UW Enduring Ideal [Archive]

kombatkiwi

11-16-2017, 04:34 AM

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

Mr. Safety

11-16-2017, 07:15 AM

twndomn

11-16-2017, 10:23 PM

this list is nowhere being on par from other Modern forums.

If you're going for Blue, how could you Not run Monastery Siege? How about Peer through Depths?

kombatkiwi

11-16-2017, 11:43 PM

I would think you would still want 1x Form of the Dragon somewhere in the 75. Some other cards I would consider:

Meishin, the Mind Cage
Reverence

The old sequence was Dovescape, Meishin, Form. Such a cool combo/prison deck!

Meishin is just outdated I think, there's no reason to use this card over other options.
Reverence might be ok, it's close to a lock with Overwhelming Splendor (barring +1 counters or Auras or whatever) and 2 Devotion is nice but against many of the aggressive decks the creatures all have 3+ power (Humans, Merfolk etc) so it doesn't really do anything by itself.
Lightmine Field would be ok too but it prevents you from attacking with Soldier tokens.

I think at least 1 Elspeth Sun's Champion maindeck is a good decision, _maybe_ 2 (but definitely not more). The 2nd ability is a good combo with wall of omens.
I tried playing Zur's Weirding maindeck and as expected I hated drawing it.
Even though Overwhelming Splendor is kind of 'narrow' it's still a big bomb that often helps to stabilize so I will keep it for now, but I think that I'm almost at the point where I would say that Peace of Mind is uncessary (ie. I get more annoyed with drawing it than I seem to actually need it). With the blue splash maybe Monastery Siege or Trial of Knowledge / Oath of Jace / Sphinx's Tutelage is better, if this is effect is even warranted. Otherwise the plan to get enchantments out of your hand is to just Endless Horizons to fill your hand up quickly and then start cleanup discarding. There aren't even too many matchups where the game is decided by 'search for specifically X card ASAP or lose'. (Especially because the only card in the list that can't be cast pre-Ideal is Dovescape).

Teferi's Moat might be decent as a sideboard card
Merfolk:Blue
Humans: White
Elves: Green (they always seem to have Chord into Rec Sage but still)

EDIT: (Replying to twndomn)
I don't browse other forums too much, I just check lists from Starcity or MTGTop8. The only card which I see used sometimes that I haven't mentioned is Ensnaring Bridge, which I don't like because it doesn't give devotion. I don't think Peer is good because it only hits Ideal or itself, Monastery Siege is card disadvantage and doesn't give devotion either, but maybe 1 copy is fine (especially because sometimes you draw multiple leylines or other cards that don't help in certain situations).

Apart from that, the only changes to bring my list in line with other decks that are already out there is to up the numbers of Ghostly Prison and Suppression Field, which I am not strongly against doing, but I already addressed this in the first post. Is there anything else you specifically meant by 'nowhere being on par with other modern forums'?

twndomn

11-17-2017, 01:15 AM

"THE" Enduring Ideal thread is a primer thread started on 2012 and still active today in a different forum. A simple Googling would have save everyone's time.

kombatkiwi

11-17-2017, 06:56 AM

"THE" Enduring Ideal thread is a primer thread started on 2012 and still active today in a different forum. A simple Googling would have save everyone's time.

It's just another MTGS thread going around in circles, posting lists that aren't much different to the ones that first came out when people realised that Leyline + Nykthos was a combo. This thread is not 'I have no idea how to build this deck, please help', I was going for something more along the lines of 'I have a somewhat different approach to building this deck than the norm, can we discuss why it is/isn't a good idea'. If you're just trying to say 'salvation has solved it, sorry' in the most recent pages you can see stuff like people thinking Solemnity will disable PWs, or that Overwhelming Splendor will disable PWs, it's not exactly a hive of inspiration. The decks still look the same for the last 2-3 years and they aren't winning tournaments.

The only potentially useful thing that I can glean is that everybody seems to think Suppression Field is really good, so maybe I'm off in my evaluation of that? It would require a bit of a decklist overhaul because it makes all of Mobilization / Cast Out / Cycling Lands / Elspeth much worse.

The disappointing thing is that there seems to be no wincon that
A) Is castable
B) Gives white devotion
C) Doesn't use an activated ability
D) Doesn't need to have counters put on it

Maybe Starfield of Nyx meets all of these criteria but exposing your other enchantments to creature removal seems a bit risky.

Another option is to play Lotus Bloom and be more of a 'combo deck' like Shayne Morris at Roanoke, but I'm not sure I like this much, I think it might be more consistent to just focus on Nykthos.

Mr. Safety

11-17-2017, 07:31 AM

I like Nykthos a lot better than Lotus Bloom if you're not going 'all in'. Playing both for an all-in setup would be cool, but not necessarily better.

Ghostly Prison, Supreme Verdict, and other anti-agro cards are certainly good sideboard options. My thought with Reverence is that it creates a lock with Dovescape tokens (which is what Meishin used to do. Meishin also makes attakers with 3+ power almost negligible as threats.)

Form of the Dragon fits all of your requirements for a win-condition that works with Suppression Field, and it can deal 5 damage to creatures as well as opponents. I don't think there are any commonly played flyers in modern with 5 toughness or more. Starfield is still probably your best option, simply because once it triggers you have hasted enchantment creatures that are pretty beefy. Even if they have Path/Terminate/etc to kill your enchantments, they are still not going to win. You get a new "creature" every turn with Enduring Ideal. Your big worry is Supreme Verdict on that front.

kombatkiwi

11-17-2017, 07:57 AM

Form is basically perfect in terms of what it does, the only problem is that it costs 4RRR
a) If you draw it then it's neither a big threat by itself nor can it ramp your devotion because 1. It has no white mana symbols on it and 2. You can't even cast it. So every time you see it it's like you skipped a draw.
b) If you are relying on Form's life-reset for Unlife to protect you then the fact it's uncastable is even worse, because you have no convenient way to get it into your deck or into play if you draw it. So now it almost seems like you have to play a backup Solemnity as a contingency plan, but as long as you have Form in your library then Solemnity will always be essentially useless, so now by adding Solemnity it feels like you are wasting a card slot. One way to eliminate this second feel-bad would be to play multiple copies of Unlife/Solemnity so that you are more likely to assemble that combo naturally, but this just seems like such a shit idea when these cards don't do anything in multiples and the deck has almost 0 library manipulation.

Another option would be instead of a Solemnity to just play Sphere of Safety or similar and hope that is good enough to protect you if you can't quickly put Form/Unlife together. (and with Ghostly Prison in the deck Prison+Sphere probably locks out damage in most situations)

You don't need Reverence (or Meishin) to lock Dovescape tokens when Unlife/Solemnity or Unlife/Form locks all sources of damage. Meishin also has the same problem as Form of being uncastable.

Starfield is fine during the combo because you can wait to protect your enchantments from non-Supreme removal with Dovescape. I'm more worried about playing turn 5 Starfield for value and then Oblivion Ring gets Path to Exiled or whatever.

Assuming that no-Solemnity is acceptable then you can play a 2nd win condition that depends on counters and I think Assemble the Legion might be perfect for this. It depends whether a red splash is better than blue (you get Crumble/Moon/Stone Rain as Tron hate which is maybe a slight downgrade from Seas).

Mr. Safety

11-17-2017, 10:04 AM

I agree they are uncastable, so they are more akin to all-in Enduring Ideal rather than your alternative plan of big mana/enchantment lock. Starfield is most likely your g1 go-to win condition then, which should be fine. G2 maybe you can sideboard in Form of the Dragon.

One card that saw a lot of play in both Dragonstorm and Enduring Ideal is See Beyond. I think its worth testing.

twndomn

11-17-2017, 06:13 PM

It's just another MTGS thread going around in circles, posting lists that aren't much different to the ones that first came out when people realised that Leyline + Nykthos was a combo. This thread is not 'I have no idea how to build this deck, please help', I was going for something more along the lines of 'I have a somewhat different approach to building this deck than the norm, can we discuss why it is/isn't a good idea'. If you're just trying to say 'salvation has solved it, sorry' in the most recent pages you can see stuff like people thinking Solemnity will disable PWs, or that Overwhelming Splendor will disable PWs, it's not exactly a hive of inspiration. The decks still look the same for the last 2-3 years and they aren't winning tournaments.

Another option is to play Lotus Bloom and be more of a 'combo deck' like Shayne Morris at Roanoke, but I'm not sure I like this much, I think it might be more consistent to just focus on Nykthos.

You're overly generalizing. If you look at Miracles thread on this source forum, it is also going around in circles for years. The same Blood Moon vs Back to Basic circle once every other months, it's universal in all forums for all established concepts.

User drmarkb has over 3000 responses on that forum, a lot of his posts are on this archetype, it's just faster to get deck expert's opinion than throwing an idea onto a virtual discussion wall and see what sticks, what bounces back.

One card that saw a lot of play in both Dragonstorm and Enduring Ideal is See Beyond. I think its worth testing.

Why would I cast a CMC 2 Sorcery to see 2 cards on top of my library when I can cast CMC 2 Instant to see the top 5 of my library via Peer? You're either looking for Ideal, or for some kind of spell that can save you from dying next turn, hence Ideal, Path, board wipe like Verdict are the most logical library digging targets. Sure, See Beyond can allow you to put uncastable Enchantment back or find another land, that's so little to gain when you most likely just need something to combo off or to save yourself.

Basically, kombatkiwi has objections to many typical card choices on established threads regarding this archetypes in a vacuum. This is basically the same as a new graduate student being ambitious and refuted established journals and common wisdom in that domain for the sake of novelty. Write couple tournament reports on your "novel" build, then we can have constructive discussion.

Phoenix Ignition

11-18-2017, 01:29 AM

kombatkiwi

11-18-2017, 04:16 AM

The difference between this and miracles is that with miracles there wasn't any reason to make any big changes to the lists when you had multiple people top8ing with it every week. There's a difference between being suspicious of like Newtonian Mechanics or something vs some other relatively unsuccessful idea. I understand that maybe posting here isn't the right approach to get the best feedback but I'm not sure why you seem so butthurt about it.

The Peer suggestion makes sense if you have things like Path or Verdict as well as ideal but that seems like another relatively unpopular/untested concept (at least from what I can find), most lists only seems to play 4 ideal as Instant/Sorcery.

After testing some more I do agree that Suppression Field is good and therefore it's possibly not worth playing cast out (at least in such high numbers).
Ghostly prison is also pretty good.

I still think that maindeck Wall of Omens is better than Porphyry Nodes, and that Stasis Snare is underrated. With Ghostly Prison out you can wait and see if they attack with anything before you exile, if they continue to develop their board instead then you can just hold onto it until they do commit to attacking with something. (and like I said before 2 devotion is really good).

// 60 Maindeck
// 4 Creature
4 Wall of Omens

// 28 Enchantment
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Dovescape
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Assemble the Legion
1 Banishing Light/Cast Out
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Endless Horizons
1 Sphere of Safety
4 Runed Halo
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Suppression Field
4 Ghostly Prison
4 Stasis Snare

// 4 Sorcery
4 Enduring Ideal

// 24 Land
4 Temple of Triumph
1 Rugged Prairie
2 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
12 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry

6 Red sources including Rugged Prairie makes Form of the Dragon at least semi-castable, which is a side-benefit of playing a red splash.
I have tried Chained to the Rocks in the past in red builds but I don't think it's consistent enough without fetchlands and it's not essential to kill things on turn 1 in most matchups.

I'm not confident that Prison/Field/Snare all need to be x4, it might be reasonable to add more Banishing Light, 1 Greater Auramancy, Journey to Nowhere, Nevermore etc. I think adding 1 more Assemble the Legion would be reasonable just to up the threat density, (possibly in the Endless Horizons slot).

