During the dark days of companion spring, I tried to slot Yorion into Curses. The package of omen of the sea/trial of ambition plus Yorion/Estrids invocation felt very good. Both enablers are almost playable on their own and your engines fit the current FIRE hellscape model of guaranteed value plus running away with the game. Of course, being neither an artifact nor creature helps avoid oko disrupting your engine. It didn’t mesh well with the fast mana and land base of curses, but I always wanted to revisit it.
The name is based on a Canadian dessert, usually involving blueberries and blackberries, by analogy with the other enlightened tutor based decks strawberry shortcake and parfait.
We need redundancy as a Yorion deck, so Aminatou (the best 3 cmc pw that doesn’t see play in legacy imo) and 3feri were added as backup engines. Court of grace and reality acid were added as additional enablers. Aminatou plus is similar to a baby jace 0, so it made sense to fill out the rest of the slots with an Esper miracles shell.
The discard and enlightened tutor package serve to remedy Yorion piles usually horrible combo mus, while synergizing with the planeswalkers and estrids.
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
2 Tundra
3 Sea
2 Karakas
2 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Arcum’s Astrolabe
4 Omen of the Sea
4 Trial of Ambition
4 Aminatou
4 Estrid’s Invocation
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
2 Reality Acid
2 Court of Grace
2 Entreat the Angels
2 Terminus
4 Force of Will
2 Force of Negation
4 Enlightened tutor
1 Yorion
1 Stoney Silence
1 Torpor Orb
1 Act of Authority
1 Back to Basics
1 Nevermore
1 Deafening Silence
2 Rest In Peace
2 Engineered Plague
Why could this deck be good? Every brew should have a premise why it is not just bad X imo.
Current legacy has shown that engines based around flickering (goblins), enchantments (rg lands) or Yorion (D&T) can compete. Every other deck needs an unfair element or plays the UG haymakers themselves (except for UR delver I guess). Well this deck uses all three methods to a great extent. Combo decks have adapted to the current control decks plans of forcing everything by playing Defense grid, pyroblast, and allosaurus Shepherd. Playing those cards instead of veil, makes them vulnerable To discard once again. This makes playing Esper over Bant or Uw defensible. Bant decks have shown that mystic sanctuary justifies not splashing 4th colours.
The closest decks to this one are Esper vial (soul herder is an almost identical engine to estrids invocation) and mark voght’s snow miracles (miracles plus sanctuary package).
Advantages vs Snow miracles
E tutor package gives you a sledgehammer against unfair mus
Discard gives you multiple angles vs combo decks instead of just forcing everything
JTMS is too slow nowadays, having a 3 cmc version of that effect allows you to rely more heavily on miracles.
Yorion is a bomb in slow mus, and 3feri/reality acid/trial makes it more tempo Efficient than in other decks.
Cons:
Uro, carpet, library, and blasts/veil are all extremely good in fair blue mus, especially delver.
Advantages vs Esper vial:
Discard/Etutor means we are more disruptive turns 1 and 2.
Enchantments are harder to interact with than creatures, so our engine is less disruptable.
Terminus is better than plague engineer in several mus.
Cons:
Weaker mana denial
No g1 tutors
Slower clock
Vial is a house vs delver
Last edited by Reeplcheep; 01-14-2021 at 11:31 AM.
Not great with 80 card numbers, but you have high cmcs, high wasteland risk, and this need to aggro-out basics leading to Sanctuary offline. Sanctuary can only buy back Terminus to go up a card.
Without Oko, 4x Astro isn't competitive, but you're also trying to fill slots to 80. In 60 card deck, optimal no-Oko Astrolabe is x1 slot with x1 or x2 E Tutor (maindeck), this allows keeping basic Plains hands, cycling E-tutor, and making your own Gush with Teferi.
Aminatoa is linking to an 8 drop sorc, not the PW. Looking at your PWs, I'm not seeing a great plan vs Oko; at least play some 3cmc Kaya. Consider Moat x1 with E-Tutor here.
On recursion, Sevinne's and Heliod's is far superior to Sanctuary imitating Mirri's Guile by necro'ing Ponder.
Main impression is to shrink deck to 60 for consistency and clean up the susceptibility to Wasteland. To compete vs FIRE with a do-nothing (Estrid's), it's important to tank its slots down to 1x or 2x at the most, using E-Tutor to maintain build-around. Another example of this philosophy is Aluren using Watcher for Tomorrow to take slots away from Aluren. In the same way, Food Chain can mill extras out of deck with their second casting of the spell that exiles 3 and draws 1 (the newer Foresight).
In terms of cuts, -8 lands, -2 Aminatoa, -2 Reality Acid, -3 Estrid, -2 IoK, -3 Astro. That's -20. Need to add Sevinne's and E-Tutor (at least 2 more nonland slots). Really dislike splitting 1cmc priorities with off colors (white and black) so it's either replace Plows or dump the Thoughtseize. With WW on Court you're priced into Plow, but the need for black on turn 2 for Edict-enchant becomes problematic quickly.
The color identity crisis has to make us ask why we're not playing UBw Standstill, with the cleaner black 1-drop removal, into Drown, into considering white for the first time on turn 3 (Teferi, Kaya, Sevinne's - the three best white payoff spells in the game).
