Hello and welcome to the Playhouse! This week we will be discussing the merchant mechanic and its implications for deck building.
Earlier this month, the merchant mechanic dropped like a bomb and Eternal will never be quite the same after Set 4 comes out. In case you have been hiding under a rock lately, here is the official release of the mechanic. We can expect way more consistency out of decks and niche game-breaking cards. Right now, we have to wait for the set release asking ourselves what types of decks will play these cards, what does a good market look like and what strategies may just be invalidated by this pseudo sideboard.
There were several very good articles published trying to unravel these puzzles: Daily Grenadin and rngeternal and even a gauntlet-focussed take: Eternal Gauntlet. Here I will try to add a little bit upon that, touching on some other aspects and strategies from market that haven’t been discussed yet.
Let's say you are making a market for TJP fliers. A natural inclusion would be Stand Together, a card that ranges from amazing to lacklustre depending on the matchups and situation. So you move one from your main deck to your market and swap it with the appropriate merchant. Stand Together, however, is not a card you want to see in multiples over the course of a game, it does have diminishing returns and is over-represented in TJP since the first one is so powerful for its strategy. If you are willing to incorporate market into this deck it is very likely that you should cut down Stand on your main deck to 1 or even 0. That's the first mistake that I think people will do when building markets, just swapping cards around without reassessing the main deck. Valkyrie Enforcer, on the other hand, is a card that could go into the market, but you would still never play less than 3 on your mainboard in TJP. Another example is Chalice, after Set 4 I would start my lists with only 2 main deck copies, another one in the market and 4 Time merchants.
Tavrod, Heart of the Vault and Icaria are three super powerful units that you would go out of your way (and people already do) to play virtual extra copies. As such, they seem like great inclusions to the market. For each of these units, there is some sort of downside to putting them in your market. Once you cut an Icaria to add merchants to your deck, your Warcry hits become so much worse. Heart of the Vault entirely loses one of its main late game abilities in Warp. Finally, Tavrod reduces its chance to hit a weapon or a minotaur, but if you are attacking with Tavrod you are winning anyway, so it isn’t a big deal. The point is that you are making your normal standard drawing game a bit worse to have this extra, albeit clunky, consistency. I don't think the cost will be worth it for Icaria (also given that her decks play Rise anyway). I am on the fence on Heart and sadly a believer for the cow God.
Anyway, let's say you want to play 7 Tavrods by having 4 merchants on your deck. The first one is going to be great, the second one can get discarded to the first one but the third one needs to have a good alternative hit off of your market. All in all, I believe you will need to have two solid non-situational cards to pick up from your market when you play 4 merchants. Consequently, you will have 2 fewer good cards in your main deck for 4 merchants, so it is a net +2 good cards overall. I'm not sure this is the right way to look at it, but I feel that you won't really be getting the 7 virtual Tavrods in practice and this is closer to 6 or even 5.
If you really want you can go over 4 merchants, but no matter what strategy you are on, I doubt that having merchants of different colours will be correct, as your market becomes too constrained and these units don't mingle too well.
Undoubtedly markets are clunky, but certain cards don't mind this slower speed. Permafrost can easily slot in the turn you fetch it with your merchant, while Azindel's Gift and Rain of Frogs don't care much if you wait a turn to find them, the matchups they come in are slow anyway. On the other hand, cards like Bloodletter and Hailstorm don't fit this market play pattern that well, as they are important anti-aggro tools and hence perform much better when you don't need to spend a turn setting them up. Instead of moving these cards to the market, you can have even more of these immediate answers to aggro in your main deck and just use your merchants to get rid of them in slower matchups. I would still start my market with a Hailstorm (perhaps adding a Lightning Storm main deck to keep the fastest opponents in check) but I wouldn't take Bloodletter out of my main deck: instead of searching for it when I need it I would rather sell it when it isn't necessary. Harsh Rule, for example, is a card that I'm very sceptical of being good in the market: playing a 2/2 and waiting a turn to destroy the board doesn't seem like a winning play pattern for control decks. Lumen Defender seems like the best anti-aggro market card and I would look for cards with similar effects (annoying body + life gain) on other colours to perform this role.
