As Foretold
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a time counter on As Foretold.
Once each turn, you may pay 0 rather than pay the mana cost for a spell you cast with converted mana cost X or less, where X is the number of time counters on As Foretold.
This card received some hype on the Amonkhet spoiler thread, but it seemed to die down after people were contextualizing it within Legacy. It was understandable at the time, since BUG already has Shardless Agent and UWx Control didn't really need an enabler like this given how powerful Miracle cards were in tandem with SDT.
Well, now that Sensei's Divining Top is banned, UWx Control needs to go back to the drawing board in order to function as a valid archetype. Without Top, cards such as Terminus, Entreat the Angels, and Predict become more unwieldy. Monastery Mentor isn't quite as busted of a finisher without being able to chain Tops back-to-back.
I am sure a lot of players will go back to incorporating Stoneforge Mystic, but another direction worth pursuing is using As Foretold to enable chaining together broken Suspend cards, namely Restore Balance and Ancestral Vision. But it's also worth considering other options such as Wheel of Fate to replenish your hand. Besides letting us cast Suspend cards immediately, if the enchantment goes unanswered it also provides a method mana fixing and casting 'free' spells on our opponent's turns.
To fully take advantage of Restore Balance, we want to make the trade as lopsided as possible. We could consider jumping ahead on mana via Sol-lands or artifact mana, e.g. Mox Diamond. For more typical lands, Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds can help us retrieve our losses. These also play well with the creature-wrathing aspect of the card, as we can utilize Man-Lands such as Mishra's Factory, Faerie Conclave and similar such cards. Another option is to run creatures with Flash and play them after Wrathing the board: Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique, Venser, etc.
Discarding cards seems to be a bit more difficult in a UWx shell, however we can consider running additional 'Pitch' cards: besides the prerequisite Force of Will, there's also Misdirection and even perhaps Commandeer. It's worth noting that Restore Balance doesn't effect planeswalkers, so those provide another angle of attack. If we run Esper, Liliana of the Veil provides a method of discarding cards. Ideally, RBalance will just about Mind Twist your opponent, which would be especially helpful against decks not running creatures.
Here's an example list:
22 Lands (some sort of mixture that includes Fetches, Duals, Wasteland, maybe a Karakas and/or other utility lands, and some man-lands)
4 FoW
4 BStorm
4 As Foretold
4 Restore Balance
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Jace, TMS
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Council's Judgement
1 Gideon/Elspeth
2 Counterspell
1 Spell Snare
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendllion Clique
1 Pyroblast
I'm sure that the mixture of cards needs to be adjusted, and perhaps 1-2 Entreat the Angels is still worth fitting in there as a finisher. This is just a rough starting place. I think that the direction the deck takes will largely depend on how the format evolves without Miracles around.
1. This looks more like a new deck, than a Single Card Discussion.
2. You're not going to break parity on Balance in a Control deck without Artifact mana.
3. The best thing about Top being banned, to me, is that people will start to brew again. Especially regarding U/W shells. All recent forays ended in, "Isn't this just a worse version of Miracles?"
~ Team Unicorn MottoOriginally Posted by MacGruber
I think you want to go UW with Crucible, Tombs, Planeswalkers, and Mox Diamonds. Balance is the only card that might actually be strong than the "Power 9". It's Wrath+Armageddon+Mind Twist for two mana, and it's one sided. You might also want to look at the "expertise" cards as an additional way to cast the suspend cards, although none of them work particularly well with Restore, they are all aces with Vision. Expertise Card -> Vision would be an amazing play to make after a Balance.
Restore Balance also doesn't check Enchantments, so maybe some Starfield of Nyx shenanigans?
The SCD guidelines do suggest a sample deck.
This card saw some discussion in the spoiler thread. If it enables something that recovers card advantage - Balancing Act, Wheel of Fate, or Ancestral Vision then it could be OK, but otherwise it seems terrible to weak.
It seems like the obvious place to try it would be some kind of Shardless variant.
I an not sure I would want to run Shardless and Balance in the same deck though and Balance seems like the most powerful thing you can do with this card.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I like the idea of playing some number of Ancient Tomb. This would enable a Turn 2 As Foretold, a Turn 3 Planeswalker, etc. But the question is, how many copies? I'm not sure the deck really wants to play any Sol Lands unless it was also playing Chalice of the Void.
This is likely Danger Of Cool Things, but perhaps Zuran Orb (or some other sacrificial outlet) would be a way to turn RBalance into straight-up Armageddon. Unless your opponent held up mana to Disenchant/ADecay your As Foretold, it's not even all that problematic for you to lose all of your lands, since you can use AF to cast spells without lands.
So, we did play around with a few configurations of UWx As Foretold yesterday, trying to figure out how to abuse the card. We specifically looked at Restore Balance and Ancestral Vision (leaving out Wheel of Fate for the moment). There will be no deck lists, but a few notable observations for anyone interested.
We tried to accelerate into As Foretold with Sol Lands and either Lotus Petal / Mox Diamond / Chrome Mox. We played an Enlightened Tutor package to possibly T1 Tutor T2 As Foretold -> Vision / Balance. Support came from Brainstorm and Ponder, with the usual 4 FoW. We went creatureless to blank the opponent's spot removal and to guarantee at least a board wipe when Restore Balance resolved.
- If (and that is a pretty shaky if!) As Foretold sticks, you are going to have a LOT of Mana. You won't need lands any longer, and due to Restore Balance, you will find yourself scrambling to get rid of them.
