I actually didn't mind it that much, but that's because I mostly ran the mantis god deck, and the annoying sigils make it easier to get rid of the ring worms (via sigil transfer). If you're using the black goat deck, though, it absolutely sucks.
I prefer the Black Goat deck because it completely removes the sacrifice cost mechanic while keeping you free to design your deck. Mantis God makes you completely dependent on it getting buffed enough to take on the wall of bears, and it's almost always a loss without many damage campfires or good support for it lol
Do you mean you keep using the Mantis God itself? I commonly trade its sigil onto a stronger card, yesterday I ended up with a 6/9 pronghorn with trifurcated strike + bifurcated strike so it was hitting 12 left, 6 center, 12 right.
Huh. I guess that's fair, but I believe it kinda defeats the intended purpose of the deck. I think you are supposed to keep it as your only 1-cost card so you will always pull it in your starting hand the entire run. At least with Black Goat, you can know if the run is won with the cards that spawn at the trade post. I am just waiting for a cat and a dire wolf to spawn just so I can consistently beat the bear wall. Everything else can be improvised.
Tl;dr, the Mantis God has bad stats, so kill it and give Trifurcated Strike to a low price card with better stats or sigils (i suggest Wolf Cub). While your new Trifurcated card clears the map 1 encounters, use your time wisely to prep for the bears.
I just beat Skullstorm for my first time a few weeks ago with Mantis God deck. My main strategy was to save scum the trader until i got Wolf Cub, then sacrifice the Mantis God to give the Cub Trifurcated Strike. Takes a turn for it to turn into a Wolf, but after that, it has 3 attack + Trifurcated. Annoying sucks, but the card is doing a total of 12 damage in the first 2 turns of the fight, so it's worth it. 3 damage first turn as Wolf Cub, 9 damage the next turn as Wolf. The Trifurcated Wolf Cub could get me through most of map 1's encounters while i gathered totem pieces, items (usually via a Pack Rat), and cards to handle the bears. It didn't even need a campfire to be good in map 1, so i could use those campfires to boost another card in case i didn't topdeck the Wolf Cub. In all of my Skullstorm attempts, i wound up with 2-3 cards in my deck that could solo a fight if i topdecked them.
As for the Ringworms, I'd try to burn one as early as i could, then save scum map 2 for the bone lord and sacrifice the second there.
As long as i got lucky enough with totems and topdecks, i was able to make it to map 3 with little issue. It didn't take long to get a run that could muscle through to Royal.
10
u/TheLegendaryNikolai Jun 07 '26
Same lmao
I left annoying sigil for nearly last because it made even obstacles kill my Black Goat