There are several approaches to even xenan available. This is, in my experience, the best. Gum up the board with cheap replaceable units, then grab a game-ending engine from the market. If the board stalls, Burden or
The Queen of Glass will guarantee a win.
Talir's Favored,
Temple Scribe, and
Evenhanded Golem form the core token package along with
Devour. Cheap units that replace themselves allow you to get on the board early without spending cards, and Devour lets us cash in on the small bodies for more cards once they're outclassed.
Wasteland Broker lets us shuffle an appropriate value engine for the game state. Try to play Broker before you need the cards you shuffle, to make time to draw into them. I normally find Broker too unreliable for gauntlet, but we have enough cheap draw here to get to the cards quickly. If I drew a lot of tokens, I like to go for Obelisk. If I'm facing flyers, Gnash can blow them out. If I have a Grafter, I like to shuffle Gnash and use Grafter for Grodov's Burden. The Speaking Circle is a good target if the board is stalled or I'm slightly behind, and I don't have a Grafter. Vara's Choice is usually not a good Broker target.
Speed Grafter gives us direct market access in even decks. Lack of access to
Grodov's Burden was the main reason I didn't like even xenan as much before Empire of Glass, and it's the most important Grafter target.
Vara's Choice is there if you need to get a big unit off the board immediately. Otherwise the considerations are about the same as for Broker.
The Speaking Circle has performed better than I thought it would. You can rely on it to deal with one or two small units through its agenda, and it often does better than that. There is just a lot of removal in the pool of available spells. Do be aware that when
The Queen of Glass is in play, you can't sacrifice other units to board space, so be careful with what you play, and don't activate
Grodov's Burden on a full board.
Exploit is a card you want to be careful with. Pay attention to the AI's decklist, and try to play Exploit the turn before the AI makes a key play, to maximize your chances of hitting it. After playing Exploit, remember what the AI had in hand and play around it.
Cards I'm not running:
Send an Agent, and
Xenan Initiation: In this deck, I've found it sufficient to answer units with units, and we need a high concentration of units to make the token package work. I could see an alternative build that cuts Obelisk and trims the tokens for more interaction
Vara, Vengeance-Seeker: Too often, she just edicts a 1/1 and then can't challenge a bigger unit. I want to play 4 drops that can block the AI's 5 and 6 drops.
Petition: There's an argument to be made for this, but here we're rather use
Talir's Favored and
Spiritweaver to hit our power drops while keeping our unit count up.
I still don't love Vara for the stated reasons, but she's been okay, might be the best for her slot anyway.
The anti-aegis effect is rarely helpful, with only our market options affected by aegis. It is helpful on occasion for letting Gnash hit aegised flyers, and shutting down Shelterwing Riders. The slot should be a 4-drop, I just want there to be a better one.