This is a new and improved version of
VolaVolaVolaVolaVola! Credit to them for building the initial list that I've ran with.
I should warn you: the primary goal of this deck is to sit back with your thumb up your rear until your opponent either gives up in frustration or you blast them for lethal with 90 power floating. Your entire gameplan is staving off early aggression, spamming board clears, punishing overextension, and getting rolled every time an aggro deck gets a start you can't stop. If you like playing Zoners in fighting games, this is the deck for you. If you have a broken A key, this is the deck for you. If you like roleplaying as Gandhi in Civilization by being nonaggressive for the entire game until you flip a switch and go nuclear, this is the deck for you.
Here's a list of all the changes I made, and why:
First, I added a market. While this does "dilute" our pool of
Volatility draws, adding 4 merchants doesn't hinder our Volatilities much, but lets us be a lot more flexible, especially in certain matchups.
Halotipped Spray: -2 Maindeck, +1 Market - The only downside is you can't draw them naturally of off Volatility anymore, and you have fewer Inscribe effects, but that's more than made up for by the fact that your Smugglers have a 100% chance of making Creation and Dino Nest opponent's cry. And, with 4x Calibrate and 4x Wrath, you rarely want/need to be Inscribing anyway.
Pyrotech Explosion: +1 Market - I noticed a significant lack of "I win the game buttons" that reward that absolute heights of power this deck gets to. I added Pyrotech Explosion to resolve this. Remember, 18 power means you can deal 32 damage, which is often enough even against opponents that have gained some incidental life throughout the match. This is the most frequent way you're going to win your games: it's the fastest, most consistent, and ignores face Aegis. Just watch out for negates against blue decks!
Shen-Ra Speaks: -2 Maindeck, +1 Market - It's so rare that you actually want to use Shen-Ra Speaks's secondary effect; it's more like a harder to cast
Harsh Rule. So, I cut it and added 4x Harsh Rules. Adding 1 copy to your market allows your Smugglers to grab a board clear, which can save otherwise unwinnable games. However, this the card I grab least often, so I'd be most open to swapping it for something else.
The Fall of the Spire: No Change - I'm pretty meh on this one. It's a few extra copies of Harsh Rule, but it's drawback seems bugged; if you take two extra turns after it, its downside affects you on both of those turns. In addition, you can easily screw yourself over if you plan to cast a follow-up that's in your void on the next turn. It's not bad, but the downside seems redundant and counter-productive to the deck's plan: why would I want my opponent to be unable to play a few threats for a turn when I'm holding Bathe in Light, Copperhall Blessing, and another Harsh Rule?
From the Heavens: -3 Maindeck - I cut From the Heavens entirely. Sure, it's nice, but it's worse for early game protection, and we have better ways to win the game late. We don't need nearly as much redundancy in our win-cons as we need for our early game protection.
Moment of Creation: +1 Market - If you clear the board, and cast an extra turn or a few, Moment of Creation can seal the game. It's not often you win the game this way, but having 2 win cons on your Smuggler? Why not? This is another market card I could see cutting for something, if only I knew what I'd swap it for.
A New Tomorrow: -2 Maindeck, +1 Market - You basically never want to cast A New Tomorrow more than once, and finding one through a Smuggler is much more consistent than finding one without. Remember that your chances of playing Paintings are quite good, so that small incidental lifegain can sometimes let you squeeze it in otherwise impossible situations. It's very often that casting A New Tomorrow can enable a next turn kill via Pyrotech, if you have the 2 smugglers to set it up, of course.
Builder's Decree -2 Maindeck - Casting one for 5 early is nice to get some early board presence, but Builder's Decree is much more often a closer than a mid-game board control tool, so duplicates aren't too beneficial. I could see myself bringing it up to 3x or even 4x if you find yourself casting it on 5 for a 5/5 often.
Wrath of Caiphus: +1 Maindeck - There's no good reason to not run the full 4 copies. In the early game, it gives you the power you desperately need to cast your 4-6 drops that protect your face, and in the late game, it refills your hand with defensive gas and/or win conditions, while disrupting your opponent.
Sol's Rest into Wrath is a particularly cruel combo; you not only gain the tempo of clearing their board, but also delay the next turn they'll get to try and redeploy. Make sure not to cycle these away too aggressively: If your hand only has 1 copy of Wrath or Binding, then it's sometimes better to naturally draw to 7 power, so you can get a fresh hand.
