crowe_1
08-17-2017, 12:04 PM
When Solemnity was first spoiled, the implications for Legacy were immediately apparent. Its interactions with Dark Depths and Cumulative Upkeep seemed viable, as well as its fringe uses against mechanics like Infect or cards like Walking Ballista. Since the card came out, however, I feel like the community gave up on Solemnity without giving it a fair shake. Here's my admittedly unoriginal attempt to make it a "real" card, and input is appreciated.
First, here's the initial draft:
Deck: Solemn Depths
Counts : 60 main / 15 sideboard
Creatures:12
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
4 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Ramunap Excavator
Spells:21
3 Mox Diamond
4 Crop Rotation
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Life from the Loam
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Sylvan Library
1 Phyrexian Unlife
4 Solemnity
Lands:27
1 Bojuka Bog
3 Dark Depths
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
1 Plains
4 Savannah
1 Scrubland
2 Thespian's Stage
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
Sideboard:15
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
2 Containment Priest
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Ground Seal
2 Krosan Grip
2 Ramunap Excavator
4 Leyline of Sanctity
Dark Depths is your primary win condition while Knight of the Reliquary and the other beaters can get there if Marit Lage fails. The deck also contains a formidable mana denial component composed of recurring Wastelands and Ghost Quarters, with a slew of tutorable utility lands to interact with graveyards, creatures, and even direct damage. Finally, Solemnity removes most of the downsides from Glacial Chasm and Phyrexian Unlife, often preventing the opponent from being able to win at all until the cards are removed.
Why play Solemnity over Vampire Hexmage?
Vampire Hexmage has been the quickest secondary Dark Depths enabler since before the Legend Rule change allowed Thespian's Stage to come into the spotlight. It is one less mana than Solemnity and allows you to make a 20/20 at instant speed. It is still effective and provides redundancy for the combo, as demonstrated in Turbo Depths.
The problem with Vampire Hexmage is that it's a one-and-done, and sometimes a one-for-two if the opponent can interrupt your combo or otherwise remove Marit Lage. To make a 20/20, both Hexmage and Dark Depths have to die. If the combo fails, you need to find new copies of Component A (Hexmage/Stage) and Component B (Dark Depths) to get going again.
While slower to play, Solemnity offers much more redundancy and inevitability than Hexmage. Once Solemnity is on the battlefield, every Dark Depths that enters play becomes a must-answer threat. If the opponent answers Marit Lage or Wastelands your Dark Depths, your Component A is still live; you just need to find another Component B, which is highly likely to happen quickly with full sets of Crop Rotations and KotR, as well as Sylvan Libraries for filtering and Loam/Excavator for recursion. It is not uncommon to be able to create three Marit Lage tokens in one turn to overwhelm answers. And on the topic of answers, Solemnity gets around one of the more common answers to Depths combo: Pithing Needle. Finally, as a relevant bonus, Enchantments are probably the hardest-to-remove card type in Legacy at the moment, with the vast majority of decks being totally unable to remove them during game one.
Problems with the Deck Right Now
Combo Matchup - Unlike most versions of Loam, we are not going to run Chalice of the Void because Crop Rotation is pretty essential to the strategy. As a result of this, we get to run Deathrite Shaman for combo hate, acceleration, and winning through our own Glacial Chasm, but DRS is generally not as effective as Chalice at stopping combo. I decided to add a couple of Sphere of Resistance supplemented by Enlightened Tutor, a Gaddock Teeg supplemented by GSZ, and a Bojuka Bog which can be tutored multiple ways. Still, I feel like there could be better options against the combo matchups.
Creature Removal - I am not sure how essential it is to remove opposing creatures here. We have a Karakas, Glacial Chasm and Maze of Ith to stop attacks from most of the field in a pinch, and Marit Lage will often simply not care what they have while it ends the game. Opposing DRS I can see being a problem, but decks that run DRS tend to be pretty soft to the single 20/20 in general so recursion might not be an issue. I thought about adding a Punishing Fire package or StP, but that would be at the cost of redundancy for the mana denial strategy or for Marit Lage so I don't know.
