Evo Portal is a combo-control deck with a high ceiling that can be simplified and made more consistent via the mulligan and several key patterns. The power level is very high, though it won’t feel that way without taking full advantage of the most important cards to maximize evolves. When you are well-practiced with the deck, you will see that reaching 10 evolves by turn 6 going second is surprisingly common.
I may refer to Sisterly Bonds as Spinaria interchangeably.
After many testing many iterations, I feel this is the best and most consistent list.
One Mikael, two Olivia, three Robotic-Arm Rescuer (Robo-Arm), and zero Arc are common developments. The third Sweeper Doll is a good card to cut for the second Badb, and the difference between running two or three Sweepers can be made up for in the mulligan, as it’s ultimately a card we only want to play once.
Pandora is extremely clunky—with two Badb and effective hand management, it’s more practical in more games to simply draw for multiple damage cards, even in control matchups. I think the main way to justify Pandora would be to not run two Badb, for example in a list like this with three Sweeper and two Grimnir:
While this is a list that makes sense for running Pandora, I don’t think Pandora is worth running to begin with. Despite Pandora being fusible, the deck is still more reliable in more matchups with two Badb and three Grimnir.
The first Puppet we generate initiates a chain of turning Puppets to Assembly Droids, which then produce more Puppets. Sweeper Doll is also a 1-drop who is easy to manually evolve if we don’t have a superior target like Kyrie, and since its trigger effect applies to any allied follower including herself, this is a way to immediately generate a Puppet.
Sweeper Doll enables Robo-Arm and especially double Robo-Arm. Half the deck consists of unfusable Neutral followers, and there are very few universal ways to increase hand size, meaning it’s never trivial to have followers to fuse on every evolve turn into however many Robo-Arms we have. We can’t fuse until our evolve turns, but the buff on Assembly Droid doesn’t go away, so ideally we can fuse every turn until Shin is active and unload the 1PP self-evolves on whichever turn is most convenient. It isn’t possible to have this much fusion material without Sweeper Doll to refill our hand with multiple Puppets.
Having specifically double Robo-Arm to play many 1PP self-evolving Assembly Droids is crucial for hitting turn 6 Shin and is therefore integral to maintaining an acceptable winrate going second. When we evolve at least twice on the turn we play Sweeper Doll and go plus with Puppets, those Puppets can be thought to be real cards, or indeed superior to real cards because most actual cards in the deck are not fusible. When we frame Sweeper Doll as the key to unlocking multiple 1PP self-evolves across our first two or three evolve turns, it should be quite clear why it’s so valuable.
Generally, we won’t need to play more than one Sweeper Doll per game, but it’s a massive difference if we see one copy or zero.
Three Freyja is core because Robopup and Robotic-Arm Rescuer (Robo-Arm) are very nice to see going first or second. The 1/3 statline also happens to be great since multiple popular decks spend early turns spamming weenies. For an evolve deck, any 1PP manually evolvable follower has value for being simply that, and Freyja can function in this way going second.
Mikael is a free invoke that we can shuffle back into the deck, who functions as both a free heal and a 0PP manual evolve target.
In the most extreme scenario, we can get 5 evolves on turn 6 with Shin + triple Assembly Droid + evolve Mikael. Two Droids could be substituted with Alice or Blooming Dancer if we already have 6 evolves and et cetera, so there is a range of patterns where Mikael’s being an invoke follower actively helps us reach 10 evolves.
As Vengeance Blood increases in popularity, Mikael becomes more important. Whatever debate there may have been in the first week about running Mikael or not should be definitively settled now that Vengeance sees play and Ghost is regarded by many to be one of the best decks—if not the best deck.
Some players have seen success with Pandora, and to her credit, she effectively represents a ton of damage as a single card—plus she’s a Portal follower, so she is fusible while Grimnir isn’t. The issue is she is very slow to play as she demands an evolution point, and this either means we need to save our last evolution point while staying alive and activating Shin anyway—which is already a non-negligible constraint—or we need to draw and play Olivia first followed by Pandora the following turn.
