Mercadian Masques I: The Rebels
These are the Rebels, in order of increasing casting cost:
Ramosian Sergeant W 1/1 3, Tap: Search your library for a Rebel card with converted mana cost 2 or less and put that card into play. Then shuffle your library.
Ramosian Lieutenant 1W 1/2 4, Tap: Search your library for a Rebel card with converted mana cost 3 or less and put that card into play. Then shuffle your library.
Steadfast Guard WW 2/2 Attacking doesn't cause Steadfast Guard to tap.
Nightwind Glider 2W 2/1 Flying, protection from black.
Thermal Glider 2W 2/1 Flying, protection from red.
Task Force 2W 1/3 Whenever Task Force becomes the target of a spell or ability, it gets +0/+3 until end of turn.
Ramosian Captain 1WW 2/2 First strike 5, Tap: Search your library for a Rebel card with converted mana cost 4 or less and put that card into play. Then shuffle your library.
Pious Warrior 3W 2/3 Whenever Pious Warrior is dealt combat damage, you gain that much life.
Ballista Squad 3W 2/2 XW, Tap: Ballista Squad deals X damage to target attacking or blocking creature.
Ramosian Commander 2WW 2/4 6, Tap: Search your library for a Rebel card with converted mana cost 5 or less and put that card into play. Then shuffle your library.
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary - Rebel Legend 2WW 2/2 Prevent all damage that would be dealt to Cho-Manno, Revolutionary.
Rappelling Scouts 2WW 1/4 Flying 2W: Rappelling Scouts gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
Jhovall Rider 4W 3/3 Trample.
Ramosian Sky Marshal 3WW 3/3 Flying 7, Tap: Search your library for a Rebel card with converted mana cost 6 or less and put that card into play. Then shuffle your library.
Cho-Arrim Bruiser 5W 3/4 Whenever Cho-Arrim Bruiser attacks, you may tap up to two target creatures.
Jhovall Queen 4WW 4/7 Attacking doesn't cause Jhovall Queen to tap.
The rebels can be divided into two sections: The searchers and the non-searchers (normals). The searchers all cost two more than their casting cost to activate, and get a Rebel with a cost up to one less than you just paid. As they get more expensive, their other abilities stay about one mana behind their casting cost. A plain vanilla 1/1 should cost less than one mana. A 1 /2 creature with no abilities (the 2-level searcher) should cost one mana. A 2/2 with first strike (the 3-level) should cost two. The 4-level is a 2/4, which is worth about three mana. Finally, the five-level is a 3/3 flyer, which for white is probably a little over four mana. So no matter what level of Searching Rebel you play, the ability can be viewed as costing you one mana. If you compare these abilities to other ways of creating creatures, that's a bargain even if you don't have enough different rebels in your deck to be flexible. You just need enough normal rebels to be seeded into your deck.
The normal Rebels are a more mixed bag. The best of them is clearly Steadfast Guard. At two mana for a 2/2 that doesn't tap to attack, it would be a decent creature even if it wasn't a rebel. If it were available in UBC, WW would be a much more interesting archetype, pumping these up with Mother of Runes and Brilliant Halo. Longbow Archer is better, but this is the second best 2-cost attacking white creature left in T2. Fresh Volunteers is a Grizzly Bear. It's a bad deal, because the only deck that needs this kind of creature doesn't care about the main benefit of the card, which is that half its casting cost is colorless. The biggest of the Rebels, Jhovall Queen, is also interesting as a six cost 4/7 that doesn't tap to attack. White doesn't have many good options that are that expensive. In general, they can best be described as clunky creatures. They don't do all that much, with low power for their casting costs. In exchange, most of them have a power that's very helpful against the right deck at the right time. Ballista Squad can win creature battles, the Gliders have protection from either red or black, Cho-Manno flat out doesn't take damage. This kind of conditional utility makes them good targets to tutor for. Of course, the ones that don't have this kind of conditional utility, like Jhovall Rider, are just useless. But there are still plenty of Rebels to go around.
