Forward
I honestly did not expect to be able to make 14 decks with only 120 unique cards, but here we are. (Only 110 cards once you ignore Dark Leader, Trihorror, Rally the People, Standard Bearer, Thundarus, Vital Mission, Bellowing Minotaur, Burrowing Wurm, Chomp!, and Wolf Companion). Bravo White Wizard Games, well played.
As a side note, I plan on streaming tomorrow once I get my new microphone to get rid of that annoying clicking sound. Probably around 3pm CST, but it will depend on when my package arrives. twitch.tv/tomsepicgaming
Core-Only Decks So Far
As of now, I have played and really liked Core Sky Force and Core Epic Humans.
I have played and not cared for Core Token Control, Core Evil Tokens and Core Big Butt Burn.
I have played and am neutral towards Core Wild Champion Overload and Core Coming Through!.
I have not played Core Feint, Tom’S Core Discard Deck, Tom’S Core Aggressive Burn List, Core Sage Army, Core Incremental Targeted Removal.
New decks in this article: Core Resurrection Evil and Core Rampaging Evil. (I really like Core Rampaging Evil.)
Core Resurrection Evil
After a brutal dark draft game where I played Thought Plucker on my opponent’s turn, played Corpse Taker to replay Plucker on my turn, and Resurrected Plucker on my opponent’s turn, I decided to make a constructed deck that could do the same thing.
The Deck
Essentially I just grabbed the most powerful champions in the game, added all of the ways to recur them, and added Surprise Attacks to help me cycle to get them.
Performance
The deck performed only okay.
Difficulty Dealing Damage to Opponent
The deck’s main weakness is that it struggles to push damage. I noticed after I played a couple test games that I had completely ignored on-turn gold-punishers! I had been so fixated on the most powerful, high-value champions that I hadn’t built the deck to compliment my midrange playstyle.
Pretty much the only way I was able to get damage through was when my opponent ran out of cards in hand, or by attacking with the zombies gained from multiple plays of Murderous Necromancer.
Reliance on Muse/Thought Plucker
Unanswered Muses and Thought Pluckers are some of the most powerful cards in the game. However, if your deck relies on drawing cards from them, and they are immediately answered (which isn’t hard when decks are built to answer them), they can perform quite poorly.
The main reason why this deck relies on these cards so much is the deck’s Evil core. Evil has the worst ability to draw in the game. Core set only includes no Evil 
“draw 2 and” cards and only 1 Evil Tribute/Loyalty -> draw a card champion. This is offset by the fact that they have some of the most powerful loyalty 2 effects in the game, all of which are included in this deck.
In addition, Palace Guard and Kong take up off-alignment slots that could have gone to card draw. Therefore, if my Muses/Thought Pluckers don’t draw me multiple cards, my hand eventually dries up, and I lose.
Low Impact 0-Cost Cards
Finally, my 0-cost cards in this deck aren’t able to do enough to help. They are largely removal effects to deal with Muse/Thought Plucker and chump blockers. Most of them won’t draw out my opponent’s gold to give my Kongs, Palace Guards, and Medusas effective targets. Overall, the deck just doesn’t function great as a whole. Instead of building my deck to win a game of Epic, I built it to gain as much value as possible.
Core Rampaging Evil
After playing the no on-turn gold punisher deck, Core Resurrection Evil above, I needed a palette cleanser. So I built a Rampaging Wurm deck.
Since Rampaging Wurm is an incredible on-turn gold-punisher, I wanted to give it a deck that could draw out my opponent’s gold before mine as often as possible.
The Deck
My first thought was that Medusa is one of the best off-turn cards in the game, and it can let you start your turn with a solid threat, while keeping you alive off-turn too. Then, I wanted 0-cost blitz
champions that could provoke a 1-cost response from my opponent, hence Guilt Demon, Dark Knight, and Thrasher Demon. Army of the Apocalypse works great with them, as does Rampaging Wurm. From there I used the rest of my deck to include solid Sage card draw that works well with Army and Necromancer Lord. 9 break all board clears also give me the ability to consistently reset to begin a fresh assault again.
Performance
So much fun! Killing an opponent from 13 because they had the audacity to spend their gold before me on my turn is great.
Sage Package
I am loving the Sage cards in this deck. Winter Fairy is great to play on your turn, and Final Tasking it on-turn is pretty solid (draw 3 and deal 4 damage). Djinn continues to out perform my consistently growing expectations. Being able to draw twice with it and threaten a third draw is great. 8/8 airborne gold punisher is amazing, and if it survives until next turn I can always draw with it if I’m afraid of mass removal. Love this card. Army of the Apocalypse with Crystal Golem feels great. Get back multiple champions and draw 2, pretty nice, especially since my Amnesias and Guilt Demons do work keeping my opponent’s discard pile threatless.
0-Cost Blitzers
Guilt Demon is great. It breaks just as easily as Muse, which means many decks can answer it easily, but at minimum it takes 2 cards from your opponent’s discard pile and 1 card from your opponent’s hand with it (unless it breaks in combat). This removes recall cards, Soul Hunters, obstructs recycling, clears the way for your Army of the Apocalypses, and can severely hamper cards like Memory Spirit/Corpse Taker/Necromancer Lord/etc. There are many reasons why this is far and away my most included card in core only decks.
Thrasher Demon in a Raxxa’s Curseless environment has also been pretty nice. Mine haven’t grown very big yet, but 3 damage and the final nudge that draws the board clear against my 0’s is quite respectable. Forcemage Apprentice‘s direct damage can also be helpful when I don’t need it to break Muses.
Conclusion
Now I have Evil, Good, and Sage focused core-only decks I really enjoy: Core Rampaging Evil, Core Epic Humans, and Core Sky Force. Just need a Wild deck to complete my collection.
Using a mildly modified version of “Core Coming Through” has worked very well for me against most decks. It feels like a combination of just a lot of the most powerful, difficult to deal with cards in Core. What’s led to your neutral feelings about it?
It works fairly well, but it isn’t that interesting to play. Playing Hurricane to clear a board to get attackers through is great, but it isn’t as fun to play as the other decks.
In addition, it relies on Wither, Flash Fire, and Fireball to clear out blockers in order to get most of its damage through. In a Muse/Thought Plucker heavy environment, burning my small removal on a token doesn’t feel the greatest; it can also lead to an eventual loss due to low value trades, since only Juggernaut can get through chump blockers indefinitely.
I prefer decks that have considerable staying power and don’t need to rush out a win. Just my personal preference though.
Hi Tom, of the core only decks, how many of them can be built at the same time with 3 core sets?
Hello Andreas, sorry for the late reply.
Most of the decks cannot be concurrently built from only 3 core sets due to many decks wanting to use the same cards, for example: Drain Essence, Erase, Kong, Muse, Sea Titan, Surprise Attack, Thought Plucker. That being said, if there are any you specifically want to try playing against each other, I’d be happy to give some recommendations on how to best adjust those decks so you can play them against each other.
I did specifically create duel decks that can be played against each other which can be found here: http://www.tomsepicgaming.com/tall-v-wide-duel-decks-updated/
But, looking at them, the Wide deck seems fairly weak. I might need to update them again.
Hi Tom, thanks for the reply. Hadn’t seen the duel decks, will give that a try. Would love to see updated Duel Decks or an alternative to the wide deck 🙂 Thanks for the great resource you provide.