The Backstab

[Malduk]

I'd definitely give it a spin with Dunes later today, and include it into the top post. I imagine they would be slower than Stalkers, but more reliable when against CC heavy decks.

[Malduk]

I played a bit with the Dune version, and here are my thoughts.

Looking only damage scorpions do, Stalker wins the damage race as soon there's more than one Stalker down (with the maximum number of Scorpion hits per round being actually 4 due to Epinephrine), and the damage difference gap is getting larger with every turn played due to poison mechanic.

BUT, you dont expect Dunes to be fast anyway, so thats not a big deal to me. Bigger issue I see is that deck is not as fluent with Dunes, mostly because of the way they clash with Precogs. IE, for scorpio to work, you need to have 2 cards in hand: buff and scorpio. If you only have one of those, using Precog with Stalkers can get you that second card which you will play that turn. Using Precogs with Dune will likely make you wait for another turn due to quanta you just spend. So there's no real gain in speed. Of course this is the issue only in early game.
That mark quanta usage is the biggest difference between two decks. Bad draws (ie, no Novas) with mark will let you play and fly your Arsenics, building your poison counter faster, or let you drop unbuffed Stalker down after 2 turns, to help clear your hand. Same draws with mark wont give you any possible damage output, and you'll need to wait one more turn to drop first unbuffed Dune.

Now, this text can look like Dunes suck or that I dont like the deck, but really, its just nitpicking of how decks preform in very specific situations. I lost only twice with them while testing it against T50, so the deck definitely works. Also, having the opponent poison himself to death is all kinds of awesome.
I prefer the Stalker version, but Dune version is definitely fun, and I would look into how to improve the flow of the game with average to bad draws.

[Dragoon]

That's a slick looking deck Malduk.  I'll definitely give it a spin once I get a couple more upgrades.

[Jangoo]

[...]
Now, this text can look like Dunes suck or that I dont like the deck, but really, its just nitpicking of how decks preform in very specific situations. I lost only twice with them while testing it against T50, so the deck definitely works. Also, having the opponent poison himself to death is all kinds of awesome.
I prefer the Stalker version, but Dune version is definitely fun, and I would look into how to improve the flow of the game with average to bad draws.

Yeah you're right, the Dunes are definitely more prone to bad draws because none of the cards plays itself without
the novas.
The Precog-problem you mentioned kind of relates to the Crysaora-problem in The Backstab:
In either situation I often find myself having to choose between getting the fast benefit now or not using the card to
get my Scorps next turn. The only difference is that actually HAVING to use precog seems more pressing than
Crysaoras ability ... as non-card, precog is mostly there to played right away or it loses its use.
I only put in 1 more precog because I dropped the animate-weapon counter by one, since Arsenic becomes a
standard "hard to be paid for"-card by changing the mark ... maybe another CC-card would do better since it
will help stall across the waiting for setup.

During my games I found indeed, that the extra poison you get from the opponents card-play makes up for
all that slowness. In fact, it would totally put me in pole position against rainbow-stalls and even against rush decks
like Lava-golems I would win pretty well ... by a hairs-breadth but a win.