Mulligan

Liu Su

Liben

The Bestest Travel Companion!

Always keep 1 Liu Su and The Bestest Travel Companion as Shenhe’s burst is a vital point to your strategy and you want to be able to use your skill round 1 and generate Icy Quills. Keep ramp cards such as Liben and Paimon to guarantee being able to use 3 skills in future rounds.

Early Game

As this deck really wants Shenhe’s burst out as quick as possible, it is important to have the energy to burst round 2. You generally start on Shenhe and use Spring Spirit Summoning to get Icy Quills and to apply Cryo. If you have a fast swap, look to use Sucrose skill to spread Cryo and use up Icy Quills. If they swap off the initial character that you applied Cryo on, use another skill on Shenhe to build up her burst. Alternatively, if you have Liu Su as well as a ramp card in hand from your opening mulligan, start from one of your Anemo characters and swap Shenhe to Skill and ramp.

Aim to get Divine Maiden's Deliverance by the start of round 2 start dealing 2-3 damage Swirls depending if you have Icy Quills or not. If they ever swap to a character with no Cryo aura on them, swap back to Shenhe to apply Cryo, dealing up to 4 damage with Spring Spirit Summoning with Icy Quills and Talisman Spirit on the field.

Single Target Pressure

As this deck is mainly focused on dealing strong off field damage with Swirls, you may wonder how you will deal with tankier opponents or dealing meaningful single target damage. Well, Tandoori’s Roast Chicken is useful for this! An extra dice and Tandoori’s allows you to do 2 boosted elemental skills in one round, gaining 4 extra damage to push through the opponent’s characters. Wanderer’s burst is also a dangerous threat to single carry decks, so building up his burst over Sucrose is a great alternative.

An additional source of single target comes in the form of end turn summon damage. Large Wind Spirit and Talisman Spirit together deal 5 damage, boosted to 7 damage with Sucrose’s Chaotic Entropy equipped. This summon pressure will force an answer from the opponent as they will be unable to ignore it, so use this to your advantage to pressure their important unit. Keep in mind however, that if Talisman Spirit disappears before a boosted Large Wind Spirit attacks, the second summon will not get a buff from the first and deal one less damage than expected (and vice versa).

Mid/Late Game

Get as much value out of Shenhe’s Talisman Spirit before it expires by swirling on your Anemo characters. Either use Sucrose or Wanderer as they both serve different purposes. Sucrose’s force swap comes in handy to disrupt opponents setting up bursts like Shenhe. Wanderer in tandem with Fresh Wind and Freedom can threaten defeating an off field unit, then bursting the opponent's active character.