FTP Midrange - Fire Market

An updated version of the deck I used to take down the community championship. It's been performing extremely well on ladder as well, especially against top-tier decks like FJS midrange, as well as most variants of aggro.

Current Rank: Top 25 (Climbed from rank ~250 to top 25 in 2 days)

I haven't changed much from my invitational version, but the few changes are fairly important, so I'll give a short explanation of the thought process behind them.

Market Changes:
First off, one of the biggest issues for the deck has been Deepforged Plate. Because of that, I really wanted to find a way to fit Bore into the market. Not only is bore a good answer to plate, it also answers cards like Permafrost and Eternity Core, and it has amazing synergy with all of our merchants and Strategizes. Of course, this meant that we had to switch to a mono-fire market, at which point Torrential Downpour needs to come out too. This isn't as much of a problem as it might seem, since downpour was never that useful for me unless I had at least 1 Howling Peak Smuggler in play. The fact is that with Snowball, Torch, Heart of the Vault, and Amaran Stinger, we have a lot of ways to deal with swarms of tiny units. I also don't think that Bore and Kaleb's Choice are both needed in the market, so I replaced Kaleb's Choice with Urn of Choking Embers. Urn is a massive boon to the highway matchup - it's even better than downpour most of the time.

Maindeck Changes:
The maindeck changes are mostly a consequence of the market changes. Obviously, we have to take out the Great Valley Smugglers and replace them with Ixtun Merchants. Past that, I also added a 3rd copy of Jotun Hurler, as we're relying more heavily on snowballs now that we don't have downpour in the market. I took out a copy of Display of Instinct for the hurler, as display was consistently my worst card in the championship. 4 damage for 3 power is not a good rate, and holding up a counterspell that costs 3 power is rarely feasible. I do still like the card because of how versatile it is, as well as the situational lifegain it grants, so I think 3-of is the sweet spot.

Strengths:
- Favored against FJS (~60% at least)
- Favored against most aggro variants thanks to all the removal + anti-aggro units (stinger, SST, hurler, HoV)
- Counterspells for Temporal/Reanimator
- VALUE!

Weaknesses:
- Low on hard removal, so you can get overwhelmed by beefy time units
- Low on answers to giant units (Deepforged Plate, Mystic Ascendant, etc)
- Somewhat low on finishers, though aggressive lines of play + burn is almost always good enough

Edit I:
-1 Permafrost
+ 1 Jotun Hurler
With all the Hojan Hooru decks running around, I wanted to max out on snowball value. Snowballs also tend to get better in multiples. Although permafrost is a stellar removal spell, it gets hard countered by the new hooru site. I think 3-of is a safe spot to be in.
- 1 Urn of Choking Embers
+ 1 Kaleb's Choice
I've been really missing the counterspell in the market, so I wanted to find a way to get Kaleb's Choice back in. Urn has been pretty useless to me as I have not seen a single highway deck on ladder, so it was a fine card to cut.