VS Kayo

Kayo

This matchup is very difficult to navigate. At first I wrote it off as a cursed match up and considered not playing Dromai so long as Kayo was meta. But then I developed a game plan that actually worked. At its core the idea of the plan is to block very aggressively and win the game in the second cycle when Kayo’s hands start becoming much worse. When Kayo hits his blue stack a lot of hands will start being attack with one card and pass. This will let you block with 2 cards and play a 2 card hand, eventually you will start catching up as your 2 card hands are much better. Similar to the Dash IO match up if the Kayo wants to just throw his hand at us every turn we will leak damage but he won’t kill us. Also like Dash IO, Kayo will need to take off turns to set up for big damage turns which usually involve him playing a Cast Bones. The next turn will usually involve a Blood Rush Bellow, one really big attack, a claw for 5 and another big attack. It is imperative to punish Kayo as hard as possible on these off turns where he leaves you with a hand. Again like Dash IO, disruptive attacks such as Command and Conquer are great here. This is a great opportunity to play multiple dragons since you don’t get many chances to establish a board if you are blocking a lot. Lost in Thought to mess up their hand is effective, usually it's best to take one of their pitch cards but use your judgment. Tome of Fyendal to gain the life you are going to lose from the Cast Bones are also effective. This can also be an opportunity to push their life total down if you have a board already since it is very likely they won’t want to block with any of their cards this turn and even if they do you are happy with that.

Unlike Dash IO we do need to actually win the game since he won’t fatigue himself. If all you do is block all game you will get to the end of the game with not enough cards to close the game and end up fatiguing yourself. You might want to consider playing a couple extra cards in your deck just in case you aren’t able to get anything going at the start of the game. Generally there are only a few cards I’m looking to take damage to play. The first one is Rake the Ember and Ouvia. Ashwings are super annoying for them to deal with and they won’t want to spend time clearing them. Once I establish some ashwings I will just keep asking them to pop every single turn. Kayo has less actual poppers than it seems like he should since a lot of them don’t block or are base power 5 so they won’t work as poppers. Forcing a popper out of his hand every turn will usually strip him of the cards he actually wanted to play. The macro game plan is to get to the late game where their hands start getting bad so forcing Kayo to block with his good cards also facilitates this. Once I have some ashwings I’ll try playing a mid game Burn Them All. Since we are blocking so much it's going to be very easy to fill our grave with reds so this Burn Them All will stick around for a long time. I will usually try to keep it around for 8 or so uses. Of course the classic distraction threats Miragai and Passing Miragai are good too. Try not to play Miragai if you can avoid it when they have a Might and Agility token since you are making it very easy for them to clear it with a Claw before sending another attack at your face. Themai can also be annoying for them since it means that they can’t discard Agile Windup on our turn to guarantee the go again on their turn. Try to pitch your Cromai’s if possible as they aren’t very good early on since they only have 2 health and get picked off by claw. Later on they can be game winning when they are running out of poppers. Usually you also will end up with one turn during the game where you break through and get a lot of damage in, catching up on life total. This is either because they don’t have a popper or they can’t afford to block with it and still do what they want to do on their turn.

Lastly, here are a few things to watch out for. A big one is to be careful with your arsenal and how you block. They play 3 Send Packing and 3 Command and Conquer so always keep that in mind when you block. I usually try to save my armor for these incase my hand either doesn’t block well or they have a Might token buffing them. Once I’m out of armor I usually try not to arsenal cards other than Sigil if they still have these floating around in their deck. If they don’t have any more of these left though I don’t mind using my armor on a Swing Big to get the Quicken token, being able to use Dustup as a chain starter can be nice.