So let's avoid losing in gauntlet. These are the main challenges we want to address:
1- Power and influence RNG: Just don't play 3 faction decks in gauntlet. It's better for your mental health. Also don't play greedy stuff. Gauntlet is all about tempo and occasional removal for rarely appearing key units.
2- Getting overrun by aggro. Do NOT play weak tempo in the early game. You want to discourage the AI to attack into you until you get your things set up.
Blightmoth is a great card. It doesn't matter whether if it's in meta decks of throne, USE THAT SHIT! He turns a lot of problematic aggressive tribal decks into easy preys. All your token stuff works really well at discouraging the AI into attacking. The AI does NOT want to lose its units no matter what (unless it has lethal of course).
3- Flyers: I've grown to hate the whole mechanic. It's just disgusting. Feels like there is nothing you can do but to race them.
AND RACE THEM WE WILL! The Shrine really shows itself here. +2 attack and lifesteal lets you win EVERY SINGLE RACE. It doesn't matter what they're doing. The best they can do is stall, and they can't even do that for so long.
4- BIG units. There are a bunch of this guys in gauntlet. And not just big units, even worse are aegis units with a bunch of weapons on them. Also sometimes
warcrys can get out of hand. So we want to run a shit ton of
deadly units alongside
Combust to deal with those.
5- INCONSISTENCY. Can't stress this enough. You must and I repeat MUST be able to assemble your pieces ASAP. We have multiple tactics here: Some (or most?!) Shrine decks run it in the main deck. Fucking why?? I mean sure if you can tutor it out with
Calibrate or some shit sure but in Stonescar colors you do NOT want only 4 draws to get your key card that you only need one of. We're running 8 merchants here. Alongside them are a myriad of card draw and filtering to help you get their every single game. (I have a fetish for undepleted power. You can run
Crest of Chaos for even more card selection if you want) The good thing about this deck is that the card draw isn't negative tempo. It's a part of you win con. That's just beautiful.
Have suggestions? Ideas? Feed backs? Discussions? Some Stonescar energy you want to share? All comments are appreciated <3
Also I think it's better to run emblems of makkar for the deadly body. The last comment (241akerman) has a better powerbase that utilizes the card.
thx for sharing your list, yesterday i struggled with my gauntlet deck since AI was jamming legendaries every turn but with this version the issue has been solved and i was able to ramp through the gauntlet.
regards
Khan2k14
Have you considered adding Shavka's Lute to the market and switching the Merchants again (Red instead of purple). All your Singlefaction units get warcry, which is also a boost to Shrine, also it gives you a "free" Steelbound Dragon with Charge, Warcry and Lifesteal on top for just sacrificing a grenadin drone :O
I'm currently testing that, and it really is so funny
7-0 (end boss: forgot the name / whenever you play a unit, discount the units of the same type in your hand by 1)
7-1 (lost to High Council; end boss: Shifting Alliances)
7-0 (end boss: Feln Rittualist)
4-1 (lost to Strange Return)
6-1 (lost to Xenan Power)
7-0 (end boss: Limitless Possibilities)
Note that I came back from the hiatus, so with this I ranked up, hence the 7-1 run. In 2 of my 3 losses I was severely power screwed, so I don't weigh them much. A solid deck! I didn't have enough copies of Strange Burglar, therefore I replaced him with Stonescar Scrapper.
Fun consistent deck overall and I quite enjoy it!
Our friend in the comment below (241ackerman) below has good suggestions for upgrading the deck. His version is better imo.
1. Strange Burglar was a very clucky card so I decided to move it to the Market. I replaced it with a playset of Madness, which has always been a favorite of mine in these kind of decks.
2. I didn't like my market options so I decided to swap Ixtun Merchant for Kerendon Merchant, this gave me the market of Bore (only gettable with smuggler,) Shrine, Burglar, and the new additions of Shadowlands Guide to reanimate a carver, and Vara, Vengeance-Seeker for those pesky Aegis units.
3. Urgent Missive is a cool card and I like the idea of having instant speed sac for shrine to activate on defense, but the card was not very good outside of that and was often just sent to my market, I felt a bit removal light especially against the faster decks, so I decided to go with 3 of Torch in its place, can't beat the classics.
4. I messed around with the powerbase quite a bit, with no way to fetch sigils I didn't really want to play them so I swapped the powerbase to this:
1 Fire Sigil (Set1 #1)
4 Granite Waystone (Set3 #1)
4 Emblem of Makkar (Set7 #121)
4 Crest of Chaos (Set3 #268)
4 Stonescar Banner (Set1 #419)
4 Stonescar Insignia (Set6 #228)
4 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425)
I hope that something I swapped around is helpful for you in grinding out gauntlet with this deck and thanks again for the post. Happy grinding!!
Now my opinion about the changes:
1- He is somewhat clunky I agree. I like him in the main deck because he can dig deep for a merchant if I somehow didn't get any. But I understand the clunkiness of him for most people. It's a good solution to run him in the market. I myself will keep him in the deck and put Madness in the market but your way is solid I gotta say.
2- I really REALLY like the 3/3 body of the fire merchant but your suggestion sounds so good I can't pass on it without trying. I'll use madness instead of burgler in the market as mentioned before. Also, how about Last Chance instead of Shadowlands guide?
3-Pretty much agree. I was afraid of not having enough sac activators but this card isn't the best option. I think your torch replacement is great. Either torch or a good sac effect (that I can't think of right now)
4- The power changes are fantastic. I have some personal love for basic power so I'm gonna mostly stick to my basic list but I'd say every other person would be better with you version of power. I think I'll add some Emblems of Makkar to my list foe the deadly body
And again, thank you very much <3