Winning with the BDIF - Natura Sword

At this point in time, it's very clear that the best deck in the format is Natura Sword, and to be frank, I suspect the only reason it isn't more dominant is an issue of supply/price of the deck.

At the Grand Showdown, Top 32 consisted of 13 Sword players, a ridiculous 40% representation, with the grand finals being a Natura Sword affair.

What makes Natura Sword so powerful?

Natura Sword has a great matchup spread, owing to high levels of consistency and a toolbox of cards that can dismantle enemy plans while forcing the opponent to avoid letting the Natura Sword player take control of the board.

Natura decks have the specific advantage of being able to expend trees to cycle cards in the deck, discarding cards that are irrelevant to the current game-plan, while accelerating your progression towards your win condition. It is not uncommon to cycle through the majority of your deck in any given game.

With the exception of the 1-cost slot, where Natura Sword has no 2/2s, most of its curve are very generously statted, with the 2-costs generally having a 2/3 statline, and followers which are heavily mana efficient. Bayleon, a 4/4 ward on evolve, also has the added feature of being Alice, Wonderland Explorer for Natura cards.

It is exceptionally difficult for the opponent to snowball any type of aggressive lead on you, due to access to cards like Lupine Axeman, Princess Strike, and in particular, King's Might. It is no exaggeration to say that King's Might is the card that truly breaks the deck, as the two-tree condition is trivial to meet, and Bayleon makes the card cost 0 for a 4-damage ping. In the early game, it's very rare for any follower to survive a 4-damage removal option, making sure that you are able to control the board.

Healing is also abundant with this deck, cards like Colorful Cook, Viridia Magna, and Mistolina provide chip healing, which is stronger than people give it credit for. In a game like SVE, being on high health can create situations where the opponent is forced to trade into you rather than going face. This is the type of situation Natura Sword loves being in, as Mistolina can hit enemy face for 7, shoot one of the enemy's major followers and then demand an answer from the opponent.

In addition, Natura Sword has quite a few tech slots open, and it can tech specific cards to improve particular matchups. For example, we often see cards like Maisha, Barbarossa, Outrunning the Encroaching Heat, Leod, and more as potential techs. This means that Sword is a generally very safe pick into any local metagame, suffering from only one particularly bad matchup in Kuon

Decklist

I've chosen to feature Justin Mao's list from BCS Melbourne. Justin's a great friend of mine and came third at last year's Worlds.

I will briefly explain the use case of the cards within this list:

Colorful Cook: Great on Turn 1, heals you, gives you a tree, and is a cheap and effective cycle. Opponent can't easily trade into this without leaving something vulnerable to Lupine or Bayleon Evo. Poking for 1 damage will eventually add up as well. Do note that you need to consider how you play this card in the late game, as it is not easily self-removable if opponent has no engaged followers, and semi-board locks do occur in some matchups.

Princess Strike: In the early game, it's just your typical 1-mana, 2 damage ping quick. Worth mulliganing for this against decks which are likely to drop 1-mana 2/2s on turn 1, but to be fair, there's not many of those in the current meta. Obviously in the late game, it comboes with Mistolina for 6 damage (basically kills everything), which is insane.

Aether: Better than Colorful Cook the later the game goes. Worth noting that when Octrice's discount effect is active, all the trees in the EX Zone cost 0pp, allowing for some degenerate comboes if the opponent leaves any of your key cards up.

Pathfinder: If you have no other 2-drops to play on turn 2, just slam it. Obviously, if you have King's Might and you are looking to Bayleon the next turn, you'll also play this to get the trees setup. Don't greed too much for the scry 3 effect, a 2/3 requires answers, especially because Bayleon can buff it.

Leod: Extremely annoying for board based decks to deal with. In particular, Mono has a very tough time vs Leod. You just leave him standing and he pings off the enemy board, potentially allowing you to develop instead of spending mana on clearing their followers.

Lupine: Broken 2-cost follower. Does everything - gives you a tree, has good stats, can clear enemy followers on the turn it comes down etc.

Octrice: Very strong in the mid-late game where EX cards are discounted. It's common to fill the EX Zone via Bayleon, then using Octrice on a future turn to play everything for cheap and flood the opponent. Is especially good vs the mirror, as you can take away the opponent's key combo pieces (Princess Strike is always a good one, stealing/milling their Mistolinas, etc).

