I've noticed a great deal of slow removal plaguing the meta at the moment and decided that I wanted something faster. Instead of trying to stick stuff against endless torches, slays and displays, I should just hit them in the face with big fatties before they have a chance to remove them.
Etched Monolith is a key card for the deck (you don't need to have one for you to win, but it helps in many different scenarios). The card does two things:
1) Our big fatties like
Crimson Firemaw,
Moonstone Vanguard, and
Heart of the Vault have to wait a turn to hit them in the face meaning you don't get firemaw's discount and vanguard's card draw to cantrip him. With this in play, Vanguard two for ones their removal, firemaw gets a hit in and makes our cards easier to cast, and HotV slams damage after removing a chumper.
2) When we hit 10 power (which happens more frequently than I thought) we can cash it in for lifegain because it has trouble racing down all the lifesteal units bogging the meta.
I added
Mysterium Orb because when we swing with our charging sentinels they don't block for us unless they already had endurance, we have 10 explorers that can help us reach 6 power to cast things, and the overwhelm is invaluable if we pull out darya from market.
Trail Maker and
Amber Acolyte are explorers that help us reach 6 and the 2
Pompous Historian can discard firebombs off
Cauldron Cookbook and get us cards (hits ~23 cards in the deck if we haven't drawn them)
Groundbreaker is a sentinel that comes down early and stops life gain. The double damage make it a pseudo 6/6 on t3 if we played Trail Maker, which doesn't die to vanquish and demands a
Display of Ambition so FJS doesn't get to play it as double dark return.
Obliterate has impressed me as a way to remove blockers and kill pumped Varas we didn't get to sacrifice an Acolyte or Historian for. I'd think to add more, but I think 2 is fine for now.
Waystone Titan doesn't need monolith for charge which is nice insurance, and has been really impressing me because it takes a lot of power to fuel the deck, so slamming him for 6, swinging and playing HotV or Groundbreaker or just drawing cards off a cauldron cookbook has been very nice ways to utilize that power refuel. Playing it on turn 6 and then putting out a mysterium orb is a great way to make a surprise blocker because the endurance untaps it at end of turn.
All in all, the deck has been fun to play because it punishes slow reactive decks and makes it hard to respond to.