CaptainTwiddle

11-19-2017, 07:08 PM

I've been playing an Enduring Ideal list on and off for a bit and have the following opinions based on that experience:

Ghostly Prison is great. So many of the decks in Modern are winning by attacking but still need to spend all of their mana each turn cycle. Prison is "good" against many of the established/tiered decks and is a blowout against a lot of fringe decks (e.g. Bushwhacker Zoo).

Porphyry Nodes is really powerful and part of that is its synergy with Ghostly Prison. That may seem odd, as Nodes keeps the creature count down, while Prison prevents multiple creatures from attacking. However, the combo of Nodes + Prison means your opponent either needs to take turns off or keep deploying threats to outpace the Nodes, which ties up their mana and prevents attacks under the Prison.

Heliod, God of the Sun is a pretty solid option. Granted, being the only creature in the deck makes it really vulnerable to Path to Exile specifically, but it is immune to most other removal. While the activated ability is at odds with Suppression Field, the mana production of Nykthos can still pull you ahead and Heliod's indestructibility and high power make him a combo/lock with Porphyry Nodes.

Lotus Bloom is probably worth it. It allows you to cast Enduring Ideal more quickly and also provides a way to hardcast Form of the Dragon or Sandwurm Convergence.

I'm actually not a huge fan of Dovescape in the main, because I like Form of the Dragon and I'm afraid of getting blown out by something like Qasali Pridemage. I prefer the lock of Form of the Dragon + Overwhelming Splendor.

Here's the list I've been running for reference:

Enduring Ideal
CREATURES
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
SPELLS
4 Lotus Bloom
3 Porphyry Nodes
2 Journey to Nowhere
1 Peace of Mind
4 Runed Halo
2 Suppression Field
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Detention Sphere
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Phyrexian Unlife
2 Cast Out
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Form of the Dragon
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Overwhelming Splendor
LAND
9 Plains
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Clifftop Retreat
2 Glacial Fortress
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Rugged Prairie
4 Temple of Enlightenment

Mr. Safety

11-20-2017, 08:01 AM

Twn, why do you have to get so offended that someone wants advice on this forum about a deck that might be posted on a different forum? Who cares if people are talking about this deck on MTGsal? I post stuff here all the time that is also probably there. It's not like The Source's modern section is so full of action that this is going to push another thread out of view, we're lucky if there's a single comment per day here in the modern section.

If it were discussion about a tier 1 deck and possibly adding a garbage card to it then I might agree that the discussion is a waste of space, but until Enduring Ideal decks are the DTB of modern then maybe some real innovation is needed.

I feel that Salvation is full of fairly non-competitive players as well. Not bad players, just more budget-minded and FNM All-Stars instead of really looking to develop a competitive deck in the format at-large. I really value TheSource's input much higher than Salvation, as scarce as it is.

Overwhelming Splendor is definitely an upgrade from Dovescape, because the tokens don't have flying.

What about Secure the Wastes? It scales up really well with Nykthos ramping and could be an alternative win-condition outside of Ideal.

@CaptainTwiddle: I might just have to try out your list, I am only missing about 6-7 cards. I could play the deck for about $50. Cool.

kombatkiwi

11-21-2017, 11:46 AM

Secure the wastes is just worse than Assemble the Legion I think (assuming R mana isn't an issue).If you want to kill your opponent with a bunch of tokens then you might as well also play the token-maker that gives you devotion and is an enchantment (so you can Ideal for it if Form of the Dragon is AWOL somewhere)

I think that it's not correct to view Overwhelming Splendor as a replacement for Dovescape because the two cards do fundamentally different things. I would like to be able to cut Dovescape from the main (really hate uncastable cards in this deck) but I am afraid to losing to random things like Ad Nauseam, Cryptic bouncing enchantments, etc etc. Maybe this isn't warranted? Many of the scary things are still blocked by Leyline and the Form/Unlife combo but maybe I would want 1 Nevermore or 1 Greater Auramancy maindeck to compensate for losing this angle.

I'm on the fence about lotus bloom. Upside: Helps to combo off faster. Downside: makes you more 'all in' vs counterspells, takes the slot of a card that would give devotion so it makes Nykthos worse. Against a hard control deck with counterspells all the cards you would use in place of bloom (Stasis Snare or Ghostly Prison #4 or whatever) probably don't help much either but vs something like Grixis Shadow with Stubborn Denial, Lotus Bloom might be significantly worse than a 'real' spell. For this reason I like the maindeck Boseiju in the 4x Bloom list but not 100% sure which is the correct approach overall.

CaptainTwiddle

11-24-2017, 02:25 PM

Secure the wastes is just worse than Assemble the Legion...

I agree with that statement, but keep in mind that if you do end up running Porphyry Nodes, you probably don't want either. The Enduring Ideal deck really thinks about winning as an afterthought. The most effective approach, imho, is to just lock your opponent out and then win incidentally with whatever you have available. Luckily, there are cards that fill both of those roles (e.g. Form of the Dragon). Aside from cards that provide both offense and defense, the strength of the deck comes in that it plays so many cards that function as roadblocks to various strategies and some of those pieces overlap in unique ways, buying you time until the hard lock is established. As such, I find that the deck has game against most of the field, because you have trumps to everything. Runed Halo is probably quietly one of the most powerful cards in the deck; as it has a relatively high floor (blanking a single card on board) and an incredibly high ceiling (being a self-contained lock, against Storm relying solely on Grape Shot, for example), all while providing WW to your devotion.

kombatkiwi

12-03-2017, 10:16 PM

Another top from Shayne Morris (Starcity classic 3/12/2017)

Creatures (2)
2 Simian Spirit Guide

Lands (23)
11 Plains
1 Mistveil Plains
2 Rugged Prairie
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Triumph
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Spells (36)
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Blood Moon
1 Dovescape
2 Form of the Dragon
4 Ghostly Prison
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Overwhelming Splendor
3 Phyrexian Unlife
4 Runed Halo
1 Sphere of Safety
4 Suppression Field
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Idyllic Tutor

Sideboard
1 Defense Grid
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Greater Auramancy
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Rest in Peace
2 Stony Silence
1 Story Circle
3 Silence
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All

Going to test this version card for card, it's hard to judge what might be good/bad when it's so different to the version I am used to playing.

CaptainTwiddle

06-16-2018, 01:47 PM

I've been revisiting Enduring Ideal and have been liking my updated list, but there are some points I'd like to address. Let's start with the list:

Enduring Ideal
CREATURES
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
SPELLS
4 Lotus Bloom
2 oppressive Rays
3 Porphyry Nodes
1 Greater Auramancy
1 Peace of Mind
4 Runed Halo
2 Seal Away
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Phyrexian Unlife
2 Cast Out
1 Dovescape
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Form of the Dragon
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Overwhelming Splendor
LAND
10 Plains
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Saltcrusted Steppe
2 Scattered Groves
3 Temple of Triumph

SIDEBOARD options
Aura of Silence - vs Affinity, Bogles, etc.
Banishing Light - all purpose removal
Expedition Map - vs control
Heroic Intervention - combats enchantment sweepers (e.g. Fracturing Gust, Back to Nature, Oblivion Stone)
Nevermore - vs specific problem cards
Rest in Peace - vs Dredge, Ironworks, Snapcaster decks, etc.
Sacred Ground - vs Ponza, Death and Taxes
Sandwurm Convergence - vs Death and Taxes, flyer-heavy strategies
Stony Silence - vs Affinity, Ironworks, and Tron
Torpor Orb - vs Humans, Reclamation Sage, Acidic Slime

This isn't radically different from the list I posted previously, but there are some notable changes. I've cut Blue from the deck, mostly to streamline the mana, making it more realistic to hardcast Form of the Dragon. I've also cut Suppression Field. I think Field is actually an amazing card when it comes to hating out the format at large, but it hampers what I want to do with this deck as well (e.g. activating Heliod, Mistveil Plains, cycling cards, etc.). I've also added Dovescape. My omission of that card previously was a total mistake; I didn't understand how to use it, thinking that it served as a win condition giving you birds, when in reality, it's a lock piece preventing your opponent from countering spells or dealing with your enchantments.

What I'm Looking to Improve
My main issues are navigating the control matchups and combating Bogles post-board. Against control decks, the strategy I've found to work well is to just jam your Leylines and Ghostly Prisons to make it hard for them to win, then either draw Boseiju or overload their counters to resolve an Ideal. Dovescape is the primary lock piece against them. Cryptic Command is probably the scariest card control has, as they can bounce an enchantment while countering something else, which is a potentially huge problem. I've considered adding an Expedition Map as a way to increase access to Boseiju (and Nykthos), but am unsure what I'd cut for it from the main, so maybe it belongs in the sideboard, but that seems odd to me for some reason.

As for Bogles, I'm pretty well suited to beating them game one. Porphyry Nodes is effective removal and Ghostly Prison taxes them heavily, as they need to choose between suiting up their creature or paying to attack. Post-board the matchup gets much more dicey. They will typically have access to multiple copies of Seal of Primordium, Dromoka's Command, and their real hay-maker, Gaddock Teeg. Since most of their threats have hexproof, it's natural to want to side out targeted removal, which makes Gaddock all the more difficult to answer. I guess my real concern with this matchup is how to answer Gaddock Teeg effectively. We need something that costs less than 4 mana, which would ideally not be super narrow. Oblivion Ring and/or Banishing Light come to mind, but given that Seal of Primordium is coming in along with Teeg, those types of answers seems dubious.

Thoughts for Larger-Scale Changes
I continue to wonder what the ideal color configuration really is for this deck. I like being able to have the option of hardcasting all of my cards. Lotus Bloom goes a long way toward casting Form of the Dragon or Sandwurm Convergence, but I don't know that it's necessarily worthwhile including lands to produce Red or Green specifically. I could see swapping out W/R temples for W/U and replacing the W/G lands with their W/U equivalents to include Detention Sphere and possibly Copy Enchantment. I like D-Sphere a lot. Copy Enchantment is less powerful in a vacuum, but being able function as an additional copy of the other one-ofs is solid, as is being a 5th Ghostly Prison. Perhaps the most powerful thing it can do though is copy Greater Auramancy to make your enchantments fully immune to spot removal (though making the opponent answer the first Auramancy is usually a sufficient hurdle). I could also see Jace, the Mind Sculptor doing good things in this deck. Using the Brainstorm ability to put back your expensive enchantments to search up later seems nice. The main problem I see with Jace is that Ghostly Prison doesn't tax attacks directed at planeswalkers. Sphere of Safety serves that function, but at a significantly higher mana cost. The last thing that Blue offers which I find appealing is [cards]Spreading Seas[cards] out of the board to combat Tron.

kombatkiwi

06-17-2018, 01:02 AM

Nice post, I was thinking about this deck for a bit again yesterday.
Yeah, Dovescape is just a hardlock vs noncreature spells, not only does it protect your enchantments but most combo and control decks just auto-scoop to it.

I'm surprised you are having difficulty with Bogles, yes Teeg can be annoying to deal with but that deck struggles with Runed Halo, Ghostly Prison, and Porphyry Nodes. You could try playing different removal instead of Oppressive Rays / Seal Away. I still like Stasis Snare.

One card that I think might be good is History of Benalia, because it helps in 2 of the problematic matchups (Tron and control). Against control it's a powerful early threat that can't be answered well by spot removal (bolt/path/fatal push etc, especially in SB games where the opponents will be aiming to board these out). The tron deck can still probably go over the top of it relatively easily but if you have turn 2 Stony Silence into turn 3 History on the play then maybe you keep the opponent off balance for a few turns to win, and the tokens stop Karn from having absolute free reign. Against Jeskai it also lets you attack Teferi. In aggressive matchups it gives you two 2/2 blockers which isn't too bad either, and if you play it a bit later on turn 5 or so you can use the 2 devotion to cast Enduring Ideal before the Saga sacrifices itself (you can even get this mana on the turn the saga dies because the +2/+1 ability resolves in your mainphase).