Trail of Light: Self-explanatory, discard with tree, free +1

Bayleon: So yeah, obviously this card is Alice and is a +2 for no reason at all. It also has good stats, ward (why lol), synergy with King's Might (0pp 4 damage removal!?), and you can even cycle your trees to draw 2/discard 2 and buff a follower. In matchups where opponent has no easy ways to clear it outside of battle, leaving this card standing represents a huge amount of pressure.

Gemstaff Commander: The reasoning for this card over Maid Leader (which is also a good card), is that it doesn't take up evo deck space, can be used to search itself vs grindier matchups, can search Mistolina, and can search Octrice then evo the Octrice on the same turn (Maid Leader cannot do this). Maid Leader's advantage is that it can be played on turn 1, can, evo on turn 2 with evo point, and trade on the same turn it's played. It's personal preference. Worth noting that Gemstaff and Maid Leader both force deck shuffles, which can sometimes be bad if you are counting your cards via Bayleon/Mulligan etc.

Swift Tigress: Good pressure card, especially from a neutral game state. Forces your opponent to make a move afterwards, does 4 damage, etc. Generically strong.

King's Might: Imbalanced. Obviously play this with trees active, preferably with Bayleon evo turn.

Viridia Magna: Basically reads: Kill anything on the field, then summon a 4/4 and heal 2. Although the evo comes out engaged, it represents a threat that has to be cleared. For example, against the mirror, the opponent can hardly ignore the 4/4 next turn if it comes down with a Mistolina for 11 damage. Also, because it only costs 4 mana, it's not difficult to pair it with another follower. In other cases, you may also decide to clear their only follower with Viridia, leave it at like 1 health, but the opponent will be put in a very tough spot because they have to clear it (or it kills their follower for free), while also needing to clear a 4/4.

Mistolina: Your main win condition. Against most decks, if the opponent leaves only a single follower on board, you just slam this and hit them for 7. After that, the opponent has to spend their entire turn dealing with it, and if you chain this card, you win. It's a little different in the mirror match and vs decks like Control Haven, but for the main part, this card wins you the game.

Tech cards:

Depending on your meta and preferences, there's a bunch of cards that you can go for instead of the above decklist:

Maisha: If you're bricking, playing this on turn 2 is not bad as the statline meets the base tempo requirement. It opens you up for late game OTKs with Purgation Blade - and obviously synergises with the constant cycling with Trees (putting Purgation Blade into Grave). Purgation Blade itself can be very useful due to being a 3pp hard removal. It's worth noting that Maisha can definitely be played around, and the moment they see you discarding any combo piece for it, they'll know to either leave empty board (purgation blade cannot buff Maisha without a target), or leave a ward in your way (Maisha's effect can't kill the ward and go leader at the same time). It has some niche comboes where you can go turn 2 Maisha, turn 3 crack a tree, discard Trail of Light/Purgation, swing face, cast spell for free ~_~. Takes up evo space as well, keep that in mind.

Barbarossa/Cyclone Blade combo: It takes up a pretty large amount of deck space but the upside is that you can toss Cyclone Blade in matchups where it's bad, and Barbarossa is searchable via Maid Leader/Gemstaff. Barbarossa having assail and massive stats is also pretty good. Takes up evo space, but this usually replaces Leod.

Outrunning the Encroaching Heat: Good in neutral game states, and also puts in work vs slow decks (basically, you force out their removal then you surprise them with this). If you drop your opponent below certain life thresholds, they have to play way more defensively.

Nagi Hisakawa: Another great card from neutral game states. Extremely undercosted for what it does, but conditional on drawing/discarding your cooks/aethers.

Mulligan:

I think generally, any hand with Bayleon + 2-cost tree generator is enough, especially going second. When going first, Gemstaff/Maid Leader can both be considered Bayleon (as your evo is on turn 4), when going second, only Maid Leader can be considered a Bayleon.

Versus matchups where you need the early board control, then you want a 1-cost tree generator + Lupine Axeman, as this will save you a huge amount of hp in the long run. I think it's less important to hold Bayleon hands in this type of matchup, especially if you are going first.

