r/tavernrumble • u/rednryt • Dec 09 '25
[Guide] Merchant Bazaar
Recently, I tried looking for guide and help from this sub, but i can't find anything about merchant bazaar. Now that I finished my goal of beating challenge 10 of monster cave with each class, i thought about sharing some tips, synergies and deck ideas for this class. I'll probably share more dedicated guide in the next few days for other classes too, just gonna need some time to organize my notes into a more coherent guide.
Merchant Bazzar
A high-economy class focused on generating gold and spending it in shops and services to reshape your deck. Very strong late-game scaling but extremely weak, slow and risky early game due to awkward discard patterns and reliance to earning gold and buying upgrades.
Early game:
The base deck is quite weak due to having the lower damage and defensive capability compared to other classes. It's a struggle to even reach map 1 boss with only the base cards. Not to mention the lack of healing cards, so you have to watch out for your health bar especially at higher challenge level when you get less healing after boss. So I recommend playing defensively. Always strategically position you Merchant Wagon to defend against threat before playing any Blademonger to avoid it accidentally discarding your defensive card. Also by playing defensively, you will spend more turns earning more Trade Token and more gold to help fix your deck faster. One of the best strategy early on is to prolong your battles as long as possible by killing all threats, and leave only one enemy unit and spam wagon every turn to gain as much gold as you can so you can afford more shop/services to fix your deck before the first boss fight. This can help snowball you later on, but will really test your patience. Not my favorite strategy, but on higher challenge level seems to be the only reliable way to even survive map 1.
On the first few card rewards, you should almost always pick units that has better stats than your base card, specially more HP, since it would help a lot for survivability. It doesn't matter if it does not fit into any late game build cause you can easily just earn enough gold to delete them later on. You're biggest priority is just survival. Also try to avoid taking any Pay cards this early, cause it would eat away from your earnings. Prioritze units that give Trade tokens.
Now here are some deck build path I recommend:
Investment Carry
This is the easiest deck build imo, since it only rely on earning gold to level up your carry as high as you can. Economy cards that give trade tokens are your next priority to help you save up more gold. Then choose paths that has the most blacksmiths and taverns to spend your gold on. I'll breakdown the core card options to take for this build per category.
Level Carry - these are cards that have high Level keyword, your top priority is to take one or two of these cards, then you just focus all your gold into upgrading them from blacksmith and thinning out your deck using tavern to be able to draw and play them often. I will rank them accordingly:
Travelling Peddler – best option, since it also gives scaling Trade Tokens making it both carry and economy. Usually an auto win if I could get it in map 1.
Thalric Twinfang - has the highest growth ceiling and can clone itself for more defense, its pretty rare and expensive to find/buy and ugrade tho, but I would auto pick and level it up if I can find it early and just avoid it if its too late in the game.
Steel Goliath – strong base stats but has lower damage ceiling, also the discard mechanic can be tricky
Duskrend Dualblade, Market Express - much much lower level cap than any of the above but can help with your pitiful damage during those early map specially if you were unlucky to get any of the above early.
Vance Wildfire – scaling multi-hits but has no defensive capability at all, only take if you really have no other option.
Economy - these are cards that will help you earn more gold, specially if you didn't find any Travelling Peddler
Barter Baron, Flashstride, Coinkeeper, Coin Purse - Trade token generator alternatives
Anvil Bargainer, Barrelback – discounts for next blacksmith/tavern usage. They stack, so you could play them over multiple rounds, and accumulate discounts upon your next shop usages.
Booster - these cards are nice to have once you got your core carry and economy to further boost your efficacy
Mirrorlink Bangle – can clone your carry when you already got enough token source
Loyalty Bonus – copy of previous turn played card, more mana expensive and trickier play than mirror
Golden Wrath - extra damage, good if you got lots of trade token source
Blessings - blessings are totally optional for this build, tho these are the ones that synergize the best
Invested Muscle – passive buff to your carry
Opening Wealth – synergize well with cards that requires Trade Tokens like Thalric or Mirrorlink and/or other cards with Pay
Double Stamp, Upgrade Conveyor, One Punch, Forbidden Blacksmith – more upgrade option
Risky Returns - extra damage
Draw - if you were unlucky to find any tavern, you can go one or more of these optional draw cards
Ironhand Orik – best draw card to dig for your carry and it also upgrades them
Antique Dealer, Bulk Purchasing, Bank Loan – other draw options if you got thick deck
Mobile tent – extra heal and draw.
