5F pile of jank

Boy is this one a grindy control janky pile of cards. I love 5F and the idea here is pretty simple: buy time, do not lose, stabilize and win via Crackling Bauble. This has been working surprisingly well for how weird it is. Let's go over it:

The power base favors Time Seats as it's needed for the power fixing cards. I'm very bad at this so the power curve is probably extremely suboptimal.

Then we have Seek Power, Tight-Lipped Standard Inspection. Not much to say, just here to fetch whichever color you're missing. I tried to run Amber Acolyte over Tight-Lipped but the 3 vs 2 power requirement actually makes a world of a difference and Tight-Lipped allows 2 power hand keeps which is super useful with such a greedy deck.

As for removal, that's like 80% of it:

Dangerous Gambit and Reeve's Mandate as unconditional removal. Depending on matchup you'll want to either throw these out willy nilly vs aggro to stave off aggression or hold vs key threats and relics.

Tripwire Trap is here to buy time. Vs aggro either it trades one for one which isn't great but it buys time regardless. Vs midrange or control it serves as a delayed cantrip and it synergizes with Dangerous Gambit as the Trap either pops aegis or softens big creatures so you take less damage with the Gambit.

The Great Rift is probably my favorite card in expedition and it performs surprisingly well, despite the huge amount of apparent anti synergy. The charge and killer spells will very rarely see use, but the other 3 spells are good enough to carry some weight. -4/-4 just pops most of everything, and at worst it pops aegis. Giving yourself aegis is great for protecting Crackling Bauble. Killing enemy attachments is almost always useful as everyone runs some weapon or ramp or card draw relic these days.

Futility is a good enough flex card to run at 4x imo. Vs aggro it's just very cheap unconditional removal (and it can snag some surprisingly large threats such as Champion of Chaos). Vs control just popping a market fetch is usually great value, or you can keep it up as a counter-spell counter when you want to drop a key board clear or removal.

For board clears, there's Rift Disaster, Light the Beacon and Save the Day. I hate how Beacon performs here but I don't have enough Shiftstone for extra copies of Disaster, but it's on my priority list to change. Maybe even Heavy Hail would be a better fit but I still need to test it out.

For card draw there's Wisdom of the Elders and Surveying the Rift. It is what it is.

Crackling Bauble is the win condition somehow. I don't seem to face many decks that gain a ton of life so the damage is usually enough although there aren't nearly enough high cost cards to justify it. It just seems to work somehow lol. There's 0 need to rush dropping this so focus on stabilizing first and foremost, don't greed this out unless you're very confident you can stabilize after giving your opponent a free turn.

Deeptrail Vanguard. This is the star of the show for me. It can be anything. Extra removal, extra card draw, extra market fetch, double use of a market card. I love this card. When you have the Rift up it comes down at 4/6 which is just a fantastic blocker so that's also neat.

The market is fairly standard. Extra conditional removal, and some early game card draw if you're against a slow deck. You'll basically never be able kicker Feed the Hecaton but I still like the card as it pops aegis creatures which are a huge pain the butt for this deck. Information Leak at worst serves as a cantrip and at best can snipe some huge market bombs that people like to run to close out games.

Matchups: Fire/Time-Mono fire are fairly straightforward. Unless they have a hugely explosive opening you'll likely be fine. If you get some board clears then it's usually free. Be wary of using 1 for 1 removal on sight as you can run dry if you pop everything early

Fire/Shadow is similar to the above but there's some extra considerations: Their units tend to be beefier so Gambit actually hurts quite a bit. Unstable Hellion also needs some finesse to deal with, either Reeve's Mandate or Shrivel from The Great Rift. Any other method probably means trouble as the deck lacks any form of life gain.

Primal/Shadow control. I've been facing quite a bit of this (maybe due to my rank, dunno) and it is quite the pain. Aegis creatures galore means you need to really need to consider how to best make use of removal as most trades will be 2 for 1's. Feed the Hecaton+Deeptrail Vanguard come in clutch but even then it'll be a struggle. Tripwire Trap is also very useful here so dont be afraid of keeping those in your hand until turn 4 or 5.

Fire/Time/Primal control. I mean it's not good. Obviously lol. If you miss one turn of removal for their ramp, or don't have board clears when the recruits start coming in it's just gg. I've managed to snag some wins but they are extremely rare. Again, maybe due to my rank I don't match up against them too too much so I don't mind it.

And yeah that's it. Let me know what you think and have fun!