It doesn't necessarily take up too much space in the deck, you can play HoB in one of the 'threat' slots (e.g. instead of Heliod) because combined with Mistveil Plains and Enduring Ideal it does give you an endless stream of 2/2s (which are actually 4/3s half the time). Having more token-makers also makes Worship more viable as a lockpiece.

The problem is that HoB is not very good with Porphyry Nodes, I still really like Wall of Omens but Porphyry Nodes is so important now because you want outs to Meddling Mage / Thalia / Freebooter. At the same time, Porphyry Nodes is actually pretty bad vs Hollow One because it's not good vs Flamewake Phoenix and Bloodghast. I agree that the splash colour seems mostly decided by 'which tron hate do you want to play' (either Spreading Seas or Moon/Stonerain. I just remembered Green gives you Beast Within which doesn't seem terrible). But maybe this matchup is a total write-off no matter what you do.

I feel like once you have decided to play this deck:
- Aim to get your free wins vs Burn/8 Rack/Valakut/Storm etc with maindeck Leyline and Runed Halo (if the meta is in a spot where you don't expect this to happen much then the Enduring Ideal deck becomes much worse)
- Tune the deck to beat the aggressive matchups you expect to face because different creature decks are variously susceptible to different hate enchantments
- Once you have made your creature matchups good, if you have a few slots left try to fit some more threats or anti control cards
- Accept that if your opponent is playing Green Tron then you can't win (I think the deck might be able to play a few copies of field of ruin to address this somewhat)

I tried a green splash for a while with 3 Ajani's Aid and 1 of that Ajani (using 4 Wall and 1 Heliod as the only creatures), which wasn't totally awful but didn't feel too great either.
I liked the fact that the Aid gave you extra devotion while replacing itself, and Ajani would give you walls for draw and devotion. Eventually it would find a threat in Heliod, which you could put back into your deck with Mistveil if countered and then use Ajani to find it again, but it was a lot of hoops to jump through and the resulting engine wasn't that impressive.
The other 4GW Ajani (from Kaladesh/AER) might be ok as a draw Engine too but I haven't tried it, and I don't even know if it is what the deck wants.
I liked playing on-colour storage lands and cycling duals, which don't exist with WB / WR, but that's not too important.

For copying Auramancy, you can also play 1 Auramancy and 1 Privileged Position which combines to give your whole board shroud. (1 Position 1 Copy Enchantment also works). I like Privileged Position because it gives you 3 devotion
Jace is an okay idea but I think double-splash manacosts are too hard (having UU on turn 4 requires a pretty significant manabase commitment)
Teferi is another strong white planeswalker, and the untap lands ability is quite good with Nykthos and the flash enchantments like Stasis Snare and Cast Out (but like you say, Ghostly Prison not protecting your planeswalkers kind of sucks, and so does the rules change meaning that Leyline doesn't protect your PWs from Burn anymore)

CaptainTwiddle

06-17-2018, 11:47 AM

Thanks, kombatkiwi; I appreciate your input. History of Benalia was on my radar, but I felt like it belonged in the sideboard and I really only wanted it if I could play 3-4 copies. I decided against it because I didn't want to dedicate that many slots for a card I thought I'd only be bringing in for a few matchups.

The Tron matchup doesn't seem great, but I haven't played it much (not really present in my local meta). My plan was to board in Stony Silence to shut off their maps, spheres/stars, and O-stones. Karn and Ugin are huge problems, so Nevermore would come in as well. Aura of Silence and Heroic Intervention are also option that are better than some of the maindeck cards.

I've played a few matches against Hollow One and didn't think that matchup was that bad. Obviously, if they get the nut draw, they can run you over, but on that flip-side, dropping multiple Hollow Ones or Bloodghasts into play on turn 1-2 is answered nicely by Runed Halo and Ghostly Prison is excellent against against a swarm from a deck that often aims to function off of few lands. The fact that they can't effectively answer enchantments is nice for us.

Looking at control matchups again, Silence is a card that I've run in varying numbers in the past, but it never really came up, so I don't know if it's that great. I suppose forcing through Ideal to get a Dovescape is probably game over, so I'll probably keep at least 1 copy of Silence in the board. I've also wondered about Starfield of Nyx as an option. I like the direction it can take the deck, but I've generally omitted it because it seemed to just make me vulnerable to removal that would otherwise be irrelevant. That said, I could see it coming in from the board against control to act as threat that can allow you to win unexpectedly in a single turn in the late game or provide recursion for enchantments that your threw into waiting counterspells to empty your opponent's hand. I would imagine that your opponent would side out most of their removal, at least their sweepers, so Starfield seems like less of a liability here. That said, I've often wanted Rest in Peace against Snapcaster Mage decks, which would be at odds with Starfield.

I think the biggest hurdle for Enduring Ideal as an archetype is that you have access to all of these powerful, surgical tools, but many of them do work against angles that you might want to take yourself. For example, Rest in Peace shuts down Mistveil Plains recursion. Stony Silence shuts down Lotus Bloom, which is awkward, but the time it buys you usually makes up for the difference. Blood Moon shuts of Nykthos and Mistveil Plains. Suppression Field is amazingly powerful, but you have to skew your deckbuilding dramatically to include it effectively. The point is, it's hard to sideboard/build correctly and you have to be hyper aware of your sequencing, as it's sometimes correct to take lines that invalidate other cards in your deck.

I do like Privileged Position as a devotion generator and the effect is obviously very desirable, but it seems a bit too mana intensive for it's purpose. I like that Greater Auramancy can come down early and just make your subsequent enchantments safe or force your opponent to commit resources to answering it first. That said, if I found myself wanting to play something like Sandwurm Convergence in the main, having the ability to use Nykthos go generate GGG would be helpful (that said, I don't think Sandwurm Convergence is necessary or even much better than other options at the moment, but if some other big green game-winner comes along, this line is something I'll be keeping in mind).

kombatkiwi

06-18-2018, 02:58 AM

Stony Silence vs Tron is annoying because one of the best ways to beat them is simply to 'combo off' as quickly as possible but you need Lotus Bloom in order to do that.
Heroic Intervention is ok but it's only very good vs Oblivion Stone. It does nothing against Ugin and it seems relatively ineffective vs Karn / Ulamog

Vs control, Silence is okay, but I think maybe Boseiju is just better? I think vs control decks I'd rather just have more bombs like Planeswalkers (e.g. Elspeth Suns Champion) or other threatening Enchantments (e.g. Starfield that you mention, which is also very good with History of Benalia)

if you're using RIP as an anti-Snapcaster card then Rule of Law / Curse of Exhaustion also work (admittedly less great vs Gurmag Angler, Kolaghans Command, Logic Knot etc). If you only want to hate 1 persons graveyard then Wheel of Sun and Moon is an option.

I was thinking of History as a maindeck card 2-3x, I don't think it makes sense as a SB card because there are more powerful but narrow things you can bring in for all matchups. This is something I was thinking of:

// 60 Maindeck
// 4 Artifact
4 Lotus Bloom

// 4 Creature
4 Wall of Omens

// 25 Enchantment
4 Runed Halo
4 Stasis Snare
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 History of Benalia
1 Starfield of Nyx
1 Worship
1 Endless Horizons
1 Sphere of Safety
4 Cast Out
1 Greater Auramancy / Privileged Position
1 Dovescape

// 23 Land
2 Scattered Groves
4 Temple of Plenty
2 Mistveil Plains
1 Saltcrusted Steppe
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
10 Plains

// 4 Sorcery
4 Enduring Ideal

4 Stasis Snare / 4 Cast Out might be the wrong split of disruption (are you supposed to play Ghostly Prison, Journey to Nowhere, Suppression Field, something else instead?). But I do like the rest of the skeleton. Now all your win conditions are easily hardcastable, can help to stabilize the game leading up to the Enduring Ideal, and give you devotion. The only thing you really lose is the Unlife/Dragon combo, but hopefully either Worship or Sphere of Safety can protect you from most situations. By playing this 'lean' version a drawback is that it might not be taking advantage of Lotus Bloom enough but I don't know what other big spell you would want to play. Maybe 1 Elspeth Suns Champion or something would be ok, or maybe it's fine that the curve isn't too high.

You could -1 Starfield +1 Form of the Dragon, -1 Worship/Sphere of Safety +1 Phyrexian Unlife and everything else could be mostly the same
I do like everything that Starfield offers
Endless Horizons might not be good in which case you don't need to play the cycling lands
Maybe you only want 1 History and 1 Starfield as winconditions because History isn't a good enough defensive card to warrant 3x, and then you just play extra Ghostly Prisons or whatever instead. (But the goal is to find a balance where you can still win control matchups)

CaptainTwiddle

06-19-2018, 08:19 PM

kombatkiwi

06-19-2018, 09:56 PM

I'm not a fan of Wheel of Sun and Moon as an anti-graveyard measure against control decks, specifically the Snapcaster decks. The games tend to grind really long and I just don't want them to be able get rebuys on Cryptic Command. I do think Boseiju, Who Shelters All is probably the key card in the matchup, so maybe my plan for boarding in Expedition Map is sound after all. I've considered Ashes of the Abhorrent to shut off Snapcaster shenanigans, but we don't really get to take advantage of the life-gain clause and it's a less universally applicable piece of graveyard hate.

The mono-white list is interesting. I think if you start going that route, you can kind of steer into the "pillow fort" archetype a bit more. I still think Ghostly Prison is probably worth the maindeck slots. I think they're generally better than a comparable number of spot removal pieces. Going mono-white, I'd be tempted to include Sun Titan; it plays nicely with History of Benalia, can be cast through Dovescape, and can get you pieces that were countered by Dovescape for value. The only strike against Sun Titan would be that I'd likely want to play Elspeth, Sun's Champion as well. I guess I just wonder if going mono-white makes it correct to forgo Enduring Ideal altogether.

Ashes of the Abhorrent is ok but like I say if you really want to just hate exactly Snapcaster then Curse of Exhaustion is fine. Maybe Ashes is better because it's cheaper and still good vs storm but curse is good vs other combo decks like KCI

I don't like Sun Titan because there isn't any way to tutor for it and I don't want to enable my opponent's removal by playing 1 random 6drop
If I had Nahiri the Harbinger in the deck I think it would make sense.
'Able to be cast through Dovescape' is not a relevant benefit for any card in this deck.
99% of the time you put Dovescape into play via Ideal, so you can't even cast spells with Dovescape in play.
In most situations if you draw Dovescape you don't want to hardcast it from your hand because when your opponent has creatures they can cast and you don't, you can easily lose a 'bird race'.
This means "can return cards countered by Dovescape" is not a relevant benefit either.

I don't think it makes sense to cut Enduring Ideal (and I don't understand why playing mono white would make that a better choice).
If you don't play Enduring Ideal then you don't need 7 mana, so you don't need Nykthos, so you don't need to play a ton of enchantments, and I think this just leads down a path to playing a generic UW(r) deck.
If you think the Leyline/Halo shell is good so you want to keep the rest of the deck mostly the same and have another expensive card as the payoff (e.g. Sun's Champion), this seems bad to me because Enduring Ideal is so much more powerful than any other mono-white card and the deckbuilding cost (having a bunch of enchantments in your deck to tutor for) is not very high when you're already playing a ton of enchantments to enable Nykthos anyway.

The new Alpine Moon is a good anti-tron option for a red version

walked

06-21-2018, 10:21 PM

I've been looking for an updated and current Enduring Ideal list.

