This is my poor attempt to improve nostalgic merc deck Mercenary Surprise by Nordlys
Except adding blue colour changes are pure cosmetics, mostly because current price of Volrath's Stronghold Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth Shizo, Death's Storehouse Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx but in my opinion they match mercenary character and build nice fluff around this old mechanic
I am not a Dimir specjalist, so if anyone know some U, BU cards that can support this mercenaries mechanic please comment
For deck core mechanic manual visit Mercenary Surprise mechanic of this deck is the same like Nordlys idea.
Why put Smurfs into Gargamel kingdom? For three things - counterspells, additional card draw and for our god and savior Training Grounds. I know that Heartstone is classic, work fine, looks good but in my opinion Training Grounds is superior to it in every aspect - it is cheaper, stronger and work only with our creatures - two of this bad boys on the table and most of activated abilities of our merc are covered - this beauty work perfect in this deck, but perfection this time is dressed in blue, so mana base need modification and altar of burnt offering for /dev/random gods
Arcane Denial isn't the most obvious choice when it comes to blue counterspells so why do I choose it? risc vs reward of course! prime directive of most games based on /dev/random and principle that match to the mercenaries nature perfectly! I know that the opponent can draw 2 cards, but we can also do that- that is only 1 card less - what possibly can go wrong? heck - independent tests in a laboratory environment shows that there is always a 0.00003% chance that we will have opportunity and will to counter our own spell - that gives us an additional three cards! How awesome is that? Solid 5/7 here and strong "WTF moment" to your opponent, and that is priceless
Disrupt is not that powerful [especially later] but still one mana sorcery/instant counter with additional draw - not great, not terrible and still tappable [I dont need to mention that we like additional draw in this deck? we need Training Grounds and Sol Ring ASAP
Haunted Crossroads is a cheap substitute to Volrath's Stronghold - can do the same job, but cheaper and without tapping, work well with Arcane Denial too but it is not a land so a little bummer here
why Scion of Darkness ? someone can ask - well the answer is simple - Mark Zuk great piece of art! Mark Zuk art used in Ascendant Evincar card was the main reason why I bought my first ever mtg booster but damn what kind of epic masterpiece Scion of Darkness is - just look at this marvel! Pure demonic perfection and instant material for at least four metal album covers! And now the fun/best part - this deck can play creatures from our hand, directly from our library and even from our greyward - now lets go one step forward and give ourselves the possibility to play creatures directly from the opponent graveyard! How cunning is that? How annoying it can be? How good will you feel when that trick will work? And don't forget that this bad boy have Cycling so it can go kindly to graveyard whenever we want to with nice additional draw as a bonus [and we like additional draw here]
Volrath's Stronghold, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Shizo, Death's Storehouse, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx oh those fancy and overpriced lands ... back then we didn't have any fancy lands and we don't need them now! Just kidding, I'm just poor :P Volrath's Stronghold and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx are nice and worth reconsidering ... Choked Estuary and Drowned Catacomb are for casting Training Grounds first turn and having some juice for counterspells later on- nothing too fancy. mana base is still in testing - not sure if colour balance is good so i'm open for any ideas
and what in the name of everything that is cute and fluffy Phyrexian Driver is doing in sideboard? Well that card has one of most annoying "misspell" in the whole MTG history - some anonymous and I hope forgotten for eternity designer left totally unnecessary "until end of turn" after "all other Mercenary creatures get +1/+1" in the card ruling, completely ruining lord potential in this creature. It was most likely a rebel mechanic enthusiasts inside job! So i am keeping him in side deck as a kind of appreciation form for the idea of mercenaries lord"
have fun and remember - old frames were better ;-)
