UW Enduring Ideal

[kombatkiwi]

4 Enduring Ideal

4 Wall of Omens

4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Runed Halo
4 Cast Out
4 Stasis Snare
1 Dovescape
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Solemnity
1 Endless Horizons
1 Mobilization

4 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2 Mistveil Plains
2 Irrigated Farmland
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Calciform Pools
10 Plains

53 Cards

This is not a full 60 but I would describe this is as the core I am building off of.

It doesn't make sense to me how none of the Enduring Ideal lists seem to play Wall of Omens. It's the pefect card for a White-Devotion control/prison deck. One argument would be that it's not good alongside Porphyry Nodes, but I don't like that card either. Against creatureless decks Nodes can't even give you 1 devotion and even if your opponent does have creatures it will still eventually sacrifice itself.

Leyline/Halo don't need explanation. Powerful cards to protect yourself and both give 2 devotion each. In some ways this deck is a metagame choice depending on whether maindeck Leyline is viable or not, and I think that this is an okay spot at the moment (vs Valakut, Storm, 8-Rack etc).

Cast Out is solid removal, or helps you dig for Enduring Ideal or lands. Having removal for any permanent is important because resolved planeswalkers are often a problem for this deck.

I am playing 4 Stasis Snare and 0 Ghostly Prison, I don't like Ghostly Prison because the nature of your 'pillow fort' deck means that games often go long and the opponent will eventually draw enough lands to pay for it. Taking the creature out of play is also often important compared to just stopping it from attacking (e.g. Tasigur, Thought Knot Seer, Pikula, Freebooter). These points alone would possibly be an argument for Snare over Prison but the fact that it also provides twice as much devotion puts it way ahead in my opinion. Both Snare and Cast out having flash is also more important than it might initially seem, breaking up company combos, ravager plays, hasty titans, etc.

1 Dovescape is absolutely essential for Enduring Ideal, there are plenty of matchups/gamestates where you just find this card immediately and your opponent can't possibly win.

In some situations when you resolve Enduring Ideal you are about to die, and the card that makes it most likely for you to not die is Phyrexian Unlife, which effectively fogs your opponent for one turn no matter what (unlike Worship or Sphere of Safety, which can often be broken through by the opponent). Then the next turn you search for Solemnity, which alongside unlife prevents all damage. Form of the Dragon also does a similar thing to Solemnity in this situation while saving 1 deck slot by also being a win condition, but I hate the fact that it's not castable (you can just play Solemnity on turn 3 to gain 1 devotion and it will already be in play when Ideal resolves so you can 'skip' 1 search). Touch of the Eternal is a castable card that functions kind of like Form of the Dragon by resetting your life total, but the fact it triggers in your upkeep and not at the end of the turn means that searching for it after Phyrexian Unlife will often give your opponent a 1-turn window to kill you.

Endless Horizons is a pretty good card, it's a Phyrexian Arena that adds white devotion, there arent many cards that do this. It's also a tutor for Mistveil Plains in case you need to put a critical enchantment back in your deck. With the Amonkhet cycling lands (the UW and GW ones are nonbasic plains) it can also act as an actual draw engine.

Mobilization is the primary wincon. It's castable from hand to help ramp devotion and after comboing off you can usually make a ton of mana with Nykthos to spam out tokens. I like it better than Heliod because it's cheaper to cast. I also like it better than Sacred Mesa, as while the activated ability is worse, not having a 1W upkeep cost is better when you are trying to 'curve out' playing a card every turn to ramp devotion. Luminarch Ascension is also a good alternative but under the Solemnity lock you can't put quest counters on it.

The manabase is pretty self-explanatory, Calciform Pools should be noted for being disabled by Solemnity but is still worth including. Maybe I could add 1 Celestial Colonnade.

There are 7 slots remaining and I am not 100% sure how to fill those.

I do want 1 more enchantment win condition in case the Mobilization gets exiled somehow but I am not sure what it should be. There arent very many good options. None of the mill enchantments in blue are very good and they don't give devotion. The only other alt-win as an enchantment in UW is Near-Death Experience which is cool for giving 3 devotion but seems impossible to reliably work. The only other option seems to be a second thing that makes tokens, or maybe Starfield of Nyx?

Another approach would be to play an additional lockpiece as an 'indirect' win condition, like Zur's Weirding or Shared Fate, but I'm not sure how good these are. Another thing to consider with these blue enchantments is that it's likely that you never actually want to hardcast them before resolving enduring ideal and therefore they might as well be Form of the Dragon. (It's also worth noting that if you can assemble a lock there is a hidden win condition already built into the deck, which is decking the oppoonent with Mistveil Plains)

I have played Overwhelming Splendor and Peace of Mind maindeck for a while and have been liking them. Splendor is a good complement to Dovescape against decks like Company where you are more worried about their creatures than their spells. Peace of Mind is okay for the lifegain but is mainly included as a tutorable way to discard key enchantments so you can tuck them back into the deck with Mistveil Plains. The reason why I didn't put them in the above decklist is because I'm not sure if they're just a 'crutch' and not really needed.

Apart from this there are a number of cards I have tried which are good sometimes and underwhelming at other times:
- Nevermore/Gideon's Intervention
- Privileged Position / Greater Auramancy (More important in matchups where your opponent can Decay Unlife through Dovescape)
Copy Enchantment (Notable for comboing with the above pair to give your entire board hexproof while having more utility than just playing 2x Auramancy)
- More anti-creature / removal cards like Sphere of Safety/Ghostly Prison/Faith's Fetters/Prison Term/Detention Sphere etc

I liked Suppression Field in a format with Twin/Pod but I'm not a big fan at the moment. Azcanta seems like a good card in theory but in a deck of all permanents I think it might be too hard to flip it.

Apart from that you can just play some generic good card like a planeswalker, Path to Exile / Supreme Verdict, and I have even played 1 copy of Mana Tithe before. Ardent Plea might also be okay just as a free devotion but this is obviously very underpowered. Having a couple of additional threatening cards (e.g. Elspeth Suns Champion, or maybe even Sigil of the Empty Throne, even though it does nothing after Ideal resolves) is good because otherwise the deck is so threat-light that you can struggle against people who play counterspells.

The reason why I play blue over any other splash is to play Spreading Seas in the sideboard, because Tron (both versions but especially the Sylvan Scrying one) is by far the worst matchup (they have many ways to wipe your enchantments but all of them are expensive: All is Dust, Ugin, Karn, Worldbreaker, Ulamog, Oblivion Stone etc). An example sideboard would be something like the following
1 Boseiju
3 Spreading Seas
3 Stony Silence
3 Rest in Peace
1 Aura of Silence
1 Curse of Exhaustion
1 Anti Land-Destruction card (Terra Eternal or Sacred Ground)
2 Porphyry Nodes / Wrath