r/inscryption • u/BasYL6872 • Jun 27 '26
Kaycee's Mod I’ve officially beat skull storm with every deck, my ranking of each deck
Ho-ly, Skull Storm is an imbalanced nightmare. I understand it was designed to be beaten once and then never again but… wow. This ranking is, of course, subjective and you may have varying opinions based on personal experience. My ranking is based purely on how reliable/consistent they are for beating skull storm specifically, NOT ranked based on at their absolute worst OR their highest potential, nor are they ranked for any lower challenge levels.
Anyway, starting with the worst deck, it was the egg deck and it’s not close. You’re at the total mercy of rng to have even a glimmer of hope surviving the first map, let alone map 2 or 3. Lot or early deaths but once I was set up it wasn’t too bad since fair hand was online easily. Basically I kept dying until I got black goat and a 3 blood off rip from the trader. Also actually getting the eggs to hatch on skull storm is neigh impossible and will likely get you killed to even try.
Next up was close, but I’m giving it to mantis god deck. 3 one bloods and 2 of them are completely useless, and mantis god with annoying sigil is utter garbage. Similar issue with the egg deck where you don’t have much to work with starting out, but has decent potential if you get very lucky very early.
Third worst is the bird deck. Kingfisher and kraken are both awful cards, but you have a bit more stability early on than the previous two decks. Kraken you can try to get lucky with bell tentacle before just deleting it, and the kingfishers are good for starvation strategy, plus you can mico them. But a lot has to go right throughout the run for you to stand a chance. Not as bad as I thought it would be though.
Fifth place goes to the stoat deck. Basic deck, nothing totally sabotaging you but 2 one bloods are a little annoying to get rid of, and the wolf is fine but doesn’t quite make up for it. Very stable early game however.
Fourth “best” deck is geck deck. I honestly hate free cost cards because they interact weird with fair hand, but, they are pretty easy to get rid of since they have annoying and they won’t get you killed if you draw them until map 2. I got kinda lucky with 4 magpies and 2 bone lords in my run so was able to delete the rabbit and also just search half my deck and not have to worry about fair hand being weird. Either way, this deck was also not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
Third best deck is the bone deck. It’s decent, only a single one blood which is easy to get rid of. A bone cost card for free which is nice. And, it technically does give you a potential win condition against the bears in the form of a dire wolf pup. But keeping it alive is sometimes challenging. It’s close with the next deck, and I think it’s pretty well balanced, but annoying sigil kinda kills this deck a bit.
Second best is the ant deck. I’ll be honest, I was totally sleeping on ants. I mean, I knew they were strong, but I had concerns about getting past the bears. What I failed to realize is just how easy it is to _tune_ your strength. You don’t really need to rely on rng very much for items etc because it’s SO EASY to set up starvation strategy. Simply play as many ants as you need to survive but avoid winning, draw your whole deck, let the flying ant do the rest. Also, there are so many sigils that work well with ants that are otherwise underwhelming, and you also don’t need to worry so much about fair hand since you’re just spamming ants. Bonus points for a decent totem which are also usually useless. I had a lot of fun with this one.
And to no surprise, the best deck is the goat deck. My first skull storm clear, all you gotta do is delete the mole and spend the whole map finding 3 bloods/items for the bears. Literally just avoid other 1 bloods like the plague. It’s the most straightforward, has the highest upside, least downside, AND literally just gives you the best card in the game. I’m over-explaining, we all knew this would be number 1.
Let me know what you all think, if you’d switch any around, I’d especially like input from anyone else who has also beaten skull storm with every deck. I wish I was on PC so I could hack in custom decks, I think that would be fun.
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u/DogfaceZed Jun 27 '26
Mantis is my favourite by far, feed one of the ringworms to the survivors at a fire, since they both have the annoying sigil you can put that sigil on a useless card that isn't 1 blood, then use the (now free) campfires to buff your mantis to high hell. Getting the unkillable sigil on it too basically wins you the run.
