Fennie Dragon Guide

Admittedly, a lot of my time has been spent grinding Take Two, but when it comes to Rotation, a deck that has fallen under the radar but has a relatively strong matchup spread is Fennie Dragon. While it was nothing more than a meme in the previous format, I consider it much stronger in Heirs of the Omen due to the addition of multiple cards that improve its consistency and survivability. It has a decent matchup spread against popular decks, which means that it can be a decent bring to a bo1 2-deck format, as you can find edges against the most popular lineups (crest + spellboost)

In addition, the current state of the meta gives the deck much more time to set up its win conditions than before, with many of its natural predators (chicken enjoyers) like Roach and, to an extent, Loot Sword, are not as popular as their counterparts in the previous expansion.

Decklist:

The decklist is taken from a Japanese Dragon player that reached the BEYOND rank recently. I will explain each card choice and their applications:

Ferocious Flame: Use early against aggressive matchups like Loot Sword where taking chip damage can be very dangerous. Extremely strong post-Fennie, as it guarantees you a dragon follower (which is half pp) while clearing board and only costing 1pp. It also has the combo potential with 7pp Storm Galmieux to clear board and swing face, whereas in many other situations, Galmieux cannot safely swing face. Can also be used to clear your own board locks, especially with Galm crest active.

Filene: Post-overflow and with evo, it can be used in conjunction with its token to clear every board. Against certain decks, like Roach, it can buy you a turn as it is often difficult to pull off large OTKs without it. This also works vs cards like Cocytus or Izudia, you just need some planning ahead of time to make the most of it. If you have galm crest, you can just play this a turn prior (and hold the fangs in hand) to instantly cast Whitefrost Whisper on demand.

Feel free to play this early for tempo too. It is not necessary to greed for its overflow effect. Notably, there will be games where it can brick your hand post-overflow as well, especially without Galmieux crest active for evo-less clear.

Ruby, Greedy Cherub: Shuffle Genesis Dragon back into deck before using Fennie. In addition, it's just a solid turn 2 slam to protect life total. I'd also note that this card is very good at decreasing your hand size post-Fennie. You'll have a bunch of games where you have too much draw and this card helps reduce your handsize quite well.

Ocean Rider: Good for early clear and lets you "miss" turn 2 due to its rush effect. Strongest after overflow as you get two orcas, which also means two healing under Orca crest.

Dragon Sign: It's ramp! We need this to get Fennie on-curve before the opponent start setting up lethal. I think it's not necessary to get "multiple ramp", one is generally enough. Notably, if cast on turn 3, it gives us Galm a turn early. I also don't think it's necessary to coin this out on turn 2. Most of the time, there's no real benefit as the only way to take advantage of the ramp is to play 2 2pp cards, which is not that high of a chance to hit.

Greatness Ascended: If you have Fennie active, drawing 3 cards can be game-winning on its own, for obvious reasons.

Liu Feng: Your ramp for when Dragonsign isn't available. It's generally totally fine going second where you can evo it on turn 4, but it's a little more awkward when going first. Conversely, the card is much easier to use post-fennie/overflow, as 2pp 5/5 rush is pretty great.

Olivia, Heroic Dark Angel: Generically strong card at 7pp but you won't always have a good target in hand. Best saved in hand early-on, after you get Fennie active, you can combo this with a 5pp Genesis and super evo both to clear board while pushing face.

This card is just insane when discounted with Fennie. At 4pp, it's just way too cheap. If double discounted by Fennie, the card is literally 0pp and at triple discount, it RECOVERS you play points, which is crazy. Basically, when Olivia is discounted, the draws lead to multiple more discounted cards and it becomes way too hard for opponent to play around

Galmieux: Strong board clear early and the token helps extend "Board Clear Reach" once the crest is active. Note that she does 3 damage to a random follower when she takes damage, which you can often manipulate via the order in which you trade/play your cards.

Note that Super Evos take zero damage, but still proc Galmieux crest. Also consider when to burn the 0pp early, as sometimes, you'll be forced to cast it to go back down to 8 cards in hand (but you'll have a board and feel pretty bad pinging your own board for no reason).

There are some scenarios where you might deliberately hold the 0pp to safely drop Fennie (For example, holding 1 0pp spell so you can instant clear luminous mage tokens). Galm token is also useful for preventing the opponent from board locking you (you only need 1 token in hand to full clear all your 2hp Orcas, as your first token will make you a 2nd token).

She also has storm at 7pp. Most of the time it's pretty risky to use, but Ferocious Flame and a previously cast Galm Crest can mitigate this issue.

