FTS Control (masters)

tl;dr: Cauldron Cookbook and Vara, Vengeance-Seeker are good cards, Azindel, Revealed is an absurd finisher, Banish is very good in the current meta, and Heart of the Vault is still good.

I started this month by playing FJS Cookbook to Diamond, and grew a bit frustrated by a few things while playing it.... mostly when playing games in the mirror. Eventually, a question reached my mind - is Rizahn, Greatbow Master a better card than Heart of the Vault? I'm generally a fan of big stompy Praxis things, and I've never really been a fan of Icaria, the Liberator (especially now that it has been nerfed).... so when I looked inside myself, the answer I found staring back at me was 'hell no!'.

As a result, I set out to build a Heart deck. After playing with Cookbook, it became clear to me that it was one of the best draw engines currently available (much better than anything Primal currently offers, at least). If we're playing Cookbook, we want the game to go long, which pushes towards a control deck, which strongly suggests playing Shadow for removal. At that point, it mostly became an issue of 'lets build something that beats the current meta'. This deck was definitely inspired by the FJS deck I started out the month with, but tuned to address some of the weaknesses I felt it had, and to attack what the meta represented. Played this deck from D3 to Masters, making a few tweaks along the way.

Original version of the deck had Ixtun Merchant to fetch Cookbook, but its other market options felt pretty weak without Rizahn and Icaria, plus I constantly found myself wishing for another removal spell in the market. Kerendon Merchant is pretty solid in the current meta - Vara's Favor is nowhere to be found, and all the market options are pretty solid (in comparison to something like Flamestoker, which felt consistently terrible).

For future context: the four most common decks I encountered (and geared to beat) while laddering were: FJS Cookbook (midrange), Haunted Highway (aggro), Combrei Aggro / Midrange, and Talir Mask (combo).

Individual Cards
power suite - Seek Power, Find the Way, Vara's Favor - we're 3 factions and want to hit 8 power, plus Cookbook is a power sink. FtW has the upside of being a good target to trade away with Merchant, and Vara's Favor was included as a little extra power with upside (popping aegis, killing oni ronins, etc).

discard suite - Sabotage, Devastating Setback - there are a lot of spells being played in the current meta, and sniping something after your opponent grabs it from the market is very satisfying. Information is also useful for knowing when it is okay to deploy threats. Setback is quite good for dealing with a fast start from Haunted Highway.

removal suite - Torch, Annihilate, Banish, In Cold Blood - ICB was the original reason I went FTS over FJS, but it became clear over time that Banish is fantastic. Having a maindeck answer to Mask of Torment and opposing Cookbooks is quite good. Banish has historically been dead against control, but when every control deck is playing Cookbook and Vara, it becomes much better. ICB is the best hard removal spell available in these colors - Deathstrike is arguably better, but there isn't that much charge (and other than removal, we have very little to do at fast speed), so the free wins you get when it snipes a card out of your opponent's hand are worth it. Torch and Annihilate round out the removal suite and help against aggro.

draw suite - Cauldron Cookbook, Quarry - hot take: Cookbook is good. Revolutionary idea, I know. We're playing the full 4, because drawing an extra card every turn is fantastic when it's so efficient, and the downside is negligible. We're not running Ixtun Merchant, which makes it a bit less consistent, but the deck makes up for it by having Banish to win the cookbook mirror. Quarry is here for additional filtering.

Units
Kerendon Merchant - deadly is great when your opponents aren't running silence, and no one is currently running Vara's Favor, so the only ping in the format is Vicious Highwayman. Other than that, standard Merchant stuff - see below for the Market.

Vara, Vengeance-Seeker and Sandstorm Titan - high-impact, mid-sized units that stabilizes against aggro. Vara is generally better due to also shutting down aegis (which this deck otherwise hates) + lifesteal. Titan was originally Waystone Infuser, but the deck really wanted another roadblock for the aggro matchup... and when you want to slow the game down, SST has historically been the gold standard for a reason.

Statuary Maiden - I started with the full 4, but this dropped over time as I ran into more Combrei (and thus more silence). Still, she is quite good against Haunted Highway and any other decks lacking silence. We have a ton of removal, so getting Cudgels is also quite doable.

Heart of the Vault - still the best 6-drop unit in the game, IMO. Doesn't kill quite as many things as Rizahn, but generating card advantage is huge in any control or midrange matchup.

Azindel, Revealed - a fantastic finisher - 3 bodies (one big, two deadly) means he instantly stabilizes virtually any board, and spirals out of control very quickly if your opponent doesn't have an immediate answer... and if we're in the lategame, most opponents will have already burned their Harsh Rules on single targets.

The Market
In Cold Blood - an extra hard removal spell, almost never dead.
Burglarize - want to win the Cookbook mirror? Steal theirs. Having a free win against any Cookbook deck is the primary draw for Kerendon Merchant, IMO.
Statuary Maiden - usually grabbed as a roadblock against aggro, but also useful for recursive decks such as Scream and Talir Mask.
Azindel's Gift - a bit more situational, but when it wins games, it does so with style. There is a saying that when it comes to power, screw beats flood, but this reverses that dynamic entirely. Great against any slow deck or anything that depends heavily on merchants, such as Talir Mask or FJS.
Azindel, Revealed - here as another finisher, because Azindel is something you'll want in any game that goes to 8+ power.

Matchups
FJS - very favorable. We have Banish for their Cookbooks, and more card advantage in general due to HotV. This is the primary matchup this deck is built to beat, since Harsh Rule is weak against us. More midrangey versions with Zuberi can be difficult though.

Talir Mask - generally favorable. Statuary Maiden is great here, since it shuts off Dark Return and generally limits their ability to combo, while Banishing their Mask slows them down significantly.

Skycraggro - generally favorable. Vara and SST are both fantastic against them, and we have a ton of cheap removal. Even if Vara gets permafrosted, shutting down aegis is still very useful. Games we don't draw Vara are much more difficult though.

Haunted Highway - generally favorable. If we draw cheap removal or stick a Vara, things are great. Maiden is also quite good here, since their primary removal is Permafrost and Combust from the market. If we draw a slow hand with a ton of depleted power, then they can definitely punish us though.

Combrei Aggro - toss-up. Maiden and Vara are great if they stick, but silence and Stand Together (+Sword of Unity) are a massive pain. Similar to HH and Skycraggro, depends a lot on how much cheap removal we draw.

Conclusion
This is the first time I've reached Masters with my own brew, and it was a lot of fun to do so. Slamming Heart of the Vault is something I haven't done for a while, so it was nice to see it is still just as good as it used to be, even if Praxis Midrange has sort of disappeared.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you any questions or comments.