Dan’s notes in Green David’s notes in Red
The question with Helping Hand is what are the best targets? Dan correctly pointed out that it doesn’t work with the existing shells people want to put it in (Greasefang or Storm Herald). I am proposing that Monastery Mentor might be the best with Raffine as a not too bad consolation prize (also incredible if you have crapped out a bunch of Monk tokens first or if you have Evangel in play). Mentor + TCruise is pretty incredible, the rest of our deck is just the best cheap disruption and velocity.
<aside> 🦊 Helping Hand Combo
4 Flameblade Adept 4 Inti, Seneschal of the Sun
4 Flourishing Fox 4 Drannith Stinger 4 Drannith Healer 4 Footfall Crater 4 Go for Blood 3 Djeru’s Renunciation 2 Cast Out
2 Zenith Flare 3 Play with Fire 4 Helping Hand
18 Land 4 Sacred Foundry 4 Inspiring Vantage 4 Battlefield Forge 3 Needleverge Pathway 1 Mountain 1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire 1 Den of the Bugbear
Sideboard 1 Jegantha, the Wellspring
More options: 1 Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might ****Djeru’s Renunciation Voldaren Epicure Flameblade Adept Phoenix Chick Valiant Rescuer Conspiracy Theorist Containment Construct Splendor Mare Irencrag Pyromancer Hollow One Abandoned Sacrophagus Glint-Horn Buccaneer Rielle, the Everwise Dying to Serve The Raven Man
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Main idea here is to kill with Drannith Stinger + Helping Hand and burn them out, but before that happens we pretend to be an aggro deck with Flourishing Fox and Inti (both get re-bought with Helping Hand).
Not sure if Inti is actually going to make a big difference here, certainly not as impressive as Rielle with the cyclers, but it will at least let me hit land drops and probably go card-up every other turn at least. Unclear if t1 Flameblade, t2 Inti, discard something, hit for 3 is actually a good idea or not.
I like the idea of Helping Hand bringing back Drannith on the cheap, or when Inti is down we do a Containment Construct impression (cycle a creature, “draw” a card, helping hand to get our creature back later).
I could imagine a version of this that tries to kill with Ojer Axonil + Drannith Stinger, that ought to finish them off very quickly.
Malcolm is awesome, RIelle and Breeches take it to the next level.