Card Choices and Interactions
Life from the Loam - Allows recursion of Wastelands and Ghost Quarters, as well as Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage. Dredging has a high chance of growing Knight of the Reliquary to unmanageable size. Is pretty bonkers with Azusa in play.
Ramunap Excavator - Tutorable land recursion that does not use the stack. If you use your Dark Depths on your main phase, you can just play it again before it gets eaten by opposing DRS. This card is also bonkers with Azusa in play.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking - This card allows you to quickly remove all of your opponent's lands from the board when combined with Wasteland/Ghost Quarter and Ramunap/Loam. Even if they run a lot of basics, you can run them out in only a few turns. Azusa is pretty unremarkable on her own, however, and could be "win-more".
Crop Rotation - This is your Swiss-army knife. At instant-speed, it answers just about any threat or pumps out a Marit Lage end-of-turn to swing for lethal. Once Solemnity is out, this is a one-mana instant speed 20/20 flying indestructible, and with multiples or a KotR it is easy to overwhelm removal like Swords or even Karakas. Getting Glacial Chasm during your opponent's alpha strike can save you the game.
Knight of the Reliquary - A huge beater, or a repeatable tutor in this deck. Gets bigger with Loam and Crop Rotation and can overpower many board states on its own. Neat interaction with Maze of Ith where you can attack and untap it after damage.
Deathrite Shaman - The best creature in Legacy, it acts as acceleration and maindeck graveyard hate. There should be plenty of lands in graveyards to feed it, at the minor cost of shrinking Knight.
Ghost Quarter - Hits basic lands to run the opponent out of mana completely. With Azusa and Excavator in play, it can eat three lands per turn. Slow on its own, so it would probably come out of Azusa did.
Phyrexian Unlife - You can't die outside decking if this is in play with Solemnity. At the very least, it gives you 10 more points of damage to work with.
Glacial Chasm - With Solemnity this never gets Cumulative Upkeep counters, so you can never take damage. You can copy it with Stage, recur it with Loam/Excavator, and just generally buy time from attackers in the worst of cases.
Gaddock Teeg - Maindeck tutorable Storm hate that also turns off FoWs. Honestly, this card is less remarkable since the Top ban and might get relegated to the SB.
Sphere of Resistance - Again, I don't feel we want to run Chalice, and we don't run too many creatures so Sphere might (?) be better than Thorn of Amethyst for us overall as combo-hate. Trinisphere might be better than either, since a lot of our business cards are three mana and with mana denial it would be possible to lock an opponent completely out of the game. Not being able to drop Trinisphere on turn one is why I chose Sphere.
Enlightened Tutor - A little extra consistency that can be Solemnity, P Unlife, or a SB enchantment if you need it.
Horizon Canopy - Draw many cards between Azusa, Excavator, and Loam.
Ground Seal - Nonbo with DRS and Loam, but it stops opposing DRS and prevents the opponent from casting Surgical Extraction on your Dark Depths. The extra Excavators in the board would replace Loam so that you can still recur your lands. Ground Seal also draws a card and stops all reanimation spells except Exhume.
I feel the other SB and MD cards are pretty self-explanatory.
The Mana Base is Weird
I'm running a full set of Savannah because in practice I've found colour requirements to be an issue otherwise. This is partially due to the number of colourless producing and non-producing lands in the deck, and partially because Knight eating specific land types can inadvertently lock you out of a colour. One of each basic is present to get around Blood Moon/B2B, and one Scrubland is fetchable to use DRS' drain.
Maybes
Punishing Fire/Grove - Recurrable Weenie removal. Would have to drop a couple of Savannahs, Azusa and maybe GQ.
Swords to Plowshares - The cleanest spot removal in Legacy.
Trinisphere - Slower but arguably more effective combo hate. Would take spot of Sphere.
