Have you ever looked at a “unitless” control deck and snickered with derision upon realizing that it did, in fact, contain units?
Do you treat losing to a single attack from a
Darktalon Wyvarch as a badge of honor?
If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, then have I got a deck for you!
This deck is a pile of ways to kill units, draw cards, and generate power. It originally started as a Hooru control list that felt glacially slow at ending the game. It was killing the units and drawing the cards part just fine, but it felt slow to hit the 8 or 9 power and finish the game. Incorporating Time for the relic ramp and the extra draw helps accelerate the deck to the end game a bit sooner and more smoothly.
That’s really the game plan.
Spend the first 7 or 8 turns drawing cards and killing units and then playing
Stormhalt Plating or Builder’s Decree for two 9/9’s to finish the game in a couple of turns. The critical mass of removal and card draw means that you most likely won’t run out of either before you can finish the game.
The market is a vestige of the deck’s history as Hooru. Playing merchants to access that market almost always felt bad so I cut them. Without the merchants there isn’t actually a way to access the market yourself. However, the Company of Exiles and Nictotraxian bosses CAN randomly spawn market access which means that it is TECHNICALLY strictly better to have some cards hanging out in the market to grab. For the other 99.9% of the time the market is completely irrelevant. Feel free to leave it empty. The bargain cards are included because I can imagine scenarios where they are castable, even if those scenarios will never actually happen in practice.
It’s possible that this deck wants
Xultan Conclaves for fixing, but so far I have managed without them. The power has actually been fairly smooth.
Is this deck a good grinder? Haha! Good one! This deck is obviously not built for those of you who want to grind gold as quickly as possible, it’s built for people who want to play this deck. You probably know if that’s you better than I do.
Builder's Decree
x4
1
Defiance
x4
1
Tradition Chant
x4
2
Ice Bolt
x4
2
Icy Scrying
x4
2
Pillar of Progress
x4
2
Power Stone
x4
3
Auren Condemnation
x4
3
Celestial Discovery
x4
3
Hailstorm
x3
3
Wisdom of the Elders
x3
5
Harsh Rule
x4
8
Stormhalt Plating
x4
Justice Sigil
x3
Primal Sigil
x3
Time Sigil
x1
Combrei Painting
x4
Crest of Order
x4
Crest of Progress
x1
Crest of Wisdom
x1
Hooru Cylix
x4
Hooru Painting
x4
View Deck on Shiftstoned
The first, and most minor reason, is that this is a novel deck and I wanted to embrace that novelty further by not playing with a market. I know, this isn't really a great reason, but it also wasn't my primary justification.
The second reason was that everytime I accessed the market with the previous iteration, it honestly just felt BAD. I understand the flexibility that a market provides and I've rarely ever built a deck without one, but this deck is designed to draw cards and kill units, and in practice, it was doing both quite well without having to sink extra power into fetching another card.
The last reason was that, typically, when I initially build a deck without a market and then want to give it one, I will find the card that I like the least and then exchange four copies for four market access cards, and then move one copy of the card that I initially cut to the market. Part of the issue, however, was that I already wasn't able to fit in four copies of every card that I wanted to! This deck really wants to be playing a lot of cards that draw two cards so that it can afford to play its targeted removal while still advancing its power. I think that it would be odd to cut any of the card draw for Deliveries.
As far as the removal goes, there is certainly a lot of it and that would probably be the most likely candidate if I was to try to make space for Deliveries. That being said, I also really like all of the removal in this deck and I like it in a way that I am usually pleased to draw multiple copies of the same card. Hailstorm is perhaps the most situational of the bunch, but it's rarely ever dead in gauntlet, and there are a lot of situations where it would lose much of its value as a cheap sweeper if you have to wait to play it. I basically found myself going through the list, card by card, and trying to determine which card I would be content to go without maindeck to make room for Deliveries.
I also felt that Builder's Decree and Stormhalt Plating were both too integral, too flexible, to lose access to multiple copies. Plating helps guarantee that you're not missing power and also gives you more life to work with. On the other hand, Decree can function as a very powerful wall once you start hitting 5+ power. It is also a very common play pattern to Decree for 9, attack the following turn, and then Decree again to close the game out. Decree is also the sort of card that you don't want to play the same turn that you cast Delivery, and shuffling it in prior to that point isn't great when there are now 3 enemy decks which actively mill you.
This was the thought process behind my reasoning for NOT including a market, and in practice, I honestly didn't find myself missing it. That being said, I'd be happy to hear you out if you had more thoughts on the matter.