Generally speaking, any playable hand is good enough, because you end up drawing/cycling so much anyways, esp with Sword's access to direct tutors (like Gemstaff/Maid Leader).

Game plan: 

The typical game plan consists of tempoing out your followers and controlling the board as best you can. You want to have at least one tree generator on turn 1, followed by a 2-cost tree generator on turn 2.

When going second, this sets you up for a Bayleon evolve into King's Might combo to clear the enemy board. For this reason, you typically want to leave your Colorful Cook from turn 1 standing, this way, you can Evo Bayleon, use King's Might, engage both trees, clear a follower, then gives your Cook +2 attack and swing for 3. Alternatively, if it is actually your Pathfinder or Lupin that survived, then buff them instead, as 4 attack is a very good number.

When going first, your Bayleon turn happens on turn 4 instead, with a similar approach to when going second. Keep in mind that yes, you do typically want to use your Bayleon effect to cycle cards, even if you don't get to chip in the attack damage instantly. Cycling is important to ensure you can secure your Mistolina Combo, and, ideally, multiple Mistolinas. It also helps set up later stage Octrice setups.

Your mid game should be focused around controlling the board. Against decks that cannot easily clear your standing followers, you want to leave your followers standing where possible, such that a Bayleon swing turn (+2 attack on the standing follower) will create backbreaking tempo damage to enemy leader.

Against most decks, you are aiming for the fastest Mistolina to the enemy leader, ideally on turn 6. Of course, you don't just slam her into the enemy if they have control of the board, but if they have 1-2 followers only, you can just slam it and hit them for 7. It's hard for them to ignore Mistolina, because the actual swing in life is 9 (due to 2 healing). They also have to consider the possibility of you chaining Mistolina the following turn again.

Keep in mind that while you can aggressively expend your trees for cards like Bayleon and Viridia Magna, always ensure that you are able to reach two trees for your Mistolina turn. Depending on how you do this, you may also telegraph your hand to your opponent, and it can make their range of movements a lot easier.

Say, for example, you are on turn 5 with 1 tree left. You end the turn. Your opponent now knows that they don't have to worry about a turn 6 Mistolina, as it is impossible for you to reach 2 trees and play Mistolina at the same time. In other words, your opponent will not play around Mistolina, which is bad for you. Granted, there are some situations where you will be forced to expend the tree. Perhaps you do not even have Mistolina in hand, so you feel you do not need two trees. This, in itself, is fine, but just be aware that sometimes, you can bluff it even if you do not have it!

Of course, this is only really relevant on turn 6. On turn 7, it is easy to use 1pp to regenerate a tree, but it's something worth considering nevertheless.

In a majority of matchups, you will find opportunities to get non Mistolina poke damage in. As such, you probably only really need two to close the game. But it does work out great that 3 Mistolina = 21 damage, and once your opponent has taken 1 Mistolina + chip, they will start playing defensively (which is generally inefficient). This is where the true power of the deck shines through.

Matchup Spread

Mirror: 50-50
Natura Forest: Favoured
Fairy Forest: Favoured
Natura Dragon: Favoured
Cool: Favoured
Machina Abyss: Even/slghtly favoured (if you don't run Leod or Cyclone, you are unfavoured though)
Kuon: Unfavoured - nothing you can do about it

I will briefly explain the dynamics of each matchup.

Sword Mirror

This is probably one of the higher skill matchups in the game, but I will touch on the key points:

1) Unlike in other matchups, where playing Mistolina ASAP is generally advantageous, it is very risky to play the first Mistolina. The only exception, imo, is when you are going first, you have 6pp, and opponent doesn't have Princess Strike in cemetery. This is because the most efficient out to Mistolina is, unsurprisingly, Mistolina herself. If they don't have Princess Strike, then they have to use a different way to clear your Mistolina, which means you will cash that 9 life swing for free.

2) The other risk with playing Mistolina early is that it gives your opponent the opportunity to recur it using Octrice. It's rather disgusting that Octrice can steal Mistolina and play it for 4pp, this is an insane tempo swing and also forces you to simultaneously clear Octrice and the Mistolina.