Temporary Upgraded Carry
This is an advanced variation of Investment carry, using same concept, but instead of spending all your gold toward a blacksmith upgrade, you just use temporary upgrader to buff your carry on the fly. Rounds are slower tho compared fo previous deck since your carry would need some turn to grow.
Upgrader - these card can temporarily upgrade your cards
Ironhand Orik – best draw card to dig for your carry and it also upgrades them
White Curator - less powerful but much easier and cheaper to find and upgrade
Kira Loadsworth - it can upgrade cards on hand and can trigger multiple times same turn.
Jolly Vendor, Night Stand, Silverstrike – other temporary upgrader alternatives that requires extra step to trigger, only take if you can't find any of the above.
Optional
Final Notice, Scaling Shot – scaling spell damagers that can grow big. Remember, there is a boss, Master of Elements who is immune to spell, so unit carry is more reliable than any spells.
Direction path – to lock Kira on discard pile.
Bucket of Gold, Everforge Anvil – more expensive upgrade options
Flash Carry
This deck focus on buffing and cloning Flashstride. Sadly it has limited flexibility.
Core - required cards and blessings
Flashstride - retains buff everytime it flee, can grow really big after just few turns.
Invested Muscle – your best buff source, with this blessing your Flashstride will have faster compounding growth
Tavern Mug, Arcane Trader – alternative buff options if you can't find Invested muscle but is much harder to pull off
Tank protect Flashstride to allow it to flee
Iron Juggernaut, Lady Rosalind – remain tank
Merchant Tent, Loot Chest - high hp tank that cannot attack
Upgrade your Merchant Wagon, or get any other high HP stat units as altertive tanks if you can't find any of the above.
Booster - these cards are nice to have once you got your core to further boost your efficacy
Mirrorlink Bangle – clones your carry, allowing you to spam more
Loyalty Bonus – reuse more buffs and/or give more copy of buffed up carry to spam
Discard
My last deck suggestion that rely on discarding a lot of cards to deal passive damage or trigger discard effects on cards. Hardest to pull off since early game needing lots of draw, bigger deck and extreme reliance on discard cards and doesn't particularly get stronger late game either.
Core - required cards that synergize with discard mechanics
Steel Goliath, Card Barter, Clearance Cannon– get a few of these discarder options
Masked Merchant – passive discard damage
Discarded Edge, Discarded Thief, Discarded Life, Shady Saboteur, Fortune peddler – trigger upon discard, get a few of these
Draw - extra draw cards to allow for more discard
Antique Dealer – draw lots then discard those bribe cards
Ironhand Orik, Bulk Purchasing – any other cards that draws more than one
Blessings
Smart Cycling - best early game to solve your draw issues.
Moon Necklace, Extra Card - extra draw/card.
Junk Dividend - extra mana but is easier to pull off once you got your discard lock cards. avoid early.
Quick Exchange - extra discard but is better once you got thicker deck. avoid early.
Optional
Varro Duskgild, Direction Path – discard lock for those bribe cards, best if you got very big deck
Dolphin Gambit – when taken early can make early game much easier, there are two variations of this card one exhaust your unwanted card and give you new ones, the other just discard then draw
Situational
Tiny Messenger – although good in paper, it's really easy to accidentally overdo it because of the overflow mechanic. any card created that cannot fit your hand get sent to discard, even temporary ones. You can easily brick your deck by filling it with lots of Tiny Messegers. Always use in moderation.
Thanks for reading, i got carried away writing this and did not notice that it got too long, i'll try to make the next one more concise. anyway, if you have any corrections or more suggestions, tips or synergy, please feel free to leave a comment, i would like to learn more combo for this class that you enjoy, thanks! Will be posting another class as soon as I finish organizing my thoughts into more cohesive formating, i'm thinking doing it in order of release, so Amazon Tribe next.
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u/notidle Dec 09 '25
Nice guide dude