Vara's Armory [Masters]

Got first time Masters with this list; I found another similar Armory list a few days ago and just kept tweaking it until it worked for me with a somewhat limited collection. There may be more refined versions of this list but this worked well for me.

Your general game plan is to just remove everything you can so that there's nothing in the way of your giant weapon going directly at your opponent's face repeatedly. You're generally looking for power and spells that find power in your opening hand. If you don't have a way to get to four power with at least one of each type of influence in your hand, mulligan it. If you get power, you can generally get yourself out of any situation, but you'll lose with cards you can't play stuck in your hand if you don't mulligan and plan your early turns correctly. You're generally using Crests to look for power until you have 6 or 7 (with Brel in hand) with two of each type of influence, and then you're tossing all the power away whenever you can.

Specific Card Choices/Usage:

Red Canyon Smuggler: You want a black market to give you additional options and let you run one-ofs that you wouldn't want to main deck, and the minion is a threat on its own, especially when you pull it from Rise to the Challenge and it has four attack.

Vara, Vengeance-Seeker: There are a lot of aegises in the meta right now, and sometimes you get stuck with Avigrafts and Harsh Rules in your hand that do nothing. Vara both solves that problem and is a decent threat on her own that will draw removal. It also may confuse opponents into thinking we're a different kind of deck as a bonus.

Throne Warden: A good midgame minion to contest and heal, but the real reason this is in the list is to keep your weapons from breaking when you have to run them into minions or your opponent has burn. The wombo combo is landing it alongside the Molten Fist in the market, but that's not going to happen very often.

Brel, Solist Apostate: This is the reason this deck works as well as it does. Giving you a 4 attack runic weapon with warcry 2 or buffing your existing weapon plus giving you a 4/5 body that also has war cry 2 is ridiculous. Plus, the warcry often buffs the armor from your next weapon which makes that even harder to remove. Only running 3 because it can be hard to assemble all the influence for, but it swings games on its own when it comes down.

Avigraft - This card is so good. Being able to completely turn off Vara or merchants or any other obnoxious minion is so powerful. Even when your opponent runs relic removal, they still need to do it, and the original is still there. I started with one in the market and Vanquishes in main, but I was so impressed with the Avigrafts that I moved them to main instead and they’ve been clutch.

Auric Runehammer - This serves as both early removal and a late game win condition. If you’re using it as the latter, try to either set up some armor or have a way to get it back from the Void because it’s very easy for your opponent to break it with any sort of damage.

Starsteel Daisho - Being able to attack twice with all the weapon buffs can end the game really quickly. It’s even better if Brel can give it warcry 2 or you can Reforge it.

Torch - Not much to say here except to be careful about how you use these against decks that run aegis minions because you’ll often need to pop an aegis with this to clear a pesky board.

Slay - You need to have extra removal against aggro, and you can pair this with a Torch or Harsh Rule or Avigraft to remove a minion with Aegis. These were Annihilate in the list I took to Masters, but I swapped them out because most of the single faction minions in the meta right now have Aegis, and it being fast wasn't making up for that awkwardness.

Lost Scroll - Originally this was two copies of this and two copies of Privilege of Rank, but the difference is that this effectively lets you play two power in one turn for the same tempo loss, so you can get to your power turns more quickly. Getting to four or five power a turn early can make a huge difference, which Privilege doesn't let you do.

Quarry - Helps you find your power and removal early, helps you find your threats late.

Reforge - Weapons are your win condition, and buffing a weapon and getting it into your hand is very good at advancing that win condition. We only run two because they’re dead cards in the early game and you usually don’t need to play more than two to win.

Rise to the Challenge - It’s slow so we only run two, but it’s great at pulling either a Smuggler early or a Daisho or Brel late.

Harsh Rule - Obvious inclusion.

Market:

Cauldron Cookbook - This has some anti-synergy with the deck, since punching yourself in the face for 5 will break most of your weapons, but in slower matchups you do need the draw, especially when you draw all power early and have nothing to do.

End of the Story - Basically an emergency board clear for when you can't find your Harsh Rules. The Tribute text is occasionally relevant, but we generally don't have any way to activate it so it doesn't come in handy as much as one might think.

Molten Fist - There are games where you can't find any of your threats and you and your opponents are just looking at each other and drawing cards. This gives you a proactive threat that can be hard for your opponent to answer if they don't put anything on board. It also has some ridiculous synergy with any of your buff and armor cards, because it effectively gets all of the attack buffs and and all the armor buffs added to its attack. It's not as good as Daisho which is why that's in main and this is in market, but this can help in slow games where you can't find weapons.

Smuggler's Stash - This is your finisher. Ideally, you've played a relic weapon and buffed it with Brel, and this lets you draw both of them and play them again, getting another buff on the weapon in addition to the original buff. It's not uncommon for opponent to just concede when you play this.

Flame Blast - Since runic weapons can't hit sites, this is basically your only answer to Howling Peak if you can't stick a board big enough to attack into it. With 6 power you can wipe out Peaks and keep hitting face. Howling Peak is still a bad matchup but this helps a bit. (This was Adjudicator's Gavel but sites are more of a problem than recursion, especially now that Avigraft is a card.)