Defiance
x4
2
Eilyn's Favor
x1
2
Ice Bolt
x4
2
Privilege of Rank
x4
2
Strategize
x4
3
Hailstorm
x3
3
Jennev Merchant
x4
3
Pristine Light
x3
3
Rime Conclave Smuggler
x1
3
Wisdom of the Elders
x4
4
Honor of Claws
x4
5
Harsh Rule
x4
5
Jotun Hurler
x3
6
Svetya's Sanctum
x4
9
Martyr's Chains
x2
Justice Sigil
x7
Primal Sigil
x2
Clan Standard
x4
Cobalt Waystone
x4
Crest of Order
x4
Hooru Insignia
x4
Seat of Order
x1
View Deck on Shiftstoned
Please feel free to ask me any question you want, I'm always happy to answer. If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out the eternal discord (should be easy to find with a quick google search), you can find lots of advice form the best players in the game on anything from expedition to ranked to draft, as well as the latest news from DWD on expansions and tournaments.
As for your question, Jennev Merchant is just as able to fetch Hooru cards like Korovyat Palace out of the market as Rime Conclave Smuggler. Jennev merchant can fetch any card from your market that has primal influence in its cost, the card doesn't have to be mono-primal. In the same vein, Rime Conclave Smuggler can fetch any card that has primal OR justice in its cost, so it can fetch mono-primal cards too. Since they can both fetch all 5 of our market cards, the tiebreaker that makes jennev merchant better is that a 2/2 aegis is usually better than a random 3/2 (the onslaught on the smuggler is very very rarely active).
I hope that answered everything!
Erik9099
I'm playing Jennev Merchant over Winchest merchant for a few reasons. First off, a 2/2 aegis is far stronger than a 2/2 flying. Winchest merchant will generally get torched or annihilated, since your opponent has a ton of dead removal in hand, while jennev merchant either forces them to spend their entire turn removing her or is removal proof. I also think that there are some very strong primal market cards, primarily Scourge of Frosthome and Royal Decree that you don't have access to in a justice market. Royal decree in particular feels key to winning many matchups (combo and control), and is usually very good in any other matchup as well. I could pretty easily play 3 copies of Korovyat Palace in the maindeck already, I'd just have to cut the smuggler. The reason I only have palace in the market is that it's a very slow card, and we're already a very slow deck. With 4 strategize, 4 wisdom, 4 privilege, and 4 honor, we can't really afford to play more slow card draw in palace, and palace only affects the board if we have a sanctum in play. Besides, the first palace is generally enough to win if you have a sanctum in play, and if you dont then palace is a 6-cost wisdom of the elders, which is bad. Lastly, the reason I have all 4 sanctums in the maindeck is that its just a very good maindeck card. Playing one in the market would be kind of like playing Vara, Fate Touched in FJS's market. Sure it's one of your best cards, but you just want all the copies in the maindeck to save your market for more conditional cards. Plus, sanctum (unlike palace) is a spectacular defensive card, since it just locks down the ground after a turn or 2 of being in play.
Lastly, Stormhalt Knife is a card I experimented with a lot, and the list had 2 copies of it for quite a while. However, it consistently felt like it just gained me 5 life and did nothing else. It's very bad if you have to play it for 6 power, and when you get it for free you don't really want to attack a unit with it since you're already at a really low life total. I wish there were a better lifegain card out there in Hooru, but knife seems to be the best one and it just hasn't been good enough in testing. As is, face aegis and tight play is usually good enough to avoid getting burned out in the lategame, especially with Eilyn's Choice in the market to counter lethal flameblasts from stonescar.
I'll be honest, this is the first control deck I've played that made me really understand how control could be fun. Currently I'm using 3 Vanquish to substitute for Pristine Light, Channel the Tempest for Scourge, and one Rost and one Auric Runehammer for the two Sanctums I haven't forged. I'm hesitant to go all-in on Sanctums because of cards like Bore and Vision of Austerity. Vision I can beat by getting Aegis and establishing control ASAP, but what's the best way to fight Bore (and Fire decks in general)?
I'm glad you like it, control decks really are my favorite kind of deck, and I'm always happy to recruit new control players to the club :>
I would 100% recommend making the last 2 copies of Sanctum, as it's the main win-condition of the deck. It just locks down the ground against most anything, and will quickly kill your opponent for you. It does get countered by Bore, and there really isnt much you can do against that, but it's not as bad as it might seem. The main deck playing bore at the moment is Stonescar, and Stonescar has a plethora of strong market cards against you. Flameblast and Vicious Highwayman are two of the most common ones. For them to get bore, they need to forgo getting one of these other deadly cards. Although it really hurts to have your 5-drop be answered by their merchant + bore, the fact is that it's actually not that bad. Although sanctum helps a ton in winning the game, you dont actually need it to win. You can just play a traditional control game: draw cards + play removal. Eventually you'll find another sanctum or a merchant and win anyways. The real tough part is winning when they do get the Flameblast, in which case there are a lot of tips I can give you. Saving face aegis for the critical turn is a good one, as Stonescar has a lot of ways to pop aegis for free and you want to get as much value out of it as possible. Holding up removal every turn so you don't take damage from their units is another good one, although you sometimes need to just play a sanctum and pray you survive. If possible, try to use your sanctum tokens to end the game instead of prolonging it, as flameblast will always be a threat. Getting Eilyn's Choice or Royal Decree to answer flameblast will often win you the game.
