Vintage Spoils – CotW: Market Oracle

by Ryan Cohen

In First Edition, there was a very peculiar card. It was called “Amortized Straw Man.” Poor straw man was, frankly, unplayable. It had tokens that weakened it, and the easiest way to take tokens off the card was to pay 3 per token… which meant that in the end of the day you would’ve had to pay a blistering 14 for what was, ultimately, merely a 6/6/3 character with no special abilities. Hardly an economical proposition. The only other means of token removal was Voidal Poisoning and well, if you were playing token-manipulation Arcanist, you were playing Arcanist/Rogue, not Arcanist/Banker.

Now we have First Edition Part II and it is the dawn of a new era. Enter the Market Oracle. Bankers are now in on the token-manipulation game. Market Oracle, and its partner Furtive Investor, are direct analogues to the ecto-manipulators of the Arcanist trade. Rather than putting tokens on, they take them off. Along with them came a slew of other token-bearing characters and one very nice token-loaded item. On their own, they tend to overpriced and ineffectual. In combination with consistent token removal, however, they become economically viable.

Let’s focus for a moment on the card itself. It’s inexpensive in cost and threshold, with a very simple mechanic. Weak stats means that it’s not going to be good for much except token removal, which is fine since the ability requires depletion anyway. With 2 life, it’s not terribly hardy and is vulnerable to direct damage removal. There are a few ways around this, such as Clandestine Resort or Fat Pants. Furthermore, Bankers have recursion to bring characters back from the discard pile if it does get killed.

But the real value of Market Oracle is not the card itself, but the way it can be used in combination with the token-bearing cards. Amortized Straw Man can now realize his potential, along with Reluctant Hiree and Entry-level Employee as beatsticks. The thing to keep in mind here is “long-term growth.” Most other trades will have comparably beefy characters, but they cost more. Thus, by using Market Oracle (and Furtive Investor) to remove tokens, you can harbor a resource advantage. The many control and defense-oriented cards which are the bailiwick of the Bankers make it possible to stay in the game long enough to reap these benefits.

Part II also gave us a couple of cards that let us use tokens for card draw, adding another element to Bankers already substantial draw power. Short Term Investment is, frankly, spectacular. For the mere cost of 2 and a two-turn wait, you get 3 cards to your hand. Combine this with two Oracles, and you can cash in the same turn you bring it out. Moneychanger is a built-in draw machine, you can keep drawing as long as you can keep the tokens from killing him.

So many fun uses, and we haven’t even started talking about possibly combinations with other trades! Okay, admittedly there aren’t many. Most cards benefit from having tokens rather than not having them. The rather substantive exception to this is Runic Circuitry. Resource acceleration? Yes, please. Then there’s also the delightful Slingerang. More character removal? Check. Of course, if your opponent is using cards that benefit from tokens, then you always have the option of powering them down instead. I shudder to think what would happen if a Banker/Gearsmith token-manipulation deck were ever to face off against an Arcanist/Rogue token-manipulation deck; one can only imagine that things would get very ugly and very confusing very quickly.

Now, personally, there’s one thing I enjoy most about the idea of using token-bearing (and mercenary) cards: nobody wants to Pluck them. Only Bankers have the card synergies to make proper use of them. So you can dump cards into your discard pile with Selective Gluttony and The Garbageman without worry, knowing that your refuse is undesirable to Rogues.

So, what might a Banker investment deck look like? Here’s one possible model:

Characters
4x Market Oracle
4x Furtive Investor
4x Amortized Straw Man
4x Reluctant Hiree
4x Entry-level Employee
4x Embezzling Bookkeeper
4x Erotic Assassin

Items
4x Short Term Investment
4x Brummagem Jewelry

Tactics
4x Selective Gluttony
4x Cash Out
4x Anaesthetizing Opulence
4x Postmortem Debenture

Locations
4x Ministry of Other Smaller Ministries
4x Gold Summit
4x Clandestine Resort

Resources
12x Greed

Market Oracle and Furtive Investor form the central core of the deck, as their token-removal is what enables us to utilize Amortized Straw Man, Reluctant Hiree and Entry-level Employee. Short Term Investment, Selective Gluttony and Cash Out are also fairly important, as it is imperative to get the investor characters into your hand and out into play as quickly as possible. Gold Summit is a corollary mechanism, earning you Influence along with the tremendous amount of card drawing. Erotic Assassin and Embezzling Bookkeeper are there to establish early-game presence on the board while the token-bearing cards get up to speed. Clandestine Resort will help keep characters alive and Postmortem Debenture is there to fetch them from the discard pile in case they are destroyed. The Ministries, Brummagem Jewelry, and Anaesthetizing Opulence are the control element of the deck, interfering with your opponent’s game long enough to let you develop yours. The resource base of this deck is very sparse, but it’s mono-trade and the highest threshold is 3. You might have to mulligan most of your starting hand to make sure you get that 3rd Greed to start out with, but it means there’s less of it in the deck cluttering your draws.

-ABOUT THE AUTHOR-
Ryan Cohen is a senior at Middlebury College and has been an avid fan of The Spoils since his introduction to it during Open Beta at Penny Arcade Expo 06.  Ryan’s favorite trade is the Bankers, which may or may not have anything to do with his great ambitions of wealth.