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40 Merchant Nictotraxian

Throne Deck By
nothership

+33

Cost Curve

Type

Faction

Information

I thought this deck was going to be a meme when I built it, but I went 11-7 today at around 500 in Masters. Savior gives you a decent chance against aggro.

The general gameplan is to shuffle Nictotraxian and your other fate cards in and out of the market with merchants to get a lot of fate triggers. Fetch Jotun Hurler and Savior against aggro decks, fetch crown and the dragons against slower decks. If you’re facing a lot of aggro, you can replace the crown with Lumen Shepherd

Details

Shiftstone Cost
Does not include campaign cost
59,900

Premium Cost
248,000

Influence Requirements
3 1 2 1 1

Power Sources
10 10 10 10 9 22 4

Power Calculator
Shiftstoned Icon View Deck on Shiftstoned

Deck Rarities
4 5 62 4

Card Types
44 1 4 0 31

Contains Cards From Campaigns
Jekk's Bounty [Set1001]

Archetype
Unknown

Added
January 22, 2019

Views
7,995

Eternal Version
Balance Changes

BBCode For Comments

Deck URL

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Comments

Solafide Eternal Version: 1.43.0.6161
how is this deck +28....it sucks. Worst deck I've seen on this site. Its unplayable.
AirHater Eternal Version: 1.43.0.6161
Just try it :)
BarnacleEd Eternal Version: 1.42.3
By far the silliest deck I've seen on EW, and perhaps one of the most fun I've had the chance to play. Thanks for sharing!
sentenza Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I've tried playing this deck for 2 days. You simply can't win a match. There's no way to kill units. If the OP has Vara or scream or Xo... you lose, full stop.
Comment Deleted
Superspeedsnail Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Hmmm, im not playing on master so I cant say for sure, but OP has test it on master so it should not be a problem.

Against fast decks, you cycles Savior of the Meek & Lumen Shepherd, against slow decks you cycle Nicto and Xo. the draw from nicto gonna need some pray and sacrifice for RnGeesus.

Tho, you could fit in some removal and making the deck having less merchant. Unstable Form kinda cool since you can get values from it.
Superspeedsnail Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Hot daymn. I'm trying the deck right now and fun as hell. still sub optimal because im still collecting many more smuggler and must come up with other stuff by myself.

Though, kinda feel slow out of the fact there is basically all crest in it. and need mana fixing if we want to use some other stuff like Hailstorm or Harsh Rule. Since this filled with crest, im trying using Petition instead of seek power. It slow the deck further more but it gives me access to fixing two colors in one go plus a scout. And since the deck basically passive until three mana, Petition arent that much different than seek power. It pays off to hit quick double color requirement for the sweeper.

Might be there is some optimal build where we wont have to totally jamming in all of the merchants/crest and use other stuff instead. I'm trial error by focusing on Auralian color (but still use all color) and the using the Display of Ambition to make the deck become totally toolbox. with Crystaline Chalice, Quicksilver Mirror, Xenan Obelisk, Eye of Winter, Staff of Stories, Memento Mori, Azindel gift and many more others of relics to try.
nothership Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Yeah, the 40 merchant version probably isn’t the most optimal build. A relic-display build certainly could work, but I feel like giving up on green merchants and Savior of the Meek is going to hurt the aggro matchup more than adding Hailstorm would help it. The ideal build might be some kind of 4-color pile, dropping Ixtun, Red Canyon, and Howling Peak for Harsh Rules and a relic package?

I don’t know if you saw my earlier comment on Petition, but this build I think needs seek instead of petition. I initially tried the petition build and lost far more games due to being unable to cast a merchant on 3 than I did to color screw - seek+crests can get you all 5 colors most of the time.
Superspeedsnail Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
4 color huh, good Idea. Yeah, I really need to hit that savior quickly. and since my green smuggler arent complete yet, My early still really vulnerable I need shepherd to add the savior on the market and making the deck focusing on green and white merchants. Im thinking on dropping black and red (but still five color for smugglers) since late game this deck feels really powerful already.

After some more play. I agree on hitting 3 mana ASAP. I swapped the petition for seek, with some more crest that not green/white for the sigil.
Nordos Eternal Version: 1.42.3
have you ever thought about cargos instead of seek power?
While I haven't tested the deck, Cargos can be fetched by multiple merchants, while seek power is either colorless (therefor wasted merch slot or gives a sigil, which is heavily limiting as well). It also can provide more cards in the lategame, when you hit the influence reqs. The only downside is, that the powerbase is weakened a bit more, so there is that.
Also, black merchants are kinda.... problematic. You can only fetch Nicto with it, and most things you market won't be black either. All in all, I would even go as far and suggest cutting the black merchant for ... Twinning Ritual! It can be played T2 to duplicate one of your smugglers (which are most of the times a better target after all) or even copying a fetched Nicto/Xo/... to get an additional fate trigger, possibily a new Crown keyword and to get another copy you can chain marketing.
Well, I will test it, since that deck looks truly fun :)
nothership Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Cargos are just strictly worse than seek power in this deck - you rarely get to XXYYZZ influence, and the point of the seeks is to fix for whatever color you’re missing. You almost never need to market a seek or get it back out, since the whole point of the deck is to shuffle the same few cards in and out of the market.