Even disregarding the removal issue, I still think larai is a bit too slow. This deck is full to the brim with slow durdly cards; we have 4 Strategize, 4 Wisdom of the Elders, 4 Privilege of Rank, 4 Honor of Claws, and 4 Svetya's Sanctum that all don't impact the board when we play 'em. There really isn't any more room in the deck for durdly cards, you're already spending tons of power on drawing cards, you can ill-afford to spend more power twisting larai to get sanctum. Larai can block against some decks, but most of the time she'll just get flown over or attacked through by deadly units.
Lastly, I really dislike playing units that I want to keep alive in a deck with harsh rule.
Not sure how she wrecks opposing sanctums - her ability does not stop sanctum from making tokens as far as I know. I'm fairly certain her ability only stops opponents from activating relics, like Cauldron Cookbook, as opposed to sanctum which is just activated automatically. You could play 1 copy of avigraft to tutor up, as avigraft does stop sanctum, but for all the reasons I've already stated I think she's just not good enough.
I applaud you for thinking of ways to use off-meta cards though!
The pristine lights are quite important though. You could maybe replace one of them with a vanquish, but I wouldn't recommend going below 2 copies, and even the 1st vanquish is a downgrade. Pristine light often nabs 2+ units, making it very difficult to replace. If you absolutely can't afford to craft pristine lights, then vanquish is the card to replace them with. However, I'd highly recommend making as many as you can - they're extremely powerful and important in many matchups.
How did you decide on 5 as the number of merchants? (as opposed to 4, 6, 7 or 8 merchants)
Why did you include the Hailstorms? I feel like there isn't much Aggro in the meta and Stonescar, the closest thing to an Aggro Deck right now in the meta, does not have many targets for it.
I'm happy to elaborate:
I played around a lot with the number of merchants. After testing, I was pretty certain that I wanted somewhere between 4-6 merchants. You usually want the first merchant, but they are fairly clunky to make use of, so you usually dont want multiples against something like stonescar, especially since the deck is already quite clunky due to all the card draw spells. I ended up on 5 merchants, mostly because the 3/2 body on the hooru smuggler is far worse than the 2/2 aegis body on jennev merchant. I could easily see going up to 6, but 5 has been a good number so far. tldr: I don't have a real explanation, 5 merchants just feels like the best number atm, though 6 is also quite good.
As for hailstorm, I mostly included this card to target Hooru Fliers, which I thought was one of the deck's hardest matchups. Hailstorm kills all but 2 of the units from hooru fliers (pacifier and sediti), which basically makes it into a 3-cost harsh rule. Hailstorm is also very strong against combrei, another deck I faced in the tournament. Lastly, although hailstorm is not amazing against stonescar (only kills instigator, warleader, merchant, and highwayman, and warleader dodges it if it gets a hit in) it does trade for a 2-drop most of the time, and sometimes gets a merchant + a highwayman. The hailstorms basically replaced permafrosts, which were a bit better against stonescar but a lot worse against fliers. Hailstorm is extremely bad with sanctum in play, but it feels necessary for surviving the early onslaught. It's also quite strong against praxis pledge, which is one of the better decks atm, as well as skycrag and rakano aggro, which are ~T2 decks atm and will likely be seeing more play as both are good-ish against hooru control.
Do you think this would still be a correct choice for the ECQ Showdown ? i wasnt really sure if i was going to make the cut for top 32 so i took a break from the game until they send me the confirmation email so now i need to test 24/7 some deck and your's seem simply amazing!
I truly have no idea how the metagame is going to change now that I won with this deck, but I do know that people are going to be gunning for it, so you're likely going to be in for a rough ride if you take this exact list to the tournament. However, it's an extremely resilient deck, and when played correctly you can overpower almost anything, so if you're confident in your skills then by all means, go ahead. Just be aware that the metagame is likely going to be far more hostile to control than it was during the masters challenge. If you try this on ladder and adapt to the strategies you see there you might be able to change the deck to be more resilient to the anti-control cards people will be running.
Regardless, thank you for the compliment, and I hope I was helpful :)
I'm easy to reach on Discord, if you @ me on the Eternal discord I'll get back to you the same day and we can chat a bit about any changes you've made.
Cheers,
BTW, Erik, it's awesome that you take the time to reply to everyone so extensively! You're a gem of the community.
Thank you so much for the compliments :)
By the way, you've got a good eye for decks to use at the very least, GHP's stonescar list is very strong as well.
Congrats!
There also isn't really any other primal or hooru card that I can think of that'd be good in the market. It feels like all the bases are pretty much covered - maybe an anti-aggro card would be nice, but I don't really know of any great primal or hooru options. A hooru market would provide some interesting options like auric runehammer and stormhalt knife, but I think the 2/2 aegis body is just too much better than the 3/2 smuggler.