Mono Carver (top 20 masters)

Mono Fire deck with Kindling Carver as a draw engine and a whole lot of charged units to surprise your foe.

This deck sacrifices some of the initial speed (one drops that do actual damage) for mid-game draw offered by the Kindling Carver. The idea is to get your opponent as low on health as possible and finish with Kaleb's Persuader played on one of your units or a surprise charge from the likes of Thunder of Wings.

The basic premise is to start pressuring your opponent from the start with units like Grenadin Drone, Akko, Inspired Artist, Rakano Outlaw and Teething Whelp. Do not play Kindling Carver in the first few turns, unless you have a really bad hand or an extra copy. All the cheap units in the deck, with the exception of the grenadines, are popular targets for early removal, taking the pressure off of your more expensive units.

The three drop slot is reserved for charging heavy hitters like Censari Brigand, Milos, Rebel Bomber and Thunder of Wings. The latter is, of course, not a three cost card per-se, but it should be played as one. It is especially useful as it provides a flying charging attack that does four damage.

Kaleb's Persuader is most often the key for victory, as it provides great synergies with Censari Brigand (if unblocked will deal 4 + 10 damage in a single turn) and Milos, Rebel Bomber (he can put two firebombs in the enemy deck in a single attack). It can be useful also on Akko, Inspired Artist (reach mastery 9 faster) or Teething Whelp (get flying with initial attack, and reach mastery in the same turn).

The other finisher is Fire Conjuring, as it provides with extra punching power, the more units you have, the better. Even though this card is optimal in decks with more bodies on the board, it can surprise your opponent and be useful even when played on a couple of units. The invoke it provides is a great plus and it won me many a games, as decimating is not a problem for a cheap deck like this.

Draw is provided by Ornate Katana, which, besides providing an extra card synergises well with Akko, Inspired Artist, Rakano Outlaw or Teething Whelp. But it's a great card that can be played even on one of your grenadines, drawing a card and forcing your opponent to use up one of his removals or blockers. The main draw in the mid and late game is provided, naturally, by the Kindling Carver.

Contrary to most Carver decks, one should carve BEFORE attacking as so many things have charge and cards like Fire Conjuring may pop up. This is true for a majority of cases, there are situations in which carving after an attack is preferable or not carving at all, but those are rare. Best targets for carving are the grenadines and Kato, Arena Herald and his companion. But other cards can be carved in a bind, like unusable Akko, Inspired Artist (if you foe has a lot of blockers), extra carvers or things that are silenced/permafrosted.

Torch and Blazing Salvo are the only removal options, with the latter providing valuable access to the market. My number one buy is most of the time Pyre Elemental, with Salvo + Elemental being one of the iconic turn 3 plays. Phoenix Stone is also very neat as a 4 damage dealer with charge but useful later on. Sear is for emergency removal, coupled with the Salvo itself it provides the only way of removing large threats from the board. Edict of Shavka is here for Icaria and other similar threats, although I don't use it very often. Factory Quota is very situational, but it can be very damaging against lifesteal decks, armory decks or controls without too many units.

Notable exclusions are Assembly Line which synergises well with a few things in the deck, but I found it too slow. Galai, Shavka's Listener is also a 4 damage charger with an invoke too boot, but his weak body for a relatively steep price was not ideal so I cut it.

The deck works well on ladder, and I'm currently at around 60-70% winrate at top 50 masters. Why share it? At the time of writing there were no other published mono carver decks, which seemed odd to me.