Goldennote Melody: Draw 2 Heal 2, what's not to like!? Obviously, very strong once Fennie is active, and you want to generally save this so that you can get two discounted cards at once.

Fennie: In a vast majority of your games, you need this card to win. Halving your deck is essential as your cards are not good enough to win unless they are discounted. Generally speaking, 1 Fennie is enough to win games, but multiple Fennie is unbeatable vs decks you can stabilise against. Your opponent will try their best to create board states where you cannot safely Fennie, it is up to you to determine when you can risk it or not (more pointers in the guide itself). When going second, aim to use your coin on 7pp to cheat it out a turn early.

Raging Lightning: Nobody ever expects this card. Primarily used as a lethal enabler, as you will usually have less health than the opponent. The fact that it hits cards of equal highest hp is also much stronger than you'd think, situationally, it can be manipulated to clear 2-3 followers, and this card can be absolutely crazy against Abyss. Against Haven, you usually have to hold this in hand to setup lethal (popping barrier on leader or 3 damage generally being strong when aiming for OTK setup)

Seasoned Merman: Your anti aggro tool/orca generator. Notable that on evo it gives you an extra Orca.

Neptune: The reason why your deck refuses to die once Fennie is active. The amount of chip healing is insane once your Orcas come out at discounted rates, especially when considering the Orca cards are clearing the opponent's board and forcing them to respond. It's not necessary to always super evo this card if you don't have to, as the crest is tied to the fanfare.

Genesis Dragon: Most of your lethals will involve Genesis Dragon in some shape or form. Try to save an evo so 2 genesis + evo is 20 damage. Always keep in mind that Genesis Super Evo is 12. People often miss lethal because they don't realise just how big 12 damage is. For example, if opponent is at 20 hp and leaves a 5 attack card on board, you have lethal with Genesis + Raging Lightning.

General Game Plan

This deck typically composes of three primary phases of the game: Pre-fennie, Post-Fennie Stabilisation, Post-Stabilisation phase.

Pre-Fennie phase

The pre-Fennie phase consists of clearing enemy board while ramping. In most cases, you will lose some amount of health in order to ramp, which is fine.

Going first - you want to play a 2/2 on turn 2, Dragon Sign turn 3, Galm/Merman turn 4. After that, you should prioritise ramping or clearing board.

If you missed Ramp on turn 3, shift your focus towards clearing the board and preserving your health. You can still draw into Dragon Sign or Liu Feng later, which will inevitably cause you to lose tempo and health, so you need to protect your face by controlling board.

Going Second, you gain access to the highroll curve. This consists of Turn 2 2/2, Turn 3 Dragonsign, Turn 4 Liu Feng evo, Turn 5 Coin into Fennie.

In most of your games, you will only draw 1-2 ramp. Notably, when you draw Dragonsign going second, you usually don't need to coin it out on turn 2. It is often better to just play your 2/2 then Dragonsign the following turn.

The early phase is a great time to push out Galm and get her crest active, but cards like Merman will help you control the board against a majority of decks.

In the games where you only ramp once, use your 2nd coin to get Fennie out on your 7pp turn.

If you fail to draw Fennie on curve, many matchups will become very difficult to win. You are effectively forced to stall out with Orca package until you find Fennie, but if you get it too late, you will simply lose. If your opponent bricked and took chip damage, you will still have the opportunity, rarely, to win through Genesis Dragon.

In some games, you will be unable to play Fennie on curve. You need to consider the board state and ask the following questions:

• What is my current health total

• What is their deck's likely burst damage over 1-2 turns

• Can I clear their board next turn if I Fennie this turn? (cards like Neptune are very effective at clearing board. Galm crest being active is also huge)

• When will I get my next chance to Fennie safely?

Generally, if you ramped, it is much less likely for them to have a board which you must deal with immediately. In most cases, if they have two followers on the board and one can be cleared with Fennie, I will slam Fennie down with evo point.

Post-Fennie Stabilisation Phase

In a lot of games, you will be in a dangerous position with your life and your opponent will build massive boards that are difficult to clear. Your priority in this phase of the game is to survive.

The longer your Fennie is active for, the greater the advantage is for you.

Therefore, the longer you live, the more likely you will win.

This doesn't apply to every matchup, such as Rune which has access to Cocytus + Dclimb or Roach with potential 20 damage lethals. However, for decks that have to chunk you before going for lethal, it is entirely possible to stabilise through healing and board clear every turn.