While Kerendon Merchant can only fetch Nictotraxian, the body is one of the better ones for this deck - it helps stall the ground out really well. You just have to be careful to sequence your plays so that you can fetch Nictotraxian with Kerendon Merchant and put it back with something else.

Twinning Ritual is a fine inclusion, but you really can’t play it T2, since the deck runs a lot of depleted power and you really want to save your sigil for T3 to play a merchant on curve.
gork Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I tried replacing Crown with Accelerated Evolution, since being able to consistently generate card advantage while giving units +1/+1 and flying (or endurance, sometimes) seemed like it might help mitigate the generally suboptimal bodies of most of the merchants while also synergizing more with the market. Great deck idea, I'm having a blast with this!
Ninjacan Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Just wanted to stop to tell everyone the deck art you want for this deck is 100% Elvish Swindler (:
VoidKing Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Yes! xD
vampikachu Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I actually think Talirs unwinding is fun in the market :p I’ve had a few games where grabbing it just refueled the whole deck. Obviously you’d make sure nicto is in the market before doing it though lol
nothership Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Yeah, I've been experimenting with some form of card draw instead of crown. Talir's unwinding actually seems like a great choice - its primary downside (being 3 colors) is actually an upside in this deck because it increases the number of merchants that can fetch it.

EDIT: Another commenter brought to my attention that Kerendon Merchant currently can only grab Nictotraxian, which can lead to some awkward lines. Talir’s Unwinding fixes that problem as well.
ElEshVee Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I mean, I WAS going to use my 3200 for a Dizo's Office, but obviously I need to play this masterpiece now
Diablolee85 Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Wonder how Knucklebones would perform in the deck......I think I'm about try it! Wonderful idea, executed much better than the brew I had going on!
Ninjacan Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
The whole point of the deck is to draw random cards already, adding knucklebones doesn't really give you anything new.

Also, when you play a dedicated knucklebones deck, the deck is all removal and card draw, so when you play knucklebones, you already have a hand of gas to protect your shenanigans. In this deck if you play a knucklebones, and it get's removed, the plan of the deck just falls apart.
nothership Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Exactly - Knucklebones is a card draw engine. This deck uses merchants and fate as its draw engine, so it doesn't need another one.
Diablolee85 Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Seems legit. It was fun for a few games but easy to get around. I was short 1 ebon and 2 red canyon smugglers, so i went with a 2/2 split of them filling in the other 4 slots with dessert marshal. The silence has been extremly useful. Thanks for the advice.
Jmal Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Maybe replace crown with memento memori
eljeffedemagico Eternal Version: 1.42.3
This deck is a lot of fun! Thanks for sharing
Stevercakes Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I really enjoyed playing this deck, thanks for sharing it. in and out and in and out and in and out...
YurickYu Eternal Version: 1.42.3
The problem with Market Crown in this Deck is: If Crown give Destiny to a unit with Fate you lose the loop. Is better replace it with another card. What you think of use only 25 powers and another cards? Maybe a Harsh Rule. No echo cards in main deck? Would be great too. 4 Seek Power and ONLY 5 power in the deck? Maybe you can trade Seek Power for Petition.
nothership Eternal Version: 1.42.3
The more I play with Crown, the more I think it’s not what this deck wants - it just doesn’t do enough. The destiny issue is a problem too. I think cutting power would be a mistake - even against aggro, you want to hit 4 power on time for merchant + snowball, and against control you want to be able to cast your random 6-8 drops from Nictotraxian.

I haven’t felt the need for Harsh Rule or random Echo cards, but if you wanted to cut a few cards (Aurelian Merchant and Ebon Dune Smuggler would be my first cuts) for Harsh Rule or Unstable Form, you probably could. Cutting more than 1 or 2 power would be a mistake.

5 hits is still enough for the first 2-3 Seek Powers to have a hit, and the odds of drawing all 4 and multiple sigils and not enough crests that the limited number of sigils is worse than just regular flooding are very low. Petition is too slow for the Crest, Crest + Seek, Sigil + Merchant curve that Seek Power enables, so I don’t think it accomplishes much.
Ninjacan Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I was kinda thinking about chalice in that slot, you said it's for the longer games, drawing cards seems good, idk. Like the decks plan is drawing random cards, so drawing more random cards makes sense to me. Especially now that Jennev and Hidden road both got "nerfed" into chalice range, most of your creatures are targets.

Edit: I guess Xo is for that, but you only have 12 of your merchants that can get him vs 20 units that can get chalice. Could also just be a Mirror image, I don't know if that's possible though in this deck XD
nothership Eternal Version: 1.42.3
I haven't tried chalice, but that seems like an interesting choice. Let me know how well it works if you do try it.
Superspeedsnail Edited Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Quite nice actually. Since there is many scouting instances and many targets, chalice give some nice play to dig deeper or optimizing the draw.

What I wanna try is Quicksilver Mirror, since we can copy the merchants and keep cycling the stuff in and out. After some tries, it feels like win more card. The deck need a way to survive early onslaught, the mirror doesnt help about it.
mauric Eternal Version: 1.42.3
Mirror would be unreal!
Comment Deleted