Orim's Chant - Force spells through or stop Storm cold if you're lucky. Buys time. Would take spot of Sphere.
Sejiri Steppe - Force Marit Lage through blockers or save creatures from StP with a Crop Rotation.
Unburial Rites - Get an essential creature when Loaming.
First, here's the initial draft:
Deck: Solemn Depths
Counts : 60 main / 15 sideboard
Creatures:12
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
4 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Ramunap Excavator
Spells:21
3 Mox Diamond
4 Crop Rotation
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Life from the Loam
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Sylvan Library
1 Phyrexian Unlife
4 Solemnity
Lands:27
1 Bojuka Bog
3 Dark Depths
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
1 Plains
4 Savannah
1 Scrubland
2 Thespian's Stage
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
Sideboard:15
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
2 Containment Priest
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Ground Seal
2 Krosan Grip
2 Ramunap Excavator
4 Leyline of Sanctity
Dark Depths is your primary win condition while Knight of the Reliquary and the other beaters can get there if Marit Lage fails. The deck also contains a formidable mana denial component composed of recurring Wastelands and Ghost Quarters, with a slew of tutorable utility lands to interact with graveyards, creatures, and even direct damage. Finally, Solemnity removes most of the downsides from Glacial Chasm and Phyrexian Unlife, often preventing the opponent from being able to win at all until the cards are removed.
Why play Solemnity over Vampire Hexmage?
Vampire Hexmage has been the quickest secondary Dark Depths enabler since before the Legend Rule change allowed Thespian's Stage to come into the spotlight. It is one less mana than Solemnity and allows you to make a 20/20 at instant speed. It is still effective and provides redundancy for the combo, as demonstrated in Turbo Depths.
The problem with Vampire Hexmage is that it's a one-and-done, and sometimes a one-for-two if the opponent can interrupt your combo or otherwise remove Marit Lage. To make a 20/20, both Hexmage and Dark Depths have to die. If the combo fails, you need to find new copies of Component A (Hexmage/Stage) and Component B (Dark Depths) to get going again.
While slower to play, Solemnity offers much more redundancy and inevitability than Hexmage. Once Solemnity is on the battlefield, every Dark Depths that enters play becomes a must-answer threat. If the opponent answers Marit Lage or Wastelands your Dark Depths, your Component A is still live; you just need to find another Component B, which is highly likely to happen quickly with full sets of Crop Rotations and KotR, as well as Sylvan Libraries for filtering and Loam/Excavator for recursion. It is not uncommon to be able to create three Marit Lage tokens in one turn to overwhelm answers. And on the topic of answers, Solemnity gets around one of the more common answers to Depths combo: Pithing Needle. Finally, as a relevant bonus, Enchantments are probably the hardest-to-remove card type in Legacy at the moment, with the vast majority of decks being totally unable to remove them during game one.
Problems with the Deck Right Now
Combo Matchup - Unlike most versions of Loam, we are not going to run Chalice of the Void because Crop Rotation is pretty essential to the strategy. As a result of this, we get to run Deathrite Shaman for combo hate, acceleration, and winning through our own Glacial Chasm, but DRS is generally not as effective as Chalice at stopping combo. I decided to add a couple of Sphere of Resistance supplemented by Enlightened Tutor, a Gaddock Teeg supplemented by GSZ, and a Bojuka Bog which can be tutored multiple ways. Still, I feel like there could be better options against the combo matchups.
Creature Removal - I am not sure how essential it is to remove opposing creatures here. We have a Karakas, Glacial Chasm and Maze of Ith to stop attacks from most of the field in a pinch, and Marit Lage will often simply not care what they have while it ends the game. Opposing DRS I can see being a problem, but decks that run DRS tend to be pretty soft to the single 20/20 in general so recursion might not be an issue. I thought about adding a Punishing Fire package or StP, but that would be at the cost of redundancy for the mana denial strategy or for Marit Lage so I don't know.
