FTP Tokens

I feel that this Fire-Time-Primal token build is not viable.

See if you follow and agree with this argument. Traditional Fire-Time token meta runs various Time minions that draw cards, thinning the deck and populating the board. The thinned deck gives increased probability of drawing Xenan Obelisk, Rally, and Shogun of the Wastes, which combine with the generated tokens when the deck hits 8 power to deal fatal damage. Even if you just manage to push four tokens through, that's 24 damage with Rally/Shogun; running Rally-Xenan and hitting with four tokens is 20 damage, running Obliterate/Rally with four tokens is 17 damage. That is, there's multiple finishers. Within all that is typically four Torch, which as a fast spell that can be cast on opponent's turn (which is IMO why it makes it in over Purify). Because hitting 8 power is so essential, the deck also typically runs power acceleration in the form of 4 x Trail Maker, which also fixes influence.

Then you have different tech cards, which I guess maybe I would say the usual suspects would be Praxis Displacer (which lets you bounce a big problematic enemy minion, but also lets you get another activation out of Shogun of the Wastes or lets you draw another key card), Obliterate (which doesn't combo well with Xenan Obelisk, and which I personally think is a bit dangerous), Shogun of the Wastes (which I mentioned as a core part of the deck, but others consider it "tech"), then Alluring Ember, Heart of the Vault, and perhaps Cinder Yeti against metas that stop the Praxis deck from hitting its ideal kill zone; the Warp lets the deck at least have some sort of card draw engine as well as providing flying/charge for an unexpected finisher, exhaust to clear the path for unexpected finisher, or a 6/6 body and a bit of extra damage, and Gloaming Wisp, which is a cheap 1-drop flyer that damages the enemy and lets them draw but lets you draw as well and maybe you get some early chip damage out of it. Oh, and Initiate of the Sands, which isn't necessarily run in place of Trail Maker but possibly as well, letting the deck ramp up to 8 power and generally vomit onto the board that much faster especially if running a Warp variation (though always having to be careful against board wipes). Some run Arcanum Monitor though personally I think it's just a bit too slow and doesn't quite do what it needs to do in the deck, or Vault of the Praxis, which I think personally is way too slow, the problem is you use up a card to play the card itself, then you need to generate a card advantage with a token play, then only after that do you start generating card advantage, which all seems to maybe be all right until one realizes that one could also draw more Vault of the Praxis which are dead cards developmentally that don't generate board advantage and just how long was this game supposed to last anyways and just what win conditions are in the deck for the late game matchup? (the answer being basically Praxis Tokens can't really afford Vault of the Praxis to my mind). Edit - oh, and there's plenty of other cards that mess with things, like a Time card that doubles casting cost that works if you have a pretty good idea of the meta, you drop it before they get the power/influence to play a key card then try to get a hit and double the card's cost then your opponent's key development card got crippled. Then there's a Time card that blows up all enemy attachments and silences everything. Then there's all sorts of fun stuff, fire/time with warp that destroys an attachment, just lots of things really.)

But regardless of tech, the traditional Praxis token deck and variations is very focused on generating a quick board and pushing for a finisher. Personally I like the Warp build as it lets you trade with more confidence against the aggro matchup, and provides a bit of extra added threat range against slower combo decks that might otherwise go into a 50/50 tradeoff situation where you're each trying to draw a finisher, Warp gives you that bit of an edge. But there are no Mystic Ascendant in the build to try to build some sort of late-game card advantage, there aren't Find the Way that would generate card advantage and even increase the reliability of playing out power each turn but would slow the deck from putting out a board (because there needs to be a good-sized board already in play before Xenan Obelisk / Rally / Shogun can go off) besides which depleted power cards possibly stopping it from making a key play a turn earlier which can be vital. What I consider the classic Praxis build is very much token generation, boosting tokens, then multiple finisher cards that work to buff the board for fatal damage. Fundamentally Praxis tokens doesn't go the distance, it is not supposed to go the distance.

