I wanted to try my hand at the new Temporary Alliances special event in Eternal. For those unfamiliar, for the event, you need to build a deck that takes advantage of a special rule – That all multi-faction cards will cost one less. John Wells did a good breakdown on where to start brewing and talked jokingly about how he wasn’t enough of a monster to play Bartholo.
Well…
As you can see, I have no such problems. When faced with this format, the most appealing way to attack it to me personally was through sheer value. I wanted to make a deck that was aggressive, to take advantage of the discount, but it wouldn’t look like a traditional aggro deck. I thought a deck filled with Fearless Nomad would end up running out of gas too fast and be easily outclassed by the very broken cards everyone else would get for cheap. No, a good aggressive deck in this would look like a normal midrange deck and the discount would make it an aggro deck. With that in mind, I settled on this:
4 Seek Power (Set1 #408)
4 Torch (Set1 #8)
4 Quarry (Set1001 #15)
3 Vanquish (Set1 #143)
3 Bartholo, the Seducer (Set2 #234)
4 Slay (Set2 #236)
4 Sword of Icaria (Set1 #315)
2 Deathstrike (Set1 #290)
3 Navani, Warsinger (Set1 #323)
2 Rise to the Challenge (Set1 #320)
4 Statuary Maiden (Set1 #387)
4 Harsh Rule (Set1 #172)
3 Inquisitor Makto (Set2 #242)
2 Smuggler’s Stash (Set1 #396)
1 Starsteel Daisho (Set1 #328)
2 Icaria, the Liberator (Set1 #329)
5 Fire Sigil (Set1 #1)
6 Justice Sigil (Set1 #126)
4 Shadow Sigil (Set1 #249)
2 Rakano Banner (Set1 #427)
2 Seat of Glory (Set0 #56)
2 Argenport Banner (Set2 #231)
2 Seat of Vengeance (Set0 #55)
3 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425)
It’s a list that is based on my memories of facing various Rakscar midrange lists in ranked. I wanted to have a lot of answers, broad and specific (Harsh Rule and all the Deathstrike/Vanquish/Slay) so I would be prepared for the variety of decks that would be thrown against us. The deck is certainly capable of explosive early draws (mostly with Navani), but also plays mid to late game quite well with some end game bombs in Icaria and Smuggler’s Stash. After playing through the event with this deck twice, I would probably lower the number of Torches and maybe add more Influence fixing of some kind, even a Kaleb’s Favor for extra Fire late could be possible. Or just jam in a couple extra copies of our big legendaries. There didn’t seem to be as many people trying the explosive aggro decks I had the Torch for, or if there was, Navani and Maiden outclassed them easily. I would highly recommend this deck for the event as it felt very powerful and was a lot of fun.
Good luck in your events!
