This is my version of the combo. Adjusted some market cards, the power base and altered the merchants to make it as successful as possible. You WILL be auto-conceding vs a lot of cards so be careful if you are going to try to commit to this line of play. It can be extremely frustrating.
--
You need to hit FTPP for your power base. Keep that in mind when choosing your opening hand.
There are 25 ways to receive Primal (excluding Common Cause)
There are 25 ways to receive Time (excluding Common Cause)
There are 15 ways to receive Fire (excluding Common Cause)
For your Market:
There are 12 ways to grab your Primal cards (
Celestial Omen,
Diogo Málaga, Elonze,
Messenger Hawk)
There are 12 ways to grab your Time cards (
Dissociate,
Diogo Málaga, Elonze)
There are 8 ways to grab your Fire cards (
Stonescar Excavator,
Diogo Málaga, Elonze)
Be aware of which merchant is able to grab Primal as this is your "winning" merchant. Use Fire or Time merchant combinations ideally to grab your
Diogo Málaga, Elonze!
Your ideal opening hand should include a
Power Stone and two merchants (ideally one being
Auralian Merchant and the other having some way to access Primal cards. Attempt to hide the fact you are 3 faction as long as possible so players assume you are going for a large Elysian or Praxis setups. The sooner you reveal the fact your deck is full of merchants, the quicker they will respond with their market hate or discard mechanics.
Why no Ixtun Merchant?
Ixtun Merchant is replaced completely by
East Annex Smuggler. This ensures that you are able to draw both Disassociate and
Stonescar Excavator. The 2 damage charge can also help seal games in the first turn of the combo as you generally will hit for around ~27dmg.
Combo Breakdown:
1. Aim to create a board that contests your opponent without sacrificing all of your units.
It is important that we have a unit and a standard sigil in our hand when the combo begins so we do not play depleted power during the combo.
2. In an ideal world, you will be grabbing Diogo straight off the first merchant. This is not always a good idea tho. If you are against Xenan, FTP, or Stonescar you need to be extremely careful as they can instantly cause your combo to fail so ideally (when you aren't being aggroed down, grab
Dissociate. You should also always grab this as the first card of choice against Reanimator, Warp Combo, Talir Combo also.)
3. You do not need to attack for any reason if you do not think you will absolutely need to have the combo kill them
the same turn. Remember that the combo occurring will generate a large amount of blockers in most circumstances.
4. Diogo on 6 to Amp your next spell -- Invoke is your only spell in the deck.
5. Play Celestial Omen at 6 (or at 8 if they have been holding a fast spell. You can
Dissociate anything that attempts to prevent your combo.
A couple different situations will occur once the combo goes off:
Note:
DO NOT PLAY THE EXCAVATOR UNTIL YOU DETERMINE YOUR NEXT STEPS
If you get to 7 power or more, and a Fire merchant is played to the board to retrieve your
Stonescar Excavator.
-Determine if the Excavator will 1 shot your opponent. (When hovering over the card it will tell you the total damage you will perform.
The card you discard with Excavator does NOT increase the damage by 1!)
If your opponent can not be killed by your combo this turn, or you did not achieve 7 power:
Determine how you can add more Excavators and achieve the most blockers while ideally holding 2 power for Disassociate.
----> Play a Primal merchant for your
Messenger Hawk (if you did not retrieve it already during combo). Use it on your
Stonescar Excavator to add 4 of these to your empty deck (or on top of whatever remains in there).
----> Survive your turn post-combo by using all of your newly played merchant blockers.
----> Play 2 Stonescar Excavators and use both of them your next turn to blow up your opponent. If they survive, you will be able to perform this 3x on your next turn.