Then look at this deck. It runs Primal, and sure it's all sorts of fun if the opponent plays Harsh Rule or whatever boardwipe then you play Scouting Party and they don't have an answer (but mind that by playing Primal at all, once they see Fire-Time, it's a sure bet they WILL be thinking you have Scouting Party (and Shimmerpack too probably). so you're telegraphing that play so they ought to be prepared.) There's some chance they'll be thinking you're running Crystalline Chalice as well though I'd guess usually not (as I think Crystalline Chalice is bad for the deck and probably others would think the same so wouldn't think you'd run it).

But instead of Shimmerpack (which I'll get to in a moment), what this deck runs in place of traditional Praxis is additional Crests (which slow pushing the board on to the field), 3 Permafrost, 3 Strategize, 4 Wisdom of the Elders, then 4 Scouting Party. You can make a case for Permafrost even though it's conditional, even though it doesn't generate a body that combos with Xenan Obelisk (like Ice Sprite would, not that I am saying Ice Sprite is great by any means either). At LEAST Permafrost is cheap so you can drop it while you continue developing your board. But Strategize and Wisdom of the Elders have you trading power to cycle through the deck or draw, and are quite costly in terms of development. And you could perhaps justify this by stating you're trying to draw into key parts of a combo, but if you look at this deck, it removed 2 Rally and Shogun (or Arcanum Monitor, as it were, or Obliterate, or really any other card that combos with the generated field of weak tokens and/or finishes), and though you have draw, I state the draw is clearly not compensation for fewer win conditions. As I wrote (and would you not agree?) traditional Praxis tokens pushes to end the game before enemy decks get their shenanigans off. Sure draw cards let you increase the probability of getting key combination cards, but it's better to have *more kill combination cards* than *card draw* cards that let you draw kill combination pieces. Specifically? Say you're running out of room to maneuver (which you will be), you have two kill combination cards, you play them in combination and do 20+ damage. Or you're running out of room to maneuver, you have one kill combination card and one draw card, you spend power to play the draw card then get another draw card, you can't do a finisher that turn, then you get killed before your next turn. It plays out exactly like that in close matchups. Time is essential.

Instead of a more consistent and reliable Praxis token deck with multiple win conditions, this Time-Fire-Primal deck is considerably slower, has considerably fewer combinations resulting in potential lethal damage win conditions, and doesn't have any compensatory tricks or safeguards to compensate for the loss. The one thing it really does to a lot better is potentially repopulate the board and swing to re-establish hand after enemy board wipe into your Scouting Party, but that's hardly enough considering all the discarded potential win conditions, and you could do that with just a bit of Primal anyways.

What's most surprising to me is the absence of Shimmerpack. It just seems such an obvious choice; if you are running massive token generation off Grenadin Drone, Assembly Line, Humbug Swarm, and Scouting Party to boot, as well as running multiple Time garbage minion-draw cards, well the one thing you can be pretty sure of is that if your whole deck didn't get blown up (and maybe even if it did) you will probably have more creatures then your opponent. And what better way to shut off annoying abilities than to effectively silence everything by transforming them into generic token minions? Sure it's not a perfect solution and is costly, but a pseudo-Silence effect that increases threat range at 8-drop? It's certainly not the worst one could do.

The other big surprise to my mind is Initiate of the Sands x 4, but no Trail Maker. It's a three-color deck, and sure the deck's already slowed by running Crests, but with so few win conditions, wasn't it thought feasible to run a 2-drop influence fixer that as a 2/1 can defend against more potential threats and do a bit of additional opportunistic damage? Granted 2-drop 2/1 is pretty garbage insofar as combat stats go, but the influence fixing in a three-faction deck is just really nice.

