The ShiftstonedEternal Power Calculator is a deck-building tool that visualizes your odds of drawing enough Influence and Power based specifically on the cards found in your deck.
I genuinely can not understand how is it possible to do well in a tournament with this deck. Sure, sometimes it does powerful stuff, and when everything lines up, you can beat pretty much everything. However, about 50% of the games I played have just been non-games for me. Got colorscrewed A LOT, despite active digging with Quarry; topdecking diploseals feels embarassing; milling your only Fire sigil with Chairman's is hilarious (got a reasonable looking hand with seek power, feln crest, and chairman's -- did not pan out at all, died before finding Fire) ; drawing all reanimation with only Merchants is your creatures occurs frequently; drawing only creatures is less bad, but still slow enough to get steamrolled by any like of a reasonable start from an opposing side.
Also, Statuary Maiden is almost unbeatable unless you draw one of 2 Choices.
The deck only needs one influence for each faction, so influence screw shouldn't happen too often. The case where you discard your fire sigil is unlucky, and definitely not the norm. I usually mulligan hands that are not able to either play an infiltrate unit on turn 3 or play crests + quarry to find action. I agree that Statuary Maiden is very problematic, but Combust and Permafrost are situational answers even if they are much less efficient than Rindra's choice.
I might be overreacting a little, my record with the deck is 7-7 in Gold 1 right now, where my first couple losses were due to being new with the deck, which is not horrible.
Did you consider running Suffocate? It looks pretty reasonable in the current meta, and is not as embarassing as Permafrost against Maiden, Dusk Raider, decks running ValkEnforcer etc.
I didn't try suffocate, but it does sound good vs Maiden and aggressive decks. All of the removal and discard spells are flexible and can be changed based on whatever meta you are seeing.
Funny enough, Aggro felt very favorable for me. I managed to win against Highwayman who had Drone -> Dusk Raider -> Drone + Perma -> Merchant + Combust -> Bandit Queen Berserked a minute ago.
Not sure if Suffocate would be good in any type of meta (unless you would pitch a Torch). SST, Maiden, Caiphus (with Endurance especially) are the most annoying creatures to face, so you only have to guess what removal to play...
Yea, I think this is a decent deck for ladder climbing. You do need to have some sense of what your opponent is up to in order to figure out which cards to keep or market, but this deck can have powerful starts even if the opponent has removal or blockers.
almost feels like the black monolith in 2001: a space odyssey - a catalyst for the evolution of the metagame.
like, no one is playing the game in the way almost is and i feel like we're all trying to catch up.
in the span of a few months he's managed to showcase several highly technical and competitive lists and this current one has to be pushing the outer limits of reach and value.
SEVEN merchants? Chairman's Contract? Abduct and nearly 2 copies of every answer in the game? what is even a deck anymore? where do you even draw the line between graveyard, market, and hand? and at the same time, it takes the wisdom of an alien race to do the interstellar merchant dance and make it all fall into place.
i'm getting a little carried away but seriously, it's all been really impressive. what a breakout year for almost.
Haha, thanks. Playing more than 4 merchants is because of how important scream is to the deck. A lot of the numbers came from iterating and wanting more or less of something.
Also, Statuary Maiden is almost unbeatable unless you draw one of 2 Choices.
Did you consider running Suffocate? It looks pretty reasonable in the current meta, and is not as embarassing as Permafrost against Maiden, Dusk Raider, decks running ValkEnforcer etc.
Not sure if Suffocate would be good in any type of meta (unless you would pitch a Torch). SST, Maiden, Caiphus (with Endurance especially) are the most annoying creatures to face, so you only have to guess what removal to play...
like, no one is playing the game in the way almost is and i feel like we're all trying to catch up.
in the span of a few months he's managed to showcase several highly technical and competitive lists and this current one has to be pushing the outer limits of reach and value.
SEVEN merchants? Chairman's Contract? Abduct and nearly 2 copies of every answer in the game? what is even a deck anymore? where do you even draw the line between graveyard, market, and hand? and at the same time, it takes the wisdom of an alien race to do the interstellar merchant dance and make it all fall into place.
i'm getting a little carried away but seriously, it's all been really impressive. what a breakout year for almost.