With Highwayman getting nerfed, I wanted to try and make a different sort of Scream deck work. Started with
Haunted Highway in 2019 and ended up with what you see here. It’s not as explosive as Haunted Highway, but
Equivocate and
Vara's Choice make it more evasive, and the additions of
Amaran Stinger and (especially)
Teacher of Humility give it more staying power.
Possible areas of improvement:
—Power base. Highway had an easier time with banners because of
Grenadin Drone. This version does struggle to get its 2s and 3s out on time.
—Maybe some other options at 4?
Lethrai Soothsayer has been underwhelming and
Dread has been more useful as Pledge than as an actual card. Dread in particular seemed like it would be a useful Scream target, but there’s almost always something else in the void you’d rather get.
—Market could maybe use some work. The deck basically folds on the spot to
Adjudicator's Gavel as it is, and
Rindra, the Duskblade has been meh unless there’s a
Dusk Raider on the board. I really wish I could go with some variety of Time merchant, but market access to
Haunting Scream and
Dark Return seems mandatory and I REALLY don’t want to cut them from the main to run a smuggler.
EDITS:
+1
Dark Return and
Cykalis, the Burning Sand; -1
Vara's Choice and
Lethrai Soothsayer. The former two are among the better cards in the deck and we want full sets of them. Soothsayer was not useful, and we have plenty of other removal/disruption.
Secret Passage in the market instead of
Rindra's Choice. I never once got the Choice; again, the main deck has plenty of ways to deal with units. Passage is occasionally very useful for sneaking a unit in for infiltrate or lethal, and can also be a sac outlet for
Madness.
-2
Permafrost; +2
Suffocate. Perma is kind of a non-bo with Vara, and Suffocate fills the role of super cheap removal better.