Ghostly Gambits: Navigating Neopets Battledome with a Ghost Deck

I have had quite a few people ask me to make them a Neopets deck. I asked what kind of deck they would like to play, and what interests them. I’ve had 2 very common answers: Ghost or Faerie. I’ve also had some strange ones like a ‘Luck’ deck, or also a ‘Freeze deck. For now I want to talk about Ghost & Faerie decks. 

I sat down and created 3 different versions of each deck, one being a tournament-caliber deck, another being a modestly-priced deck, and finally a budget-friendly version. As prices seem to have settled for the Defenders of Neopia set, certain cards stand out more than others, such as Jhudora & Queen Fyora price wise. Both are incredibly powerful cards by themselves, and when they’re tied into the right deck, they are forces to be reckoned with!

With the power level of these cards, their demand reflects that. So, both fairies are in the tournament level decks, but not in the other two versions.

Remember that this is how I would optimally build these decks. If you’d like to exchange cards in these lists, I welcome you to do so!

Additionally, these decks are built to have more balanced Attack & Defence. This is shown in the Codestone choice. Each deck plays 18 Codestones, split evenly between 6 Attack, 6 Defence, and 6 Agility.

Now that we’ve discussed how these decks are set up, let us get into the deck lists!

First is our Tournament-Level Ghost Deck!

Neopet Deck Choices

Let’s start with the Neopet Deck choices. If you noticed the colours, I chose only Red and Yellow Neopets. In any current painted deck, you do not need to play any Green Neopets. Every painted Neopet has a Hitpoint bonus, and you want to get as much value as you can from your Neopet before you paint them. As painting your Neopet in this deck will always give a Defence bonus, I chose not to play any Blue Neopets either. Rainbow gives 1 Defence stat bonus, while Ghost gives you 2.

Being efficient in the cards you play keeps you in the game, and can propel you past your opponent in card advantage. Having these Red and Yellow Neopets enables you to sneak in damage early. Painting your Neopet mid-game to keeps your Hitpoints up, and gives an elevated Defence to protect those Hitpoints. Then, we rely on having our hand and graveyard set up to hit hard towards the end of the game to close it out.

Let’s talk about the Neopet choices: Aisha, Ixi, Jubjub, Moehog and Wocky. From the pool of 10 Ghost Neopets, these are the 5 I decided to use. As I said at the beginning of the article, this is meant to be well-balanced. We have 3 Balanced Neopets, 1 Attack Neopet, and 1 Defence Neopet. 

The 3 Balanced Neopets are: Ixi, Moehog and Wocky. 

Ixi and Wocky are very close in stats, only having their Defence and Agility swapped. These are fantastic to start the game with if you’re unsure what you are playing against and have a hand that could be aggressive or defensive. They can pivot to both aggressive and defensive depending on what you draw in the first couple turns. Now what about our 3rd balanced choice? Moehog can also start the game, but it’s here mainly for a Game 2 or 3 choice for its high agility. It can give your opponent trouble in battle against one of their own Balanced Neopets.

For an example, let’s use our Moehog against an opponents Yellow Wocky. They will roll around the same number of dice during the Battle Phase, both attacking and defending, however the Moehog will gives us 3 more rerolls in comparison. This becomes a serious problem later in the game if we’re rolling 5 Attack and still able to reroll up to 3 dice.

You’ll want to play Moehog if you lost a game and your opponent chose a well-balanced Neopet. Use that to your advantage.

Now for Aisha and Jubjub, Aisha is your Attacker and Jubjub is your Defender. Having Red Aisha with 5 Attack and a comfortable 3 Agility makes it a great attacker if your hand is set up to be aggressive. Now Yellow Jubjub, with 12 base Hitpoints, and 5 Defence, is played when your hand needs some time to set up and wants the game go on a bit longer.

This is a Ghost list, so we get to play 5 Ghosts in our Rainbow Pool, but that leaves us with 5 other choices. I chose Rainbow for the other half of the Rainbow Pool. All 20 Neopets have a Rainbow version, and each have a bonus to every stat. That is simply too good to pass up. Each Rainbow Neopet played in a game is a problem to deal with, as they have no weaknesses to them.

With the Faerie Naia specifically giving Rainbows an extra boost on top of their pumped stats, it makes Rainbows (in my opinion) the strongest painted version of the 5.

Using Aisha as an example, if you play Naia, then play a Rainbow Paint Brush off it, you get to paint your Aisha Rainbow. Your Aisha’s stats with Naia are 7 Attack, 6 Defence, and 6 Agility, without any Codestones! That is too good to pass up!

Now that does not discredit how good Ghosts are. With the Ghost ability of sending cards to our graveyard, we give our Viras and Meukas maximum value, and can capitalize on all our Jhudora equipment. This gives synergy to an already powerful deck.

Main Deck Choices

Let’s move onto the cards we have in the Main Deck. We’re playing 2 Ghost Paint Brushes, and 2 Rainbow Paint Brushes. I want to see these cards early as it changes how we play the game.

In the list there is a pseudo 5th brush in the form of Naia. I have discussed how good Naia is already, so let’s look at the other 2 Faeries we are playing: Jhudora and the Soup Faerie.

First Jhudora. Jhudora might be the best card currently in the game. Having the passive ability to play any card out of your graveyard makes it very difficult for your opponent to guess your next play. And being able to play her off the Ghost ability is incredibly powerful. Expect some explosive turns being able to immediately play anything you send to the graveyard with the Ghost ability!

The other Faerie we’re playing is the best turn-1 play in the game, the ‘Soup Faerie’. 

Now that is a bold statement, the best turn-1 play, how? Let’s quickly imagine the start of a game. 

Turn 1: You start with 6 cards in hand (drawing for turn), play a Codestone, and then the Soup Faerie, reducing your hand to 4 cards. You draw a card from Soup Faerie bringing your hand back to 5 cards.

Turn 2: You draw a card for turn, returning your hand to 6 cards. You play a Codestone reducing your hand to 5 cards, then draw another card from Soup Faerie, maintaining 6 cards in hand.

Turn 3: You draw a card for turn increasing your hand to 7 cards. Then play another Codestone  and draw another card from Soup Faerie. This keeps a strong hand size!

The wording on Soup Faerie also lets you draw an additional card during your Draw Phase. This means if you have 6 cards in hand before you draw for turn, you can draw a card off Soup Faerie, and then draw normally for turn, going into your Train Phase with 8 cards in hand. You may do this if you’re missing a Codestone to play that turn.

This Faerie lets your Ghosts send off more cards that you don’t want, but also gives you more card choice and card advantage over your opponent, letting you dig further in your deck for answers. So I ask you: how would you feel if your opponent had 6 cards in hand after training their Neopet and playing a card from their hand each turn. I would feel so behind in the game, so why not do that to your opponent?

We still have a lot to go over, so we’ll take a break here and return with the rest of the run-down. In the 2nd part we’ll discuss the rest of the main deck and introduce the mid- and budget-level Ghost decks I’ve built that focus on Ghost/Starry. See you soon!