This is a Gothic mid-range Air/Earth deck with Avatar of Air for mobility. It's not too different from the typical air/earth mid range gameplay that encourages an aggressive early-mid game with late-game finishers. With the changes to Guisarm and other "Strike" effects, you're not going for the OTK and instead looking to constantly apply pressure.

---------- Artfiacts:

Onyx Core is to help ramp and fix Earth Threshold. Torshammer Trinkets are to help deal more damage and make trades more favorable. Toolbox is to provide answers when you need them but more often than not it is to pull Zap! out from the collection to kill your opponent at Death's Door. You could argue running a 3 of to add consistency to access to the cards.

Rolling Boulder is a typical card to have in an Avatar of Air deck, however with Gothic we have a brand new toy to play with in Lord of Greed. You can now roll the boulder and have Lord of Greed bring it back at the end of turn.

---------- Minions:

Most minions don't' need explanation as they are typical valuable creatures to fly into your opponent's board with AoA.

Men of Leng is a personal pet card of mine that if played at the right time can be very hard to deal with and can take a few cards from your opponent. Use your Blinks, Wuthering Heights, and AoA to fling them to the back row and force some discards.

Skeleton Mage is a fantastic new addition to the roster of air minions as it not only lets you recast your magic, but you can also cast opponent magics that you may need (specifically says "a cemetery" not "your cemetery").

All of the ranged units become extremely difficult to play around with air's mobility. Stygian Archers are one of my favorite new additions. Kill stuff, gain benefits. Doesn't get more satisfying than that.

Daperyll Vampires are probably the most questionable minion on the list. With the changes to how they work in that you no longer get health when striking a site, they lost a lot of luster. However, they are still an airborne minion that is hard to deal with sometimes. They are the most likely to be replaced for lower-cost aggressive targets. And they've also been outclassed by one of my new favorite Airborne minions which are:

Legion of Gall are a fantastic minion. Never would they have printed a 5 mana 5 power Airborne unit in Beta, but they did it in Gothic and gave it an upside. These guys are a monster to deal with, especially early with a tower. On top of them dominating the air, they also remove cards from your opponent's collection. So you get to see what kind of answers they may have and remove their best options.

Lord of Fear is a game ender. Enemies can't defend alone is a huge effect and makes your offense feel so much more powerful. You get to trade better. You get to attack without being blocked. And most importantly Death's Door is scarier than ever.

Lord of Greed is an answer to your opponent's artifacts and he has an upside of having some fun synergy with Rolling Boulder. I debated over 2 of Fear over Greed but there are just too many good artifacts in this game that you want to shut them down as often as you can. We don't have Swap so this is one of our best and consistent answers to artifacts.

---------- Magic:

There are a lot of typical tempo spells you will see in a deck like this but there are a few cards that I want to talk about. Namely Gift of the Wolf and Vanishment.

Gift of the Wolf is a fantastic new card and I feel it might be overlooked very often at first glance. This card is so good at making trades, or just getting extra damage in with a ranged strike or site attack. The fact that it replaces itself and also is a great target for Skeleton Mage is what helped it earn its slots in the deck. I replaced Gigantism with this because Gift of the Wolf more easily fits into turns. Gigantism is still good, but often your opponent will have chump blockers making it have less opportunities to be used.

Vanishment is another one of my own personal pet cards. I like cards that replace themselves, and this does so and protects your board state. Plenty of times I find myself just ahead enough and Vanishment guarantees I stay ahead on my opponent's next turn most of the time.

---------- Sites:

My site choices are very defensive. Stuff like Perilous Bridge, Mountain Pass, and No Man's Land let you take advantage of AoA's mobility while shutting down your opponent's ability to strike back. The quality of sites drastically increased in Gothic. Double threshold sites are an amazing new addition. Learning how to mulligan sites is a process with this deck. Placement of air sites and defensive sites is something you will get used to after playing for a bit. Wuthering Heights is a new site that replicates AoA's ability. This lets you double fly units and get them further in to enemy territory.

Collection:

3 Ghouls

1 Amazon Warriors

1 Bury

1 Dispel

1 Disenchant

1 Murder of Crows

1 Gift of the Raven

1 Zap!

Avatar of Air - 1st Place Cornerstone Championship

@Ghorta