Went 21-3 with minor variations on this (I changed a few cards around between each run).
Torgov's Trading Post is absolutely busted when you can play it on turn 1 and tutor for the titans with
Crownwatch Press-Gang. The highest value
Twinning Ritual possible is to cast it on a Press-Gang with Killer and Destiny (in hand due to
Safe Return) but it usually feels strong just casting it on whatever unit you have available.
My runs were:
7-1: Absolutely terrible play against another alessi deck
7-0
7-2: A game of power flood sitting on 11 power vs haunted highway at 5 and getting out valued by a Hooru fliers deck due to no Titans drawn and apparently
Poaching Drake and
Eilyn, Clan Mother are stronger than 2/2
Awakened Students.
I later tried a version that leaned into the dinosaur synergy and that was not a good idea at all. For the less aggressive evolution of this deck that attempts to improve consistency using more card draw and influence fixing see
Long Live the Titan. I believe part of my success with this particular version is that decks were worse in the wild west of the beginning of the event. I only put
Avisaur Patriarch in for my third run because I had yet to realize I could put Call the Ancients in.
I found Equivocate to be worse in this format than expected because your opponent frequently has enough power left over to play whatever was returned to their hand and as long as it's not absolute garbage you've just lost card advantage. You usually need to use removal early in the game and it's much worse than torch at dealing with most early game minions. I also think FJS and Rakano aggro were very underrepresented at the start of the event. My follow up version of this deck does indeed main deck Equivocates but it also runs more card draw so that you can actually take advantage of the cheap cost.
If you're saying you added 4 Winchest Merchants I don't follow that reasoning at all.
What's so surprising about 8 merchants? It's pretty standard since the smugglers arrived. Basically the first 2 smugglers usually grabbed Equivocate and/or Evolution so I rarely had the chance to play the game-winning Sword. With 4 winchest merchants I had the sword whenever I wanted, and I could put it right on the merchant to get a 5/5 flyer. And of course vanq and blade are useful in every matchup. Also, twinning ritual+hatchling makes a lot of cards to trade with.
3rd run: 6-3
Damn, I suck :(