What did I just read?

Again, what did I just read?

The Fall of Argenport is going to give us this new Market mechanic. This is such a powerful and flexible mechanic, and I have many thoughts on its applications. However, here’s a quick breakdown of all the rules we know about the Market thus far (courtesy of Scarlatch on Discord and the official DWD spoiler release):

Deckbuilding Rules relating to the Market

These are the only cards that access the Market in this set.

When you add a Merchant to your deck, you will be given the option to make a five card Market, with max of one copy of each card.

You can only have four copies maximum of any non-Sigil card between your Market and your deck, so you have to decide if it’s worth stocking a particular card.

Power cards are considered the factions that the power card creates. Eg. Combrei Banner is both Time and Justice, and thus can be Marketed by both Aurelian and Winchest Merchants.

Gameplay Rules relating to the Market

Opponents cannot see your markets.

Cards in your market are not affected by gameplay – therefore, Warcry effects will not affect your market – an important corollary is that Rain of Frogs won’t affect your cards in the Market.

Temporary cards like Bore will stay in the Market.

The Market favors the skilled

I absolutely love this new mechanic and can’t wait to play with it, for the simple reason that it is very powerful, variance-reducing, but also very skill-testing.

It is a huge deck-building skill-tester, since we functionally have 5 more cards slots to play with, locked with the limitation of requiring singletons. An additional limit is the need to match factions with that merchant, so they aren’t simply free deck slots – you have to bend your deck to work with them so they will work with you. Much thought has to go into building these markets – the best deckbuilders will get the most out of them.

What can’t be overlooked as well is that the Market is also a huge skill-tester in gameplay. During games, so many situations can arise. When should you play the merchant, in order to dodge cards like Rain of Frogs? Once you play it, what card are you going to take? More importantly, what card are you going to give?

If you put in a card that isn’t of the merchant’s faction, you can never get it back. Even if you put in a card of the same faction, the more merchants you draw and play, the less likely you are to get to access the market again – therefore, cards that you put into the Market have a higher likelihood of getting locked away permanently.

As a small aside, the Market makes holding power in hand way more valuable, since you need a card in hand in order to trade with the relevant merchant.

Possible Applications

It is fairly evident that the Market is extremely flexible, with many possible applications. Here are some that come to mind.

Silver Bullets. As alluded to in the DWD official release itself, special pieces of “hate cards” that you might not necessarily want to draw in every matchup can be placed in the Market for access in-game if required. Obvious examples that come to mind are Shatterglass Mage for relics, Azindel’s Gift against control, and Lightning Storm for tokens. Placing such singleton silver bullets in your Market gives you access to extra virtual copies of the hate cards in the event you play several copies of the relevant merchant.

Of course, there are several downsides to using the Market this way exclusively. For one, you have to do your best to make sure that at least one card in the Market is relevant in every game you play – if not, there are games where the Merchants are just under-statted 3-drops. Secondly, in the case of removal spells that are extremely relevant against a specific opponent, it is likely you want more than one copy of the spell, so playing just a single copy in the Market may not necessarily improve the matchup as much as you would like.

An Amber Acolyte on completely illegal anabolic steroids. The more likely use of the market is as a curve-smoothener. Might you need an additional power over the coming turns? Or do you need a 4-drop to fill out the curve? As mentioned earlier, playing a card in the Market gives you access to more virtual copies of the card in your deck. The merchants can be used to smoothen out the gameplans of midrange decks that intend to curve out smoothly, by running a single copy of an intended 4-of in the Market.

With 5 slots, it is likely that most midrange decks will run a combination of silver bullets, power, and curve-fillers. Although we can only speculate on the Fall of Argenport metagame, it is fun to think about the Market in relation to current decks just as a thought experiment.

A current deck that would love the Market is Praxis. In its current iteration, Praxis desires to curve out as well as possible, and it also lacks a strong 3-drop alongside Dawnwalker. Imagine playing Ixtun Merchant, a completely reasonable 3 mana 3/3, with the following market:

Who woudn’t want to see that?

In slower, more controlling decks, merchants are obviously used as Tutors to gain virtual copies of cards. I foresee myself playing Jennev Merchant for the following in any control deck:

The beauty of primal-based control is that they tend to play a huge number of primal cards, so the fluidity in the Market is much higher than with other multi-faction decks.

The Bodies are Relevant

We’ve pretty much established that the Market is insane. But let’s get off our hype trains for a second and realise that these cards don’t actually net any true card advantage, since we have to give up a card – therefore, the merchant itself must be a body that can muster up some level of value for the merchant to be playable.

(Repeated for ease of reference.)

Looking at the bodies of the merchants, the Fire and Primal ones look the best – which is probably why my prior two examples of Markets went with those.

Ixtun Merchant fits well into any aggressive/midrange curve, and can hide burn spells for that final bit of burst to close out games, or even a Burn Queen in Stonescar decks. If the yet-to-be-revealed Fire Standard (for those who forgot) is a decent burn spell, Fire decks could see a bit of a comeback.

Jennev Merchant already has in-built Aegis, which makes it fine as an early-blocker in Control decks, or even in midrange decks as an adequate source of pressure.

Aurelian Merchant looks like its born to be home in Chalice decks. As a 1/4 body, it can be Chaliced. It provides the reliable ramp that the mana-hungry Chalice deck has always needed. It can Market the Chalice itself, silence dudes like Desert Marshal or Archive Curator, deadly guys in Lumen Defender, value cards like Waystone Infuser or Amber Acolyte, and even allow for a completely different game-plan with Predatory Carnosaur or Mystic Ascendant. Maybe Chalice makes a comeback?

The remaining two I’m not as excited about, because the bodies are not particularly great. The strength of those cards will depend on the strength of the silver bullets they can pull, and that depends on the decks in the metagame. How many copies of Kerendon Merchant will see play in the tempo-oriented Argenport Midrange right now? I cannot even particularly say.

What a bombshell DWD has dropped on us – I don’t think I’ve ever been more stoked to play with a set of virtual cards that aren’t even out yet. Get your shiftstone and gold ready – the Market is soon going to be open for business.