Rewind: +2 Maindeck - This card simply wins games. Don't get tunnel visioned by the potential of several extra turns in a row: you will sometimes have to smuggle, Binding, or cash it in for 1 extra turn in order to not lose. This deck will give you chances to get greedy; don't get greedy when it's not time to be. Often times, you don't even need a wincon: the prospect of your opponent watching you play 4 turns in a row is so boring, they'll just concede.
Save the Day: No change - Copperhall Blessing: +2 Maindeck - The original deck used 4x
Copperhall Blessing as a placeholder for 4x
Save the Day, and Save the Day may be one of the sleeper hits. The biggest downside of Blessing is that you spend 4 power and a card to be in the same situation next turn. Save the Day's fast board stun means you can buy yourself a free extra turn to lower your shields and play your Calibrates, relics, or any other setup you otherwise can't find time for. In addition, Save the Day only costs 4 when you cast it, meaning Volatility can still draw it. In
addition addition,
Save the Day doesn't have to target an attacking unit. Is your opponent holding back an important synergy piece like
Disassembler or
Scraptank? Kill it, and freeze the rest of their attackers. However, Save the Day has some major weaknesses: such as being unable to stop attackers with Aegis, and it can kill units with Endurance but can't stun them. So, we still include 2x copies of Copperhall Blessing for some redundancy in our early game protection. This is because the abundance of Tomes in our powerbase means we can very consistently cast 4 drops on turn four: having more cards which keep us alive for 4 is invaluable.
And the rest of the deck is pretty self-explanatory: Calibrate helps you find power draws/relics, Volatility draws you board clears and Fog effects, Partnership Agreement/Fire Sale ramp you to your board clears and fogs, and once you've run your opponent out of resources, you cast Binding Agreement and/or Wrath of Caipus to dig for more control tools and, eventually, a win condition.
Edit for Behemoths of Thera:
First, I cut Fall of the Spire from the maindeck, replaced them with the Shen-Ra Speaks from the market, and filled the market slot with Rift Disaster. Not much to say, these are much easier to cast on time, and are generally better cards.
I added 2x Halotipped Spray, cutting 3x Copperhall Blessings to make room. This deck needs more ways to clear relics than just 4x Red Canyon Smuggler, with all the Dino Nests and Creation Projects running around. In addition, Spray can be inscribed in matchups where it's irrelevant. Since Spray was in our market, I added 1x Bore to the market to fill its role. Losing the Blessings sucked, but we can't draw them off Volatility, and they really feel like the worst of the Stabilizers. In addition, this gives us a slot to add another Shen-Ra Speaks, bringing us to 3 total.
I cut all of the sigils for 4x Xultan Conclave and 1x Praxis Cylix. The cylix could probably be swapped back for a sigil. The main benefit of Conclaves is they're whatever faction you need for negligible cost, and they let you cast 3 drops on 3, of which we have a lot. Neither Paintings nor Tomes let us cast 3s on turn three, so I'm inclined to keep them. Since all our 3 drops are Rakano, I'd almost instantly cut some cards if they released a Rakano power that was guaranteed to be undepleted on turn 3. This is also why I'm running 0x Midnight Reprieve, but I think Praxis Cylix might be cut for it; Cylix rarely draws you the card, anyway.
What are we missing?
Any cards to give us Aegis that still work with our existing plan. It's an absolute headache to give my opponent the benefit of a Fire Sale or Partnership Agreement, and have them clear the relic before I can get that benefit myself. Especially when it happens multiple times a match. The main problem is we can't dedicate card slots to giving ourself Aegis, since we need as many cards to delay and stabilize the early game as possible. So we can't run cards like Protect or Auric Herdward, and need a board clear/fog/power card that gives face Aegis, which seems unlikely to happen soon. It's possible we could play some face Aegis in the market, but spending a market slot on Protect feels cataclysmically bad.
In addition, we have a big problem: when we lose relics, we can't get them back easily. I'd like to add Disjunction to this deck, but Spray > Disjunction in the maindeck, and our market is firmly Rakano because we need green for a board clear + A New Tomorrow, and red for Pyrotech Explosion. Alternatively, if we got an instant win-con like Pyrotech in either yellow or green, that would allow us to cut red from the market and play a green/yellow market instead, which allows us to move Binding Agreement/Waystone Core/Nahid's Distillation to the market for draw and Disjunction to the market for relic removal/recursion.
Nice
I hate making new decks, but I love tweaking and refining fun ones, and yours definitely was!