Do you love big fat Time decks? Do you love smacking your opponent's board around? Do you want to punch Icaria (in all her annoying incarnations) out of the sky with extreme prejudice? Well then, this might be the deck for you. It's the first homebrew I've gotten to Master's, and it's a lot of fun.
The basic idea: draw out removal early with must-answer threats (or just punish their lack of removal), establish board presence, then use
Grodov's Burden to give everything Exalted and pass around a Killer tag from unit to unit, clearing the opponent's board and building progressively stronger units to attack with.
Deck features:
Grodov's Burden - The most important, irreplaceable part of the combo. First because it enables passing of battle skills, but also due to its 5-power card draw ability. This provides some recovery from the inevitable board clears through superior draw. You'll typically want to market for this first unless you're under imminent threat.
Gnash, Desert Prince - A good source of Killer tags if he survives until your turn (and with enough early pressure, he frequently does). His Summon ability has won me games too - dumpstering a
Sediti, the Killing Steel is a heck of a tempo swing. There's some anti-synergy with
Friendly Wisp, but the two-card draw (which triggers before it gets buried) is generally worth losing the 1/1 unless you've had to stash an Exalted weapon on it.
Striking Snake Formation - A backup plan if you don't pull a Gnash or can't wait for that 6th power before swinging. Worth picking ahead of Burden if you're up against an aggro deck that is nearly out of gas - most will concede after you clear their board.
Dawnwalker,
Cykalis, the Burning Sand - These guys have two things going for them - Overwhelm tags and low health. In cases where you've only got one Killer tag to pass around (if you spawn a Gnash buddy, for instance), you have to keep chaining unit deaths to chain Killer. High-attack, low-health units that give Overwhelm give you bonus damage to face and guarantee a longer stabbing chain.
Amaran Stinger,
Xumucan, the Surveyor - more dinky units is great when you need bodies to pass around Exalted weapons. Stinger is a great turn 2 or 3 play that tempts out some pretty extreme removal or favorable trades. Xumucan started in the main deck, but the influence requirement meant he sat around in my hand or got swapped to market early more often than hitting the board. But he's a great surprise to pull on an attacker who thinks they've got the game won.
Crack the Earth - Great for a surprise chump blocker in the early game, and lets you grab the Burden or whatever else you need. The only downside is the Cultist it creates has two factions, but that's rarely a problem.
I'm fairly happy with the market setup at this point. It's got relic removal, relic retrieval, an extra body, and combo pieces, all of it accessible by both Crack and Merchant. Other good choices, depending on meta, include
Frenzied Omnivore,
Worldbearer Behemoth, and
Alhed, Mount Breaker (his Inspire ability triggers with Burden draws, potentially landing a 10/4 Cykalis).
There are probably better decks that can feature
Grodov's Burden, maybe a Combrei or Elysian battle skill pile. But I'm only smart enough to work in one color at a Time, so here we are. Enjoy!
Edit: Nvm, Xenan is still better than mono time, Annihilate and Banish are too good. This deck folds to any kind of early pressure and gets outvalued by many other decks like reanimator. Grodov's Burden is super slow and you never know if it's going to be 5 mana do nothing.
Deck didn't fold to early pressure often unless I got a power screw. Half the time I was the one giving the early pressure with Teacher, Stinger, and Dawnwalker - all of which make perfectly fine blockers as well. The tempo loss from dropping Burden definitely lost me a few games, but once it's down you can pull an extra draw per turn to help with the grind.
Agreed that Xenan is better, though. Too many decks stick one specific unit and win (this one included), so it's hard to run a deck without spot removal of some kind. I'll probably play around with Xenan next season, or maybe Elysian since I've been seeing a lot of that in Expo lately. But I love mono Time and wanted to see if it could be pushed up to (low) Masters, and the answer this month was yes.