Four factions anchor Wave A: The Alliance, the Horde Coalition, the Sylvan Confederation, and the Clockwork Dominion. Each plays a different game, and each plan below is built from what is actually known — card data where it exists, hero abilities where it does not.
Honesty note on the split: the public card pool currently ships Alliance and Horde lists (53 cards each in the MVP data). Sylvan and Clockwork cards are not public yet — their plans below are built around the confirmed hero abilities and faction identity, and they are labeled theorycraft because that is what they are.
The Alliance — the wall that fights back
The Alliance plan is defensive attrition: survive the early game behind structures and high-health bodies, then close with fusion-joker finishers.
- Core bodies: Templar Knight (3/5 at 2 cost — the value anchor), Aegis Cub (2/4 at 2), Covenant Griffin (4/6 at 3)
- The wall: Citadel of Light (0/8 structure at 4) — pure health that holds a lane while your board develops
- Removal suite: Rays of Divinity (2), Holy Light Burst (3), Divine Retribution trap (3)
- Closers: Dawnbound Union (4/5 fusion joker at 5) and Radiant Twinblade (5/4 fusion joker at 4)
- The hero: Seran the Valiant (2/30 hero — survives everything short of dedicated removal)
The play pattern: trade efficiently early — your 3/5 Templar Knight eats their 2-drops — then the jokers land behind a stabilized board. The plan loses to fast combo decks that ignore combat entirely, which is why Radiant Ward and Oathbound Rebound sit in the list as interaction.
The Horde Coalition — speed is the strategy
The Horde plan is tempo: spend every point of essence every turn, put cheap aggressive units on the board, and close before the opponent’s defenses come online.
- The curve starts at 1: Horde Runner (2/1), Savage Wolf (2/2), Bloodlust (spell)
- Mid-range pressure: Blood Frenzy Warrior (3/2 at 2), Ravager (4/3 at 3), Horde Executioner (5/3 at 3)
- The top end is short: Worgen Alpha (5/5 at 4), Troll Brute (4/7 at 4)
- Burn and reach: War Cry (2), Pack Frenzy (3), Primal Surge (3)
- The hero: Groknak the Destroyer (5/25) plus Warlord Grex (4/4 commander) whose Bloodrush gives the next unit Charge — the “one more turn” button
The play pattern: you are the clock. Every turn you do not pressure, the opponent stabilizes a little more. Grex’s Bloodrush exists to steal the turn where the opponent thought they had stabilized — charge a fresh body into a lane they counted as safe.
Sylvan Confederation — recursion theorycraft
Sylvan’s card pool is not public, so this is a framework, not a list. The confirmed piece is the hero ability: Archdruid Eldas’s Regrow returns a defeated low-cost unit to your hand.
What that implies for deck-building: cheap units stop being disposable tempo and become fuel. The skeleton of a Sylvan plan is likely a dense low-cost curve — you want Regrow targets — plus whatever payoffs the faction cards provide for replaying them. If Sylvan has any “when this enters” or “when this dies” triggers on cheap bodies, Regrow turns each into a recurring engine piece.
Watch for the balance question from the design post last week: recursion re-prices cheap units, so whatever the Sylvan cheap slot looks like will be costed against the fact that Eldas can bring it back.
Clockwork Dominion — artifact theorycraft
Clockwork’s pool is also not public — framework only. The confirmed piece is The Overseer’s hero ability, Directive: repeat the last artifact activation at half value.
That text says the deck is built around artifacts as a resource engine. The plan shape: play artifacts that generate value on activation, then let Directive double-dip — half value on the repeat is still free value on a card you already played. The faction’s lore identity (precision, self-replicating constructs, essence-pulse synchronization) suggests the synergy is deeper than “get extra mana” — expect artifact chains where the repeat hits a different activation than the first.
Four factions, four different games. Alliance outlasts, Horde outruns, Sylvan recurs, Clockwork doubles. Wave A’s variety is not cosmetic — the win conditions genuinely differ.
Keep reading
- EFURC — the trading card game
- The v0.2 balance question — Regrow and cheap units
- Clockwork Dominion preview
- Join the EFURC playtest
Agree, disagree, or caught something off? The comment form is below — I read all of them.
