Katra with infinite power and extra turns

Intro

So this is yet another Katra, the Devoted deck. I've been trying to make this card work consistently since it came out years ago. This is my 7th version of the deck which evolved quite a lot over time. What really changed is the introduction of better card draw, better life gain and the focus change toward Mask of Torment. The main problem I previously had was that I wouldn't draw any Katra for the whole game and simply end up with a fairly average Time / Shadow deck. I now regularly finish games with over 50 max power and several extra turns available.

How does it work?

The main idea here is to get the Mask of Torment out as soon as possible, then turn all the extra power you get into card draw with Javan, the Steel Crest or Grodov's Burden. Alternatively, you can instead scout for our girl Katra, the Devoted while gaining life, ie, more power and generating a bunch of 9/9 Lux Penumbra through Eclipse.

In a typical situation, you'll have at least 1 Grumbo, Tota Legend, 1 Hive Queen Uther and or 1 Meditative Trance. With those 3, for every 4 power you spend, you gain 5 life, draw one card and gain 2 maximum power. If you drew a unit then it's 6 life and 3 max power

What's in there?

The core of the deck that you can't really do without is Katra, the Devoted, Meditative Trance, Javan, the Steel Crest, Grumbo, Tota Legend and Spiritweaver. Everything else is just there to get those cards out and get them to work better. The Hive Queen Uther is also a very useful part of the combo. If you start spending mana to draw with him on the board, you'll usually gain enough life that you won't have to block anymore for the rest of the game, making it a nearly guaranteed win. The interaction is also very interesting for contract cards. For example, when you Saloon Massacre with contract, you'll be spending mana twice, triggering Katra / Mask twice before the -1/-4 effect is applied. It's even better yet if you can't pay all of that debt right away because you'll be spending more mana at the beginning of your next turn for another lifeforce trigger.

The Sandstorm Titan are present in 100% of my time decks. It has incredible value for the cost and lets you avoid dealing with flyers.

The Ebon Dune Smuggler and Kerendon Merchant have been around in the deck for a long time, and are fairly average ways of dealing with the market. The Kerendon Merchant does stall the game a bit since the gauntlet AI is usually very reluctant to attack against deadly units. I'll probably try using Skullmarket Delivery instead as they trigger 2 card draw.

Market

The Fall to Ruin, Spire Shadows and Rewind in the market are not very strong picks and usually stay there for the whole game. Emergency board wipe with 6 power is not really a thing, you usually either have a strong board presence by then and don't need to wipe or you don't have 6 power and the question is moot. Swapping cost and power for units is useful when you are low on max power and / or in the rare case that your Mask of Torment got himself perished. Rewind is fun because having 5 or more extra turns available always feel good, but it's rarely very useful. If you're early in the combo and only have 20 or less power, an extra turn or two will make the likelihood of drawing a Katra before your opponent plays again very high, but being able to afford several cast usually means that the game is already won.

How to play

Your first goal is to make sure you have 4 max power and 2 influence of Time / Shadow with ideally 3/3 so you can drop an Amber Waystone right after playing Katra or a Cylix and benefit from 2 lifeforce effects through Meditative Trance. I usually don't block anything with the core cards, but don't hesitate to throw everything else away if it can close attackers. Once you have units with total power over the toughness of all enemy units, the AI will stop to attack until he can lose units to blockers every turn and still win.

Katra, the Devoted needs special care. Ideally, you'll be able to trigger her at least once on the turn you play her. That means 4th turn minimum if you have Grumbo, Tota Legend or 5th turn if you wait for a waystone or draw a card by creating the treasure trove with the Xenan Cylix. The idea is that 3 dmg spells are common for the AI while 4 dmg spells are rare and anything above that is very rare.

Main weaknesses

90% of the games I've lost, I've lost because I redrew a starting hand and got stuck with 2 powers for too long. Maybe moving Saloon Massacre to market and adding Skullmarket Delivery would help that but it's fairly hard to deal with.

There are some key components to the deck and sometimes the AI will play 4 Slay and 2 Vanquish against your first 6 units. Your game is then very hard.

Sometimes the AI will have a Valkyrie Enforcer with 2 Mantle of Justice on turn 5, so that's like a 13/13 flying. It's possible that you don't have anything to deal with that.