Pure Gold - Uprising of the plebs

[lurifaxb]

Hi all


I have toyed around with this idea for a while. It was just recently that I got my 5th Family heirloom that I decided to build it. It works surprisingly well. It is also pretty cheap. If you take out the family heirloom it is no way near a 5K deck.

At first I was going to put it into concept/fun, but then I started playing with it and it has beaten high level players (also one top 10), so I would ague that it is in fact competitive. It is competitive as it is a surprise that I don't think the opponents expect or have too many counters for (due to current meta).

Playbook:

It is critical to get the draw power going early. Drop only some cheap agents for income boosts if necessary. Better to use for the people first and wait until you have 4. When you have 4, launch your assassins recruit and then the low priced agents to start drawing immediately. With more than 1 assassin recruit on the table, drawing becomes really good. When you have income and drawing, launch your sly smugglers to boost your agents. You will find that the defender ability actually does well against a lot of decks to draw out the time before you will have 3-4 sly smugglers and thus agents with around 8/10 power.
Don't be afraid to sacrifice some of your agents to draw some new cards. The cheap agents should be replaced by sly smugglers and assassins as you get them. Mid/late game you should have about 2 assassins and 4 sly smugglers in play = 10/10 or 9/9 agents with defend.

The strength of the deck is actually the ability to get your cards our fast. Family Heirloom and for the people are great cards to get what you want fast. Family heirloom is just beautiful when you grab any card as a surprise. E.g. get incite revolt against a discard deck immediately to screw them over
It is relatively easy to get the Tactical Upheaval / Sudden exhaustion going to kill of pesky agents.


Meta comments:
Agent based decks are not going to be a problem in general. You should be able to out buff and out draw them and take out their strong agents.
Counters are a problem, true, but if you do see this, you have the option of searching for constantinople galata district and try to bait your opponent to counter something else before you launch it. Or use the trick of launching several agents at the same time.
In an earlier version I had 5 Cappadocian Market (+1 for non gold memories), but they do not slow down enough unless you get them really early. In this meta income is so easy to get, that I instead chose to improve my own income with Den Defense.
Imperial gardner is there for decks that use a lot of archive shuffling.
Incite revolt for discard decks and to resuffle your archive into your hand. you would be surprised how fast you actually can get all cards into hand late game.


Core (25):
5 Sly Smuggler
5 Assassin recruits
5 Family Heirloom
5 Young Farmer
5 Horse Merchants

Income (10):
5 Den defense
5 for the people

Tool box (15):
3 Tactical Upheaval
3 Sudden Exhaustion
1 Imperial Gardner
2 Constantinople Galata District
2 Militia Intimidation
2 Venezia, San Polo District
1 Condottiero Tactics
1 Incite Revolt

[Brontobeuf]

It's a strong deck. Slightly vulnerable to counters, but who isn't.

I would add two or three end-game cards of different colors to create a surprise in the strategy. Like Papal Influence, Assassin Stronghold or Man of the People.

Militia Intimidation should just be removed. Pointless and cost you timing that you already lost with Heirlooms that are better.

[lurifaxb]

Thanks for the comments, Bronto.

You are right about the counters. If they just have some counters it is ok as you can outdraw and outgrow. If it is heavy/pure counters it is really tricky. I lost to such a deck, but just barely. Suleiman and yerebatan came out eventually but had to fight some weak agents there. I made the mistake of deploying more counter fodder and they got more out when I had killed/removed them.

I'm not totally over military intimidation. I had 5 initially but took some out. It can be used with Constantinople an against counted in general. It is also nice to deploy buffing agent as a surprise to win a fight. But you may be right.

If I were to add game winners they would be better - I just like this as a concept deck

[IchiRomero]

So strong
When i saw it i thought that u have galatea.
I would add media to them xD, sofia and -o/-4 all agents

[lurifaxb]

I do have 2 Constantinople Galata district in there.
Sofia could be ok in there, yet the venezia do the trick nicely on winner sites (10 - deceptive sites) and the defender takes care of the rest.

The -0/4 would hurt the deck more that do any good unless you meet a lot of agents that you cant reach.

[IchiRomero]

But not if u put safe the most important peasant xD
Just 5 memories more or dont care about giving 0 power and swicht, cause the peasants will kill him

[Altaem]

Beaten a top 10. Was it me?

[rl]

pure gold decks need to have cappadocian market in my mind.. its all golden's best card to take advantage of by far

[lurifaxb]

Not you Altaem

About the market. I thought so too, but I actually first took out 2 and later I took out the last 3. It doesn't slow down your opponent enough unless you get them down really fast. This decks needs to get down agents first.

[lurifaxb]

Just had another good game vs the nico odai deck played by a high level. Won without much trouble. I think this deck can beat most agent decks. So far I haven't lost to an agent based deck.

[lurifaxb]

Lost to first agent deck. RingelT's thief deck. He killed my assassin recruit with a surprise just the millisecond before a peasant hit the deck (to get draw going). Messed me up early. Then his buffed up thieves took me out before I could recover. So it can definitely lose

Most losses are due to early counter or destruction of the assassin recruit. It stops my drawing power.

[coolkendude]

lurifaxb, thanks for posting this deck. I don't have 5 Family Heirlooms so I'm running a variant of this but the concept remains the same. Very good deck (and very fast once you get the draw power). I've been using this the last two days to get my 500. But you're right about it's weakness. My only losses were against players who were smart enough to take out Assassin Recruit early on.

[lurifaxb]

No problem. I didn't have any family heirloom before I started this deck. I saved and scrapped for them. They are extremely powerful here, but you can do without ofc. I won many games because I could instantly find the card needed to win, like a Venezia against a power site or Constantinople against counters or incite revolt against discards etc.

Tactless theatrics is starting to become more useful in decks (media: cost 2 surprise that gives agents -0/2). This one hurts this deck too. It was due to this card I lost. It is really good against the likes of Piri too.

[coolkendude]

Yeah, I started noticing a few more players packing in Tactless Theatrics if they're using Media to counter Piri and the like. But as you said, as long as you get the draw power early on, you're more likely to win than lose. Great deck!

[UnCL0NED]

I've been busy trying to create a Trader deck, and came close to yours, I do play 5 Galata's because of the heavy counter env. However once I played some games with this deck, I came to realize that it's cheaper and faster to play a Thieves variant. So if you don't play Cappadocian Market anyway, I'd recommend playing Thieves instead of Merchants...