It’s so slow and so demanding while you could spend just as much time simply drawing cards with Kyrie and Badb to put together an OTK with the standard damage cards. Even with Badb effectively drawing four, Evo Portal is very good at quickly trimming its hand of unwanted cards via multiple fusion and Robo-Arm itself having Rush.
Pandora basically feels like an unnecessary solution that creates more problems elsewhere. The majority of matchups won’t require a slow, full OTK, or else it will still be superior to simply have all the necessary damage without going through the trouble of playing Olivia first. Having Pandora, who loses a tremendous amount of value when the opponent isn’t at maximum defense—instead of a third Grimnir, who is more flexible and is better at ending games sooner—will actually result in slower lethals on average. It’s especially important against Crystallize and Mysteria to maintain the threat of turn 7 lethal or even turn 6 lethal with Alice + Grimnir after a successful Cassim curve, and that simply isn’t practical if there is one less Grimnir in the deck.
Pandora is frequently just fusion fodder, which, while not a bad quality to have, does not lessen the burden of drawing Sweeper Doll. It is still troublesome in a variety of matchups to not have lethal because we drew Pandora instead of another Grimnir.
After reducing our hand with Shin, our hand may be small and clogged with cards that are generally no longer useful, like Robo-Arm, Sisterly Bonds, and Freyja. There are multiple cards that recover PP, so if any of those are reduced, PP will never be an issue again. The real issue is having enough useful cards to win the game with, and that is where Badb Catha with 3/3 evolves is extremely clutch. To put into perspective how strong late-game Badb Catha is, reducing Badb with Shin is frequently as good or better than reducing another Grimnir simply due to the sheer volume of card draw at almost no cost. When multiple Alices and Grimnirs remain in the deck, Badb can easily turn a weak hand into a strong one.
There are some situations—primarily going first with Cassim—where combo keeping Badb with the intention to play her on turn 3 is justified. Think of Badb primarily as a late-game bomb that remains playable early.
Morrigna’s Gospel may vary in importance between aggressive and slow matchups, but 0PP active Badb is simply an incredible option to have in general. Evo Portal relies heavily on Shin for burst healing and on Rosa to mitigate early damage, so having another small source of healing is very nice. The main purpose of Badb is still the late-game hand refill, and it’s hard to overstate how strong it is, especially when low-value Portal followers can be multifused to create space. Robo-Arm itself can be cheaply played post-Shin and with Rush can create space in hand without taking up space on board. With two Badb and the ability to continue evolving Kyrie with Olivia, it feels far more practical to simply run three Grimnir rather than any Pandora and focus on drawing for damage cards.
There’s no doubt that Arc is very strong when drawn by turn 3 going second, but it’s borderline unplayable going first. The way to justify playing Arc or not in this deck is not by looking at its value over the entire average game, that being 7 or 8 turns—rather, Arc needs to justify itself within roughly two turns of being played.
Arc is mainly strong when it consistently draws and raises maximum defense multiple times by virtue of going second. It’s extremely unreliable going first especially since buffing on board is completely useless when we have already spent 2PP playing Arc in the first place. For Arc to be worth playing when going first as a 2PP card that does nothing on board, it needs to draw a card twice before turn 5. The alternatives to Arc will draw one card consistently and provide some body to contest with on top of having some other unique utility and purpose in the deck. Simply put, Arc cannot consistently produce a return that remotely justifies how narrow of a window in which it must be played, in a deck that is already hurting for consistency bombs in both the early and late game. Arc is not nearly as impressive as it might seem for a deck like Evo Portal since we are not simply trying to stall for the sake of stalling—we actually have important cards to find and important plays to make throughout our evolve turns. We also need our evolve payoffs to be consistently strong, and while Badb Catha gives a late-game boost, Arc cannot.
Alterplane Onslaught with 1PP Keenedges in the deck sounds really amazing against Ghost Shadow, though it’s often not needed. Elina is basically the backup plan in case we can’t get turn 6 Shin second or win normally going first. What qualifies as a good Shin turn—early enough or with a strong enough hand—is almost always sufficient to win. Elina does not contribute to making Shin any faster, but she is a decent way to still have a winning chance against aggro if turn 6 Shin isn’t possible.
