Owls and Dragons and Pirates, Oh My!

This is a new and improved version of my Spellcraft Nonsense deck. Defiance added a lot with Hojan, Scalebreaker, and Clutch of Talons. Overall the changes make it easier to play a more explosive strategy, moving the slower cards to the market or dropping them entirely. It actually feels like a competitive deck rather than just a meme now.

The strategy is pretty straightforward. You're trying to play Plunderer into Tome on turn 5, then go buck wild with extra power and spellcrafts. Basically you want to invest heavily into the board to play a lot of extra power while creating a very threatening team.

Sometimes this is enough to win, but a lot of the time they can kill or neutralize your board. Often this leaves you with no cards because most of your units had weapons so that Harsh Rule was a 7-for-1. This is where Clutch and Parliment come in. While you were making that threatening board you were also playing a lot of extra power, so you can instantly refill the board with just as threatening a team (if not more so). This is usually a GG because they pulled out all the stops to get past your Aegis and ramp.

If they can't deal with your board it just keeps getting wider and taller and more skillful until you win. Very few decks can keep up.

Hojan is obviously great as a stabilizer, weapon payoff, ramp payoff, and ramp, which are basically all the things the deck wants. So he's pretty much 100% amazing. Not much else to say about him.

Scalebreaker is also a great boon. A lot of the time you need a unimportant unit to park an important weapon and she's is perfect. And 5 attack with Renown is nothing to sneeze at. Plus she gives you a weapon for your weapon payoffs. If not, the double card is nice for the merchants. But flying is actually very relevant for the deck. Also you can just curve Scalebreaker -> Goad to swing with a 5/5 flier on turn 4 without opening yourself up for a 2-for-1. Definitely one of the best cards in the deck, and IMO underrated overall - brew with this card people!

Clutch gives us a weapon based ramp payoff that doesn't need a board, unlike Sword of Unity or Gleaming Shield. Parliament is also good in this spot, but as a weapon Clutch synergizes much better with the deck (and the rate is better). The Dragons still have a Fire/Primal cost so get Fire with Trail Maker once you have TTJJPPP, just in case you need to do a Temple Tactic play or something.

Temple Tactic is only a 2-of but bouncing and replaying a unit and a couple of weapons is a pretty common gamewinner. It's also nice with Svetya if you need to buy some more time.

Svetya is really nice in this deck as a way to protect your board (one turn is often all you need) and a ramp payoff. The deck has 34 units so her ability is pretty good. And 8 is pretty trivial with the amount of ramp so it's pretty common to have the option to use it. I've been consistently ending up with more weapons than units in hand so the draw restriction hasn't been an issue.

Desert Marshal has been really nice for some fast interaction, which this deck lacks. You can also use it to get a body for a weapon without giving them a chance to respond. It's also another Svetya target.

Gleaming Shield is great with Svetya, but also with the rest of the deck. It's mostly for control when you need a lot of Aegis, but it's probably the most versatile card in the market, there are a lot of spots where it's good. A lot of the time you can use it to get 1-2 more Merchants to get the rest of your market cards and win that way.

I ran Parliament in the market because I wanted an army in a can and I also wanted 3 options for each merchant. The only other army in a can is Clutch of Talons but Gleaming Shield is too versatile to give up (it's also kind of an army in a can sometimes). So it had to be Parliament. Plus with Parliament it's easier to play Sword of Unity with Spellcraft on the same turn, and that's a really good play to have access to.

You want 8 Merchants because Plunderer -> Tome on 5 is crazy strong, and most of the power in the deck comes from the weapons anyway. The stats of the units don't matter as much as the fact that they can hold a weapon. If you get enough weapons out you'll have plenty of stats to win with. Plus ramp and Aegis are two perfect things for units in this deck to have so it's not like the bodies are even bad anyway.

Overall the deck feels pretty strong, but I'm in the 2000s in masters due to playing a lot of jank (shoutout to Rat Cage and Hatchery Hunter). I'm going to try laddering with this next month because it feels like there's a lot of potential here, I want to see how it does on the Masters climb. If anyone higher on the ladder wants to test it and let me know how it goes, I'd really appreciate it.