3) Octrice is exceptional in this matchup. Depending on the setup, you can cheat a ridiculous amount of play points, especially if you take their Mistolina, clear their board and push 7 to face. If your opponent doesn't have their own Octrice counterplay, or a tech option like Cyclone Blade, they can lose to the overwhelming playpoint advantage. In addition, consider stealing parts of their Mistolina combo, like Princess Strike if they don't have more than 1 in cemetary

4) With the above dynamics in mind, playing for resources and committing smaller threats early is a good way to approach the matchup. This is why cards like Swift Tigress are very strong. For example, you can go Pathfinder, add a card to hand, Tigress, swing 4 to leader. This is good, because it keeps your handsize up, pushes 4 hp in tempo, forces opponent to respond, and doesn't get punished by much.

5) Viridia Magna is essential for the resource war. As mentioned in a previous section, Viridia Magna is uniquely high value due to the way the resource game plays out. For example, if your opponent plays smaller followers, like Pathfinder, Viridia trading into Pathfinder leaves your Viridia Magna alive. This means your Viridia will either soak removal during the next turn, or you can use it to further control the board on the following turn. The 4/4 is not ignorable and represents a large threat. Alternatively, it's always fine to just trade it into bigger guys. For example, you can always trade it into their Mistolina, then evo a Bayleon or something like this. If they opt to Mistolina again, it leaves them open to you firing back with a Mistolina, pushing 11 and having a ward up. This is actually quite relevant, because they must choose between Princess Striking Misto or your ward, but if they do not shoot Misto and you have 1pp open for Princess Strike, you can clear theirs instantly. This grants you strong levels of protection against the Misto chain (outside of them just having double princess strike).

6) Look for opportunities to setup 2-3 turn lethals if they present themselves to you. If your opponent has a particularly weak answer to one of your setups, it can telegraph an opportunity to go for big pushes (often with Octrice), but sometimes even Bayleon can be a great punish (buffing your follower repeatedly when they have no playpoints open to respond).

Overall, the idea is to push and prod until one of the players loses their patience and goes for the first Mistolina, and also to look for opportunities to go for major swings which the opponent is unlikely to have answers to. This matchup is one of practice, if you play more, you will identify more of the patterns where opportunities arise.

Natura Forest

Natura Forest tends to live and die by its own draws. Yes, it can be a little tough if they get on curve Ladica + Send Em Packin and then chains them into Primal Giants, but if they don't hit, they just fall over and die.

Even if they do get the combos off, using cards like Viridia Magna can buy you some reprieve. Even if they do get 2 7/7s on board, you don't die immediately, especially because sword has a lot of chip damage. If they get the upper hand, just try to survive and outgrind them. If they lowroll/average roll, you are just going to win.

Fairy Forest

Lol, you can't really lose vs this deck outside of you lowrolling/them highrolling. You control the board so well regardless of if their guys are standing or not, and it's very hard for them to clear Mistolinas once you get going. Just clear their board/play normally and you will win.

Natura Dragon 

Unless they ramp twice early, you're pretty favoured in this matchup. Their best hope is that somehow their followers stick, but since you're Natura Sword, that's simply not going to happen. If you don't miss Mistolina + Princess Strike, you are pretty favoured. They can't stop you from slamming Mistolina and hitting their face, so if they don't have at least 2 followers on board that can threaten you, they will just fall over and die to the first good Mistolina turn you have.

The only thing to be worried about is their lethal range, so just calculate if you're in range of Forte/Oguri Cap (and sometimes, consider this two turns in advance so you can decide whether or not ignoring their board to send it with Misto just wins you the game insta). Keep in mind that most of the time, it's going to cost them at least half their playpoints to clear Mistolina, so their range of options afterwards is going to be fairly low. If they can't punish the first Mistolina, they definitely cannot punish the second/third, so you just straight win.

Hilariously, you can even steal Shadow's Corrosion (or forte hehe) via Octrice, and also get the burn damage on the enemy leader.

Cool

Just like with Fairy Forest, they can't win unless they highroll or you lowroll. In fact, I think that their highroll gets beaten by your midroll. Ultimately, the amount of removal that Sword has access to is way too much, and Mistolina, if ever safely dropped, is total doom for Cool.

Frankly, I've seen games where the cool player just folds to Bayleon (the buff effect is actually kinda crazy in this m/u).

