🌈 Rank 29 🌈 Crafty Spire 🌈

So if you thought Crafty Infiltration was good grabbing 3 drops, you'll love what it can do when it grabs 5 drops. Spent a lot of time brewing Crafty + Spire Shadows since Thera's release and have turned over many builds of the unit composition and power base. At this point, if you're going to be on 5F Crafty/Spire, I definitely think this list is the best balance of consistency and power. Single pip influence across the board plus 14 rainbow choose cards makes the 5f influence threshold easily obtainable in the early going in most games while crafty and other usual spire engines provide the punch.

Basic gameplan is very straightforward.
Step 1) Setup influence
Step 2) Market for Spire
Step 3) Play Spire
Step 4) Crafty/Reweave/otherwise get broken cards out of your deck

Step 1 can sometimes be the most complicated part of playing the deck. Planning out the sequencing of power can be very important to ensuring you can play everything on time and have the influence to do it. Think about your power drops VERY carefully early. Seek Power and 10 rainbow choose powers means we have a lot of flexibility but not a lot of duals. So you'll routinely need to squeeze 5 unique influence out of 4/5 power. Exploit pitches in here but with so many multifaction cards you'll find yourself spinning the influence wheel plundering a multifaction unit if you don't plan your influence out well properly.

We have 12 market access cards for Spire, and imo, they're the best 12 cards you can use to go get it. 8 of them, Blazing Salvo and Ebon Dune Smuggler, can be played at the end of the opponent's turn, meaning we don't have to expose our spire shadows to an exploit or other slow speed hand check. Salvo also pulls double duty barring the gates to aggro while we setup our spire. Auralian Merchant is just great.

So, what do I do now that my deck is Spired? Waiting to draw 1 cost 5 drops one at a time off the top of my deck sounds slow and arduous, at best. Reweave has been used in J spire lists as a jumpstart that can be played on turn 4 alongside your spire so that you're not just using that turn to spire. You can shift in a Triumphant Stranger and let it churn out value out of the reach of targeted removal or have Crownwatch Press-Gang setup a unit for the following turn. This is where I feel obligated to explain why I only have 2 copies of Reweave if it's so good. 1) Crafty is more powerful and can often be played turn 4 with spire if we have a surviving Auralian Merchant. 2) there are only 32 units in the deck as is, and whiffing on an early Crafty is a death sentence in 99% of games. So Grenahen is there as a hedge to the unit count while also being an okay early blocker that can find your market access, and post-spire it's a 1 cost 2/3 that draws you a 1 cost 5 drop (usually). So Reweave and Grenahen are good plays post spire, what are the GREAT plays post spire? Crafty Infiltration and Glimpse the Possibilities are the spiciest things you can be doing post-spire. Glimpse has been a value high roll backstop of spire lists for awhile now. Shouldn't take a lot of thought to see why, your deck is cheap and busted. The one thing I'll say about Glimpse is that you usually want 6 power minimum the turn you play it as that leaves you 4 to warp with. Crafty can sometimes be played turn 4 in conjunction with spire thanks to Auralian Merchant. Any potential advantages from the hunt become very relevant as our whole deck is extremely cheap. So in many cases, 1 more power means 1 entire extra 5 drop landing on the board.

The market is very straightforward imo. Spire is the whole reason we're here. Glimpse is the ultimate followup to Spire (with a prerequisite amount of power). Spindown is a less good Excavate in most situations, but it costs 2 so all of our market access can get it, which makes it marginally better in this deck. Recovery does a ton of things, like dodging removal, recycling summon effects, and often just effectively being a 2 cost Display of Ambition. Purify is removal for small units and a convenient text box eraser.

Unit lineup feels mostly self-explanatory but I'll run through it here.
Grenahen - For some reason, I was stuck on 2 of this, but I've seen the light. This card is bananas and should be 4x always.
Crownwatch Press-Gang is the straw that stirs the drink. You can go get him off reweave to jumpstart your post-spire living and he grabs any number of broken possibilities from your deck as follows.
Black Book, Pit Boss is the perfect spire unit. Perfectly reasonable at it's printed cost, while also being disgusting post-spire. It's typically our most sought after 1 drop post-spire because of it's combination of great stats/keywords and it comes with a hand check on summon.
Triumphant Stranger is a win condition unto itself. Endless value. Just need RNGesus on your side at times.
Xenan Adept Ridiculous thic boi that dark returns on summon. Important to keep track of what Adept's power cost will be after you spire. His cost will be equal to the # of units on your side of the board when you spired. So if you salvo into spire on an empty board your Adepts will cost 0. Keep this in mind when trying to use Press-Gang to go get him. He doesn't always cost 1.
Lumen Defender Often one of your first plundered/marketed cards pre-spire. Not super impressive, as it generates no value, but it is invaluable VS aggro. Even as a printed 1/5 for 5, the deadly + life gain means it still walls off aggro while reinforcing your life total. Gets downhill against slower decks decently well as a 1 power 5/5.
Colony Matron was axed for the next two cards listed as Anthalon and MurderofCrows are smarter than me.
Qirin Ascendant - Great toolbox target for press gang to bust attachments. And a 1 power 3/3 lifesteal flyer ain't nothing to shake a stick at it.
Archive Curator - Another fantastic target for press gang to erase text boxes when needed.