The hardest part is immediately after Fennie is played. All of your opponents will intuitively understand that they are on a clock the moment she resolves her effect. This means that they will throw everything at you to try and kill you before you draw your best cards at a discounted pp.

Naturally, you will be at either 8pp or 9pp depending on if you coined out Fennie. Let's talk about a few different scenarios:

• Opponent puts out minimal pressure: Use this opportunity to draw and heal as much as you can

• Your opponent puts out a huge board: How you respond will depend on how your hand looks. If your first discounted card is a high impact card like Olivia or Neptune, then you can feel free to play those. The problem is when your first discounted card is a brick. If you have something like Filene in hand, you can try to draw first with cards like Goldennote, then you can opt to use her evo + Whitefrost to clear

• In some situations, you will have no immediate answers in hand. In this case, you must gamble by trying to draw cards. At 9pp, it is a decent gamble to go for 7pp Olivia. She would refund 4pp and therefore, a majority of your followers will be able to super evo along with her (4pp Neptune, 3pp merman, 3pp galm etc). At 8pp, you lose access to the Neptune top deck, but otherwise it's relatively the same. However, note that playing Olivia carries the risk of instantly losing the game if you draw no follow-up. Therefore, it is usually recommended as a last resort.

• Ferocious Flame is generally very good here, as it guarantees you a Dragoncraft search for only 1pp. Greatness/Golden note is generally good too, especially at 9pp, as you will have 5pp left over, allowing Filene/Neptune/Olivia as power-outs.

• Always try to consider what the opponent can do two turns from now. This is generally quite easy to do against decks like Sword, as the majority of their plays take up a bulk of their pp and are reliant on evos to do damage. In a majority of cases, you can roughly predict that their turn 8 will be to chunk you with Sinciro super evo/valse -> Turn 9 Albert SEVO, so you want to plan your future turns around being able to clear/heal out of range.

Post-stabilisation phase

This is the phase that automatically activates if you survive the first turn or two of Fennie being active.

In general, it will eventually reach a point where your opponent will no longer have any real win condition, at which point you can continue healing, clearing, building board, playing additional Fennies until you have lethal with Genesis Dragon.

You have two main ways of dealing lethal:

The first is through double discounted genesis + evo point. This is the most straightforward lethal pattern. Note that against decks with 2 health wards, saving a 0pp token from Galm can allow you to deal 2 AOE damage to all followers before going for a Genesis lethal.

The second is by securing a board and playing until your follower leaves some amount of your followers up OR if you are able to safely swing 5 to face with Galm storm. At this point, you will only need a single Genesis Dragon to
lethal. Cards like Raging Lightning also provide the exact amount of reach that most players will either not expect - or simply cannot do anything about.

Against decks with a heavy amount of healing, like Haven, you should not overcommit to hitting their face as they can easily heal it back up with cards like Maddening Benison. However, against decks that have limited healing, it is perfectly fine to just throw your 5pp Genesis Dragons into face.

It's worth noting that against a lot of decks that have no 20 to 0 lethal conditions, your victory is essentially already guaranteed in this phase even if it takes you 5-8 turns to actually draw into it.

Mulligans

At present, the mulligan is very similar across all matchups:

Keeps: Dragonsign, Liu Feng (going second), Fennie

You can consider keeping a 2 drop if you already have one ramp and Fennie in hand. Against Sword, I wouldn't keep Fennie unless I had ramp in hand.

Keep Filene going first against Abyss. It's your best out to Beryl and there's not many ways for them to punish it as it has Bane.

The explanation for this mulligan is actually quite simple: your deck doesn't properly operate if you aren't playing Fennie at least a turn early. Therefore, you need to draw ramp and you need to draw Fennie, so you mulligan aggressively for both. Taking early chip damage isn't gamebreaking in most matchups, as they will be healed back up post-Fennie/Neptune anyways.

Matchups:

Spellboost Rune (Slightly favoured)

Spellboost doesn't really do anything to you early game. You can actually map out the majority of their plays throughout the game:

Turn 2/3: 2/2s

Turn 4: Sagelight Ward if they have 2 dirt

Turn 5: Anne and Grea/Bergent

Turn 6: Norman

Turn 7: Kuon

Turn 10: Enhance Kuon/Cocytus Climb

Of these, the ones to be most concerned about are the turn 5 and turn 6 plays. Everything else can be cleared easily or don't pressure your face enough for it to matter.

Anne and Grea is difficult to out if the ward and the Anne & Grea are both healthy (5/5 and 6/6). In these cases, you should just continue to ramp, and failing that, build as wide a board as you can. Although Galm doesn't full clear, I think it's perfectly fine to evo her into the 5/5 ward to ping Anne and Grea for 3. It'll set you up for double 0pp token to out whatever board he plays next turn. You take 6, but it's not a big deal as you'll likely heal it back later.