How's this list been treating you? I'm looking for a starting point to tweak from :)

kombatkiwi

06-22-2018, 10:55 AM

I've been looking for an updated and current Enduring Ideal list.

How's this list been treating you? I'm looking for a starting point to tweak from :)

History of Benalia is actually surprisingly good
Both what it does and the fact it's a 1WW enchantment are excellent for the deck
I feel like devotion symbols in this deck are slightly underrated (e.g. I think you need a good reason to play something like Seal Away or Oppressive Rays or Journey to Nowhere instead of Stasis Snare)

1 Extra W symbol is like having a free Rampant Growth attached to the spell

One problem is that I still don't think there's a good replacement for the Unlife/Form combo
No matter whether you try Sphere of Safety or Worship etc somehow your opponent will always bamboozle you
Unlife is the only thing that's a guaranteed fog for 1 turn (barring first strike shenanigans which basically never happens, and infect, which gets shut down by sphere of safety anyway) and then you get Form the next turn to lock it up
You can't play Unlife/Solemnity because with Solemnity in play you can't put lore counters on your History of Benalia and then you need to play some other dedicated enchantment wincon that doesn't use counters, so you might as well spend that slot on Form of the Dragon and then play something else instead of Solemnity.

So just the deck from the previous post -1 Worship -1 Starfield of Nyx +1 Form of the Dragon +1 Phyrexian Unlife

And I think that manabase with blue lands instead of green (mostly for spreading seas)

CaptainTwiddle

07-04-2018, 05:14 PM

To get a bit specific, I'm looking to figure out how to best approach the Bogles matchup, specifically their use of Gaddock Teeg out of the board. Porphyry Nodes is kind of MVP against Bogles, but it can be played around/through (totem armor allows them to race it). Teeg is close to a knockout against my list, especially since I'm running Cast Out over Banishing Light in the main. The real difficult part is that, while you could just play removal that costs less than 4, Teeg is the only target, so you don't want to get trounced by a bogle with your Teeg hate in hand. I'm also wondering about Seal Away vs Journey to Nowhere; while I like the instant speed of Seal, particularly with the ability to hold up mana that can be used to cycle cards, there are some problematic creatures that are unlikely to attack, especially if your opponent knows/suspect you're on Seal.

I've been boarding in Aura of Silence, Banishing Light, and Nevermore, but Teeg can come down before Nevermore and Aura is a bit slow to get on board.

Also, general thoughts on Banishing Light vs Oblivion Ring? I've been favoring Light, because I don't have any way to abuse the separate triggers of O-ring and didn't want to open up the potential (despite how slim of a chance) that the ability to have my own stuff targeted would come back to bite me. That said, I'm wondering if having the ability to exile my own permanent would ever be beneficial (not sure when that would be, but maybe I have Form of the Dragon out and my opponent plays a Leyline of Sanctity, leaving me as the only legal target).

kombatkiwi

07-04-2018, 11:36 PM

Banishing Light is better because you can cast it to give yourself 1 devotion even if the opponent has no permanents. Similarly, if your opponent only has 1 creature they can kill it in response to Oblivion Ring with an otherwise-dead removal spell and force you to exile one of your own permanents.

In the situation you describe you could just Banishing Light the Leyline and I don't think there is any other situation where you would ever want to exile one of your own permanents. (Maybe as a hedge vs Fracturing Gust, but honestly what permanent would you hide that would even make a difference)

If you want to play an enchantment 'Doom Blade' I still like Stasis Snare
Otherwise there isn't anything you can play that specifically beats Teeg apart from Path/Journey/Nodes/BanishingLight
Nodes seems like the best because it also answers the Bogles

Edit:
Wondering if Patient Rebuilding can be the blue version of Assemble the Legion
depends if UU is too hard to cast or not

kombatkiwi

09-28-2018, 07:56 AM

Dawn of Hope seems pretty good

1W
Enchantment
Whenever you gain life you may pay 2, if you do, draw a card.
3W: Create a 1/1 Soldier with lifelink

The activated ability is a little bit pricey compared to Luminarch Ascension or Sacred Mesa, but:
- This can help you stabilize vs aggression, unlike Luminarch
- Costs 1W (Cheaper than mesa)
- Doesn't have an upkeep cost so you can freely play it out early to add devotion and not worry about it eating your mana every turn, unlike Mesa
- Source of card advantage

I'm going to test it as the backup to form of the Dragon (instead of Sacred Mesa or History of Benalia etc)

CaptainTwiddle

10-11-2018, 11:48 PM

Dawn of Hope seems pretty good

While I like Dawn of Hope as a card, I don't think it fits well into an Ideal deck. I think the creature production aspect is just too slow and mana intensive. Also, making small creatures works counter to Porphyry Nodes, which remains one of my MVP cards. Perhaps if you had a build that played other cheap sources of life gain to enable Dawn of Hope a draw engine, then maybe I could see it pulling its weight.

I actually top 8'ed a 30+ person PPTQ with an updated version of my list just prior to Guild of Ravnica being released; I'll try to post it tomorrow (it's late for me right now). I was pretty happy with it, but definitely would make at least one adjustment to the main and I'm still questioning the sideboard.

I'm really curious to see how Assassin's Trophy affects the meta, as that card is really interesting in how it affects the Ideal deck. On one hand, decks packing maindeck enchantment removal is a negative, but the mana ramp can actually work to our advantage. You need to be able to protect your payoffs though, so I think the efficacy of Greater Auramancy and similar cards goes up.

CaptainTwiddle

10-12-2018, 06:04 PM

Here's the list I top 8'ed the aforementioned PPTQ with:

Enduring Ideal
CREATURES
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
SPELLS
4 Lotus Bloom
1 Oppressive Rays
3 Porphyry Nodes
1 Greater Auramancy
1 Peace of Mind
3 Runed Halo
1 Seal Away*
3 Spreading Seas
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Detention Sphere
3 Ghostly Prison
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Stasis Snare
1 Cast Out
3 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Dovescape
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor
LAND
1 Adarkar Wastes
1 Calciform Pools
4 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Irrigated Farmland
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
6 Plains
3 Temple of Enlightenment (Edit: Had incorrectly listed Temple of Triumph)

SIDEBOARD
2 Aura of Silence
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Nevermore
1 Porphyry Nodes
2 Rest in Peace
1 Rule of Law
1 Sacred Ground
1 Silence
1 Spreading Seas
2 Stony Silence
1 Torpor Orb

*Seal Away has since been replaced by Journey to Nowhere. While the instant speed of Seal Away was a nice option to have, the targeting restriction was more relevant. With opponents being taxed by Ghostly Prison, it only made it less likely that they'd attack with the creature you wanted to hit with Seal Away. Being able to get Gaddock Teeg or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben off the table can be incredibly important, so I've given the nod to Journey.

My only losses on the day were to the same player, once in the swiss and again in the first round of top 8, as they were 1st cede and I was 8th; they were on 4 Color Saheeli. While that wasn't a matchup I had explicitly tested, the games were pretty interesting. In some cases, it was a pure race to see who could go off first, but at other times, the games became extremely drawn out. Ultimately, I succumbed to an Acidic Slime that was copied multiple times, destroying my soft lock pieces. Torpor Orb out of the board would have been clutch, but it didn't show up in time.

I'm pretty happy with the maindeck configuration. The primary thing I'm hoping to find going forward is an efficient source of card draw/selection. I'm much less set on the sideboard. Mostly, the board included the 4th copies of powerful, but situational, pieces from the maindeck and the typical/expected hosers (Stony and RIP). There are lots of options available to narrowly target specific strategies, but choosing those cards leaves holes in the overall game plan. I've moved on to other decks for the time being, but I'm sure I'll cycle back soon enough.

kombatkiwi

11-06-2018, 12:08 PM

I agree that if you have a specific creature you want to get off the table (like Teeg) then Journey is better than Seal Away, but the flash removal in general is good with Ghostly Prison: you get to kill their creature after they decide which one they want to attack with. If you Journey one of their guys at sorcery speed then they can just hit you with the other one. (Also like I have said before I think Stasis Snare gives you the best of both of these worlds while also giving an extra devotion. I don't really feel like I'm punished enough for the higher cmc that I'd rather play Journey to Nowhere)

Don't all your criticisms of Dawn of Hope also apply to Heliod? That's the card it's competing with. How important do you find the maindeck spreading seas?

TLK

11-09-2018, 12:17 PM

kombatkiwi

11-11-2018, 05:06 AM

CaptainTwiddle

11-22-2018, 09:00 AM

Love this deck and really want it to be competitive. I was playing a version with a red splash, but I found that most of the red cards were sb and not that useful. Blue seems like a much better splash. In the list above, I see you're running Temple of Triumph over Temple of Enlightenment. Is that so you can hardcast Form of the Dragon if you naturally draw it?

As kombatkiwi pointed suggested, this was a typo. I did used to play some filter lands an a Sacred Foundry to enable the hardcast of Form of the Dragon, but it came up less frequently than just having a Lotus Bloom available for the RRR. Temples are U/W.

I agree that if you have a specific creature you want to get off the table (like Teeg) then Journey is better than Seal Away, but the flash removal in general is good with Ghostly Prison: you get to kill their creature after they decide which one they want to attack with. If you Journey one of their guys at sorcery speed then they can just hit you with the other one. (Also like I have said before I think Stasis Snare gives you the best of both of these worlds while also giving an extra devotion. I don't really feel like I'm punished enough for the higher cmc that I'd rather play Journey to Nowhere)

Don't all your criticisms of Dawn of Hope also apply to Heliod? That's the card it's competing with. How important do you find the maindeck spreading seas?

I'm warming up to Stasis Snare. Your points about the instant speed being good with the taxing effects are valid, it's a huge tempo gain if your opponent forgoes playing spells to pay for an attack, and you remove their creature. As for Dawn of Hope vs. Heliod, my main preference for Heliod is they synergy with Porphyry Nodes. When Heliod becomes a creature, he keeps your Nodes around indefinitely and the tokens he makes being 2/1 means that you can still eat away at your opponent's 1/1 (which is everything if you happen to get Overwhelming Splendor into play). Plus, giving your creatures vigilance is nice. That said, if we could work a repeatable source of low/no cost life gain into the deck, Dawn of Hope could potentially be the card draw engine I've been looking for.

kombatkiwi

01-07-2019, 01:15 AM

There's a new enchantment in RNA:
"Treasure Spews" (I forget the real name): 3W
Whenever an opponent draws a card, you get a Treasure token (lotus petal) unless they pay 2

Seems like an okay fit for this deck, potentially? 1 Devotion plus ramp.
I like Endless Horizons, which also costs 3W and has some benefits compared to this (it can act as a tutor for Mistveil Plains and can be a draw engine with the Amonkhet cycling lands) but this new one is a better source of ramp (assuming the opponent doesn't want to pay 2).

At the moment I think I'm leaning towards no, but could be a consideration in a build with more bomb spells, or some metagame factors make Lotus Bloom bad, etc

CaptainTwiddle

01-15-2019, 11:11 PM

There's a new enchantment in RNA:
"Treasure Spews" (I forget the real name): 3W
Whenever an opponent draws a card, you get a Treasure token (lotus petal) unless they pay 2

...

