Ultimate Maw/Mercy Counter Build 2

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1

I seriously hate all the Maw/Mercy Combo builds. They are annoying.

That being said, I just came up with a build that will cut through a maw/mercy build like a hot knife through butter.

I played a good 25 rounds against Maw/Mercy builds and won ever single one of them. Usually in under five turns.

Another thing that is cool about this build is that it does not rely on traits and only use one legendary card. So it should work for lower level players too.

Slot 1 - Anointed One - Turns green to red and huge skull damage buff
Slot 2 - Hellcat - Turns selected color to red
Slot 3 - Sheggra - Red to Skulls
Slot 4 - You don’t even need it but I’ll give you some suggestions.

This build is fun to play. Once you fire off hellcat, the combo extra turns that ensue can wipe the board in a single turn.

When going up against Maw/Mercy, the game AI will often have a large number of purple and yellow gems on the board. This is what makes Mercy so dangerous. She convert the purple to yellow, match four or more and this fills up Maw quickly.

So your opening move is always;

  1. Match any four
  2. If there is a skull match you have to take it to avoid the chance maw will devour.
  3. Match purple or Yellow to prevent mercy from getting a match 4 when cast. Wow this is exactly what you need to fill up Hellcat!

This means you priority is already to fill up Hellcat! Often Mercy will cast, leaving it open for you to match 4 yellow. This fills Hellcat, now cast hellcat on Yellow and fill up Anointed One and Sheggra.

You have now taken all purple and yellow off the board, this often leaves a Red match 4 if you cast Anointed One and covert green to red.

Cast Sheggra and no more maw.

The main weakness of this team is “frozen” which can stop you mad combo extra turns. So the build isn’t so good against Mab or Bone Dragon (when in slot 1).

A minor weakness is that this is a skull damage spam build and Gorgotha gives a slight defense, However, once you buff Anointed One a few times, Gorgotha goes down fast.

Good Cards for Slot 4 include;

  1. Mercy - Use her yourself to initially fill up Hellcat.
  2. Moloch - Good to stop Maw just in case he fills up.
  3. Spirit Fox - Good to stop Maw just in case he fills up.
  4. Dust Devil - Good to put Maw or Gorgotha into Position 4.
  5. Eternal Flame - Just spam more red.
  6. Heart of Sheggra - Spam more red and remove frozen.
  7. Traited Mab - Good to freeze enemy although you won’t really need it.
  8. Star Gazer - Good to buff anointed one and remove blue from board.
  9. Hobgoblin - You will fill up anything red in slot 4, free damage with the extra turn.
  10. Jarl - Spams red but you won’t need it. The Fiery Cloak trait is just fun to watch.

Again, you won’t even need the forth slot, it’s just there to add blood red icing on the cake of ultimate destruction.

Happy Maw Killing

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2

While it’s not bad, it suffers from the same thing basically all counter builds suffer from: RNG can still cause you to fail. Sometimes the game forces you to either take a skull hit or let Mercy clear out enough mana to unleash Maw, or simply between two skull hits, and you lose.

Personally I find Mab more annoying to counter, though.

2 Likes
3

Try it out. Yes, there is slight chance you will get devoured. This happened to me twice in 25 rounds but I still won the rounds. Even when up against a massive fully fed Maw, firing Sheggra took it out with Hellcat’s skull damage.

Also, if you put Dust Devil in Slot 4 and he is traited, casting him will send Maw to the back of the line and you don’t have worry about him eating you. Putting Spirit Fox in Slot 4 means you can stop Maw if Mercy fills him up.

4

I posted basically that same build a few days ago, so I’ve tried it out (and do like it a lot). It’s just no better against Maw/Mercy than, say, Ranger+Mang / Giant Spider / Green Seer / Boar Rider, which is incredibly effective at controlling the board and probably the steadiest build in the game. Maw / Mercy will still sometimes win.

1 Like
5

I have to agree with @lyya here… Yep the OP suggests a good combo / control build with good utility to clear yellows… But there are very many of those, and @lyya is right that just now and then RNG will screw you over whatever you do…

6

The advantage of this build I feel is that when the enemy’s Mercy converting Purple to Yellow, the yellow on the board helps you fill up Hellcat.

With your suggested build, often Maw/Mercy builds use Bone Dragon. This means the AI is going to take your purples plus Mercy can remove all your purples.

Again, once you fill up Hellcat, It’s game over, endless extra turns and complete board domination.

Enemy’s Mercy removes all purple by converting to yellow and you need yellow.
Anointed one removed green by converting to red.
Hellcat can convert any to red.

This lets you remove three colors from the board rapidly and leaves a sea of red.

P.S. - I normally use a Mab/Valk combo build and that makes cheesecake of anything usually in about four turns because of all the extra turns. It’s very fast. It’s just not quite as effective against maw builds though because it takes longer to get the initial mana built up.

7

Seriously, actually try the build. Take on 25 Maw teams with it and then come back and post how many times you lost due to RNG.

I hate the Maw/Mercy thing. That’s why I’m bothering to post this. I am frankly shocked the devs haven’t nerfed it yet, because so many people have complained about it. It’s like more than half of defense teams if you are high level. In the meantime, this is something I found that wins more often than not despite the RNG. In fact, I haven’t lost a single round with it yet.