Elina is harder to use in any non-aggro matchup where our goal is not to survive and outlast. If we play Elina and Alterplane Onslaught, it’s 4PP total spent on zero self-evolves and zero chances to draw Robo-Arm.
The reality for Elina is, even against Ghost Shadow, we would rather focus on turn 6 Shin going second even if we had her in hand, and going first, neither are necessary. What is the scariest about facing Ghost Shadow specifically for Evo Portal is not the Masquerade turns, it’s not having an adequate response to their early curve and especially if they play Lucius on curve. Elina doesn’t do anything to alleviate this issue, while Rosa will always be useful and will always effectively soak a ton of damage on top of being generally more playable across all matchups.
This is a card that has seen spots of play, and on the surface, it doesn’t sound awful. It’s an extra Artifact body to make Robopup more consistent and keepable while the Enhance is playable with a surplus of PP but lack of cards post-Shin.
Amalgamation is never ideal, but it’s meant to be a flexible card. In my experience, Evo Portal is stronger with more cards with a dedicated purpose, and there are already multiple cards that we want to see every game.
It’s hard to justify making space for Amalgamation when Badb Catha is so strong.
The main goal in the mulligan is to obtain ways to evolve efficiently. For turn 6 Shin, we need one Sweeper Doll and two Robo-Arms by 6, or one Robo-Arm and the Robopup combo.
We need those specific cards and cards that can draw them.
The secondary goal, when applicable, is to survive on board and not take too much damage.
Sisterly Bonds shouldn’t be used too early if Spinaria might be cleared before our last non-evolve turn. The combo of Spinaria + Robopup is the main purpose of both cards, but it generally becomes less practical to use this combo once we reach our evolve turns. Keep Sisterly Bonds all the time and only tempo out an empty Spinaria—if at all—on the last turn before we can evolve if we haven’t drawn Robopup.
Robopup doesn’t have much less value as a standalone card compared to Sisterly Bonds, so there are many instances where we can keep him. Spinaria is not a card to be aggressively played on turn 1, and Robopup can still be used for at least one extra evolve in the case of drawing a duplicate. We will always need Robo-Arm + Sweeper Doll, Kyrie, and/or Alice to make real progress with our hand, so digging for these truly important cards while getting any extra self-evolves at all is still worth it.
Sweeper Doll is a card we only want to play once, but we really need to see it by our evolve turns in nearly every game. With two Sweeper, keep it solo second or combo first with Freyja or full keep with Robo-Arm. In matchups that consistently present early threats, we would only full combo first with Robo-Arm plus any playable early follower or Spinaria + Robopup. Otherwise, if we are not afraid of dying early, we can combo keep with Robo-Arm or Freyja.
Robo-Arm is solo second and combo first with some good early play like Freyja or Cassim. Robo-Arm + exactly one of Spinaria/Robopup is more contentious since these are all important cards, but it’s a combo that doesn’t directly support each other or fill in the gaps on their own. I think we can generally lean toward keeping Robo-Arm + Sisterly Bonds going first most of the time. Unless we're staving off Ghost Shadow or another aggro deck, tempoing out followers on every possible turn is not something we strictly need to be doing. The less aggressive the opponent, the more lenient we should be with keeping combo pieces that don’t do anything early.
In a different time with a different type of Evo deck, Blooming Dancer would’ve been a solo keep. Evo decks in the current year however are all about the 1PP self-evolves and the supporting cards that enable them. Blooming Dancer is not really practical to activate before the evolve turns since it would usually require either Spinaria or evolved Robopup surviving on board, and that’s never a safe thing to rely on. Even on turn 4 first with the Robopup combo, it’s better to just play out the second Robopup and float 1PP because that second Robopup won’t even be a self-evolve otherwise while Blooming Dancer remains decent.
She’s a good card to have in the deck but not a mulligan priority. We are happy enough to draw Blooming Dancer only once we’ve reached our evolve turns, and even then she is the least busted self-evolve so she’s never strictly necessary.
Rosa is excellent for soaking early damage and she will always be among the most annoying cards for Ghost Shadow to see. Against Vengeance it really depends on their exact list, but at the bare minimum they always like to curve out with Harmonic Wolf, and Room Service Demon doesn’t exist anymore.