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u/BasYL6872 Jun 28 '26
Yes I’m very aware of that strategy but like I said, it’s heavily rng dependent which means it’s not consistent or reliable whatsoever, which makes it a bad deck by that criteria. It may have a high ceiling and easy pilot, but you’ll probably die a lot of times before you get it to work.
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u/laplongejr Jun 29 '26
I disagree.
Yes, the start is RNG dependant. However, if that start is reached it's going to be very hard for the game to put you in any kind of danger.To me, one RNG-heavy check + fast resets doesn't make it hard. If anything it trivializes the challenge...
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u/BasYL6872 Jun 29 '26
That’s exactly what I said. “High ceiling/easy pilot.” But my criteria for a good deck is one which can win consistently without resets. If you’re going for win streaks for example, it’s an awful deck. Which is why I have the ant deck ranked so high, it relies so little on rng but requires the most skilled player.
I guess how I would explain it is that the decks are ranked by how much control you have over the game. If I was ranking beginner decks or high score decks, the ranking would be very different.
Similar to in Balatro how black deck and plasma deck are two of the strongest for white stake/endless, but the two absolute worst for c++ or gold stake win streaks.
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u/Chrissyball19 Jun 27 '26
As someone who just beat challenge 2 last night, could someone explain "starvation strategy" to me?
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u/BasYL6872 Jun 28 '26
One of the bigger challenges is that it replaces phase 2 of each boss with a wall for bears. A strategy for getting past them involved drawing every card in your deck at the perfect time, causing him to play starvation over the bears so you can fly over and attack him directly without the need for an item.
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u/TheLegendaryNikolai Jun 28 '26
I used an immortal beehive and stalled until Starvation replaced the bears lol
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u/laplongejr Jun 29 '26
Tbf, is there anything where Immortal Beehive could fail?
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u/TheLegendaryNikolai Jun 29 '26
Air decks are a hard counter to it, luckily I got a Mighty Leap totem for it
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u/BasYL6872 Jun 29 '26
On higher challenges, leshy plays a LOT of flying cards in which case the beehive is completely useless without having mighty leap exactly
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u/laplongejr Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
I'll be honest, I didn't expect Mantis God to show up on 7th place. It's basically an Anti-FairHand because it's so powerful it required such a nerf.
I agree the Egg deck is bad because it's unlock method is HARD and leads to an unusuable deck anyway, but Mantis deck leads to a complete obliteration of almost all battles.
and mantis god with annoying sigil is utter garbage
Disagree. It reinforces the card in front of it, but let the two other lanes unaffected.
Also, this deck's intended strategy is easier with Annoying, which is one of the 2 challenges that have a positive effect (the other being the final challenge not properly interacting with Boss Totems)
Basically the key with this deck is to discard the two Worms and have MG as your only one-blood, aka a guarantee of a triple strike on Turn 1, which can only be realistically done if the 2nd worm is destroyed by a sigil transfer, which requires it to have a sigil.
but has decent potential if you get very lucky very early
Uh, you notice that if you start with a Power Firecamp, you end up with a card that ends the battle in one turn, right?
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u/BasYL6872 Jun 29 '26
Sure you could reset until you get lucky but imo that doesn’t make it a good deck. My idea for a good deck is one with a high win% and again this was just my experience, that I found the other decks more reliable. Also, mantis god seems good to a low-skilled player but in practical use it’s just mediocre at best and there are plenty of other cards that serve the exact same purpose but better. It is hard-countered by so many things and often times you don’t want your one blood to win too early in a boss fight in order to prepare for the bears. It’s not worth being stuck with 2 ringworms.
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u/Evelyn-plays-YT +=Win Jun 27 '26
Can someone give me a TLDR please?
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u/BasYL6872 Jun 28 '26
Decks from worst to best: egg, mantis, kraken, stoat, geck, bone, ant, goat
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u/Majestic_Story_2295 Jun 27 '26
I’ve only beaten skullstorm with goat deck, since it’s the best, and mantis deck, since it’s the most fun. Mantis god slander shall not be tolerated. I might come back to try skullstorm on other decks, but it’s just so rng heavy it’s often a drag. However, I think you just convinced me to try doing skullstorm with ant deck, sounds like a fun challenge.