Fun with mercs!

Here's some fun things (yes, fun is allowed!) that I've discovered with some of the more recent mercs.

-C'Thun and the Spud Bomb. Mystery Nodes always present the danger of making you deal with the Spud Bomb for the rest of the run. C'thun's Maw equipment makes the bomb work for you: the bomb counts as a minion, so C'Thun eats it as a battlecry if it's on the enemy side, dealing heavy damage before the fight even starts.

-What if the bomb is on your side of the board? No problem if you've got anyone in your party who can bounce to the bench, like Brightwing or Garona with Shadowstep. That opens a spot on your board for C'Thun to come down on the next turn and eat the bomb after it's swapped over.

-Speaking of Shadowstep: Infinite Garonas! Garona is eligible for the clone treasure that creates a copy of her as a battlecry. The AI loves to target clones, but you can lean into this by using her Shimmering Toxin move to turtle up. If the clone is still alive when the turn ends, it also has the Shadowstep equipment, so it also returns to your hand... and creates a clone *of itself* as a battlecry when replayed. You can generate infinite Garonas this way.

-Chromie is only okay as a merc in her own right, but her equipment options make for some hilarious outcomes. Body Euphoria makes Scabbs (yes, Scabbs!) a total murder machine. Stroke of Midnight (which makes slow moves go first) has some good natural combos, but a great one is with Murloc Holmes with the fill-the-board-with-Watfins treasure. You can bury enemies beneath a pile of Watfins before they can move.

-The Lich King is fun in frost comps. Why is that? you might ask. The Lich King doesn't deal frost damage. Au contraire: the Helm of Domination equipment *does* deal Frost damage to slow enemies (the tooltip didn't use to say this, but it does now), and the frost comp is great at slowing enemies.

-Tidemistress Athissa can very nearly solo the Coral Elemental boss fight. Once you kill enough fish for Coral to actually take damage, hit it with Riptide (the move that deals backlash damage on attacks). Each hit from Riptide procs a new forced attack from Coral, which procs Riptide, which forces a new attack... assuming Coral's attack hasn't built up much yet, it will kill itself on your face.

-Nemsy can almost solo the Darkmoon Rabbit. As long as the Rabbit keeps doing standard attacks, Nemsy will always be able to get Boggy up in time to take the hit. If you have Dream Brew, even better!

-For even more Nemsy fun, Dream Brew's bonus Boggy will always spawn all the way on the right. Using the Bog Moss equipment (that reduces damage taken), putting Nemsy on the left lets you cover all your mercs with Bog Moss protection... or you can put Nemsy all the way on the right and have the two Boggys protecting each other.

Fun!

Yeah, there's definitely plenty of fun little things you can do in Mercs if you look for them rather than staying with the same team the whole time to grind coins efficiently. Personally I find it more interesting than the things you can do in normal HS, with the added benefit that you aren't always dealing with powerful meta decks suppressing janky combos.

- I've dealt with the bomb so many times, but never once thought to insta-kill it with C'thun. I guess I just never gave that equipment much attention because bosses don't generally start with minions, so you're usually better off using one of his other equipments.

- I had used the infinite-Garonas and Chromie+Scabbs before though. They are certainly very effective for very little effort, though unfortunately the duplicate Garonas don't work with her 3rd ability so they can't discover anything fancy and are limited to a speed 8 attack to deal damage with... which is tough when you only have 1 health to survive with.

- I'm sure Nemsy against the rabbit works well, but Aranna and Xyrella trivially setting it's attack to 0 seems simpler to me. There is a related way to fight Maestra though: she can only attack once a turn at speed 4, so Kazakus can just keep summoning a taunt golem (also speed 4) and she's stuck.

Here's a couple of neat things I've been doing recently:

- Still on Nemsy: have you ever wanted that +12 attack bonus Cariel can have while in taunt but didn't want to waste a turn gaining taunt (and only temporarily at that!)? Well our little gnome warlock friend has us covered. By the same method, anyone and everyone can have taunt, giving Vanndar taunt teams much more freedom than they had before.

 - Maiev's Warden's Shroud equipment is a great way to direct attacks towards your middle merc. A good use is with Bwonsamdi who can make himself take 0 damage for the turn them bounce everyone back to the bench, giving you a free turn against attack-based teams. This is particularly useful against Dragonbone Golem who starts as 2 protectors + 1 fighter and quickly summons a lot more protector mercs. So Malchezaar can turn the fighter into a protector, then when Bwonsamdi clears the board only 3 mercs will be replayed, so this process forces the 3 mercs summoned on turn 1 onto the bench. With everything now a protector and half their team sidelined, you can safely send out 3 casters to mop up the fight relatively easily. 

Chromie can also pick up the "summon a 1-health copy" treasure. I tried that when I was running her "restart the turn if Chromie dies" equipment. 

However, this was less fun than your other highlights here. It was basically Groundhog Day, where I repeated turn 1 until deciding to leave her on the bench.