If the deck is changed to include more kill combos or finishers, switch out Seats for Banners. Late game you draw into a Seat, it's depleted because you've already played all your Sigils, so you don't have the 8 power to drop on the key turn. Reducing the number of Crests would be something to really think about too. A two-faction Fire/Time deck can run four Crests, and you could say it's worth it to run four Crests because drawing the right keys is so important. But running nine Crests and using additional cards for draw is I think excessive especially without some sort of late-game super-combo.

In closing, a comment on Praxis token Warp tech versus random card draw. The whole issue with card draw in a Fire-Time token build is it's slow and you just can't take the time unless the deck includes a lot of late-game shenanigans (and typically Fire-Time token decks are running cards for token generation and cards to thin the deck while putting out a board, so *don't* have the room for multiple win condition cards as *well* as even more draw cards that don't generate board), second this particular build removes win conditions and replaces it with draw, but third also the draw is unknown. Sure, you could maybe get around that with Scout (though I think the deck is already really dangerously slow as I mentioned). But Warp is not like that. You precisely know in advance what card you are going to draw with Warp, perhaps you need to build four influence for that 1-drop flying charge (which seems ridiculously overpriced, but it's like drawing a card, creating then attacking immediately with a persistent threat that has evasion, which is further buffed by any other spells or Xenan Obelisk buffs you may have). Or you pay quite a bit for a 6/6 body that doesn't seem to be great on the face of it, but on the other hand it also includes the card draw if you played off Warp, plus it makes the next card cheaper, plus it does a bit of chip damage, so it works out especially since 6/6 is such a good answer against so many base set cards. Or you tap out a key enemy (though I think this the weakest of the more usual Warp suspects). But in any case Warp in the late game (when you have enough power to generate card advantage off Warp) is far superior to blind draw that you're paying 2-3 power for to generate zero board but only to cycle or draw.

P.S. For much the same reasons that I recommended against cards dedicated simply to cycling or draw, I also cannot recommend Crystalline Chalice, It maybe looks good conceptually for a bit, but then you start figuring that Crystalline Chalice is a dead draw if you're digging for a late-game finisher, that you have to pump a load of power into it to get it to generate card draw to offset the card slot it itself used, and finally the more card draw type cards you run in the deck, the fewer win conditions you can include in that 75-card deck. You have to remove something, and what's it going to be? Then how much effort are you expending on trying to generate card advantage when what you need to do is end the game before late-game control decks just overrun you? Or if you're going to retool the deck so you're trying to generate card advantage then go into some sort of late-game combination exploit finisher, the deck needs to look radically different.

To my mind dedicated cycling and draw cards are really better for builds like TJP Chalice (Time-Justice-Primal) where you're using Harsh Rule to blow up the field, then your attachments stayed, then if you draw a Temple Scribe or Desert Marshal you can generate additional card advantage, or you turn your Ephemeral Wisp into 4/5s that self-resurrect off Empower etc. then you mass populate the board and crush your opponent off a big Parliament of Owls after all their responses were pulled dealing with your other stuff. while you used your Vanquish and Scorpion Wasp and Harsh Rule to deal with their X/Y huge minions, and your Sandstorm Elemental to eat anything smaller.

But if you're doing Fire-Time tokens and really starting off with Assembly Line and Xenan Obelisk, all the conditions you need to put in to really make that work start adding up. You want to accelerate to 8 power to make Xenan Obelisk more effective, you want to generate a field, you want to thin your deck. And in the end, you use up so many cards on generating the tokens to begin with that you're pretty invested in those tokens and need to make the most of them, so then you have to start pushing with Xenan Obelisk and accelerating into 8 power so you get bigger boost of Xenan Obelisk and using garbage Time minions to thin the deck to increase probability of drawing other key combo cards. Then too you run into this issue where you can't really deal with gigantic enemy minions because you don't have Vanquish, and though you could have Scorpion Wasp, you still don't have Harsh Rule, which means really *can't* count on having a response to gigantic enemy X/Y minions or generally losing board control. So you have to end the game before that happens.