Jufi Combo [Rank 2]

Hi! I haven't played much Expedition recently (in preparation for the upcoming draft open), but I'm pretty confident in saying that this deck is a strong contender in the meta against the likes of Aid of the Hooru Reanimator and Rakano Aggro. As you've surely gathered from the title, I'm currently sitting at a respectable rank of Gold 2, with an 8-0 record this month.

At first glance you might be thinking that this looks almost exactly like the aforementioned Spell Reanimator deck, except without any of the core cards or the main payoff. This is somewhat true, as they're both Hooru based control, but the way Jufi Combo wins is a bit less straightforward and involves drawing through your entire deck. I have a lot of explaining to do for this statement to make any sense, so I'll start by telling you how to pull off the combo and then I'll go over some of the more interesting card choices and usages. Hopefully this will be enjoyable to read about whether or not you decide to give the deck a try :)

Core Gameplan

Okay, I'm not exactly sure where to start because of how convoluted the combo is, but here goes nothing:
Step 1: Play Jufi, Sprite Seer and pay her intrigue cost for 5 power
Step 2: Cast Dragon's Eye and draw through the rest of your deck using sheer skill and your amazing card shuffling techniques

Phew, if you need to Re-read that several more times to fully grasp the combo, I'm sure no one will blame you. Now that you understand what the combo is, I'll explain how it works and why it's actually much more consistent than it sounds. To start with, when you intrigue Jufi and add 4 Dragon's Eyes to your deck, you're really adding 8 of them. That's because this deck runs Discover Talents, and since it's able to draw any spell, you can (and should) use it as redundant copies of the most important combo piece. Drawing 3 cards for 5 power is not very impressive in a vacuum, but you have to remember that you're doing this in a deck that now has 7 other Dragon's Eyes in it, Davia, Azurebreaker to recur them, and many other draw spells like Wisdom of the Elders or Bottled Insight. On top of that you still have access to 3 other Jufi's, and through drawing all of these cards you're inevitably going to find them and add even more eyes to your deck.

Maybe now you have an idea of why I'm claiming you'll be able to draw your entire deck, but you're wondering how this ends up winning you the game. One of the most popular decks on ladder has 4 copies of Auren Condemnation for our now massive Jufi and plays even greedier cards than us like Aid of the Hooru or A New Beginning. These are reasonable questions, but Lunar Claw flips all of this around. Because we're basically guaranteed to see our entire deck in slow control matchups, relying on single cards like Lunar Claw, Obstructive Flicker, or Thicket Trap becomes a lot more plausible. By countering their Aids, thicketing their Stormhalt Platings, and clawing their Condemnations, they'll end up with no avenue left for victory. Jufi can safely attack at any point after you've taken away condemnation, as Defiance and Desert Marshal don't answer her and only stall for a turn or two. They do have another way to potentially kill her in Harsh Rule, but they need to deplete both of your Obstructive Flickers and then draw all four copies to be able to answer your four Jufis. All of this assumes that they draw well and have multiple ways to stall Jufi at fast speed, but in a lot of cases they'll only have one type of card and you can lock it out before attacking for lethal.

Alternatively you could beat them in with Stormhalt Plating + random units and assert dominance with your intimidatingly full hand of cards, since realistically they'll never have enough card draw to answer each of your threats (especially through a Lunar Claw).

Card Choices

4x Jufi, Sprite Seer, 2x Jada, Peacekeeper
While Jufi is almost invariably played as a 5 drop, it's actually very reasonable to play her on turn 3 in this list as well. As long as you have two justice influence, you can force your opponent to play around Jada, Peacekeeper even in games where you never find him. Jada is great at stopping your opponent from ever attacking on the ground, but he quickly becomes irrelevant when drawn in multiples or as you transition to the mid and late game. By playing only 2 of them and using the 4 Jufi as additional copies, we keep the consistent anti-aggro potential while minimizing the number of dead cards in our deck when we're trying to close out the game. Another thing to note is that while it might seem like this only works against unsuspecting ladder players, you're actually not supposed to attack into a 3 cost stealth unit versus Jufi Combo even after reading this explanation. They still have two real copies of Jada, and if you end up ramping them for free then you're incredibly likely to lose the game.

4x Ice Bolt
I love this card, and I feel like it's heavily undervalued. We have ways to punish the opponent for playing multiple threats at once (Harsh Rule) and also for trying to commit one threat to the board at a time. Since we plan to answer everything our opponent plays 1-for-1 while casting draw spells to stay ahead, they'll run out of cards to play and the extra power won't help.

4x Bottled Insight
This card is typically run as an outlet to discard spells to reanimate with Davia, but I think it's still really good even though we aren't doing that. There isn't much to do with power early on while you inscribe stuff and hold up removal, so it's pretty easy to find time to either cycle it at 1 or use it to loot away cards that aren't useful in the matchup. It's great late game as a way to create card advantage by holding on to excess power and then discarding it for actual cards, and helps to find specifically Dragon's Eye post-Jufi.

2x Argenport Noble, 2x Thicket Trap
This is a split of cards meant to answer Dinosaur Nest. It's hard to deal with nest in multiples since Thicket Trap only does 1 damage, so I'm running some nobles in place of the full 4 copies because it can answer them more easily. It also gives you a way to silence opposing Thicket Traps which can be very important in Davia mirrors.

3x Lunar Claw
I think it's an alright removal spell right now, and it gives you some more ways to deal with problematic units like Syl, No Regrets and Scalesworn Patrol. It's very disruptive against TJP, and you should play it early to stop them from ramping with A New Beginning or casting their card draw even though you want to lock out Auren Condemnation post-Jufi. It's also sometimes good to take Stormhalt Plating and Aid of the Hooru if you don't have answers for them yet.

1x Channel the Tempest
it kills ppl

Okay, that's all
Good luck! :D