Still, none of these besides Steadfast Guard would see play without their ability to be put into play from your library. They punish you every time you draw them, as you draw what are now bad cards. In addition, once you get a searcher into play all drawing a rebel you could search for saves you is mana, sometimes as little as one. If you're short on white mana, have enough colorless mana, want to save mana for their turn or are fighting counterspells, it can be flat out useless. By playing the normals, you're paying with the chance you'll draw them in order to seed them into your deck. Each normal Rebel you play has to serve a purpose, and win you games you wouldn't otherwise win by being in your library. You can also consider the searching Rebels as being seeded into your library. You can move up the line, using the 1-cost searcher to get the 2-cost one, to get the 3-cost one, etc. Or you can move down the line if you want to pay less mana to search every turn or want to search twice.
I think it's pretty clear that almost every Rebel deck should include Ramosian Sergeant, the 1-level searcher. First, it is an excellent weapon against counterspells. You could easily not cast a spell for the rest of the game, and if you go first Powder Keg won't be fast enough to stop you. You're home free, and as you play lands you get to either move up the line of searchers or just send in four Steadfast Guards on turns three through six. Speaking of which, once you put in Ramosian Sergeant you obviously include the Guard, since it's the best normal 2-cost Rebel and therefore your best target. How many Guards do you need? That depends on what you're trying to accomplish. The cost for playing them is small if you want to play that kind of creature. But how often would you run out if you only played two or three, and how often would running out of them cost you the game? One Treachery can take care of two of them, often leaving you with just one even if you play four, since about half the time one will be in your hand. A Powder Keg can also force you to rebuild. That can even be an argument for playing Fresh Volunteers too. On the other hand, if you've spent three turns activating the Sergeant, you've had plenty of time to get a fourth land and maybe it's time to move up the line to the Lieutenant.
The Gliders are the Lieutenant's best targets, if your opponent is playing red or black. Otherwise, it's probably better to just go straight to the next searcher, Ramosian Captain. Once you start searching at the 4-level, you have better options. Cho-Manno is another great card against red and a great blocker. Since it won't die that often against the decks you want it for, you really only need one. The 4-level searcher, the Commander, is 2/4 and that's good even on its own against red as well. Rappelling Scouts is good if you need to block flyers or need protection from a weird color like blue (or both). Ballista Squad wins creature combats, and fits in well with a deck that likes to use its mana on its opponent's end phase. The Sky Marshall isn't just the 5-level searcher, it's better than the normal 5-level creature, and it leads into Jhovall Queen.
That's how the engine works. What do you do with it? The options that come to mind are to put the engine into a normal WW deck, or to run it with counterspells or with burn. All three approaches might use just Ramosian Sergeant and Steadfast Guard, or just those and single copies of the better bigger rebels, or they could play even more. The best approach is probably the second one, maybe playing multiples of the Lieutenant and maybe two Captains. That lets you use the Gliders and Ballista to maximum effect out of your sideboard, and have more must-counter spells. A lot depends on what the rest of the metagame looks like.
What are the weaknesses of the Rebels? First, all they do is attack and block. That may not sound like much of a weakness, but it's important: If the attack phase is shut down, all your Rebels become useless. This is the kind of theoretical problem that tends to bother me more than most people, but I think it's important. Look at War Tax, for example. Second, playing the Rebels costs you mana. You lose about a mana when you cast one, and another mana when you search for one. In exchange, searching for one nets you a card, some flexibility and works around counterspells. But again, this is only worth it if your opponent's plan doesn't involve some sort of lock. They're inconsistent, because playing them puts cards into your deck that you don't want to draw and cards you really want to draw. Keep in mind that there are a lot of other effects in this set that allow you to pay extra mana to draw extra cards. They're all the same creature type: Did someone say ' Engineered Plague '? And finally, they're white, which is otherwise a very weak color right now.
A deck list for a first-generation Rebel deck: