First off, this is not a deck that is going to give 100% success, no deck will at the moment because there is not a full set of counters available. It is also not going to work for 100% of players because it is dependent on the progression of each individual. You’ll know if it is worth a shot to you as you read along, or if you might need to try something different.
That said, with a little look-ahead, I mean Scouting before a fight, you can find out before starting the fight if the deck will work, and if it does you will give yourself a very tidy advantage. I guess it is also fair to say, if you Scout and you’re not going to one-shot then move to another opponent or don’t use this deck.
[[ edit: Or if you are feeling gutsy you can try for a two-shot approach where you use Keggy’s cast, and either a Skull hit or going for a Mana Surge on 3 Purple and use a Spider Knight cast as well… I just feel that there is only a limited range for this deck, and one-shotting the Troll is really what would be best to keep this deck in the 90%+ success rate, especially because you really do not want to accidentally get Entangled by a rogue Skull hit by the AI. Second edit: After further testing, don’t bother if you can’t one-shot, it is just too risky. But when you get an opponent that you CAN one-shot this deck is having amazing success for me at the moment. I really hate non-looping decks, so I’m surprised I like it as much as I do. ]]
Noteworthy in this deck is the absence of a looping strategy or reliance on Impervious / Insulated. This is because this deck is not meant to loop and not meant to defend… it prepares in advance to be Frozen and to be hit with spells earned by AI sky drops. It is mean to accept both conditions and work within them instead of trying to parry or counter.
I started with the premise that Keghammer would be the anchor of the deck, providing a (nearly) one-shot Empowered spell with which to hit the Forest Troll. He would also be at the back of the deck, being the only Troop to stand as the defense from Devour so that I would not have to devote additional Troop slots or Traits to additional devour/Freeze counter-measures.
The first problem which I’m sure has stood to anyone that has tried Keggy is that as I said he generally has only enough power to “nearly” one-shot the Troll. I use quotes because it is easier at this point in the description to gloss over some specifics and worry about the overall gist. This is what I meant above when I said you need to Scout the team ahead of time to see if Keggy will be able to one-shot the Troll.
Through research I found out that I could get two +1 Magic bonuses if I used the Kingdom bonuses seen here
What this does is give Keggy 2 extra Magic, so when he casts on the Troll and gets the Triple Bonus it works out to 6 extra damage, usually enough for my progression level to put me over the top and into one-shot territory.
The rest of the deck is all about using the Web Affix to reduce the Magic of the enemies to 0. This means that you can pretty much lock down Kraken with a single cast from Spider Knight, reducing Krakky’s damage to effectively nil. Same with Queenie. 7 Purple Mana means they basically cannot hurt you anymore. Then you use the double damage on Webbed enemies selectively to Skull-pop them or use Tal-Rae’s cast.
There is another deck I am working on with Keggy and Astral Sprit which guarantees Troll is dead, but I’m still working on it. (There are simply cases where your foe is just too strong for a single cast, and needs a Skull hit + Cast or two casts. 3rd Traited Peryton just might be the ticket as well giving 15 extra damage to Keggy.)