ArenaDecks.com: Explorer: Citadel Explore

Deck
3 Aetherflux Reservoir
3 Bolas's Citadel
4 Wildgrowth Walker
4 Jadelight Ranger
4 Merfolk Branchwalker
4 Seekers' Squire
4 Woe Strider
4 Collected Company
4 Binding the Old Gods
4 Prosperous Innkeeper
3 Forest
3 Swamp
4 Karn's Bastion
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Deathcap Glade
4 Darkbore Pathway

Overview

The combination of Bolas's Citadel and explore creatures is a powerful combination. Bolas's Citadel lets you play cards off the top of your deck for the low cost of a little life. But cards like Wildgrowth Walker, Aetherflux Resevoir, and Prosperous Innkeeper pay us back for our low average mana value.

Citadel does not allow us to play lands, but explore help us there too by grabbing extras off the top of our deck. Combined with Woe Strider to scry them to the bottom and Collected Company to smooth things out we tend to play quite a few cards in very rapid succession.

Bolas's Citadel

This enchantment is one of the key cards in our deck. It lets us play cards off the top of our deck for life instead of mana. This can get very broken when just about everything you play is gaining you more life then your spending.

Explore

Explore is an Ixalan Mechanic that lets us look at the top of our deck, if it's a land we put it into our hand, if not we put a +1/+1 counter on the creature and can put the card in our graveyard. This does a couple of things, first it helps us hit our land drops by pulling lands off the top of our deck, second it helps us keep citadel rolling by keeping lands off the top when possible.

Lifegain

One of the downsides of Citadel when your playing it fairly is that your life tends to run out quickly. Our deck tries to use the low mana value of most of our spells, along with life gain effects to offset or eliminate that loss so we can play a ton of cards off the top of our deck and really swing the game.

Getting a couple Wildgrowth Walkers, Prosperous Innkeepers, or Aetherflux Resevoirs going can make it pretty pain free to abuse citadel to it's maximum. Aetherflux Reservoir also serves as a win con letting us hit our opponent in the face for a ton of damage.

Assistance

We also have a few cards who's job it is to help smooth things out and help us win.

Collected Company gives us some selection that can blow opponents out at instant speed, letting us pickup combo pieces or some blockers. Woe Strider helps us keep the top of our deck land free so we can keep playing cards. Finally Karn's Bastion just gives us a little more power when we need to finish the game aggressively, letting our explore counters turn into a real threat.

Finally Binding the Old Gods gives us a little removal and some ramp to help us hit Citadel on time.