Mercadian Masques II: The Mercenaries

They survived Urza's Saga Block. That's got to be worth something.

The Searching Mercenaries: All of these have the ability "Z, T: Search your library for a Mercenary with converted casting cost Z or less and put it into play," where Z is one less than the creature's casting cost:

Cateran Overlord; 4BBB; 7/5. Sacrifice a creature: Regenerate. Cateran Slaver; 4BB; 5/5 Cateran Enforcer; 3BB; 4/3 Cateran Kidnappers, 2BB; 4/2 Cateran Brute; 2B; 2/2 Cateran Persuader; BB; 2/1

There's the tutor for Mercenaries as well: Cateran Summons, B, Search your library for a Mercenary and put it into your hand.

Here are the "normal" Mercenaries:

Molting Harpy; B; 2/1, Flying, Upkeep: 2 Rampant Crawler; B; 1/1, Cannot be blocked by walls. Misshapen Fiend; 1B; 1/1, Flying Silent Assassin; BB; 2/1, 3B: Destroy target blocking creature at end of combat. Strongarm Thug; 2B; 1/1, When it comes into play return a Mercenary from your graveyard to your hand. Skulking Fugitive; 2B; 3 /4, If Skulking Fugitive is targeted, it dies. Alley Grifters; 1BB; 2/2, When blocked, defending player discards a card. Bog Smugglers; 1BB; 2/2, Swampwalk Highway Robber; 2BB; 2/2, When it comes into play gain 2 life and target opponent loses two life. Primeval Shambler; 4B; 3/3, B: +1/+1 until end of turn.

The Rebels let you trade time for extra cards and options. Given enough time, a single one casting cost Rebel can summon your entire army. A Cateran Overlord can do the same thing, but that's kind of irrelevant. There's no reason to seed an Overlord into your deck. Just because your deck is set up to use an Overlord well doesn't mean you can suddenly start running around playing creatures that cost seven mana. You wouldn't want that big a searching ability anyway. With a huge amount of mana, the most powerful Mercenary is clearly Primeval Shambler, although you might want Silent Assassin or Highway Robber as well.

The Mercenaries don't give you as many options. First, the Rebels had creatures like Cho-Manno and the Gliders that hose certain decks. The closest the Mercenaries get to that is Skulking Fugitive, which against decks that can't target it is undercosted by a mana, and Silent Assassin. The Assassin can take down decks that depend on their creatures blocking and living, and could have handled a continuous stream of normal Mercenaries. How many decks are like that? If it took out attacking creatures or even blocked creatures it would be much more interesting. That doesn't mean it isn't a good card, and I would almost certainly play it in a Mercenary deck, but its ability won't win that many games. Basically, when you play a searching Mercenary you choose how much mana you want to spend and start spitting out creatures at that level.

So which levels are worth it? At the one level, you get a 1/1 or a very expensive 2/1 flyer. At the two level you get a 2/1 with a decent but expensive ability. At the three level, you get a 2/2 or a 3/4 depending on your opponent's deck. The four level gets you a 2/2 combined with a two point Drain on your opponent, or a 4/2. The five level gives you a 3/3 Looming Shade. The two level seems to give you the best bang for your buck, but it requires you to play a Gray Ogre (the Brute) to use it. Accessing the one level just requires a two-cost 2/1, which isn't that bad. Aiming for more is probably aiming too high. If you can keep creatures more expensive than that on the table you should win the game anyway, and the creatures you're forced to play to take advantage of the bigger searchers are pretty bad. In fact, the normal Mercenaries tend to be weaker than the normal Rebels.

In short, the Mercenary deck would have to look something like this:

Delarich, by the way, is 6B for a 6/6 trampler, and you can sac three black creatures instead of paying its casting cost. The idea is to use the Mercenary ability to get you the creatures in order to cast it.

Obvious question: Is that a good deck? It has its advantages. First, if it draws a Ritual, Crawler and a Delarich it gets a second turn 6/6 trampler, and it's black. Second, if it just draws the Crawler then Delarich can come down third turn anyway. Third, it will give you extra creatures every game. Not bad. But it has problems. First, all the entire deck does is attack and block; Cursed Scroll is gone. Second, all its creatures and damage sources are black, making it easy to shut down. Even Light of Day is still around, and Story Circle may see maindeck play. Third, it dies to Masticore.

Those are pretty big holes. How does this compare to the old Hatred decks? It's slower, it's more vulnerable. Its only advantages are the ability to field a 6/6 creature with trample and the ability to generate creatures. If you trade one for one with this deck, you have to kill many of its creatures immediately or you'll lose the war. But if you don't have to trade with the smaller normal mercenaries and can trade with the searching ones, you win easily. In short, it can take out its opponent quickly, and it can defeat opponents who attack it in certain ways.

Can it be modified to not have these weaknesses? Making the Mercenary engine work takes up a lot of space. Put in some basic utility cards, and your deck is basically finished. In fact, it's not hard to see how this deck is going to evolve. It's going to 'Dojo Drift' right back into normal Suicide Black. The first step will probably be to add Phyrexian Negator.

In short, I'm not happy with the Mercenaries. The price to play them is too high, and the benefits don't fit into the type of deck that can use them. To use them well, you have to play a creature rush deck, and then you're just slowing yourself down without really giving yourself the tools to win that many games where the rush strategy doesn't work. That forces you to use the big ones. In particular, you're stuck basing your deck around the Slaver. Maybe we're going to be in a new environment, where you can afford to play Slavers and Shamblers in a control black deck as its way to win, in place of the old Corpse Dance strategy. Needless to say, that's much less exciting.

One final try would be to use the two new cards that work with the Mercenaries. The first option is Conspiracy, which you can use to allow the Mercenaries to go get any creature in the game. That's just not worth it. You need to spend 3BB (the casting cost) and a card and then you get to spend the creature's casting cost to go get it, assuming the searcher survives, and you had to pay for the searcher, and you need to have enough real Mercenaries that your searchers aren't horrible cards without Conspiracy on the table. The appropriate rule of thumb is that anything that costs more than four mana should win the game on its own. Conspiracy flunks that test, big time. The second option is Cateran Summons. Again, not good enough. You're getting some flexibility, but your creatures are even less efficient uses for your mana now. Highway Robber is still the only Mercenary that doesn't just attack, and the effect is hugely overcosted. By all means, fit this into any Mercenary deck you do build, especially one using Conspiracy as well. But that doesn't change the lessons.

The first lesson is an old one: Do not rely on Mercenaries.

The second is that the cards and themes of MM seem weaker than those in Urza's Saga and Tempest. It seems like even without Tempest, Urza's Saga and Sixth Edition will continue to drown out most of MM.