Xenan Spires Control

The latest Expedition deck I've been working on. I gave it a run in the ECQ and ended 14-14, with some loses to misplays and some to mana flood and screw. Obviously this deck isn't top tier, but it's fun to play and can compete pretty well.

The two main cards of the deck are Spire Shadows and Gentle Grazer. You keep the Grazer hits in-deck minimal so you hit Spire with relative consistency. Once you Spire the first time, the deck becomes so full of Grazer hits that you become very unlikely to hit the second Spire off your Grazers (yes it does happen, yes it sucks).

The trade-off for Spires is that it reduces the cost of your units by a significant margin, at which point you can leverage a mana advantage to take multiple actions per turn against the opponent. It also makes your Grazer very potent, with your 3-cost Grazer having the potential to hit a 4-cost card out of your deck as the ceiling. At best, Spires turns your 4-cost Grazer into a 3-cost play that gets you 8-cost worth of cards.

I think this deck is best played as a control deck. Play for the long game, and eventually you'll win out. Obviously you need to be aggressive against decks that try to go over you (Combrei Relics and the like), but this deck is best suited when playing the control side.

Marsh Dragon can be played in the market, but I opted for it mained last minute because Spires makes it a 5/X. The deck struggles with big units like Marionettes, and this makes him able to at least trade against them. As with most control decks it takes some getting used to in terms of sequencing, but its pretty fun when you get the hang of it.

Wrath of Caiphus is mostly a 2-cost Seek Power that Grazer can't hit, and the other mode shouldn't be used lightly. It is practical to do when you're ahead on power and can just play out a bunch of things in the same turn, but its best used conservatively.

This deck feels like it has some potential. You could always try a Salvo market, but at that point you're just an FTS deck with a gimmick and its not clear if thats worth it. It might need more pieces overall, but it feels like a good start.