Zealous Artisan has been a pet card of mine since it came out, when I opened a
Pale Rider's Timepiece knew what had to be done. Sadly for me, WarlockHolmez got there first with their
Pale Rider Rakano but I think my version has a few good iterations on their idea:
-
Svetya's Bravery saves you from a lot of the things that would otherwise make this deck really sad such as
Equivocate and
Aamri's Choice.
-I've dropped shadow entirely from the power base as well, replacing the shadow merchants with
Bladecrafter. Sometimes your best way to play around a Harsh Rule is to just put an exalted weapon on a shade! This also allows us to put Deepforged Plate in the main as well as market.
-Another way to play around Harsh Rule with this version is to put
Xulta Foil on your Artisan. Even if he dies alone on board you get to put the exalted weapon on the 2/2 that gets created.
-Added
Shugo Standard because the deck desperately wants to get to 5 power and doesn't want to go far above that.
-
Honor the Ancestors in the market: don't underestimate this card! If you have a Timepiece-wielding artisan and two random dudes on the board, you can killer the artisan into a
Grodov's Stranger and then Honor your timepiece back into play on the dude that didn't get an exalted weapon.
-
Siraf, Grand Strategist : an alternate wincon to Zealous Artisan + Timepiece is Siraf + any big weapon + svetya's bravery for protection and outvalue opponents with her mana sink ability.
EDIT: -1 each rujin's choice and siraf because I'm usually happy to see 1 copy but rarely happy to see 2. Cut runehammer for extra copy of timepiece because some games grind on long enough to need 2. cut shugo standards and xo for granite waystones: xo was pretty much only ever market fodder, overwhelm from standard was redundant with so many ways to grab a deepforged plate.