At the moment I think I'm leaning towards no, but could be a consideration in a build with more bomb spells, or some metagame factors make Lotus Bloom bad, etc

When it became apparent that RNA had an enchantment theme, I got really excited, but I don't think there's anything in it for the Ideal deck, unfortunately. Smothering Tithe was the one card I considered for a moment, but having a CMC of 4 means that it's coming down on the turn you'd ideally be casting Ideal anyway. Perhaps it could serve as a sideboard option against decks that are looking to draw a lot of cards, but those decks are typically some sort of combo deck and there's better options to actually hate out those strategies. Also, it has suffers from the same issue that I already have with Lotus Bloom, namely the mana ramp is coming from artifacts, so it's bad in matchups where you side in Stony Silence.

kombatkiwi

03-06-2019, 12:28 AM

When it became apparent that RNA had an enchantment theme, I got really excited, but I don't think there's anything in it for the Ideal deck, unfortunately. Smothering Tithe was the one card I considered for a moment, but having a CMC of 4 means that it's coming down on the turn you'd ideally be casting Ideal anyway. Perhaps it could serve as a sideboard option against decks that are looking to draw a lot of cards, but those decks are typically some sort of combo deck and there's better options to actually hate out those strategies. Also, it has suffers from the same issue that I already have with Lotus Bloom, namely the mana ramp is coming from artifacts, so it's bad in matchups where you side in Stony Silence.

Maybe Stony Silence in the SB is wrong? Not for the sake of Smothering Tithe but more that Lotus Bloom seems like an essential element of making sure the deck is fast enough. Affinity can be taken care of by creature hate and maybe you're supposed to just play Aura of Silence or something else instead if the goal is to hate on artifacts

Also this deck gains a lot from the new Mulligan rule if that sticks (maindeck Leylines, white SB hate cards, put Dovescape on the bottom, etc)

apple713

03-06-2019, 12:58 AM

For reference here is a list I used a long time ago in extended (2008). I realize some of the cards are banned but I wanted to use this example for the enchantment package I included. It was very robust, at the time. The only thing I remember being weak was paradox haze. I know there was a specific reason I included it but I can't remember. It's probably less relevant in today's meta.

Enchantment [10]
1 Confiscate
2 Dovescape
3 Form of the Dragon
1 Honden of Seeing Winds
1 Paradox Haze
2 Solitary Confinement
Artifact [12]
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Pentad Prism
4 Sensei's Divining Top
Instant [8]
4 Orim's Chant
4 Seething Song
Sorcery [7]
4 Burning Wish
3 Enduring Ideal
Land [23]
4 Ancient Spring
3 Flooded Strand
1 Godless Shrine
3 Irrigation Ditch
1 Plains
2 Sacred Foundry
4 Sulfur Vent
4 Tinder Farm
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sideboard [15]
4 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Cranial Extraction
1 Enduring Ideal
4 Extirpate
1 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Yixlid Jailer

CaptainTwiddle

05-12-2019, 01:28 AM

kombatkiwi

05-17-2019, 06:16 AM

Not much of an update, but I've swapped out Stasis Snare for Prison Realm. While providing slightly less devotion to white, the scry 1 is welcome, as I've always felt the deck could use more digging power. Snare having flash was nice at times, but it wasn't all that relevant, given that most of the deck plays at sorcery speed. I do think an argument could be made for Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, or an additional Detention Sphere, which are all less restrictive in their targeting, but I really do think the scry is worth quite a bit.

I didn't even realise this card existed
It certainly seems like a viable option and the fact that it also hits PWs over just creatures is nice

I have been recently wondering whether blue is the best splash colour for the deck, the main reason for blue seems to be spreading seas, as Copy Enchantment doesn't seem essential. Damping Sphere is an option for hating Tron and Amulet but unfortunately it disables Nykthos. The cycling-land-endless-horizons combo is also available in green but maybe this combo isn't essential either (and I'm not sure what benefit the deck would gain by playing green, or any other colour for that matter). But it seems like there must be something that is worth splashing, because the splash is kind of free (assuming some number of white scrylands are better than basic plains). Otherwise you could play something really offbeat like an all-plains manabase with 1 Emeria and maindeck Heliod

E.g.

1 Heliod
4 Wall of Omens

4 Lotus
4 Ideal
4 Stasis Snare
4 Cast Out
4 Leyline
4 Halo
1 Splendor
1 Dovescape
1 Priv Position
1 Dawn of Hope
1 Unlife
1 Solemnity
1 Sphere of Safety
1 ???

1 Arch of Orazca
1 Emeria
2 Mistveil
4 Nykythos
15 Plains

Edit again:
The green splash could be funny by leaning into the token-making enchantments a bit harder and playing glare of subdual but I don't think this is actually very good against anything
Other options that haven't been tried: Glittering Wish, Borderposts (devotion and/or ramp if you just hardcast it)

kombatkiwi

05-29-2019, 11:10 AM

The Enchantment Volrath's Stronghold ('Heliod's Hall of Generosity') looks like a really good option for this deck
Not only does it perform a similar role as Mistveil Plains for reloading your combo pieces, but against control decks you can use it to put threatening cards like Dawn of Hope back on top of your library if they counter or remove them.

'On thin Ice' is also interesting as an easier-to-cast Chained to the Rocks, it could be a good option for main or side

Edit: I'm thinking of playing Suppression Field again because it has a relevant effect against the Hogaak deck (Tax Altar of Dementia / Carrion Feeder) as well as being an ok card against planeswalkers and such.
Because of the way that this interacts with Dawn of Hope I would probably go back to the red splash for Assemble the Legion / SB Alpine Moon. The RW Horizon Canopy [Sunbaked Canyon?] could also be a good include (even though it's a nonbo with Suppression Field it doesn't have much opportunity cost to include it in the deck, and in the lategame if you're mana flooded with Nykthos you can still easily pay for it)

kombatkiwi

07-29-2019, 12:58 AM

Did a little G1 testing with the following list:

1 Mistveil Plains
1 Hall of Heliods Generosity
1 Arch of Orazca
4 Wx Temple
4 Nykthos
11 Plains

4 Enduring Ideal
4 Lotus Bloom
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Dovescape
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Dawn of Hope
4 Wall of Omens
4 Runed Halo
4 Nevermore
4 Stasis Snare
4 Cast Out
4 Leyline of Sanctity

Notes:
1) Maindeck cast out x4 seems important for consistency reasons. Some of the lands should maybe be Horizon Canopy or the WR/WB ones depending on which splash color is chosen (or the UW cycling land for blue)
2) The Heliod land is a nice little boost for the deck
3) 4 Maindeck Nevermore actually seemed pretty solid, 2x Devotion is good plus it stops many things in the format if you know what to name (Humans is still playing maindeck Meddling Mage). It also avoids the need to play some of the more narrow Ideal bullets (for example rather than get Greater Auramancy to protect Phyrexian Unlife you can just get Nevermore and name Decay, or against Tron you can name Ulamog which is pretty significant
4) Leyline of Sanctity can maybe go to the sideboard, I often thought that this card was a maindeck staple due to the double devotion for 0 mana but depending on the metagame maybe it should be moved to the SB in exchange for some Ghostly Prison or something. Possibly Gideon's Intervention is also a good option
5) I thought about playing On Thin Ice but only adding 1 Devotion and only being useful against creature decks made me not want to play it main, it definitely could be a worthwhile sideboard card though. If the metagame is almost all Hogaak/Phoenix/E Tron etc then maybe it's fine maindeck
6) The deck definitely also wants some anti-control options in the SB because Lotus Bloom is awful against Time Raveler. I expect the correct move involves 1-2 Boseiju and then some cheap permanents that can threaten PWs like History of Benalia or Luminarch Ascension etc. Silence/Veil of Summer could also be an okay option but I think I would rather have more winconditions rather than rely on Ideal 100%. [Edit: Grand Abolisher could be really good, adding WW devotion, stopping all counterspells, and coming down early to pressure opposing Narset/Teferi. It seems likely that the opponent would board most of their removal out and unlike e.g. Silence it doesn't get stopped by Force of Negation / Dovins Veto]

I could take this list to the modern MCQ this weekend because these are the only modern cards I own at the moment, but I'm pretty unfamiliar with modern in general ATM and most likely the deck isn't competitive at all. Enduring Ideal is still a fun card though

CaptainTwiddle

09-15-2019, 12:04 AM

After taking a bit of a break from this deck, I felt compelled to come back and give it a try in the post-Hogaak/Modern Horizons world. Modern Horizons brought two pretty significant additions that I think really go a long way toward helping the deck compete, namely the "snow package" of Arcum's Astrolabe and On Thin Ice. Here's my updated list:

Enduring Ideal
CREATURES
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
SPELLS
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Arcum's Astrolabe
3 On Thin Ice
1 Porphyry Nodes
1 Greater Auramancy
1 Peace of Mind
3 Runed Halo
2 Spreading Seas
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Detention Sphere
3 Ghostly Prison
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Story Circle
3 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Dovescape
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor
LANDS
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Snow-Covered Island
7 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Temple of Enlightenment

On Thin Ice provides early/inexpensive removal that still adds toward the devotion count while Arcum's Astrolabe serves as a cantrip that also offers mana fixing, allowing for a more resilient mana base while maintaining the 23 land count I had been running previously. To fit these cards, I cut the less efficient removal, including all but one copy of Porphyry Nodes from the main deck. While I do still think Nodes is a powerful card, there are a number of matchups where it either doesn't do much or is too slow to reliably deal with the threats you need to target; specifically the resurgence of GW Eldrazi made Nodes rather poor, as you'd have to eat through Noble Hierarchs before you could get to the bigger threats. On Thin Ice happens to be really effective against Reality Smasher, avoiding the need to target it with a spell, and Ghostly Prison often negates the Smasher's haste. I kept a single copy of Nodes in the main deck for the situational utility and the combo potential with Heliod.

Hall of Heliod's Generosity is another new addition from MH1. I wouldn't say the card has been an all star, but it serves its purpose. Like Mistveil Plains, it can be used to put key enchantments back into the deck so you can search them up with Enduring Ideal or you can rebuy something (like a previously sacrificed Porphyry Nodes) for immediate redeployment.

I believe the only other "new" addition to the main deck since my last posted list is an old card in the form of Story Circle. It's a great card against Burn or mono-colored decks and can be used generally to build your "pillow fort" until you're able to establish a hard lock.

Sideboard Options
[cards]Aura of Silence - Artifact/enchantment hate that provides a powerful static taxing ability, adds to devotion, and can be bought back with Heliod's Hall
Boseiju, Who Shelters All - for forcing Ideal through counterspells.
Grafdigger's Cage - Graveyard hate, shuts off Neoform, Collected Company, etc.
Rule of Law (will be Deafening Silence with the release of Throne of Eldrane) - Hate for Storm, Izzet Phoenix, or other cantrip heavy strategies.
Nevermore - A catch all for cards that I can't otherwise beat (e.g. Karn, the Great Creator + Mycosynth Lattice).
Oblivion Ring - catch all removal
Porphyry Nodes - An extra copy for the matchups where it's good.
Solemnity - Hate for Infect and Hardened Scales, also opens up a combo with Phyrexian Unlife; nice in that both pieces are low cost enough to play out naturally, but Solemnity being a complete blank against most of the field means it's not worth a main deck slot.
Spreading Seas - Hate for Tron and decks with greedy mana bases.
Supreme Verdict - An uncounterable sweeper for when you need to get things dead; effective against some Stoneblade builds.
Teferi, Time Raveler -Shuts off opposing counterspells to allow you to resolve Ideal and can also generate value and dig early (bouncing Astrolabe or an On Thin Ice that exiled a token).
Terra Eternal - Protection against land destruction. This used to be Sacred Ground, but with On Thin Ice, you don't want the land to be destroyed at all, so I'm trying this out.
Torpor Orb - Hates on Humans, Bant Soulherder, and creature toolbox decks.
Wheel of Sun and Moon - Graveyard hate that can even be used as protection on yourself and adds two pips of devotion to boot.

