Sands of Time

Foreword

This is the first deck I've built that reached my expectations. It is heavily based on Your new home in Praxis/Time-City! from SaltySparrow.

I love big units, and ramp is the best way to play an ungodly amount of them. So time it is. 5 power units: sixteen.

I farmed 50k golds with similar lists before, mainly splashing Fire instead of Shadow. While the fire list Desert's Wrath has the advantage of an absolutely unbeatable late game, losing to swarm decks got boring. I brew this list by keeping the same core of Time goodness and replacing the explosive fire cards by more problem-solving shadow cards. This lists isn't final, I'll be testing it extensively and am open to suggestions. I'm not familiar enough with the card pool to claim I've struck gold. I also have to test the Justice version of this, because that core really is versatile.

10-0 runs (70-0 wins) so far. Some close calls but nothing I would have lost even with the best enemy top deck. The deck feels great. I have replaced End Of An Era with Chronostorm but neither came up. Partly because I encountered none of my boogeymen, partly because the deck is very busy in the mid game and it's often better to drop a titan or worldbearer than to bounce the board, given how the AI reacts to board states.

Main Deck

Initiate of the Sands and Logistics Expert are our "turn 5 is too late for half this stuff, let me cheat instead". Because a turn 3 Sandstorm Titan is a good way to survive till we win. In general Logistics Expert is fine to be played without caring about amplify: as said, we play 16 five drops already.

Auralian Merchant and Time Etchings are market access and ramp. The hard part comes from evaluating correctly what we'll need in a few turn since our market has both haymakers and answers.

Dinosaur Nest does for semi-emergency blockers, but is mainly a way to crush our opponent in the mid-game. The deck has quite a few dinosaur that get extra difficult to deal with when buffed, and swarming with medium-sized units is amazing with both Alhed Ascending and Grodov's Burden

Alhed Ascending is a beast. Dies to Torch, but can hold the fort and end games through board stalls. I've learned to not be too reckless with it: the AI is very bad at playing against Decay, often over blocking decay units allowing us to wreck their board state. And come late game, it easily grows to a double-digits statline.

Sandstorm Titan is unlikely to end games on it's own, but most decks can't get past it and that's good enough. It disables our own flyers from Dinosaur Nest, Riftfeeder Wasp and Hive Queen Uther, but they don't really need to fly when nothing does and it's easy enough to send the titan to its death if need be.

Moonstone Vanguard is the unsung hero, often keeping us from death by power screw or aggro. Plus if it's dropped early, it gets to attack and rack up value. Don't fear Pledging it if your not sure on your power base: the deck deals with power flood much, much better than power screw.

Worldbearer Behemoth because ramping is fun. This one does end games, especially in pairs and/or with Dinosaur Nest. It's especially good with Riftfeeder Wasp on the next turn, as the bee gets to 13 power before it first hit.

Riftfeeder Wasp because it's Wasp. Not much to say, it assures the 6 power needs of our market cards and is an evasive win condition. I never play it on 5 power if I have a better option: if it dies to Torch or Suffocate, we're a bit sad.

Azindel, Mastermind is quite good. The AI behaves weirdly around Stealth units. It will often refuse to attack into stealthed Azindel, which can buy us precious time. Alternatively, it can choose to attack with 3 mediocre units and let us free to heal on the back swing. Azindel won't often be the target of blind removal, especially if you have other targets on board. Still, be careful about not playing it recklessly against opponents that may have Vanquish. Unlike every other unit in the deck it's not affected by Grodov's Burden, but it's versatile and not too disappointing on average. Lifesteal is just a great keyword in Gauntlet.

Twilight Hunt does wonders with our big Sentinels or the many Dinosaurs of the deck. Getting a free attack can be especially good for Worldbearer Behemoth when it can't attack safely. And Killer as a keyword gets silly with the Exalted from Grodov's Burden and some Overwhelm.

Victimless Crime is in my experience, the best of the 2 power Shadow removal. It hits a lot of annoying things, and now that I'm looking at it I wonder if banish wouldn't be better. Huh. Also it's a 3-3 split with the previous piece of removal because I'm undecided.

Regarding power, we play Seats because no Paintings. 'nough said.

Market

Pretty classic time market for 80% of it. Unless there is a certain threat, Burden is the pick every time. It can be pretty sad to overrate a menace and end up flooding because of no Burden.

Infinite Hourglass just wins some matchups and makes others way easier. Elemental Mastery, Stalking Beasts and Strange Return come to mind: they're not all about the freezes, but in general stuns are their only way back into the game and it's nice to deny it. Half the deck is already stun-proof, but Crystallize is never fun.

Sandstorm Scarf is for the all-in flying decks where we don't draw Titan, but could be flexed since Nest and Wasp both hate it and can do a similar job. I see myself using it less and less, but I'm not pressed to replace it either.

Grodov's Burden will be the pick most of the time. It eats board stalls, it almost negates removal outside of board wipes, and it mitigates flooding. We don't run the highest amount of hits for the active effect so I don't try and get greedy with it. As said before, careful with your not-single-faction Azindel, Mastermind.

Hive Queen Uther is a kind of slow assurance against burn. It won't fix the problem outright, but it secures the win out of a cheeky burn finish. It's also great to fill the board when you already have Grodov's Burden. And the bees can be a decent game ender especially if they get to pass on their Flying to scarier threats through Exalted.

End Of An Era is a one way board wipe. ...Sort of? The funny thing is, even if in theory it wipes our Dinosaur Nest cuties, our ramp dorks, our bees, and even our Alhed Ascending, that doesn't matter. What matters is that army of Grenadins about to kill us on turn 5. Most swarm decks can't recover from a board wipe, so we do the board wiping. Plus hey, if you kill enough of your own stuff you might get a mansion for it.

Alternatively, Chronostorm (as suggested by alamat01) can be played one turn earlier, not affect our board, and deal with larger threats, at the cost of keeping said threats alive if weakened. It seems better, but I'm not sure which is best just yet because the occasions to use either are rare.

Overall

So here it is: the deck reliably gets to 5 power and starts dropping bombs every turn, it's surprisingly difficult to get stuck thanks to all our pseudo power, and it's not too slow. I also find it to be a lot of fun, but that's pretty subjective.