- Resolving Restore Balance did kill the creatures and maybe let them discard a few cards or sac a land, but that wasn't enough. Getting the last card in their hand was often hard (being stuck with a counterspell or worse, a not yet castable card). Also, many decks don't need many lands to function. Setting up devastating Restore Balances proved to be fairly tough, at least in a UW shell full of reactive spells like StP and FoW.
- Resolving Balance does not win the game. We played Jaces and the one Keranos, but that was neither fast nor always available.
- Resolving Ancestral Vision immediately feels good, but due to the large acceleration package, we often drew lots of fluff.
We tried more speedy versions and more controllish versions, and we think the core of the deck with As Foretold / Restore Balance / Ancestral Vision is very powerful. However, the deck felt either like a bad "New Miracles" or a bad Sneak and Show. Any ideas out there in what direction that deck might go?
Some ideas we couldn't try out:
- Armageddon. As Foretold is probably one of the best mana rocks out there itself, so maybe it's time to just kill all the lands once they're no longer needed?
- UR As Foretold (with Cities and Petals) would be able to play quick Blood Moons and run Red Blasts.
Did anyone else tinker with the card and find a home for it?
I've been thinking about burning wish foretold. You could have a toolbox of different answers in the board; sweepers and slaughter games type of cards then a haymaker sorcery for the late game.
How many utility lands did you play?
Just imagine DnT played 23 plains...
I know you can't exactly compare Vial to As Foretold, but there certainly are a lot of interesting parallels.
This is why I think it's foolish to be using As Foretold with Suspend cards. The best use case is not making unplayable cards playable. The best use case is in giving you mana for days. You can start barfing out your Brainstorms and Ponders like candy and, later on, countermagic as well.
Maybe you can run it with Orim's Chant and similar stuff.
The classic balance deck used The Rack and 8 Bolts to get ahead on damage and incidental spot removal. Adam Maysonet's deck also had Bazaar of Baghdad to rifle through the deck while whittling down his hand on the cheap. I messed with Greater Gargadon and found it good. There is also Kaerveks Spite.
I think the deck ideas are vast and deserve a lot of investigation.
The real issue, and the first thing that must be addressed is this: How do you design such a deck so that it does not suck in the absence of As Foretold? If this can not be managed in a robust way, the deck is doomed to be a weak combo deck.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
I've been tinkering with it in modern and found that As Foretold is great at breaking mana parity, but it could break it even more. Ancestral Visions and the desire for a control deck to run more lands means Restore Balance feels really clunky and fighting against what the deck is trying to do.
In modern, I've been playing Living End in conjunction with Amonkhet cycling creatures to make a Living End control deck, where Living End also functions as a 3 mana board wipe in a pinch (As Foretold->Living End).
Another strategy was to play Blood Moon, but Path to Exile being the best kill spell available really fought against what the Blood Moon deck was trying to do. In Legacy, a UWr As Foretold Blood Moon deck would work much better (on paper) using Swords to Plowshares. Something else to consider is a Crucible of Worlds/Wasteland+Ghost Quarter control deck which further exacerbates mana advantage, just like Blood Moon, but is better in some matchups and worse in others.
I just see it as fairly unviable. It's a way to cheat mana, but costs 3 mana. That's self-contradicting purpose in legacy. Full stop. [yes I realize that S&T cheats a mere 15 mana]
Even with mana rocks you're likely to leave your opponent with 2 mana. That just seems meh
But! Maybe this is how Myth Realized sees play
I agree with your perspective, Tescrin. It's a strong point. I still think it could be possible, and that if it were obvious how to do this, I would not be interested.
Looking at Breakthrough now. That card is going to pull a lot of weight. If I am reading As Foretold correctly, I can pay larger amounts than zero for x, meaning that Breakthrough gets stronger as the game progresses while also being perfect early. Also, Tolaria West. The pieces are available to make the main sequence happen with consistency, I think. Now it is a matter of addressing my stated primary concern: Can the deck be made to function reasonably well in the absence of its namesake card?
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
I mean you could maybe play etutor to find it, or some of the expertise cycle cards to more consistently be able to cast the suspend cards from hands. An Esper Shell gives a reasonable wrath that let's you cast suspend things?
That's not legal:
(You can look at the gatherer comments for Fist of Suns which has similar templating for confirmation.)107.3b If a player is casting a spell that has an {X} in its mana cost, the value of X isn’t defined by the text of that spell, and an effect lets that player cast that spell while paying neither its mana cost nor an alternative cost that includes X, then the only legal choice for X is 0. This doesn’t
apply to effects that only reduce a cost, even if they reduce it to zero. See rule 601, “Casting Spells.”
5-Color As Foretold Fuckit Control
Just play 4 As Foretold, tutors and Serum Powders to go get it, Misdirection/Force to protect it, then all cheap 5 color good stuff you can imagine. Counterspell, Smallpox, Goyf, Hymn, Orim's Chant, Balance, Wheels, Armageddon, etc.
It's also in the gatherer rulings for As Foretold:
4/18/2017: If the card has X in its mana cost, you must choose 0 as the value of X when casting it for another cost that doesn’t include X. For example, if there are five time counters on As Foretold and you choose to use its effect to cast Pull from Tomorrow, X must be 0. X can’t be 2, even though the spell’s converted mana cost would be 4.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
Thanks for clearing that out for me. Better I learn it now.
As it happens, I am leaning on a storm-ish shell atm. I have a strong suspicion that this deck can not succeed as a control shell in Legacy. In that context, the X spell issue is a non-issue.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
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