High Seas Huntress: A Marlynn Deck Tech

A few weeks back, I wrote a piece sharing my early thoughts on Marlynn, on the direction she was taking the Ranger class, and on how I was starting to build my list. Since that time, I've put most of my FAB energy into developing her as the heir apparent to Azalea (my main since I joined the game in Arcane Rising). And as I've done so - iterating on my build, running games, and comparing thoughts with others on Discord - I've come to the conclusion that Marlynn is absolutely wide open to personal interpretation and build variations. With solid understanding of her fundamentals and the reps necessary to spot your outs as they come up, I believe Marlynn is ready to become the new face of Ranger (if Azalea will ever finalize her run to Living Legend, that is).

Before we really dig in, it's important to cover the basics. I'm going to do a bit of repeating myself from my last article, but I promise you we're building up to more.

The essentials of Ranger gameplay are these:

• Attacks are made by combining the effects of a bow with the effects of an arrow.
• Our best defense is a disruptive offense.
• Ratios matter in deckbuilding.
• Card draw, opt, and other effects both offset bad draws and accelerate our gameplan.

To these, we add the Pirate attributes:

• Blues and yellows matter.
• Card cycling (primarily with Gold) both generates resources and re-draws for unnecessary blues.
• We can benefit from pitching heavily.

Prior to High Seas, every bow had included the ability to place an arrow into arsenal face-up, making one of the two primary roles of a bow to make your arrow playable. However, Marlynn has moved that text onto her hero card (similarly to Riptide), leaving Hammerhead, Harpoon Cannon to serve a new purpose: as an always-available buff. While 4 resources is a steep price to pay, you might think of it as converting any blue in your hand into a 1-cost +4 buff - and Rangers have played plenty of those! It also grants your harpoons overpower - many of which, in turn, are buffed by the activation of a cannon!

It's easy to get hung up on the harpoon/cannon synergy, but don't neglect the toolbox of arrows from sets prior! Those old staples continue to offer the value they always have, and even without overpower, a +4 makes them difficult to evade!

Buffs are part of the core design of Rangers. When I mentioned ratios above, all the Ranger players are calling up their guidelines for buff-to-arrow ratios (for example, 27-27-6 has long been an Azalea standard, with 6 being Codex of Frailty and Nock the Deathwhistle). But for the first time, Ranger is free of the need to run buffs with Marlynn; we can rely on the recurring ability of Hammerhead for those. Where we had trouble before with the 2-block printed on most of our buffs, we can now jam more 3s into our deck.

In its place, a new concern: paying for everything - and here we lean into the Pirate side of Marlynn, with a hefty suite of blue cards. The blues are the primary space for self-expression in your list, and offer opportunities to tech for your local meta. That said, there are a number of blues that come highly recommended - I'll call them out in the decklist potion.

In my last article, I had speculated that Marlynn would be well-suited for the second cycle, converting all her blue pitch into useful buffs in the late game. I even recommended the Quiver of Abyssal Depths! But as the weeks have passed, my experience has been that Marlynn is actually a fairly aggressive deck, and you're better served pressuring the opponent than wearing them down for a second cycle. While I stand by the call that Marlynn can handle the late game better than any Ranger (save, perhaps, Riptide), I now view that as a defensive measure that we'd rather not see.

The list I've presented here gives equal weight to both the Pirate and the Ranger in Marlynn's identity. By trimming most of the buffs, we've got the list down to only 15 2-blocks. Perhaps more surprising, however, is the pitch curve: in most matchups, you're going to present 14 reds, 12 yellows, and 34 blues!

14 of those blues are arrows, many of which we do intend to fire during a game. Ideally, they'll make their way to the arsenal face-down, so we can tap Sealace Sarong to give them go again. Past the trio of blue harpoons, you've got some choices here; while many players have stuck to 0-cost blue arrows for this role, I've opted for Infecting Shot and Widowmaker due to their damage output. Opening a turn with a blue arrow that threatens an on-hit is a great way to check their intentions for defense this turn, or clear the way for the more significant attack to follow.

With a lot of cards triggering effects off the top of the deck - most critically, Gold - I've chosen to run Skullbone Crosswrap to check whether these effects will do what I need them to before investing. Golden Tipple, Saltwater Swell, and Portside Exchange are all run in blue for exactly this reason: if the top card isn't what you need it to be, you can simply pitch these cards instead. Crosswrap's Arcane Barrier is also a nice bonus that reduces the weight of Wizard insurance on our sideboard. 

Among the Pirate blues, you'll find two effects prominently repeated: Gold generation and resource generation. 12 of these cards generate Gold entirely self-sufficiently - provided you have yellows to discard, or turn face down in graveyard. Saltwater Swell and Shifting Tides play the role of extenders; Swell lets you throw a 1-damage ping at an ally or Spectral Shield, while Tides allows you to store unnecessary pitch for next turn. You'll often pitch or block with these blues, but look for opportunities to take advantage of what they uniquely offer.

It's hard to explain why Tip the Barkeep is in the list; Rum doesn't really have much to do with out gameplan. But because we can simply shelve it until an opportunity arises, it's often worth playing out. At worst, it's a blue block 3; but at best, it's twin harpoons with go fish effects on each of them!

At this point, I think we need to talk about Three of a Kind: what it is, what it probably isn't, and how you should value it. We've already laid out that Marlynn is resource-intensive, planning to pitch 2 blues on most of her turns. But from time to time, we really need to block. Three of a Kind lets us refill after a turn spent blocking. And after drawing 3 cards, we can load an arrow into arsenal. What's likely to happen next is you'll pitch a lot of cards to activate the cannon and fire the arrow you just loaded. Sometimes, you'll get a 2nd attack out of that hand - usually by spending a Gold to draw (and load) again. When those stars align, keep in mind that your go fish harpoons only care that you've activated a cannon; they don't need to personally benefit from the buff to meet that prerequisite!