Cassim’s main purpose is to contest the board and generally be a nuisance, with a few exceptions. Mysteria Rune could be baited into playing their one Craig too early by an aggressive Cassim curve, meanwhile he is extremely useless against Crystallize. If Cassim is not equalizing board presence or baiting defensive cards, we are always better off looking for Freyja or Robopup combo instead.
Kyrie is busted: always keep him but generally avoid playing him until we can evolve him. He is like a neutral Meltina.
We should only tempo Kyrie before evolve turns if it is strictly necessary to contest the board. Generally, tempoing out followers just for the sake of doing so doesn’t accomplish anything.
Full keep Alice going first with specifically Spinaria + Robopup. With this pre-evolve turn self-evolve combo locked in, we are basically guaranteed a good Alice on turn 5, which we love to see going first. The exception would be against Ghost Shadow, where it is more important than locking down Alice to find Cassim or Rosa first.
Keep Badb Catha with specifically Cassim going first when we need to fight for board or have a chance for an aggressive line. Against Ghost Shadow we can also combo Badb with Rosa, also going first.
Outside of these specific circumstances, aiming for 2-drop + Badb just for the sake of it is frequently a waste of time. We need to mull more aggressively for the real key cards to accelerate the evolve count, and Badb is generally stronger post-Shin to begin with.
The standard timeframe for playing 10-evo Shin is turn 7 going first, and turn 6–7 going second, with turn 6 being possible more than half the time and required in many matchups. There is some discrepancy in peoples’ experiences with how often turn 6 second Shin is possible, and I think it’s largely attributable to differences in mulligan and early evolve turns.
Generally, we want to get away with playing the bare minimum of early-game cards to not die, and outside of that, we need to be hard focused on evolving quickly and drawing cards that will help us evolve quickly. Any card that can possibly help us pull ahead in evolves, like Robopup even on its own in the mulligan, should be valued highly. Note that Blooming Dancer is not reliable before evolve turns since it would require Spinaria or Robopup to stick on board or something very specific like double Robopup + Blooming on turn 4 first with no Spinaria.
On evolve turns, Blooming Dancer is a 2PP self-evolve, which is more expensive than Assembly Droids and on-par in cost with Alice, but she draws two immediately. So Blooming is not a priority card: she exists to fill in our evolve turns if necessary when we draw her, and in fact being forced to get multiple Bloomings out of our hand will sometimes be difficult.
To hit turn 6 second Shin, generally we need Robopup combo + one Robo-Arm or two Robo-Arm. In either case we need to fuse at least once every turn, for which we typically need a Sweeper Doll to essentially provide two turns worth of fusion material on its own.
Six evolves at the end of turn 5 second is a comfortable place to be. With Shin being 3PP one evolve, we would need three more evolves within 3PP:
Assembly Droid + Alice or Blooming Dancer + manual evolve invoked Mikael or Puppet
1PP evolve target (including Kyrie) + Assembly Droid + Assembly Droid
Evolve Spinaria + Robopup + Robopup/Assembly Droid
We can observe from these patterns that:
Going by these patterns, it’s clear that turn 6 Shin with only five evolves going into the turn is also possible via 0PP manual evolve + triple Assembly Droid. At least one Droid would have needed to be fused on a previous turn and left in hand, usually to better fit a 2PP self-evolve. If we are to use this many Droids, it’s not reasonable to be holding a Puppet in hand on top of that. It is clear then that Mikael’s existence in the deck opens up many lines for turn 6 Shin that would not be possible otherwise.
It’s also possible to have a surplus of evolves going into turn 6, such that Mikael enables double active Shin or Storm Alice hitting face.
Here is one example of a turn 6 Shin turn:
We have turn 6 Shin with far more evolves than necessary. Mikael is nice even though we don’t need a 0PP evolve target because now we can always start the turn with Alice to see what we draw. The damage from Alice hitting face will stick if the opponent can’t double Shin and have them active. If we do force the double active Shin, we will have drawn for more damage cards already, and the trade of one Alice for one Shin is in our favor.