Notable omissions:
Rest in Peace - As graveyard based decks are a bit less prevalent at the moment, I've moved to Grafdigger's Cage and the one-sided Wheel of Sun and Moon to avoid potential dis-synergy. If graveyard decks become more prominent, RIP could again find itself in the board in multiples. Note with Cage that it will prevent you from putting Heliod into play with Ideal.
Stony Silence - I had previously hoped that a suitable replacement for Lotus Bloom would allow me to avoid playing any artifacts in the main deck, so I could leverage this powerful hate card, but the inclusion of Arcum's Astrolabe only furthers the anti-synergy of this card. That, combined with the fact that there has been a general down-tick in artifact decks, makes me feel more comfortable leaving this out of the list for now. It would be nice to have against the Whirza deck, but graveyard hate can work against their combo and Torpor Orb can shut off Sword of the Meek recursion as well.

kombatkiwi

09-19-2019, 04:41 AM

Terra Eternal can also be Privileged Position
I agree that Teferi is good if you have the Blue splash

From Throne of Eldraine I'm going to add 1 of the new land:
CIPT unless you control a plains
T: add W
2WW, T: Make a 1/1

There is also an Assemble the Legion variant that costs 2WWR that is kind of interesting.

I thought about playing Stoneforge in the deck lol
It's just a good card, makes W devotion, you can even play Godsend if you want for another WW

kombatkiwi

11-25-2019, 06:10 AM

I will be taking this deck to a free local tournament in a couple of weeks
Haven't played modern for a very long time.
There are still some decent prizes (weird arrangement) so I'm aiming to do a reasonable job with the cards I do have

Main:

4 Enduring Ideal
4 Lotus Bloom

4 Wall of Omens

4 Runed Halo
4 Nevermore
4 Stasis Snare
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Cast Out
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Form of the Dragon / Solemnity (still unsure, leaning towards Dragon atm)
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Dawn of Hope
1 Dovescape

1 Castle Ardenvale
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Wx Temple
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
10 Snow-Covered Plains

Still thinking about the SB and whether I want to splash or not. Tron still seems like the biggest problem (the big Green build being far harder but the small Karn/Ugin from the Eldrazi version still somewhat annoying).
Wondering if there is an anti-tron white hatebear but it seems like there isn't (Arbiter kind of, but it needs to be backed up with Ghost Quarters)
Splashing Teeg would be near-perfect but obviously it can't be done because it makes Enduring Ideal uncastable
Lavinia is almost great but it doesn't really do anything against Oblivion Stone. (I guess this is also a problem with Teeg)
Maybe the aim can be to assemble some soft lock like Lavinia + Nevermore
Damping Sphere is ok, disables Nykthos, but it's probably the best option for monoW
Immortal Sun has a good effect but probably too expensive

Also unsure about the best plan for the Urza decks
RIP/Stony/Abolisher all seem ok in small numbers
Some alt-wincons could be ok as well (but probably requires a splash like Assemble the Legion etc, Suns Champion seems maybe a bit slow. Sigil of the Empty Throne could be ok maybe)

kombatkiwi

12-08-2019, 11:09 PM

(Sorry for the multi-post)
Played the list in the previous post (with 1 Dragon 0 Solemnity) at FNM and another tournament this weekend
SB:
4 Grand Abolisher
4 Rest in Peace
4 On Thin Ice
3 Stony Silence

Results
FNM:
2-0 Hardened Scales
2-0 Burn
2-0 Grixis Deaths Shadow
Sunday:
(I switched to a build with -2 Cast Out -1 Nevermore -1 Stasis Snare +4 Suppression Field -1 Dawn of Hope +1 Assemble the Legion -1 Ardenvale +1 Rugged Prairie)
0-2 Hardened Scales
0-2 Naya Zoo
At this point I was out of contention for extra prizes and the event had no decklists so I swapped back all the above changes
2-0 Izzet Phoenix
2-0 Bant Spirits
0-2 Bant Midrange/Control
1-1-1 Jund (Timed out after Enduring Ideal resolved and my opponent was totally locked but I needed like 3 more turns to kill them with form of the dragon)

I think Form of the Dragon is better than Solemnity, in a lot of spots the Moat effect is really important
The maindeck feels really solid. Suppression Field didn't seem like the right place to be. Because you give your opponent so much time its easy for them to get mana to play around it, and it's hard to e.g. totally lock their fetches under it because it doesn't come down until turn 2. Then it's very annoying with your own cast outs (cycling tax) and also makes things like Dawn of Hope, Castle Ardenvale, Hall of Heliod, Arch of Orazca all much worse. And compared to other options like more Stasis Snare / Nevermore it only adds 1 devotion instead of 2. The 'flex slots' in the maindeck I think are the Stasis Snare and the Nevermore but there aren't many cards I would be tempted to replace them with. Gideons Intervention is a possibility but I'm not sure how many copies would be correct. Apart from that the only option I am interested in trying is swapping some of the On Thin Ice to the maindeck or adding 1 copy of Privileged Position

Grand Abolisher is an ok card, the idea being that against fair decks with counterspells they will board all their removal out, the problem is it seems that most fair decks these days will still have Oko to nullify it. On Thin Ice is also really good, but Stony Silence and RIP were underwhelming.

One card I didn't consider for the SB was Generous Gift (White version of Beast Within) to act as Stone Rain against Tron. Also, a good choice for the kind of "midrange threat" option (in the vein of Assemble the Legion, Sun's Champion etc) could be Cavalier of Dawn. Approach of the Second Sun is interesting (and works with Boseiju) but is probably way too slow

kombatkiwi

01-03-2020, 10:41 AM

Another couple of FNMs

2-1 vs Jund Shadow
2-0 vs UB Faeries
2-0 vs Burn

2-0 vs Monored Prowess
2-0 vs Dredge
1-2 vs Infect

SB is now
4 Generous Gift
4 On Thin Ice
4 Grand Abolisher
1 Boseiju
1 Rest in Peace
1 Stony Silence

Maindeck is still the same, seems good
Maybe could have won the Infect match if I named a different pump spell in G1 and Iced Hierarch in G3
Not many people locally seem to play Tron or Urza so I keep punishing all these linear decks

CaptainTwiddle

01-26-2020, 09:38 PM

kombatkiwi

01-27-2020, 01:42 AM

UPDATED LIST with Theros Beyond Death

Turns out the new enchantment-based set gave this deck a few new toys (go figure).

Enduring Ideal
CREATURES
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
SPELLS
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Arcum's Astrolabe
3 On Thin Ice
2 The Birth of Meletis
1 Greater Auramancy
1 Omen of the Sea
1 Peace of Mind
3 Runed Halo
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Detention Sphere
3 Ghostly Prison
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Story Circle
3 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Dovescape
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor
LANDS
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Snow-Covered Island
7 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Temple of Enlightenment

New sideboard addition/option: Thryx, the Sudden Storm

I had been running a few copies of Wall of Omens and a single Spreading Seas prior to the release of THB. After some initial testing, I've replaced them with The Birth of Meletis and Omen of the Sea, respectively. My main criticism of this deck previously was that it needed better card filtering/selection. Since you want to tutor your powerful, game-winning enchantments directly onto the battlefield, you actively want to avoid drawing them. As such, general card draw effects are less desirable in this deck than they would be elsewhere. Nonetheless, there are cards you want to draw on the way to executing your endgame. Omen lets you scry before drawing, so you can tuck things like Form of the Dragon safely on the bottom of your deck while you dig for what you need at the moment. As for Birth of Meletis, I was kind of skeptical, as I figured getting the immediate blocker from Wall of Omens was going to be better, but after a few games, I'm sold on Birth. This deck wants to hit its land drop every turn until an Ideal is resolved. Birth helps to ensure that and, since you actively want to draw lands while avoiding certain cards, Birth wins out. The delay on the arrival of the 0/4 wall is a bummer, but the life gain helps to offset that.

Thryx, the Sudden Storm is something I'm trying in the sideboard as an anti-control measure. My thought is that most control decks are likely to board out the majority of their creature removal. As such, having a threat that can be flashed in at the end of their turn which then prevents Ideal from being countered seems like a solid plan. Thryx also presents a pretty reasonable clock in his own right.

Modern seems to be in a bit of flux at the moment; in the wake of the recent bannings (Opal, Oko, & Lattice). I'm not sure if that helps Ideal as a strategy, but I don't think it hurts it. I do think that the Lattice ban likely reducing the number of Karn, the Great Creator floating around is positive for us, as our Lotus Blooms won't get randomly hosed, though I do still think Tron is a pretty bad matchup.

Actually I don't think there was any card from the new set that I wanted to play.

I like the idea of the Thryx effect but UU seems relatively difficult to cast: I think Grand Abolisher or Teferi are better choices. I think even against the most anemic of control decks a 5 mana 4/5 is not going to be a relevant threat and the Grand Abolisher is not only easier to cast but also makes 2 devotion for Nykthos

I like Wall of Omens much better than Birth of Meletis because it doesn't self-sac, so it acts as a permanent devotion source. If BoM stayed around on the battlefield after the third chapter then I would be much more interested. Overall I'm not convinced that "you actively want to draw lands while avoiding certain cards" is a relevant argument: you also want to draw Enduring Ideal, and it's so rare to lose the game after Ideal resolves even if there is 1 piece stuck in hand somehow that I don't think it's a scenario that should be weighted heavily in terms of card choices. Following your own logic if you really wanted to mulligan to Ideal and try not to draw random cards, then you should cut Arcum's Astrolabe for New Benalia (your mana is near-perfect without Astrolabe it so it's basically just Glassdust Hulk, which you might as well play instead if you really want a 1-mana cantrip because it's better against e.g. Narset and Chalice of the Void)

Omen is ok but if I was playing a blue splash with fetches (and more cards that put themselves in the graveyard like Meletis) then I might consider Search for Azcanta instead

I think both Oko and Karn are annoying cards to play against (Oko game 1 is generally not scary but as a free way to disable Abolisher I found it to be annoying) so both of those being gone is a good thing.
Lack of Oko may make burn more popular which is also a good thing for this deck
And then Primeval Titan decks can be handled pretty well with Nevermore/Leyline depending on the version (maybe not, depending on how fast they are) and Shadow Variants are in general quite a good matchup I think.
Tron matchup still sucks but it doesn't seem too popular atm

CaptainTwiddle

01-27-2020, 11:05 PM

I like the idea of the Thryx effect but UU seems relatively difficult to cast: I think Grand Abolisher or Teferi are better choices. I think even against the most anemic of control decks a 5 mana 4/5 is not going to be a relevant threat and the Grand Abolisher is not only easier to cast but also makes 2 devotion for Nykthos.

That's fair. I guess without Porphyry Nodes in the main any longer, Abolisher might be more practical. I like T3feri, but felt that protecting him might be difficult, though maybe not against control without much pressure.

I like Wall of Omens much better than Birth of Meletis... Overall I'm not convinced that "you actively want to draw lands while avoiding certain cards" is a relevant argument: ... Following your own logic ... you should cut Arcum's Astrolabe.

Astrolabe has been good. The color fixing is nice & the card draw is welcome; some is better than none, but I still maintain that selection is preferable.

Omen is ok but if I was playing a blue splash with fetches (and more cards that put themselves in the graveyard like Meletis) then I might consider Search for Azcanta instead.

I should try Search for Azcanta. My initial thought was that it was too slow to be a setup card. The surveil each turn would be nice. Transforming it would be excellent, but the deck doesn't put that many cards into the yard. Nonetheless, the search function would be awesome & getting an additional land into play could be hugely relevant.

CaptainTwiddle

01-28-2020, 09:52 AM

kombatkiwi

02-07-2020, 05:48 AM

Another card that I'm contemplating for this deck is Kiora Bests the Sea God. I don't know that this card specifically offers anything that isn't obtained elsewhere, but it is another game winner at the same CMC as Ideal. Also, just a general note about sagas: if you resolve Ideal and use the Epic trigger to get a saga, it enters the battlefield, giving you chapter 1, then you move to draw and as enter you main phase you'll get chapter 2 in that same turn. I think that's worth keeping in mind if we continue to get sagas in the future.