Good criticisms. I am unsure about the criticisms on the mana base; I basically just copied the mana base from the snow miracles list http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3650621that won the sat. Challenge. I only scaled it up and pivoted green to black. My average cmc is lower than that deck, my land count is proportionally higher and I am not splashing for blasts. Unless you think in 80cards Astrolabe is not seen enough to enable sanctuary off of basics. Mark Vogt is an excellent deck builder so I assumed these builds would not have such fundamental issues.
Card link fixed: Aminatou, the fateshifter. With astrolabe, Aminatou is a personal howling mine which seems better or as good as making a 3/3 or paying 1 to draw 2 once. 1. The abyss of trial plus engine biding time until Reality acid recurring vindicates or 2. terminus into 4/4s every turn are the primary plans, although the plan A is to just discard it. 1x Moat could be great.
Mystic Sanctuary Recurring terminus, forces and entreat seemed extremely strong vs go wide/combo/durdle respectively, and tutorability seemed important in an 80card deck. If it lets me fetch more conservatively though I could see the argument for your alternatives.
With 12 cards that it comboes with, all of which can’t easily be removed and are a 2 for 1 if decayed, do you really think estrids will be dead often? Extras can be discarded with aminatou plus, brainstorm, fow or fon. But perhaps etutor is better if I can afford the card disadvantage in fair mus.
Agree with most of the non engine cuts if I go to 60. Without Yorion though I worry the actual cards that win the game become too few and slow, exposing yourself to surgical and ultra late game engines like fotd. I do dislike splitting 1 cmc but without plow my Lage matchups tank and white court/miracles are much better than black ones. (Not to mention etutor and sideboard hate). Hullbreacher snow has hierarchy and plow, plus blasts/veils/deafening silence sb.
Cutting plow is doable but that doesn’t make much sense if we want etutor main. We will never be better than the uro/carpet deck at beating delver; so cutting discard seems to remove our competitive advantage in unfair mus.
I’m not an expert on your most up to date standstill list, but the advantage Over standstill would be that the blink engine can be removal too, so it is more tempo positive and better when behind on board. You also can run terminus which helps with elves and gaak. Arguably, mystic sanctuary is a more available and more resilient land then factory.
Thanks again for your insight.
Some cards that have excellent synergy with Aminatou imo :
Detention Sphere
Oath of Gideon
Narset, Parter of Veils
The main thing is that Oko/Uro users have time (lifegain). They're allowed to fall behind and then bound forward with Uro ramp (buys back lost land drop) and +3 life negates a Delver hit. On the back end they have Astro and Oko which immediately kills all but a list of 6 legacy-playable PWs (from non-Oko decks).
While snow is drawing runners like Oko, Uro, and Ice-Fang you can't really afford to draw running Estrid's with nothing to copy. When recovering from challenged mana/reaching 3 for the first time, you need a play with adequate compensation (this is where Sevinne's excels, securing 3 mana position with Fetch necro). Estrid's banks heavily on other cards resolving before it, and by itself it won't secure your path to a PW (vs Daze or Wasteland).
I get the payoff of Estrid's, but looked at in isolation as a cmc 3 play, it is lacking. I don't see much benefit in running even more chances at a failed 3 mana execute vs FIRE (Oko/Uro). Too hard to claw back into a game if you're deferring your first threatening play to cmc 4.
^the strategy a FIRE pilot should take is let turn 1 play resolve, counter any 2-drop enchant, let you tap out for Estrid's, slam Oko/Uro, and run away with the game. So while it's great to want to build around Estrid's, it's also the worst card in your deck.
Missed the Entreat, but yes this is an example of a card that is worth buying back. More WW issues however, pointing away from making any turn 1 black plays (Fetch Usea or deploy Usea should be most avoided opener). If that's your only credible wincon, you need to find another instead of playing harder into Surgical in postboard games with Sanctuary.
I like where this deck is going. I’m putting it together for some testing in the near future. Sarcomancy was a sick find!
I think the best direction to go for a tokens list would be an Esper delverblade shell
Compared to delver and SFM, token based threats are a bit lower power but we would be quite resilient to removal and have insane catchup mechanics (estrids or yorion as an army in a can). We don’t need as many spells as delver so we can curve threat into threat, making up for the lower individual power level.
Draft aggro list:
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Marsh Flats
4 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
4 Wasteland
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Thoughtseize
4 Sarcomancy
4 Intangible Virtue
4 Bitterblossom
2 Legion’s Landing
4 Daze
4 History of Benalia
2 Aminatou, the Fateshifter
4 Estrid’s Invocation
4 Force of Will
2 Force of Negation
4 Enlightened tutor
1 Yorion
1 Torpor Orb
1 Damping Sphere
1 Graftdigger’s Cage
1 Engineered Plague
1 Pithing needle
1 Detention Sphere.
4 Mystical Dispute
The deck has a lot of 3 drops for a wasteland deck but so does Esper vial which does fine. No catch alls in the 80 card deck, instead we are trying consistency through redundancy. Make a bunch of dudes, kill them. Deck should have an excellent combo my due to having all 4 pillars of combo hate: discard, counters, clock, hate. Not sure about delver or fair non blue matchups but at least on paper this is a lot of things control doesn’t like seeing.
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