Assuming we run Pandora: if we draw Pandora from Alice, obviously we would not play Kyrie and instead we hold the last evolution point. If we do not draw Pandora from Alice, we can go ahead and evolve Kyrie since he can still find damage cards besides Pandora, and even if we randomly draw Pandora off Kyrie or a topdeck, it would still take until at least turn 8 to use her, between reducing her cost and restoring evolution points.
This combo should generally be used on the earliest possible evolve turn. This is a natural conclusion since the strength of Sweeper Doll is providing free materials not just immediately but for the next turn. By generating safely fusible material from Sweeper Doll first before naturally moving on to increase hand size with Alice, we can consistently reach evolve breakpoints while having the greatest control of our hand. This is vital, because intentionally fusing multiple cards or tossing out a spare Puppet may be necessary to maximize draws while not overdrawing. It’s a common pattern to use Sweeper + Robo-Arm then begin the following turn with Assembly Droid to efficiently free hand space for Alice while evolving as much as possible.
Given the importance of Robo-Arm, squeezing Freyjas into the first five turns is important. Remember that we don’t need to play every Assembly Droid on the turn we generate them: what matters is that the Robo-Arms are being fused, and the Droids are existing to begin with. As long as all the self-evolves are cashed in by turn 6, we simply do what is play point efficient and allows us to draw more cards without overdrawing.
Ghost is a very strong deck, but it’s also predictable. We can’t really be surprised by the amount of burst they might have, and in particular it’s very easy to tell ahead of time if Ghastly Banishment can actually kill us or not.
This is a matchup that calls for Shin on turn 6 second, but it’s achievable in most games, especially with Mikael.
Going first we typically have until turn 7 to play Shin, though we still need to evolve a lot to maintain the possibility of turn 7 double Shin.
Tempo Lucius and ways to protect Lucius, ie. Metatron, are the scariest parts of this matchup. Frequently, losses result from a very weak response to a strong curve or simply not drawing Shin. I think this matchup more than many others should make most people realize that the better they get at playing Evo Portal, the less that evolve count is the limiting factor.
Invoking Mikael by turn 6 is extremely important so always track Rally.
If you run Elina, she is the backup plan in case we can’t get a fast enough Shin. Ideally we want Shadow to spend a turn playing Masquerade before revealing Elina, and it’s important not to leave a 5-attack follower on board like Kyrie so they can’t trade Masquerade off. If turn 6 Shin is possible, Elina generally won’t be necessary.
The combination of healing for 6 and clearing while being a Ward makes Shin uniquely capable of stopping Ghost from winning on turn 7, and if they don’t win by then against Evo Portal they typically aren’t winning at all. Healing back to at least 9-10 on the Shin turn while having a Ward prevents Ghastly Banishment lethal and since Ghost doesn’t heal themselves, we are extremely likely to win outright on the first post-Shin turn.
It’s even possible to win without any Shin-reduced cards when going first. Damage from Cassim and Storm Alice will stick, so we may simply have lethal from hand on turn 7.
Crystallize does have a turn 7 OTK as long as they have Skullfane reducing by turn 5 and Jeanne + Diamond Master + Wingy. On paper Crystallize should be faster since we typically can’t lethal on turn 7 unless we go second, but in reality Crystallize is so inconsistent and overly reliant on drawing Skullfane that this matchup at the absolute worst is still even.
Generally I would advise against keeping Cassim against Crystallize since he gets cleared without pushing relevant damage far too easily, and this isn’t a matchup where we need to answer an early board. He’s still fine to play just to cycle our hand if we happen to draw him.
It’s still important to play Shin as soon as possible because Crystallize may go for lethal over two turns with multiple Storm setups rather than an OTK, and even if they don’t, we need to threaten lethal ourselves as soon as possible. Since Crystallize does not present any early threats however, we can be very greedy in the mulligan with Robo-Arm, Sweeper Doll, and Robopup.
There are several varieties of Vengeance Blood, ranging from pure Vengeance to Evo Vengeance, and either way we absolutely must avoid setting them into natural Vengeance for as long as we can.
