With the arrival of Monsters of Norso, the 4 Realms seem to finally be balanced. Each Realm has a top tier palette or two that can cut it with the best palettes out there.

Today, I thought I’d go through what I consider to be the most powerful constructed palettes from each Realm, finishing with my current favourite palette from Norso. These 4 decks form what I call the Achroma Gauntlet. If you come up with a new palette idea, and it can beat some or all of these palettes, it’s going to be a top tier deck.

Salum Planum: Clunker
There’s plenty of variety in Hex Clunker palettes, but as far as I’m concerned if you want to consistently beat the strongest chroma palettes, Clunker has to be supported by a strong achrom backbone. Pure control is useless if the opponent sees what you’re doing and trades to win, and pure chroma in Salum is too slow:

First off, yes, there’s 4 promo locations in there. But it’s not gratuitous; they’re essential for this version of Clunker. You need to maximise your steal/drain to hit the opponent’s shard bank fast while you build up a board state, and there are literally no other uncommons or commons in all of Salum that have a base steal or drain of 2 or more (except Curdle Village, but ±2 for 4Δ is objectively better than -2 for 3Δ). Plus they count towards Arabella’s Recipe.

To be honest, I’m still not 100% on Arabella’s Recipe. It provides gaming winning steals, but normally when you’re winning anyway. However, the majority of this deck I think is where it needs to be. Lots of steal, lots of control, Alchemist’s Tincture to help get those objects out, Replenishment to improve consistency. This palette tends to win in just a few turns by stealing everything the opponent plays while simultaneously stealing their shards.

Draco Planum: Locations
The palette that finally took down Rayders, this deck is all about maximum value and control:

I’ve made a few revisions since this palette was unveiled. I’ve swapped Kocora for Tenebris, Chromatic Extinction for Cintimani Stone,Chroma Overflow for Impius Drake, and Ice Falls/Summon the Mist for Draco Summer/Thisp. In other words, this is a much more aggressive build to maximise control and drain/steal.

There’s 15 cards that drain/steal at least 2Δ, as well as 13 cards that control the opponent’s canvas in some way, and a total shard value of 100 (more than Rayders… just), meaning you always have something worth trading. This palette hits like a juggernaut. It takes a few turns to get going, but it stops the opponent winning while it builds an immense boardstate, and then it becomes unstoppable.

Spirata Planum: Rayders
The most dominant palette in Achroma history, this deck resulted in a fundamental change to the way the game is played, the 6Δ trading cap. It did previously suffer from the restriction that Ray could only have one copy of Firetender and Full Palette, but the restricted list has been removed from the Achroma website, and was never enshrined in the rules, so appears to no longer apply, which is probably fair. As such, here is my current Rayders build:

This deck is still formidable, even if it’s only a shadow of its former self now you can’t trade for 10-12 each turn. One thing I noticed about this deck is there’s only 1 card, Unfathomable Hunger, which comes from Chapter 2. They really reined in the power level for this realm, which helped balance out the Realms.

Norso Planum: Sigrun’s Traders
And finally, the palette I’ve settled on (for now) as my pitch for the strongest palette in Norso Planum. This idea is one I’ve been discussing on and off with Antinomy since before Monsters of Norso was released, and I haven’t come up with anything stronger since:

Its no secret that Traders has long been the strongest palette in Norso. Previously, Traders was 10-12 cards of Trading tech, plus 18-20 cards of high cost fluff. Now, Norso has a lot more toys to play with.

When playing this palette, you can play it one of two ways:
If you draw a bunch of trading tech, you can go trading crazy for a turn and easily rake in 10-15 shards, and win next turn;
If you draw Algiz/Sigrun/Leif/Forge you can play around with them to rack up the shard count while controlling your opponent’s biggest cards with Sigrun. You can normally play Algiz twice if you need to, thanks to Lacringi Forge/Cintimani Stone.

A fun start for this palette goes like this:
Algiz hits Leif. You’re down to 8 shards.
Lacringi Forge pulls Cintimani Stone. You’re down to 6 shards.
Stone deploys Algiz, which deploys Sigrun. You’re up to 10 shards (Leif triggered 3 times, and Algiz gave you +3).
Resolve for +7 (you’re up to 17 shards, or 19 if you’re going second).
Rebound Cintimani Stone, and trade it, pushing you to 27/29 shards.

The palette is rounded off with Lacringi Way. This may seem like a situational choice for control, but since this deck’s biggest enemy is high value achrom cards, it’s proven to be great value. Plus Cerberus is there to take out Ray if you face Rayders.

Conclusions
I’ve been testing these palettes against each other over the past couple of weeks, and no single palette has the edge over the rest. Rayders seems to beat Clunker, Clunker tends to beat Sigrun, Sigrun commonly beats Draco, and Draco tends to best Rayders. That being said, any one deck can beat any other deck with the right start.

If you come up with a palette, and it can consistently hold its own against most or all of these palettes, then it might just be good enough to win a tournament.

---

Next time you’re ordering achroma products, please use the discount code dracotemple at checkout on the achroma webstore for 10% off all orders, including pre-orders. By using this code, you are also supporting me, as I also earn commission on any sales made using this code.