You also need to be concerned with Norman. Usually, it's hard for them to back-to-back this with Anne as it requires two earth sigils and if they are using their coin on turn 4 to Anne & Grea, they need to open with specific hands to access this curve. Naturally, you do need to out this, as it represents 13 damage on board. Holding Filene is usually a good answer, especially if Galm is active, as you can just ping the board with the token then Filene's evo to full clear for 5pp.

It's quite rare for them to have consecutive turns of pressure, even though they can hypothetically go Kuon on turn 7 and super evo. If your health total is high, they probably won't go for it.

Your aim is still to resolve Fennie as soon as possible, as long as it looks possible to stabilise over the next few turns.

Once Fennie is active, you want to build extremely wide boards every turn and force the Rune player into difficult positions. If you are able to make them expend all their Super Evo points before turn 10 Climb, you will outscale and beat them.

However, if they are able to reach turn 10, you are at high risk of dying to CoC Climb or Kuon Climb OTK (the latter you can play around by being at high hp and with multiple wards). I would generally recommend using a Filene spell when they are about to go into their turn 10. This blocks Cocytus + Climb, which will usually buy you a turn or force them into a suboptimal line.

In essence, you must make the most of the time when you are strongest: Right after Fennie and before their Turn 10. This is why ramping and resolving Fennie is the most important part of your gameplan, as this is the only way to force them to burn through their super evos.

Roach Forest (unfavoured)

Depending on the skill level of the Roach player, this matchup can be extremely bad for you. However, a lot of Roach players suck, and so you can win the game simply by staying at 20 Health (forcing the existence of multiple 0pp cards), and using a timely Filene spell to prevent them from lethalling you (read my roach guide to understand their lethal calc, which you can utilise yourself to figure out when you are most vulnerable). If in doubt, one guideline is to use Filene token spell the turn before you want to aim for Lethal.

This is a matchup you cannot win without resolving Fennie early. Only through discounted, high pp followers, can you force the Roach player to expend their resources and find opportunities to kill them with a discounted Genesis.

Loot Sword (unfavoured)

This matchup is difficult because they have a lot of chip damage and burst damage, which add up very quickly and around the same timing as your Fennie turns.

In general, there's two ways to win in this matchup. The first is to forsake Fennie altogether and pray you draw all your tempo cards on curve. If you answer their boards as they arise and have multiple Neptune, you can heal out of all their aggression. Once they're out of evo points, their main burst options will become significantly weaker, at which point you "outscale them".

Conversely, if you open multiple ramp into Fennie, you will generally be at a lower health total but the potential of stabilisation increases significantly if you can draw a single Neptune.

The game plan against Sword is similar irrespective of which method you're forced into by your draws. It is to grind them down to the point where they can no longer lethal you. This is not a matchup you win by dealing damage to them. It is a matchup you win by ensuring their damage can no longer kill you.

Your board is unlikely to survive against a majority of their late game plays. Sinciro will invalidate any board you have, so when considering your future turns, try to think about how you will clear an 8/9 from empty board.

They will utilise burst from Sinciro/Octrice/Albert/Centaur/Tentacles/Odin. Most of these cards require evo to function properly. In addition, they will all come down on consecutive turns, hence why it's important not to take too much early chip damage, or it will be impossible to heal and clear at the same time.

This is definitely one of the worst matchups for Fennie at the moment, but on the plus side, it's being kept out by Crest Haven/Spellboost.

Crest Haven (favoured)

The thing about this matchup is that they don't do that much early and their plays are somewhat predictable. To win, you need to understand what their deck does.

Their deck functions primarily through Marwynn's crest effect, which scales based on the number of Crests they have active. Of these crests, only Wilbert, Grimnir and Marwynn are permanent, the rest will countdown and decrease over time. Once they have five crests active, they can use Maddening Benison for free to heal for 10. Using cards like Unholy Grail or Jeanne, they can full clear your board and use Marwynn's crest to burn your face for 3-5 damage. In addition, most of these crest effects do not activate if they attack, so you are not forced to clear their board every turn. They will only attack if the amount of damage they deal through attacks is higher than the crest damage.

They can finish the game by using either Gilnelese's 5pp spell or the 4pp amulet to ping your face for 9-10 damage.

