Savage Vodalir

A deck inspired by my ladder experience:

TPS Vodokahn/Talir combo with 12 merchants, Initiate/Trailmaker, Duskwalker, Last Chance in the market, and at least one Eternity Core to grab with the Display. Pretty much looked like the deck was built to get Talir/Vodakahn ASAP out and nothing else. They got it and went hard on drawing cards, playing a bunch of things to keep the combo going as long as possible. It seemed like they were going to deck themselves with no wincon, I thought maybe they didn't realize Destiny had been changed and it was going to be an easy win. Lumen Reclaimer would've made the game go longer but I was playing a deck that could deal with it (Temporal with my own Reclaimer :p).

Then they played Savagery on the 29/29 Vodakahn they played earlier that turn and attacked my Merchant for lethal.

Intro

The deck is maybe surprisingly good. I win a mediocre number of games but a lot of my losses are due to misplays, I'm still pretty bad at it. So I'm not sure quite how good it is, but it's really surprised me with how viable it feels.

The core is the same old Talir/Vodakahn combo, but with Savagery on Vodakahn as the primary finisher. The build is tuned to get the combo ASAP and go through the entire deck every time, since the wincon once it does is so reliable. It's very rare for the enemy to not have a unit to attack for lethal with Overwhelm. And if they don't, they usually can't block your alpha strike with Etched Monolith. If they gained a lot of life and played a lot of blockers you can usually use both to deal 60+ damage pretty easily.

It feels like the deck can always play itself and win every time you get the combo, without a lot of mental effort or room for failure. The Destiny change means I almost never hit the time limit, and there are much fewer important choices to make once it's comboing off.

Strats

If you're not familiar with the combo, you just play a Merchant with Talir out to grab Vodakahn from the Market. He has Destiny from Talir so he gets played (make sure there's a spot for him!), you draw a card, and every card in your deck now either has destiny, draws you a card, or is Savagery. So the whole deck just plays itself and you get a huge board to win with. But once the board is full units go to the void (and still draw a card), so we have to win with a random selection of units and Talir/Vodakahn - no Alhed/Magus of Celerity shenanigans. Occasionally the combo stops but you can just play Devour, Last Chance, or a possibly a Merchant to keep it going.

It's technically possible to hit Savagery and have no way to continue. But between every other combo stopper drawing more cards, and a couple of the units usually stacking extra draws as they fill the board, that happening is extremely unlikely. And if it does it's not even a guaranteed loss; it just gives the enemy one turn to respond before the rest of the deck is played and we win.

There's only one Talir, but it means we can run 12 Merchants that get each combo piece so I think it's worth. Other (pre-nerf) versions I've played are more like a Mask of Torment midrange deck that happens to have the combo. This is more all-in, and it feels like the post-combo win is reliable enough to justify it.

If you try to draw a destiny unit from the void with a full board it won't get played, but you'll still draw a card. So Last Chance keeps the combo going for 0 power.

If you're not sure you'll have enough damage try to hold on to Devour and Last Chance as you combo off. Once the deck is empty you can use Devour to clear weak units and Last Chance to replace them with big units.

Remember that you can swap power/units from your hand for power/units in the market to keep the combo going. Don't swap Devour or Last chance unless you're not sure if you'll be able to play them, but that's really rare.

If you're desperate you can play Talir into Last Chance/Dark Return on a Sauropod to draw 2 cards, it's not a sure thing but it's a very strong play that can turn into a full combo. However it can still just fizzle, forcing you to pass and hope the enemy has no answer. So it's kind of a last resort.

Cards

Eternity Core is super vital as some hard to remove super ramp that powers up Great Valley Smuggler and is available with all 3 Merchants. It really helps with playing the combo on time, and that's really important since the deck has pretty much no interaction. It's usually the first market grab, but sometimes you don't need it.

Savagery is obviously the MVP, the vast majority of my wins have used this card. Occasionally I need the Monolith, but that's pretty rare. I'd say you should never use this unless you're winning with it, or you need to use it to survive. Monolith can win the game but it's decently common for them to have enough blockers to survive an alpha strike. But they almost never have enough health + unit health to survive a 30+ damage Overwhelm/Killer attack.

Azindel is really important as an extra wincon, stabalizer, and something to bait out removal for Talir. Also he's great to ramp into, the deck has felt a lot better since I added him.

Twinbrood Sauropod is actually super nice, after playing games with it I feel like it's pretty core (thank you Almost for the suggestion). It gives you extra cards for all the market swaps, and the body is just fine for the deck. Ramping into a 5 drop on turn 3 us nice even if it's just a Sauropod, and playing 2 early is even better. And on top of that it counts as two card draws when you're comboing so you pretty much don't have to play Last Chance or Devour, which means you can use them to make a bigger board for Monolith if needed. And finally the 2 bodies are just really good at gumming up the board until you win, especially if you have extra Last Chances.

Moonstone Vanguard is pretty much the same, the deck runs a lot smoother with it. I had Lunar Magus and Duskwalker instead of Vanguard and Ayan but the ramp/lifegain didn't feel reliable enough.

There's plenty of room for experimentation, the only really core cards are some Merchants (I'd say at least 8, but 12 is really nice), Talir, Vodakahn, probably Sauropod, Temple Scribe, and Savagery. The ramp feels really nice but it could be interaction and better blockers. You could even add Justice for stuff like Desert Marshal and Minotaur Ambassador. I like trying to go as all in on the combo as possible but that might not be the right way, adding more interaction/survivability instead of the nightfall ramp stuff might be good.

If you try Justice, Grinva is another wincon for decks like this that works the same way. You play the deck, Grinva stays in your hand since she's(?) not Time, then you play Grinva on a full board and sac Vodakahn for lethal. I feel like that's susceptible to face Aegis, but you could definitely get around it. However if you play Justice you can't play 3 Time merchants without going 4 factions so you'll have to rely more on interaction and valuable units. IMO Savagery is more reliable overall, and Aurelian makes the combo more consistent than Kerendon.

The sideboard is cards I'm interested in testing, some of them can be swapped in but some like Friendly Wisp and Duskwalker probably need more support. Also Equivocate and Disjunction are only market options since they stop the combo.

Shoutout to whoever beat me with this combo on ladder, that was hilarious and it's a great idea!