Haunted Cloak appreciation thread (Saheeli event)

yunnnn

I just narrowly won a Saheeli (gold rank, 9th place, 386 pts = I believe 3 losses) and I'd like to share my absolute love for a card that carried me throughout the event:
http://decktester.com/Cards/Details/HauntedCloak
I learned a ton of ways to use this card (which I'm sure is obvious to you pros)... scroll down to the "sweet plays" if you want to read the highlights!

Context:
I've been playing for 3 weeks (and foolishly mastered my way into gold), so my modus operandi here was to just cheese every game using the most unfair cards in the game that I actually had:
Runaway Carriage... and... Haunted Cloak. I'm not even kidding! Haunted Cloak is my absolute pick for MVP.

My decks:
Jace (Spells): Stalls using bounce spells while Talent of the Telepath hopefully fetches itself. Cloak could be used to count as a spell here. Often times the opponent had their own Carriage in play, so I couldn't cast bounce spells on it. This made it very hard to get 8 spells. Luckily, Cloak is only 1 mana & TotT cycling helped me get 8 every game.
Liliana (Creatures): Use the discard2 + get3weenies spell and hero power to lock the opponent out of cards. Win with Carriage.
Nissa (Support): Use Tamiyo's Journal + Elemental bond to get a draw engine for supports, then win with a giant Sage of Ancient Lore. My strategy going into this event was to look at the nerf list and purposely try to play the cards they were going to nerf, as I'm new and don't know how to judge power level that well.

I had Carriage and Haunted Cloak in every deck, and the decks were all ~4 rares + ~5 uncommons + 1 common.

Some sweet plays :
Nissa: I had Outland Colossus in hand (6/6 renown6) and needed a huge blocker for imminent lethal against me. I play the Colossus and Cloak it, giving it haste. It then tramples over the opponent's Ulvenwald Hydra, and turns my Crummy Colossus into a Colossal Colossus from the Renown 6. Hello, 12/10 trample /w vigilance! The Colossal Colossus then blocks an opposing Runaway Carriage, saving my life and winning me the game.
Liliana: I had a bunch of creatures in play but no way good way to deal with fliers (and was losing the damage race). I cast the Cloak on the enemy flier, giving it vigilance, which forces it to block my ground army. I clean up the air army and proceed to lock the opponent out of the game.
Jace: I cast my Carriages a little too early, so I was going to win without having cast 8 spells. For 3 turns in a row where I had lethal, I cast Cloak on an enemy monster so it would block and kill off my own monsters.
All classes: Gaining Trample from the Cloak is no joke. There were multiple games where I won with trample damage by attacking into the opponent's suited up (and unkillable) Carriage that had flying and defender. The carriage's 1 defense was its greatest downfall! Trample also synergizes with Nissa's 2nd ability, which gives +7/7 but not trample.
Obligatory: Cloak on Carriage creates a pretty much unkillable death machine. I took Plummet to deal with fliers that got around this, or did the trick above to deal with fliers. An additional tip: Don't play the Carriage too early, because without a followup kill spell, the opponent might play some random blocker and ruin your day.

Takeaways:
While I think Runaway carriage is the most broken card ever, it allowed me to actually win a Saheeli event even though I certainly didn't have the card quality to deserve one. While I agree it should be nerfed, this environment was still certainly very interesting to strategize around. I had fun!

Final Tip that also helped
I looked at every matchup and tried to guess what the enemy would have in their deck before I entered the stage. Against a Red PW, I would take Plummet to deal with expected fliers (very useful because Goldnight Castigator bugged out and refused to take double damage). Otherwise I would take something else, like a berserk spell.
I would also switch my support lands based on the color of the opponent. My Nissa is janky garbage (with no real combos and a bunch of vanilla creatures), so I actually sided out all the green generating supports in a Nissa vs Nissa mirror match, because I expected their Ulvenwald Hydra + Season's Past nightmare to wreck me every time. (Against Nissa, I would prime a fully charged creature & Cloak in hand so I could immediately kill their Ulvenwald without needing to match green mana)

majincob

Congrats man! If you made top 10 in gold with only 3 weeks of play you def. deserve to get Saheeli. Yeah cloak + RC is really good.

glggwp

how can i get this card???

yunnnn

glggwp wrote:

how can i get this card???

I've only opened 2 SOI big boxes total and I've pulled this card 3-4 times, so it's probably easy to get

rob443

Good read and congratz for archieving your goal.

Yvendros

Yeah, I'm kinda in the same boat. I finally just recently opened RC and decided to use it (even though I hate playing against it). Unfortunately, I don't have the cloak yet. couple of other common/uncommon options:

White: Knightly Valor
Red: Call of the Full Moon (if we're counting berserker...)
Green: Mantle of Webs
Colorless: True-Faith Censer, Brawler's Plate




Sidenote going up against RC I didn't realize until this past event: Hixus, Prison Warden will disable the RC so you can remove it.

Pacone

Haha congrats on getting Saheeli! I don't know what are we going to do when they nerf the carriage! We will be left alone with no way to cheat those pros!

Buret0

Pacone wrote:

Haha congrats on getting Saheeli! I don't know what are we going to do when they nerf the carriage! We will be left alone with no way to cheat those pros!

Most decks in platinum have some sort of blocking. True faith censer being the most common in decks where reach isn't a viable option. In white I saw a ton of Prison Warden's to deal with the RC's and the other power cards.

Within two events the meta changed and I stopped seeing RC in 75% of the decks I played against. Most of the platinum decks I see now are back to power, control, and loop combos (Harness and Seasons mostly).