Shadowverse: Skeletons

Ever since I saw skeleton cards in Shadowverse I wanted to build a skeleton tribal deck. I could not do this immediately because my collection was not big enough. But eventually, I did manage to put an Unlimited deck together. Being a strict tribal skeleton deck it sacrificed many things to stay on flavor. It lost most of it's matches, but win or lose, it was fun to play. The deck I ended up with flooded the board with 1/1 skeletons. Because of an ability of some of the cards on my deck, most likely than not if one of my followers got killed it immediately got replaced with a 1/1 skeleton. All I need now is a tech card to give these small skeletons, Bane or Storm or some kind of strength or toughness buff.

Anyway, let's go take a look at the skeleton cards in Shadowverse.

We'll start with the first kind of skeleton cards you'll most like encounter during the pre-Rotation days of the game: the Spartoi.

What exactly are Spartoi? Spartoi comes to us from Greek Mythology. Not skeletons at all, they are described as 'fierce fighting men'. Magical in nature, the Spartoi are said to have sprung from the teeth of a dragon. And right there is were I think the connection to skeleton warriors come in. It's not a big leap to consider a being springing up from teeth to have the same 'bony' nature and would therefore come in the form of a skeleton.

Notice that in the trio of skeleton cards presented above only the Elder Spartoi Soldier appears to be human. The Spartoi has horns while the Spartoi Sergeant sports some very inhuman-like fangs.

Moving away from the Greek myths we come across more classic fantasy renditions of skeletons - the skeleton as fighter of which we have three representatives here.

Whether you've encountered them while playing Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, or reading fantasy books, the armed skeleton fighter is one of the most popular tropes of the skeleton in fantasy.

Next is the animal skeleton.

The Skull Beast looks to be a four-footed predator in life. The Skeleton Viper animated by eldritch energy is an outright monster with what appears to be half a human skeleton grafted into it in a truly macabre manner. All in all the rendition of the Viper is a bit over the top for my taste.

Next are skeleton cards in Shadowverse that are quite obviously the most powerful representations of the type.

We start with a legendary skeleton lord. Mordecai has more than one Shadowverse card to his name; this being the first: Mordecai the Duelist.

I've never played Mordecai the Duelist, I don't have one, but I've played against him several times - I don't recall ever winning. Just look at him: a giant armored skeleton with so much eldritch energy it's leaking out of those empty eye sockets. I wish I knew more of Mordecai's story, assuming he does have a story. If I ever do I'll put it down right here.

Next up in our shortlist of skeleton lords is someone not as famous as Mordecai but seemingly as formidable: Soul Grinder. Like Mordecai, this is a giant human skeleton armed in the manner of the Grim Reaper.