8

I run a single Mab with some Soothsayers and a Valkyrie for support. But essentially 1 offensive troop. The only time I lost to a maw team was when the opening board had too many skull and purple combinations to account for. In other words, bad rng. While I think you may need to play a little more carefully against a maw team, I haven’t seen it as being that much harder than other builds people come up with.

9

Like I said, I have tried it (days ago, when I posted it). It’s a good build. It’s no better than the many other strong control teams that can win once they have mana, but I do like it. Maw/Mercy is particularly dangerous in the early game, and there’s no build better than Mang / Giant Spider / Green Seer / Boar Rider for guaranteed control mid- to late game (though there are several that are equally good).

1 Like
10

For your team, I recommend Naga Queen as the fourth. If Anointed One gets devoured, you will still have all mana types covered and all red generators. However, a good amount of Maw teams have Sheggra, so using this team would be a double edged sword.

My go to Maw/Mercy counter is still a Sunweaver leader with monster slayer.

11

Good Idea!

I wouldn’t use Naga Queen in slot 4 because you will never fill her up. The green/blues are going to get converted to red.

Having something that is red in slot 4 is going get filled up by Hellcat after Sheggra often times on the same cast.

12

I found this team to be a lot of fun - not just against Maw. Nice to have an excuse to get Anointed out of the cupboard and dust him off. I put Runesmith in 4th spot to give Anointed a bit more oomph as he can be a bit squishy - and Roony fills up fast with all that red sloshing about :sunglasses:

…edit…found Mercy in last spot works great :+1:

2 Likes
13

In that case, I vote Skeleros. After you convert most gems to red, and all reds to skulls, double the number of skulls. This will give you a 2nd skull generator in case Maw decides to go for Sheggra. Great to save for after the enemy casts their skull generator as well.

14

I would think the safest Maw counter would be knock + targeted damage. Dust Devil conveniently has Empowered, but Dust and Sand would also work if there’s multiple Maws. There’s a plethora of targeted damage dealers, so it’s a matter of sorting through them trying to build a team with some synergy so it can beat the rest of the opponent’s team once you’ve taken out Maw. Mana drain and anything to deny Brown/Yellow would also be worth looking for. Disease may also be useful to slow the enemy down long enough for you to take out Maw. A quick look through the troop list suggests some troops that might be worth building around:

  • Creeper - Targeted damage and disease.
  • Plague - Disease everybody!
  • Gob-Chomper - Empowered, spell does double damage to monsters.
  • Ferit - Damage and mana drain to last enemy, Arcane
  • Revenant - Damage boosted by skulls to last enemy, death mark, also Arcane
  • Spirit Fox - Empowered, drain, true damage boosted by removing yellow

So on one hand, there are plenty of counters to Maw, once you get Hunger out of the picture. The problem is that there are so few ways to do that. Entangle would be a good option except Maw has Frenzy. There are a few interesting options for denying skulls (Finley, Anubite Warrior, Zombie), but there’s still the risk that a skull match will drop in for the enemy on their turn. Knock is the best option, which means either Dust Devil or Dust and Sand. Then you just have to focus Maw down, so it’s probably safest to avoid split/all/random damage.

15

I use an all true dmg team it doesn’t have much weaknesses , I would say I hate facing spirit fox myself or other cannot be targeted that can potentially 1 hit kill bat or drain my mana.

Spirit Fox (G/P - fully traited mythic recommended)
Valkyrie (R/Y - fully traited - epic is fine)
Crimson Bat (Bl/R - no traits)
Marilith (G/R - 2 traits - epic is fine)

This team has no brown, no big deal. Only unlock the necessary traits so you don’t get a super high power lvl.

Keep spirit fox empowered until an opponent card fills up that is devastating… it’s also nice to stop other empowered troops like Mercy to go crazy turn 1.

Keep matching RED all frickin day (unless both valk & bat is ready to cast then don’t… if ONLY valk or ONLY bat is ready to cast then take the red match!)

Marilith providing bonus red means I can fill from scratch valk or bat with only 2x 3 red matching.

By doing this strategy with red you will always have pretty much double bat ready to go (the human can most likely find an extra turn with Valk)

16

I run the following and it doesn’t matter what I face.

Soothsayer***
Valkyrie***
Queen Mab***
Valkyrie***

You can do something similar with cursed bats and one valk… or even a war and peace or maralith build and list goes on…

Point is, you just go for a damage everything kind of build with some kind of color flip to it, controlling the mana colors. A number of minions start with some kind of partial or full mana drop and can affect the board… flip the purple and mercy does far less.

You can also run the spirit fox if you really dislike Mercy, as that card full traited directly counters her.

Taking skull matches away from maw isn’t that hard.

17

Also a good build, still not infalliable but solid offensive and defensive choice.

I find it’s easiest to fight fire with fire. I bring Maw / Mercy against Maw / Mercy.

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18

Isn’t a spirit fox build very strong against Maw/Mercy?

Sure seems to me like it would be. Empowered main drain? And remove yellows?

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19

normally it should be,.

20

Considering that’s the exact reason Spirit Fox was created, I’d say it is the best counter to the Maw/Mab + Mercy users.

1 Like