The Screaming Sum of All Fears

There are three cards in particular that I am excited about in Fall of Argenport - Fearbinder, Acquisitive Crow and Sewer Sludge, so this is a deck trying to make use of all three!

The plan that I built this deck around is to a) grow some Sludges, b) feed them into the Fearbinder, and then c) attack with berserked Fear's Sums, and then recur them when they die!

I decided to put these three cards in a loose Haunting Scream shell for a number of reasons. The Fear's Sum units created by Fearbinder have a power cost of one, which means they can be screamed back into play, resetting their berserk and attacking in the air twice, which is pretty sweet! Acquisitive Crow is also a really nice unit to scream, since it hits for 4 damage, and draws you two random 1-cost spells (this ability is actually great! Often the spells are useful, and when they aren't they are great fodder for Kerendon Merchant). Finally, Sewer Sludge can end up being a 3/4 or 4/5, which makes for a good scream target in a pinch!

Given the Scream shell, there are some cards that fit in extremely naturally - Gorgon Fanatic, Direwood Beastcaller, and Dark Return (the core of the classic Feln scream lists). Levitate makes the cut in the deck where it pulls double (or triple?!) duty - it helps push infiltrators through, it digs deeper into the deck for the pieces that the deck wants, and it helps to pop aegis for the removal spells to do their thing.

Speaking of removal spells, the deck features Permafrost as a cheap way to push through early infiltrators, Annihilate as a way to deal with all the over-statted Time legends that are running all over the place at the moment, and Feeding Time as an answer to anything (particularly things like Dawnwalker and recurring Wispy things!)

The rest of the deck is made up of Honored Skyguard, Memory Dredger and Kerendon Merchant. The skyguards provide a body early in the game, they have two chances to grow the Sludges, and are also a way to pitch a card for scream at the same time as digging into the deck. They ALSO cost only 2 power, which is perfect for Memory Dredger to bring back! The main reason the dredger is here, though, is to bring back dead Fear's Sums with a fresh berserk ready to go.

Finally the Kerendon Merchant brings with it the market, where we have five cards to choose from. Currently those are Haunting Scream, Gorgon Fanatic and Fearbinder
- three cards we want to see every game, so putting them into the market gives us a virtual seven (in the case of scream and fanatic) or six (in the case of Fearbinder) copies in the deck. The final two cards are a one-two Rindra punch - a copy of Rindra, the Duskblade, who is great when you need to buffer your life total to stabilise a game and Rindra's Choice to help deal with multi-faction nasties. The market is perhaps more of a work in progress than the rest of the deck is - for example, it might be right to have Devestating Setback in one of the two flexi-slots, and perhaps if Dreamsnatcher is correct in the deck then Rindra isn't needed at all.

Now, onto some thoughts about what might be correct to change - there are two specific cards that I think might have better alternatives. The slot occupied by Honored Skyguard could instead be three copies of either Dreamsnatcher or Portent Reader. Dreamsnatcher is a cheap body (like Skyguard), but it has lifesteal, which helps with keeping up in the early game. It also has an ultimate that can be pretty bonkers if the game goes long. On the other hand Portent Reader has a worse body than the skyguard, but allows an immediate discard in order to draw a copy of Second Sight, which helps to dig through the deck. Currently I am not sure if Reader beats out Skyguard, but the question of Dreamsnatcher vs Skyguard essentially boils down to how good lifesteal is vs flying (and vs the rummage/becoming 3/3) in the early game - once I have a better idea of what's going on on ladder.

Secondly, I am not sure Direwood Beastcaller is right for the deck. It could well be that between Fanatic, Crow and Fear's Sum tokens the deck has not shortage of good Scream targets. It could be replaced with something to help the Fearbinder plan more - either something to help out in the early game, or even more digging spells like Strategize (I think if I am only playing one I like Cull the Deck over Strategize in a deck like this - it digs deeper to important cards, and I don't find there are many dead cards that I always want to bottom out of my hand anyway). It's certainly powerful, but it's fragile, and needs a lot of hoop-jumping to get it to work. Pros: when it gets through on 4, it's pretty amazing, plus eating the beasts with Fearbinder is really nice! On the other hand, you can just win with the beasts, which dilutes the fun of fearbinder... Cons: Fragile, tricksy, needs support. Perhaps any other 3 drop with a good affect and P/T might be more consistent as a curve filler and food for Fear?! They could even just be Seek Powers or Vara's Favor/Eliyn's Favor to be honest - getting to 6 power is pretty key in this deck, since that's the point where you can play a Haunting Scream and then activate the Fearbinder in the same turn, which is a pretty great thing to be able to do.

There's also the option to add a light fire splash for Combust, in which case Madness comes in. Madness seems FANTASTIC with Fearbinder, but it's a 7-power combo, so without some other cheap option (i.e. Combust. Or Devour, I guess) it doesn't seem great. Perhaps one in the market? Anyway, more testing will tell! The advantage of Feln is that the power works out very nicely - e.g. landing a turn 3 crow isn't hard, and turn 2 skyguard/dreamsnatcher is also pretty straight forward.

Anyway! That's the deck for now! It's a lot of fun - Fearbinder is a sweet card. Once I have taken it out on the ladder more than the casual room and I have an idea of how it's shaking out vs other decks out there I will make some tweaks, and add to the write up!