Against any Vengeance, Rosa can still be useful early even if she gets eaten by Owlcat. At worst it still prevents them from pushing even more damage with Leoparion. Of course if they don’t have Doublame, Rosa will mitigate a lot of early damage.
The scariest setups from Evo Vengeance are pseudo-board locks featuring Mini Soul Devil and ambushed evolved Signa, for which by far the best answer is Cassim + Alice/Blooming Dancer + a third cycle. To this end, Cassim’s role against any variant of Evo Blood is to clear out unattackable followers with a combo that lets him deal damage multiple times. This is perhaps the only matchup where tracking Resonance is highly relevant—assuming we have a third cycle, we want to start the turn out of Resonance if we expect to use Alice, and conversely we want to start in Resonance if we expect to trade off Blooming Dancer. It should be clear then that Robopup serves an additional purpose in this matchup by being a 1PP cycle even if we never draw Spinaria.
Be mindful of each Mini Soul Devil giving -2/-2 to the first follower we evolve—generally it doesn’t matter if it lands on Alice, but we absolutely must not evolve Cassim first if there are two Soul Devils.
I don’t think there’s a lot to say about pure Vengeance, but be careful of 10 damage from Fenrir, which can be prevented by any Ward.
Mysteria is faster since modern Spellboost-style lists are very good at consistently killing on turn 7. We can win by turn 7 if we survive until then, and otherwise we can try to pressure early with an aggressive Cassim curve. It’s not impossible to get a surprise win without Shin since we still have Storm Alice and Grimnir evolve for 12 damage on turn 6, but if Mysteria hits their important cards and plays like a human, it’s very rough.
It’s a bit of a deck-quality gap, generally we straight up win if we go first, have turn 6 second Shin, and/or deny the 10 Machina/Academic count when they’re only one off. Denying count tends to be more relevant going first than second since we likely wouldn’t play Shin until turn 7 anyway, and having turn 6 Shin is stronger than denying one turn of Gretina.
Machina Portal doesn’t heal so it’s extremely easy to win on the first post-Shin turn. If it isn’t possible to win immediately, don’t underestimate the random damage from Gullias, especially if Bearminator is in the pool. In general, maximizing healing and putting up multiple Wards will keep us alive even if we don’t have lethal yet. This is where running two Badb can be very helpful.
In general, you should only play the first Shin if you are aiming for an OTK the following turn. Otherwise, you want to Shin or even double Shin in response to the opponent’s Shin, as they have likely wasted the healing of their first Shin. If one player starts with one Shin and the other responds with double Shin, the player who started will need to see all three Shins to return to full defense. However, the player with the first Shin can be the first to look for an OTK as they are the first to have reduced cards.
Pandora is meant to enable OTKs in the mirror, but ironically enough there will be lethal opportunities missed because of her not being Grimnir, a card that can be immediately played the turn it is drawn. There are a few ways to have damage stick in the mirror, mainly with Storm Alice + Shin while the opponent is unable to double Shin, or by responding to the opponent playing the first Shin by having double Shin. In any of these scenarios where the opponent may end up with 15–17 defense even by the end of their turn, it makes a big difference that Grimnir is more playable in terms of PP and doesn’t require an evolution point, compared to Pandora.
Each post-Shin turn spent not killing the opponent is another turn where the opponent could suddenly OTK you with any assortment of damage cards. To begin with, the most powerful line is to simply be the first to reduce and the first to have enough damage post-Shin. It’s not uncommon to dig for another Alice or Grimnir off Alice, Kyrie evolve, or even Robopup to complete an OTK, and between PP reduction and recovery, having enough PP is almost never an issue. There’s a massive gap in this scenario between drawing Grimnir or Pandora, where one can quite easily win the game immediately and the other not. If Pandora is not reduced, she is strictly not playable until at least turn 8—if not later, depending on when we play Olivia—but a 4PP Grimnir can easily slot into a potential lethal turn because of Alice’s and Kyrie’s costing negative PP.
Evo Portal is really strong, and it’s taken time but a consensus for how the deck should be built has been reached among most strong players. Where Evo Portal specializes is its favorable matchup against the highly popular Ghost Shadow while still deck quality gapping most of the field. I strongly recommend this particular build for any environment.