Glimpse the Possibilities... as long as the possibilities are more rats!
The shell is a simple
Rat Cage deck - play the cage, play random relics, beat down with Obelisk'd rats. The fun begins when you drop your first
Perilous Research - between
Lethrai Courtier and
Talir's Sanctum, ramping power should be fairly easy, and
Glimpse the Possibilities will start generating a lot of value around 5-6 power (depending on how much setup you've managed to drop).
The aim of the deck is
not to storm out - think of Glimpse as more like
Evenhanded Golem, generating a lot of card advantage in the right deck. The goal is to ramp to at least 8 power the next turn, and generate a few Rats and random Relics.
Once you hit 8, you should be swimming in random units, and hopefully an online Obelisk. Then one of two things will happen - either they fold to the tokens, or thew blow you out.
... except you're not blown out! Remember that
Perilous Research that didn't really seem that great at the time? That
Alarming Findings is looking real nice creating half a board of large overwhelming units and drawing a near-full hand of cards, snowballing your gameplan even further! Even better, even if you haven't gotten some incidental healing off
Porcelain Mask and
Shepherd's Horn, the horn alone will put you out of immediate reach once the Sandcrawlers arrive.
Rat Cage
x4
1
Sabotage
x4
2
Cryptic Master
x3
2
Glimpse the Possibilities
x3
2
Lethrai Courtier
x4
2
Porcelain Mask
x4
2
Teacher of Humility
x4
3
Auralian Merchant
x4
3
Desecrate
x2
3
Perilous Research
x2
3
Shepherd's Horn
x4
3
Talir's Sanctum
x4
4
Vara, Vengeance-Seeker
x4
4
Xenan Obelisk
x4
Shadow Sigil
x4
Time Sigil
x9
Crest of Mystery
x4
Seat of Mystery
x4
Xenan Banner
x4
View Deck on Shiftstoned
https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/UbChmDFWbsQ/xenan-rats
But I have a question: I'm in love with rat cage decks but I find them too inconsistent because they depend almost exclusively on rat cage itself. You even decided to not include a rat cage in the market. And so the question is: how does your list perform when you do not draw a rat cage in the first 3-4 turns? Have you got enough survaivability to build your relics?And finally, have you considered primal to include severin mad mage, display and stampede?
Anyway, the idea is great and I will craft 3 copies of perilous research to try your list ;)
I haven't found Rat Cage as important as you'd think - early game they're not much more than a throwaway Onslaught enabler, and by the time you actually need it Glimpse massively increases your chances of hitting them anyway. If anything Lethrai Courtier is the card I want the most at the start, but everything helps towards the plan.
Aside from Severin, I'm not sure primal would contribute much to the gameplan. Bazaar Stampede I've thought about but that would only help if you either got lucky off Rat Cage or have already snowballed out. I had this as Auralian originally but in terms of hitting undepleted power
on critical turns, Xenan just ran smoother. I do think there's an equally good TPS build here, but it would be a very different deck!
Rat Cage isn't in the market because the Time pieces being consistent is far more important - that being said it could probably do with refinement. The Praxis Arcanum in theory smooths out the Glimpse turns but in practise is a distraction when things are going sideways, and Dissociate has never been useful either. Maybe Passage of Eons and another card to help survive the early game might be better.
Only just started taking this outside of Gauntlet so can't comment on strong or weak matchups yet, but it seems to do fairly well at catching control decks off-guard. There's enough cheap disruption that it can disable key finishers against aggro, but so far the plan has been to try and stall out enough to snowball and hope for the best. I've won about as many aggro matchups as I've lost, but mostly by luck of the draw and on 1 or 2 health.
Last thing: have you considered Etched Monolith or even Death Pit in the market? Might be too imaginative but, if you manage to combo one of those relics with Alarming Findings, that would be glorious!!
I made my own list with Primal. If you are interested this is the link.
Anyway, I can't wait to see some of your new brews!!
perilous research is pretty high up on my craft list although im dust starved atm
just one suggestion, consider Lumen Reclaimer for market so you dont deck out, although I have no idea if you have run into this issue