Machina Abyss

So this matchup really just depends on how much tech you have for it. With none, yeah, you're unfavoured. With Leod, I think you are typically favoured. Also, it may just be bias from me, but good players are not typically on machina abyss, so you generally just have the skill advantage too.

If you win the dice roll, take second. While I typically don't care whether I go first or second with Natura Sword, in this matchup, taking second makes a difference due to how many strong tempo evolves they have access to with evo point. Also, they can sometimes run out of cards, and going second gives them the extra draw.

The key to this matchup is to deny them early Mono evolves. If you look at the Natura Sword deck, you are totally doomed if they cheat mono out extremely early. However, conversely, once you get enough play points online, answering the Mono board is difficult, but totally possible. In other words, you want to count how many play points they have, and whether it's possible for them to get an effective Mono turn. Then, you have your answer on how many cards you need to clear from their board. Keep in mind, that if they have no Mono/Alpha Drive in grave, this can also add to the necessary PP they require to combo off, so your leeway to answer their board or not differs via game state (you can also steal Alpha Drive off Octrice, depending on the situation).

This is why cards like Leod are very strong in this matchup. Because it cannot be answered by the opponent, and he's basically guaranteed to clear at least one card from their field every single turn, making it possible for you to develop your board while clearing theirs, without expending future play points.

If you can safely drop Mistolina in this matchup, it's a massive advantage for you. Because on the turn they want to Mono, they will have to trade two of their guys into her, meaning you only have to deal with 3 followers the next turn, and you also got 2 healing + they're 7 life down.

Ginsetsu is a card that improves the matchup for the Abyss side, but there's a few things to consider here. Unless the Abyss player has soul conversion in hand, they can't swing face with Ginsetsu and also Mono combo you on the same turn. In addition, they frequently have to trade some of their foxes in, which leaves them vulnerable to multi removal clears into face.

Essentially, Ginsetsu is a card where its threat is only really felt if they're ahead of you in life and can threaten lethal, if not, and you have the life lead, it's actually pretty awkward for them, and the card can be ignored in many instances. That said, if you suspect that GInsetsu is coming, you can always preserve some of your removal spells to answer her. But don't do it in such a way that it's detrimental to you, because like I said, sometimes, the card is more annoying than it is an actual threat.

Kuon

So basically, this matchup is bad for Sword, there's no real way around it. Kuon isn't popular enough to tech for, and even if it were, you'd be better off just playing a deck other than Sword.

This matchup is not so bad if the pilot is bad, but if they're good at Kuon, good luck, hope they brick. The onus is not on how well you draw - you could draw literally perfectly, but still lose. It's about how they draw.

One of the largest issues with this matchup is that Sword has no real early aggression (you don't even have 2/2s), and although the 2/3 stat line of the 2-costs are good, it's nowhere near enough to snowball a win.

What will typically happen is that they will take a certain amount of chip damage from you, they'll keep playpoints open to rimewind your Mistolina at least once, then maybe take one Mistolina to the face (they typically only run 1 Rimewind). Most games will end with them being only a few health away from death, but unironically, it's calculated.

The turbo build will just go for a double shift OTK on turn 8/9, and it's just gg, unfortunately. If they run Demoncallers, it's more likely to be a slower game, so you have more of an opportunity, but you also get less chip damage in because Demoncaller is very effective at outing early boards.

Ultimately, you do just play normally, and you have to hope the Kuon player bricks on critical turns. For example, perhaps they somehow just can't out your Bayleon, or they're missing combo or whatever. For this reason, it's unfavoured, but it's not unwinnable. I think Kuon is probably around 75-25 in their favour, so just pray you don't face it.

Final thoughts

Overall, I think Natura Sword is the best deck of the format. It has a very good matchup spread, and its bad matchups lose to other popular decks of the meta. It is highly consistent, and you want decks like this when playing bo1 tournaments like BCS. Unlike other card games, supply is an actual consideration when it comes to deck popularity, which means that it's not even correct for people to run counter decks to Sword, because there simply isn't enough Sword for that to make sense.

As a result, in a majority of tournaments this format, I think Sword will have an overwhelming advantage, especially in the early rounds where you are more likely to face the tier 2/3/4 decks.