Similarly, let's say you are playing Skycrag with a Primal merchant. You can't have any relic removal in your market on that colour, but you can add some Furnace Mages to your main deck and rely on Strategise and merchants to get rid of them when they are not useful. Another solution to not having great market answers in your merchant colour is to add a light splash in your main deck for specific bullet cards in your market. For the Skycrag scenario, a few Hooru Seats may allow you to play a Vision of Austerity in your market.
It is pretty much a consensus that almost every market should contain a power card. But which power should it be? My perception is that usually, you should go for basic sigil in 2 colour decks and banners in 3. Banners are enticing since you are already playing a unit, so it should be easy to have them active. The problem is that more often than not you will be trading this unit at the first opportunity. Waystones don't have this issue, but they probably won't be active if you are needing to fetch for it from your market and they hurt your power development if you topdeck a seat. That may seem minor, but having ready power is all that matters when you are mana screwed. More important than these arguments is that usually you really don't want to have one less of these effects (Waystones and Banners) in your deck unless you are not maxed out on them. You will probably have less active Waystones over the course of your games if they are in your market than if they just were in your deck to begin with.
I read a few comments on how markets will make In Cold Blood and Rain of Frogs much worse. I don't share this sentiment. When these cards work, it doesn't matter that much if there is a 4th Tavrod or Channel the Tempest hidden somewhere, you will already have got enough value out of them. In fact, if your opponent is playing 4 merchants there is a reasonable chance their first Tavrod or Icaria will come from the market anyway. I expect Rain of Frogs to be the first card you include in slow control markets that can break face aegis; if the market is the key to the matchup you can always hit their merchant.
At the same time that I have this belief Rain of Frogs might be a great market card, I know that this mechanic will lure players into putting lots of bad situational cards into their decks. Water of Life, Polymorph, Corrupt, Caltrops, Shush are the types of cards that seem like they do what you need in specific situations but in the end are just not good enough to consistently turn games around and you probably shouldn't include them in your market. In general, for the sideboard oriented market effects, I would look for cards that do something strong for little power, such as Permafrost, Bore, Sabotage; or can alone dominate or turn the game around in certain matchups, such as Flamestoker, Azindel's Gift, Lumen Defender.
These powerful niche cards will create a sub metagame: once everyone has Bore, Burgalarise, Vision of Austerity in their market, Gift and Stoker become way less interesting, so other creative answers may take their places, such as Flame Blast, Callous Survivalist (?!). You shouldn't worry about your deck being able to answer everything, that's usually a losing proposition in Eternal. I would rather have cards in my market that explore my opponent's weaknesses and put the pressure on them over trying to destroy every single weird relic and unit that is played against me. Chalice is an example of this pattern, efficient evasive threats were way better solutions to this deck than Banishes and Decays.
Markets look great until you see the merchants and their subpar bodies. My first impression is that in most cases you will look for the merchant that better fits what your deck is trying to do, as all colours should have enough reasonable market options. The Fire merchant seems to only fit Stonescar Queen decks (if these actually want markets). Justice merchant should be the weapon of choice for all Unseen Commando decks, you just want to have evasive units that complement your strategy. The Time merchant has the least embarrassing body, but I wouldn't want to have it in decks that apply constant pressure to my opponents; Praxis Tokens, for example, is not happy spending a whole turn to just add a single attack point to the board. Both Primal and Shadow have strong control options for their markets, the Primal unit seems better against aggressive decks, as it should survive enough to block, while the Shadow unit matches up well versus Time midrange, and forces the opponent to use resources to attack you.
Well, I guess that's it for now. On a final note: please, don't put Harsh Rule in your Oni Ronin deck market.