The other thing that will sometimes happen: you'll play Three of a Kind and whiff. When this happens, Gold can sometimes save the turn. It's also why we're packing Quiver of Rustling Leaves. This lets us dig one card deeper to find that arrow we need; and if it fails, we don't lose the Quiver.

The two buffs in the deck are flexible and help us see more cards. Big Game Trophy Shot is essentially a budget cannon, only its draw and discard lets us load as well. Premeditate is a familiar face, but its lack of requiring an arrow gives it a leg up on the other staples of Rangers past. I can't say enough about the value of Ponder tokens in this deck; to that end, Codex of Frailty may not be the only Codex you consider running.

You're probably asking by now, "What about the boats?!" I'll be straight with you: this isn't the list I'm running at home, because I can't resist the siren's call of a tall ship! But I am gonna stand by the ones that you see here.

Conqueror of the High Seas is an absolute tank, and easily justifies being played instead of activating Hammerhead if you have to choose between them. (Some will advocate for running Command and Conquer to follow it up, but that's just greedy when we already have so many great 6s.) But don't sleep on Swiftwater Sloop either! At 2 cost, it doesn't activate high tide all on its own, but it's happy to follow a Gold activation, a Hammerhead, or even a blue harpoon flipped by Sealace Sarong. (We run it in yellow as one more target for Portside/Tipple.) As Pirate attacks, both of these can be paired with Gold-Baited Hook for extra incentive to block.

49 cards comprise the core of this list, which means you're adding 11 every game. I have a taste for simple, clean sideboarding decisions, so I've built this one out to go as follows:

• 6 copies of _____ Fin Harpoon (pick the two sets that are most relevant to your matchup).
• 3 copies of King ______ Harpoon (again, pick the set that's most relevant).
• 2 copies of whichever tech card feels right: Battering Bolt, Endless Arrow, HMS Kraken, or Tarpit Trap.

You'll notice that this means we're only running 9 harpoons - and I stand by that decision. Overpower being what it is (and what it is, is 'not dominate'), I don't believe it's worth bending over backwards to include more harpoons simply because they meet a keyword. If the on-hit isn't relevant, we don't need it in.

As for the 4 tech cards? Battering Bolt is very nearly a harpoon as it is, and it's on-hit is absolutely devastating in the right matchups. Endless Arrow is Gravy tech: able to target an ally and bounce back to your hand for an arsenal at the end of the turn. The HMS Kraken anticipates Mechanologists, Verdance/Kano, and other Gold-loving heroes. And Tarpit Trap is the ultimate answer to Ninjas, Assassins, and Rangers; while I don't like to block in this deck, I'd be neglecting my responsibilities to my audience if I didn't draw your attention to it.

All four of these slots are highly modular, so feel free to adapt them to counter whatever you're facing locally. But I'd advise against loading multiple tech cards for the same matchup; unless you plan to go above 60, each 2-of is fighting for the same deck slots.

Some final notes on how to think about your cards.

If a card is blue, it's meant to be flexible. The blue cards in the list can all be pitched away, used to block, or played out. Determining the best use for these cards in light of your hand and the board state is key to mastering Marlynn.

If a card is yellow, it's all about opportunity. Does Bolt'n' Shot have a buff available that can make it a go again with the possibility of reload? Does Big Game Trophy Shot fit the cost of your turn better than a Hammerhead activation? Is the perfect card sitting in your graveyard for Codex of Frailty to grab? Can you fit in one more attack from a Swiftwater Sloop? Whenever that's not the case, these cards can be discarded to Portside or Tipple; pitched to pay for Gold; or simply used for blocking.

If a card is red, it's a key card, an absolute priority; otherwise, it wouldn't be in the deck. These cards tell you how to play your turn. They're also fine arsenal targets - so if you can't make use of them this time, feel free to pass them along to your next turn.

There's a real case to be made for using the Trench of Sunken Treasure as your default chest, and excluding Fyendal's Spring Tunic altogether. This has the added benefit of freeing up a spot in your sideboard that Arcane Barrier occupies. Tunic can give you some very nice playlines with Tipples, Swells, or 1-cost blue arrows; but resources are not hard to come by either, and the emergency arsenal eviction from Trench serves as good insurance. For some of you, budget will make the choice; the rest of us will have to wrestle with our preferences.

Finally, I can't recommend enough the benefit of checking out other lists. As Marlynn becomes more refined and players begin committing to her for larger events, check every list you can for good ideas. At the same time, don't feel beholden to any one list of 80 cards. Make her your own! Marlynn is a reactive, aggressive, disruptive deck that is at its finest when it's curated for the meta you're playing. If you don't have Mechanologists or Wizards at your locals, HMS Kraken has no business being in your sideboard; and if you're regularly facing Levia, you may want some blue Sleep Darts instead of Widowmaker. If Conqueror of the High Seas is pricing you out, cut it for more Swiftwater Sloops - this time, in red. Or cut out the boats entirely, if they don't feel right to you! You'll find players who support all of these swaps - and more - across the FAB community; borrow from the best, but don't discount your own instincts either!

It's a great time to get on board with Marlynn, who at this moment is the sleeper of High Seas. I have every confidence that she has what it takes, even as she skirts around the edges of the competitive peak.