If your trying to make Merrick work, I'd reccommend Running both Selfless Guildmate and Darkknives. It makes it easy to set Merrick to 6-9 attack. I also run assasins aim and regularly have him swinging for 12. Backstreet bouncer can also put a rune of strenth to hand, so i run him in my merrick guild deck too for 4 buffs :D
Its a meme, but its a strong one haha
Fun fact, I OTKed a BWD deck with it. Merrick and shadow pally in play. selfless x2, dark knife and assasins aim on the pally. It was freaking awesome swinging for 32 damage out of nowhere
Backstreet Bouncers -- I have two of them in my humble Genesis collection. I tried to use them (and other relic/rune "hunters") for supplying Back-Alley Vendors but ... I gave up the idea.
Backstreet bouncer can also put a rune of strenth to hand --- Deception needs its own Choralis Rune Moth. I, as a Deception fan, envy the most about this card. 🙂
Dark knives/Selfless Guildmate/assasins aim - I tried to combine them but I couldn't make too many wins although some of them were epic. But much depends on your skills, play style and cards you have, of course.
Currently, I like using Whisper Barons because they, in some way, have Dark Knives included into them in case you play many Guild creatures.
I am experimenting with a deck with 28 Guild creatures. So potentially one of my Whisper Barons can get strength 29 😀 But this is only potentially 😀