Notably, a majority of these can be played around by simply going wide. They only have 3 Unholy Grail in deck, so in general, going wide will protect your health total (not to mention Post-Neptune, building a wide board literally heals you anyway). Keep track of the Unholy Grail count in particular. If they have used 2-3, you can consider plays involving Olivia super evo to make it difficult for Jeanne to answer you.

Unlike many other decks in the meta, you have a ridiculous amount of healing so you have a lot of time to assemble a lethal hand.

In open deck-list, keep note of their ratios, especially cards like Odin, so you can be aware of how much burst damage they have access to at any given time.

Early game, they do practically nothing to you. Focus on ramping into Fennie and, ideally, playing multiple Fennie. This is a matchup where you will want to burst them down with double Genesis in most situations. Sometimes, you'll run into situations where they slam Wilbert. This is the only difficult turn as it lines up with Fennie. I think it's okay to evo Fennie and slam it into Wilbert, even if it doesn't clear. The next turn we can focus on outing the rest of their board. If their Wilbert actually traded into anything, then it dies, which is ideal. You don't really need to clear the 2/4 wards right away, as they will probably not attack with them anyway if Marwynn is active.

Note that it is difficult to setup Genesis lethal without discounted hands or chip damage due to the crest that gives their followers ward. This is why in many games, you want to set up multiple Fennie effects to widen the range of your plays.

You also need to be careful of them giving Barrier to their leader. This can be easily resolved by using a Super Evo to ping their leader. Ideally, your best OTK option is Olivia, Double Genesis + Super evo for 20 damage lethal through ward (you will need double Fennie active to do this)

Raging Lightning should be saved in hand to enable lethal against Crest Haven, as you will almost always be able to use this to ping their leader.

If they're bricking, keep in mind the way their crest effects work. It's often incorrect to overly pressure their health because they can punish with Maddening Benison. However, suppose they are going to 9pp with only 4 crests. They actually cannot Unholy Grail + 5th Crest + Benison. Therefore, you will have a rare opportunity to make a play like Olivia + 5pp Genesis to face to make it extremely awkward for them to survive.

In most cases, the matchup will take a long time to finish, but your ability to heal and setup lethal is very difficult for Crest Haven to play around and you should come out ahead more often than not.

Mode Abyss (favoured)

Early game, all you really have to worry about is Beryl, which you can mulligan Filene to out. Apart from that, focus on your usual game plan and get to Fennie ASAP.

Their deck is actually pretty similar to yours. It doesn't do anything until they have their Sham Nacha active, similar to how your deck doesn't do anything until Fennie's active. However, if we ramp, we reach Fennie before they reach Sham Nacha, which is where we will get the bulk of our advantage. In addition our deck is much better in the grind-game, especially once we have some time to fully set up post-fennie.

The things you need to watch out for are their tempo plays, primarily in relation to Congregant as we don't have that much hard removal in the deck. Apart from that, we just clear their board, go wide every turn and grind them out until they run out of gas or we find Genesis lethal.

Portal (all favoured)

Portal decks literally don't do anything. They try to chip damage and we just heal it up with Neptune. They try to kill us with Odin but we just heal up lol.

What are they even doing? They can't stop us from killing them and they can't find a realistic way to kill us. If you don't brick, you win.

Mirror

This matchup is interesting because it is possible to win without Fennie, and in fact, we can be punished for greeding into Fennie too hard.

The only component of the game you need to be overly concerned about is the turn heading into Fennie from both sides. It's fine to just trade Fennie turns if you're about the same in ramp. However, when one side doesn't have Fennie, the correct play is to go as wide as possible. This means we're forcing them to trade health for Fennie's fanfare effect. In addition, because we are both ramp decks, it means they have only 1-2 turns to stabilise, and both players will potentially have access to Genesis for lethal.

Understanding this dynamic is quite important. If one side gets to Fennie for free without the other player using Fennie in response, they will run away with the game completely.

It's also possible for the enemy ramp deck to run cards which we do not. This means you do need to watch out for stuff like Garyu/9pp disdain guy/Odin/Forte. Fortunately, almost all of these cards get ousted by Filene, but it's worthwhile keeping this possibility in the back of your mind.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this is a deck that has definitely flown under the radar and I think players should definitely consider it for ladder and tournament play. It's also great for people who don't want to invest the time into mastering decks like Spellboost Rune, or do not want to play the mirror match all day. It is easy to learn how to play Fennie and pilot it at a high level, which is much better than playing a deck like Spellboost Rune sub optimally. Once you get the hang of the deck, you can mostly turn off your brain and just win games with fairly low effort. It comes with a thumbs up from me, at least.