So. I'm here again.
Yay. :D
Ok, anyway. I'm still looking for a reliable and consistent (and
cheap, let's not forget cheap) gauntlet grinder. And in the midst of my unrelenting quest for a ray of hope in this cold, dark world I decided to try gauntleting (making words up, english is weird, ok) with my ranked deck. Which is basically an only-units strangers deck.
I went 23-2 with it; won two gauntlets lost the other two at the fifth and sixth challenge respectively. Deck was pretty fast but I realised trying to bulldoze a gauntlet with a deck built only on units was not giving me the consistency I seek.
And so I came up with this. Chopped off all the higher cost units and put in some much needed spells for control purposes.
I'm currently 36-3 with this one, won 4 of the 7 gauntlets I played with it in 8.4 turns average. I'll probably update results
here.
As for most of the strangers decks I've seen around, the only win condition is building a generous board: after your Victorious Daddy is in play everything should pretty much go on auto-pilot.
I suggest being wary of control decks and playing
Triumphant Stranger only when you're sure you can keep him alive. Otherwise, choose targets for removal wisely and
don't trade early. Seriously, don't.
I'm kinda looking for a
Grim Stranger alternative, since he's not really doing much for me but still, deck is in a good place, gauntletwise, as it is.
Feel free to offer any suggestion. :D
Enjoy.
P.S.: The power list is not my doing and I wanted to give credit were it's due but I can't seem to remember the name of the deck. Anyway, it was a strangers deck too, so if anyone recognizes that mess and gives me a link, I'll edit.
I also switched most of the power cards out with Crest cards. Helps give a little more control of power and skipping cards I don't need.
Also, if you feel like gifting me Crests, or the shiftstone to craft them, feel free. :D Thanks for the feedback.
Also, I'm pretty sure the 2power mana fixing strangers are better than horus traver. For one thing, the body is bigger, and another thing is they give you 2 influence instead of just 1. Personally, for gauntlet, I realllly hate playing anything with 1 toughness, you just get blown out by vara's favor and fireman cub (I think it's called that). I'd also cut hearty stranger, pretty underwhelming. Probably play 1 copy of the aegis stranger to tutor for against harsh rule decks. You're right about grim stranger, pretty trash. I'd also like to see 1 copy of the deadly stranger, and I would assume battle-sworn stranger would be pretty mandatory as well? Luckily because you get to run reunite in this deck, you can play single copies of these guys and still reliably get the effect when you need it
As for the 2-influences strangers, I mean, I think your reasoning is pretty sound but, at the same time, I only need 4 Horus Traver, as opposed to a bunch of the aforementioned guys. In the end, Horus usually opens the game and, once I have a decently sized board, just get tossed aside. With the current deck I usually manage all 5 influences by the third turn, if not the second, which makes for pretty sweet T3 5/5 Forsworns (or more, considering Ruthless and Hearty). I think it's just more reliable then cramming 2/2 units in the deck; I was doing that, when I was on a serious budget, and it was not consistent, at all.
The other options you suggested are actually part of my ranked deck's list but, as I said in the description, I decided to try and cull all the higher cost units to speed-up the action. Up to this point, the deck has been far more stable (in a gauntlet environment) without all the fatties; board builds up regardless and Triumphant stranger will, most of the times, throw some of those units anyway.
I'm currently testing Tireless stranger (a whole set of them) in the deck, dropped the Grim and Clever strangers (plus a couple sigils, since I had 27 power); Hair-trigger may very well be next since things aren't going very well.
Thanks for the feedback :)