I don't think the deck needs any more effects like this (haymakers), and if I did want to play them they would probably have a similar manacost to something like Sigil of the Empty Throne so that they can curve into ideal by adding to the devotion count.

What I'm most interested in at the moment are anti-Primeval SB options
- Nevermore is ok but it can be slow
- The white Torpor Orb creatures (Tocatli Honor Guard or Hushbringer etc) are alright but maybe the impact is not high enough (but in combination with removal spells maybe they are ok? and they also disable reclamation sage). Turning off your own Wall of Omens could be annoying though and they also have a weird interaction with Uro. (It disables both etb triggers so they don't get the 1UG explore but it doesn't self-sac either).
- Aven Mindcensor?

It could also be worth moving in on the blue splash and then playing something like Aether Gust

Edit: The deck might actually be a pretty poor choice atm (prior meme status notwithstanding) because a lot of people are playing SB ashioks to deal with Titans and it totally fucks you over

kombatkiwi

02-22-2020, 11:44 PM

Had a pretty bad run with this yesterday where I went 0-3 not winning a game
I think my draws were pretty bad but also when you're playing a fun deck against real decks (Amulet, 4C shadow, Uroza) it's somewhat expected

New idea: Astral Drift maindeck, possibly replacing Stasis Snare or something else

Reasoning:
- The main idea is not to cast it, you are usually supposed to cycle it
- 2W Fog a creature draw a card is reasonable
- You can target your own Wall of Omens for value (White Divination, omg), especially mid-combat after blocking with it
- Uncounterable un-veilable way of disrupting TBR/Infect stuff
- A lot of the same Stasis Snare tricks are possible (like you exile their Dryad of the Grove in response to the Valakut triggers)
- You can't permanently exile things but you can endstep cycle it to exile a Meddling Mage or something for your own turn
- Delete a token
- If Uro is about to attack you then you can blink the Uro, and when it comes back (they get the ETB trigger but they would have got a trigger anyway if you let it attack) it enters without escaping and dies
- It's not a spell to cycle it, which gives you some play with Enduring Ideal (e.g. you get Sphere of Safety with Ideal, then they pay to attack with their 1 big creature, and even though you can't cast spells you can still cycle Drift to flicker their attacker)

The fact it's an Enchantment doesn't matter that much:
- You can cast it for 1 Devotion if you're desperate
- If you have 6 mana you can use Hall of Heliods Generosity to put it on top every turn and keep 1 creature locked down forever while not skipping your draw step (even after Enduring Ideal has resolved)
- Nice interaction with Cavalier of Dawn, which I think is a good SB card (you can flicker the Golem to kill it or flicker the Cavalier to destroy something else, and Drift puts itself in the graveyard so you have a target to return for when the Cavalier dies)

Basically, in terms of removal it's worse than Stasis Snare, but it might be good enough, and in other situations the cantrip (or actual card advantage, with Wall of Omens) is really important for a monoW 'combo' deck that has obvious consistency problems

You can also do a loop with a card like Auramancer just paying mana every turn to draw a card but I don't know if this is good enough

Edit: Maybe this would be possible shifting the entire deck into some kind of really fair plan B
Like you can play Auramancer, Elspeth Conquers Death, Cavalier of Dawn, maybe a couple of PW, and then have fewer prison elements maindeck and just be like a midrange white deck with the backup plan of Bloom + Ideal.
In the broader modern context this probably doesn't quite make sense although I think there could be some merit to e.g. moving Leyline to the sideboard

This for example seems reasonable, but maybe 4x Cavalier is too greedy as a 5-drop
4 Temple
4 Nykthos
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Hall of Heliod
1 Ardenvale
1 Orazca
10 Plains
[22]
4 Bloom
4 Ideal
4 Wall of Omens
4 Cast Out
4 Astral Drift
[42]
1 Dovescape
1 Splendor
1 Sphere
1 Dragon / Solemnity
1 Alternate Wincon e.g. Dawn of Hope
1 Unlife
[48]
4 Runed Halo
4 Nevermore
4 Cavalier of Dawn
[60]

SB:
4 Grand Abolisher
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 On Thin Ice
1 Boseiju
2 [Free Slot]

CaptainTwiddle

03-01-2020, 09:37 PM

kombatkiwi

03-03-2020, 12:54 AM

I don't have much to add to the furthering of the Ideal deck at the moment, but I do think that we may be reaching a space where some divergent strategies become realistic. Specifically, the Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Walking Ballista combo is compact enough that I've started wondering about hybridizing Ideal w/ white devotion. I've also been playing an Esper Stax deck in Pioneer that I'm interested in porting to Modern. I don't think that build would include Ideal, as it tends to lean more on planeswalkers, but Starfield of Nyx has proven to be a really powerful card when combined with sagas, legendary enchantments, and Doom Foretold. Porting to modern would definitely require some tweaks to make sure the locks can be applied quick enough, but I do think that Arcum's Astrolabe opens up some space by providing ready access to all colors.

I thought about the same idea (Heliod / Ballista combo). I like (or am at least open to) the idea of having the minimum possible Ideal package and then using some other fair creature plan as a devotion enabler.

One thing that I think could work really well with this plan is Ranger-Captain of Eos, which searches for Ballista, and the silence effect can protect the combo (whether that is casting Ideal or the Ballista Infinite). (Actually if there was a useful 1-drop to search for in the enchantment version of the deck then maybe Ranger is already better than Grand Abolisher? Not sure. Off the top of my head all I can think of is Weathered Wayfarer, which is ok but not great).

The thing that makes me less enthusiastic about this creature version is that random 5/5 Heliod beatdowns is a much less scary plan-B in modern, and a lot of those ancillary enchantments like Cast Out and Nevermore and so on are also relevant parts of the enduring ideal toolbox in addition to being those on-curve disruption+devotion elements, so replacing them with creatures has a cost.

Doom Foretold is too much of a nonbo with Nykthos for me to consider it in an Enduring Ideal deck, maybe you can make another list around it (with starfield), but a big part of the reason to play this deck is the game-ending hammer-drop of Ideal into Dovescape (or Splendor) and I think losing this angle is a big downside). Doom Foretold + Starfield could be a thing in pioneer maybe.

kombatkiwi

07-02-2020, 03:18 PM

After seriously considering playing Astral Drift I realised that it's better to just play the blue manabase to support Teferi

4 Flooded Strand
4 Nykthos
9 Snow Plains
1 Snow Island
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 UW Temple
1 Mistveil Plains

3 Teferi, Time Raveler

4 Wall of Omens

4 Enduring Ideal

4 Arcum's Astrolabe
4 Lotus Bloom

1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Dovescape
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Sphere of Safety
4 Cast Out
4 Runed Halo
3 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Nevermore

1 Free Slot (Dawn of Hope, probably)

SB:
On Thin Ice
Cavalier of Dawn (You can pop your own astro with this which is fun)
Spreading Seas maybe
Elspeth Conquers Death?
1x Leyline and Nevermore
Lavinia Azorius Renegade maybe

Compared to the manabase suggested by cpt twiddle I don't think so many lands are needed with 4 Astro but the deck needs more than 12 snow sources for Astrolabe and it seems to work out that Hall/Arch should be cut as well, but you can probably fine-tune this a bit

EDIT: Well now astrolabe is banned, going back to the monoW build

4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Nevermore
4 Runed Halo
4 Cast Out

4 Enduring Ideal
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Wall of Omens

1 Dovescape
1 Unlife
1 Dragon
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Splendor
1 Dawn of Hope

3 Open slot

4 Nykthos
12 Snow Plains
4 White scryland
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Heliods Hall

Sideboard
4 On thin Ice
4 Grand Abolisher (or possibly Captain of Eos if the deck can figure out a 1drop that makes sense)
1 Boseiju
+X

Notes:
The main issue is the deck still ~probably~ wants to be more threat dense in those open slots but finding cards that adequately do this role in monoW is difficult
- Bomby creatures possibly too vulnerable to removal and/or not scary enough (e.g. Cavalier of Dawn, Sun Titan maybe?)
- Planeswalkers possibly same (4WW Elspeth, 2WW Serra/Elspeth/Gideon, etc. I considered Calix but maybe it's not good enough)
- Stoneforge is possible? But not sure if something like 2 SFM + 1 Skull is worth
- Other enchantments don't really exist (Sigil of the Empty Throne is a bad topdeck, Assemble the Legion slow and also vulnerable to e.g. teferi bouncing it (the splash is pretty free for a 3WX card but if you want to try to play something like Blood Moon alongside then it becomes a little more challenging), History of Benalia too low-impact, possibly don't want to play multiple copies of things that sink mana like Dawn of Hope, not sure if other options are out there)

- Astral Drift still seems like an ok idea. Maybe so many cast outs are not needed (you only need maybe 2 to be part of the EI toolbox, and they are almost always cycled when drawn) so these can be swapped to Astral Drifts, which do more when cycled and have more synergy with other cards in the deck like Wall and Hall of Heliod.

- Castle Ardenvale was cut for a plains to increase snow count for SB on thin ice and better chance of having WW on turn 2 for Halo (i.e. if you lead on temple on turn 1). Because of how the deck defends itself from creatures with e.g. Runed Halo and not hard removal like Supreme Verdict it's almost impossible to use Castle as a wincon and therefore it only functions like a bad Maze of Ith that can chumpblock 1 thing per turn, which is fine in some situations but overall not that great.

- 1 of the open slot can possibly be another plains

EDIT:

After some testing

12 Snow Plains
4 Temple of Triumph
4 Nykthos
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Hall of Heliod

4 Enduring Ideal
4 Lotus Bloom

4 Wall of Omens

4 Astral Drift
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Runed Halo
4 Cast Out
2 On Thin Ice
1 Nevermore

1 Dovescape
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Dawn of Hope / Luminarch Ascension / Sacred Mesa

SB:
2 On Thin Ice
3 Nevermore
4 Mana Tithe
4 Grand Abolisher
1 Boseiju
1 Unsure, possibly Generic Big Bomb Thing (Various upsides for a creature like Sun Titan because it dodges Force of Negation / Stub or a sorcery like Finale of Glory because it works with Boseiju or an enchantment like Sigil of the Empty Throne because you can recur it with the Heliod land)

Thoughts
- Astral Drift is actually a pretty decent card, especially with the UW blade deck becoming more popular as it works well against shark tokens and the Batterskull germ
- Now testing 4 Mana Tithe in the board as a catch-all for those matchups that are just a bit too fast / difficult to handle (i.e. combo/tron)
- Maybe the red Akroma is possible as that SB slot because you can morph it and then target it with Astral Drift to flip it
- Still seriously considering replacing the Grand Abolisher with Ranger-Captain of Eos, and then the last SB slot can be a tutor target:
----- Value creature: Weathered Wayfarer / Thraben Inspector
----- Threat/Finisher: Student of Warfare / Figure of Destiny
----- Removal/Disruption: Giant Killler / Judge's Familiar
Possibly the Boseiju can also be cut for a 2nd one of these because a lot of the matchups where you want it tend to be playing Field of Ruins

kombatkiwi

09-18-2020, 07:52 AM

A version of this deck has got some 5-0s recently but it was a fairly different list that was more focused on naturally drawing a solemnity combo (4 Solemnity maindeck with 2 Unlife and 3-4 Ninelives)
I don't know if I'm a fan of that because it seems fairly inconsistent but maybe naturally drawing ninelives / unlife gives you enough time against most decks to the point that it's better than Runed Halo? (which that list was not playing)