Card Choices and Interactions
Life from the Loam - Allows recursion of Wastelands and Ghost Quarters, as well as Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage. Dredging has a high chance of growing Knight of the Reliquary to unmanageable size. Is pretty bonkers with Azusa in play.
Ramunap Excavator - Tutorable land recursion that does not use the stack. If you use your Dark Depths on your main phase, you can just play it again before it gets eaten by opposing DRS. This card is also bonkers with Azusa in play.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking - This card allows you to quickly remove all of your opponent's lands from the board when combined with Wasteland/Ghost Quarter and Ramunap/Loam. Even if they run a lot of basics, you can run them out in only a few turns. Azusa is pretty unremarkable on her own, however, and could be "win-more".
Crop Rotation - This is your Swiss-army knife. At instant-speed, it answers just about any threat or pumps out a Marit Lage end-of-turn to swing for lethal. Once Solemnity is out, this is a one-mana instant speed 20/20 flying indestructible, and with multiples or a KotR it is easy to overwhelm removal like Swords or even Karakas. Getting Glacial Chasm during your opponent's alpha strike can save you the game.
Knight of the Reliquary - A huge beater, or a repeatable tutor in this deck. Gets bigger with Loam and Crop Rotation and can overpower many board states on its own. Neat interaction with Maze of Ith where you can attack and untap it after damage.
Deathrite Shaman - The best creature in Legacy, it acts as acceleration and maindeck graveyard hate. There should be plenty of lands in graveyards to feed it, at the minor cost of shrinking Knight.
Ghost Quarter - Hits basic lands to run the opponent out of mana completely. With Azusa and Excavator in play, it can eat three lands per turn. Slow on its own, so it would probably come out of Azusa did.
Phyrexian Unlife - You can't die outside decking if this is in play with Solemnity. At the very least, it gives you 10 more points of damage to work with.
Glacial Chasm - With Solemnity this never gets Cumulative Upkeep counters, so you can never take damage. You can copy it with Stage, recur it with Loam/Excavator, and just generally buy time from attackers in the worst of cases.
Gaddock Teeg - Maindeck tutorable Storm hate that also turns off FoWs. Honestly, this card is less remarkable since the Top ban and might get relegated to the SB.
Sphere of Resistance - Again, I don't feel we want to run Chalice, and we don't run too many creatures so Sphere might (?) be better than Thorn of Amethyst for us overall as combo-hate. Trinisphere might be better than either, since a lot of our business cards are three mana and with mana denial it would be possible to lock an opponent completely out of the game. Not being able to drop Trinisphere on turn one is why I chose Sphere.
Enlightened Tutor - A little extra consistency that can be Solemnity, P Unlife, or a SB enchantment if you need it.
Horizon Canopy - Draw many cards between Azusa, Excavator, and Loam.
Ground Seal - Nonbo with DRS and Loam, but it stops opposing DRS and prevents the opponent from casting Surgical Extraction on your Dark Depths. The extra Excavators in the board would replace Loam so that you can still recur your lands. Ground Seal also draws a card and stops all reanimation spells except Exhume.
I feel the other SB and MD cards are pretty self-explanatory.
The Mana Base is Weird
I'm running a full set of Savannah because in practice I've found colour requirements to be an issue otherwise. This is partially due to the number of colourless producing and non-producing lands in the deck, and partially because Knight eating specific land types can inadvertently lock you out of a colour. One of each basic is present to get around Blood Moon/B2B, and one Scrubland is fetchable to use DRS' drain.
Maybes
Punishing Fire/Grove - Recurrable Weenie removal. Would have to drop a couple of Savannahs, Azusa and maybe GQ.
Swords to Plowshares - The cleanest spot removal in Legacy.
Trinisphere - Slower but arguably more effective combo hate. Would take spot of Sphere.
Orim's Chant - Force spells through or stop Storm cold if you're lucky. Buys time. Would take spot of Sphere.
Sejiri Steppe - Force Marit Lage through blockers or save creatures from StP with a Crop Rotation.
Unburial Rites - Get an essential creature when Loaming.