3 Wall of Omens 1white 0.12
2 Silence white 0.04
4 Enduring Ideal 5whitewhite 2.36
4 Lotus Bloom 3.12
4 On Thin Ice white 5.92
2 Greater Auramancy 1white 1.38
3 Suppression Field 1white 0.45
1 Ghostly Prison 2white 0.90
3 Nine Lives 1whitewhite 0.18
2 Phyrexian Unlife 2white 3.54
4 Solemnity 2white 1.68
4 Leyline of Sanctity 2whitewhite 17.12
2 Form of the Dragon 4redredred 0.02
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 10.60
18 Snow-Covered Plains 1.62
SB
1 Pithing Needle 1 0.26
3 Damping Sphere 2 0.57
3 Grand Abolisher whitewhite 7.17
2 Rest in Peace 1white 10.02
2 Torpor Orb 2 1.62
2 Archon of Sun's Grace 2whitewhite 0.10
2 Gideon's Intervention 2whitewhite 0.04
75 Cards Total
(on mtggoldfish from the last month there are 3 results with this list and one with -1 wall of omens +1 silence -1 ghostly prison +1 ninelives)

Thoughts on this:
- 4 Maindeck thin Ice is probably good and from my previous list I would cut 2 of the cast out to fit this (which also opens up 2 sb slots)
- No Dovescape anywhere in the 75 is interesting and I'm not sure if that's correct
- Every time I have played this deck I have been really disappointed with Suppression Field UNLESS there is a really popular meta deck that gets totally shut down by it (Splinter Twin etc). Just using it and hoping to randomly tax the opponent's fetchlands or whatever has disappointed me every time because the deck's gameplan is so slow that your opponent usually has time to build up mana to the point where they can easily ignore it
- I don't mind the idea of playing 5-6 copies of unlife/9lives maindeck because these will protect you approximately as well as Runed Halo (which this deck is not playing) a lot of the time (sometimes better) but 4x Solemnity is a bit worrisome in that it's a card that just does nothing by itself. I could even see myself trimming some of this for e.g Idyllic Tutor.
- I didn't feel the need for Greater Auramancy when testing my build but between Nevermore / Dovescape / Splendor you can shut down basically every form of targeted removal anyway (while also stopping your opponent from developing their wincondition, in the case of Splendor and Dovescape). So you do need some card for this role but it just depends whether you value having more power out of your ideal toolbox or having cards that are more easily castable by themselves. I did consider playing Privileged Position for a while, which I think is a reasonable option (it costs more but it gives everything hexproof and adds a lot of devotion).
- No temples or utility lands maindeck is interesting (this deck still easily has enough snow sources for Thin Ice even if you cut some plains)
- The extra mana of Gideon's Intervention compared to Nevermore feels important to me (e.g. against Primeval Titan)
- I considered Damping Sphere as the anti-tron card but was not happy with the interaction with Nykthos, maybe you are so reliant on Lotus Bloom to have a chance in that matchup that it doesn't matter and it's also good against other decks (Amulet, Storm)
- Archon of Suns grace is an interesting option for that 'Sigil of the Empty Throne' sb slot

Overall I was relatively happy with my list and if I didn't adopt the solemnity idea I would play something like this going forward:
4 Temple
4 Nykthos
12 Plains
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Hall of Heliod
1 Arch of Orazca

4 Bloom
4 Ideal

4 Wall of Omens

4 Thin Ice
4 Runed Halo
4 Astral Drift
1 Nevermore
1 Sacred Mesa
1 Unlife
4 Leyline
2 Cast Out
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Dovescape
1 Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor

Sideboard
4 Mana Tithe
4 Grand Abolisher
1 Boseiju
3 Nevermore
1 Heliod God of the Sun
2 [x] (Probably 1 RIP + something)

- I have still been liking the Wall/Drift 'package' so far
- I like Heliod over the Archon against midrange/control but the Archon is better against aggressive decks. I think Archon is a good 2nd choice because I think the important factors for this SB slot are that it doesn't get hit by FoN/Stub and that it doesn't get destroyed by Disenchants (So going forward I probably would not consider playing things like Starfield of Nyx or Sigil of the Empty Throne) . Overall I think I prefer Heliod because I don't think the deck needs too much extra help vs aggro/burn and the fact that you can rebuy it with Hall is pretty useful.
- Mana Tithe has been alright as a catch-all / gotcha against things you otherwise can't interact with very well but I could see it being cut for other cards if there are more specific things you want to hate out
- Nevermore is okay but maybe 4 copies is wrong, and like mana tithe some number can probably be cut for more targeted hate

my instinct if I wanted to play a build with maindeck solemnity is to start with something like this:

4 Temple
4 Nykthos
12 Plains
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Hall of Heliod
1 Arch of Orazca
4 Bloom
4 Ideal
1 Idyllic Tutor
4 Wall of Omens
4 Thin Ice
4 Solemnity
4 Astral Drift
1 Sacred Mesa
2 Unlife
4 Leyline
2 9Lives
2 Some combo of Dovescape / Splendor / PrivPos / Auramancy
1 Dragon

I don't know whether it's worth it to play maindeck silence, it does help a lot against counterspell decks g1 but idk if it's effective enough against the wider meta for that to be a card you want to play in the main

CaptainTwiddle

11-10-2020, 10:16 PM

It's been a while since I've updated my list here. Below is what I've been playing since Astrolabe got banned. Nothing too different.

Enduring Ideal
CREATURES
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
SPELLS
4 Lotus Bloom
3 On Thin Ice
2 The Birth of Meletis
2 Omen of the Sea
1 Peace of Mind
3 Runed Halo
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Detention Sphere
3 Ghostly Prison
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Story Circle
3 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Dovescape
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor
LANDS
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Snow-Covered Island
7 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Temple of Enlightenment

The sideboard changes based on what I'm expecting, but generally includes Aura of Silence, Spreading Seas, Wheel of Sun and Moon, Supreme Verdict, and now the Greater Auramancy that used to be in the main deck (I think it's better to board in, as enchantment hate tends to be pretty low game 1 and you can play toward Dovescape or Overwhelming Splendor to protect your pieces).

kombatkiwi

12-16-2020, 01:11 AM

Going to try testing this maindeck:

12 Snow Plains
4 RW Temple
4 Nykthos
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity

4 Wall of Omens
4 Skyclave Apparition

4 Enduring Ideal
4 Lotus Bloom

4 On Thin Ice
4 Runed Halo
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Astral Drift
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Dovescape
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Sphere of Safety

Skyclave Apparition is nice as an Oblivion ring with 2 devotion (doesn't exist afaik except for Stasis Snare which only hits creatures and the trigger isn't as good)
Apparition also has really good synergy with Astral Drift (you can blink Apparition to exile something else, or blink the illusion to get rid of it)

I cut the 2 Cast Out because Apparition steps in as an exile-permanent effect and I never found myself needing to get an Oblivion Ring after ideal had resolved, and also cut the other "flex slots" (1 Nevermore and 1 Sacred Mesa)

MonoW also has a bit of extra upside now because the existence of Scourge of the Skyclaves means there is a meaningful benefit to dealing 0 damage to yourself (not that a few fetches + 1 shock is going to change much there and that should still be a good matchup regardless)

Another thing that's possible with these changes is making it a Yorion deck, I'm not sure exactly what that would look like but I think it's worth thinking about.
- You draw Enduring Ideals less but you would also draw your random Dovescape, Dragon etc less
- Yorion is another big bomb play to to spend Nykthos / Lotus mana on, or if you only have 5 mana available then casting Yorion adds 2 devotion
- Cycle Astral Drift target Yorion is a big play
- You are already a monoW deck with pretty polarized matchups and not very good sb options so losing 1 sb slot to the companion and then having diluted ratios from playing 80 cards maybe isn't such a big problem

If there are 20 reasonable extra cards to add then it could be a nice upgrade maybe (it would be nice to find more permanents that have Yorion synergy but without adding another colour that probably means just jamming all the Nevermore / Cast Out etc back in the deck)

CaptainTwiddle

12-19-2020, 10:06 AM

Another thing that's possible with these changes is making it a Yorion deck, I'm not sure exactly what that would look like but I think it's worth thinking about.
- You draw Enduring Ideals less but you would also draw your random Dovescape, Dragon etc less
- Yorion is another big bomb play to to spend Nykthos / Lotus mana on, or if you only have 5 mana available then casting Yorion adds 2 devotion

I had tried a Yorion build of my WU list and found that it was different, but not really better. As you've noted, while you draw into Enduring Ideal less frequently, you are also less likely to draw into the one-off cards that you explicitly want to find with Ideal. I think the main problem is that you are significantly less likely to draw into both Ideal and the means of casting it early (e.g. finding Nykthos or having Lotus Bloom in your opening hand). I ultimately concluded that I wasn't really onboard with using Yorion as a companion. That stated, I think a Yorion build might be reasonable, but you'd probably want to change the focus to just being more of a pillow fort value deck that just happens to have the Ideal package as an end game, if the package is even worth it at all (the potential value gained from Yorion is kind of squandered if you aren't able to cast spells).

I am intrigued by Skyclave Apparition. I love the versatility of it, but don't love that it's the only creature to turn on the opponent's removal. That said, removing a legitimate threat/problem in exchange for a vanilla 1-4 power token isn't that bad, and if Path to Exile happens to be the removal used, it ramps us to our end game.

I haven't tried any builds with Astral Drift, but I do love that the templating of Skyclave Apparition (with 2 separate triggers) allows you to exile things without giving your opponent tokens in return.

*** EDIT / ADDITION ***

I spent a little time testing today with an updated Yorion build of UW Ideal, as I realized when I had last done so, it was prior to the printing of ZNR/Skyclave Apparition. After a few games, this is the maindeck configuration I've landed on:

Yorion Ideal
Yorion, Sky Nomad (Companion)
CREATURES
4 Skyclave Apparition
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
SPELLS
4 Lotus Bloom
3 On Thin Ice
2 Mazemind Tome
4 Omen of the Sea
1 Peace of Mind
4 Runed Halo
1 Seal Away
4 The Birth of Meletis
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Detention Sphere
3 Ghostly Prison
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Story Circle
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Thirst for Meaning
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Dovescape
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor
LAND
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Snow-Covered Island
8 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Temple of Enlightenment

Skyclave Apparition does a great job handling problem permanents. Even if the Apparition gets removed, it's generally a good tempo play and a significant downgrade to the threat you were facing.

The other new addition is Mazemind Tome, which has been very impressive. I thought it might be too slow for Modern, but it's proven itself to be quite effective. As an early play, its mostly used to scry, as you'll likely be wanting to keep your mana open for other things so that you can keep yourself alive while digging for Ideal or needed lands. Also, while not the biggest problem, it's nice to avoid drawing blind so you don't draw you primary Ideal targets. If you manage to set up a solid prison boardstate with Halos, Ghostly Prison, etc. and find yourself running low on cards, then you might start drawing with the Tome. Against aggro, you often want to race toward getting the 4th counter so you can get the life boost. Tome is also great after you resolve an Ideal, as you can scry during your upkeep after you search out an enchantment to again help avoid drawing into something you'd rather search up later.

As for Yorion, in an ideal game, you won't play it. The primary function of Yorion is simply to extract some additional value from your permanents in a game that is going long and setup your normal endgame. In a tight spot, as a sizeable flier, Yorion can be your win condition. Resetting Mazemind Tome can be highly valuable to bridge you to the endgame and naming a new card with Runed Halo can significantly change the texture of a game (particularly in sideboarded games when bringing in Supreme Verdict, as you may sweep away whatever had been named with Halo initially). Finding other permanents worth blinking would be nice, though the list seems pretty tight currently. The only flex slots that I'm considering are the Thirst for Meaning and the 4th copy of The Birth of Meletis.

kombatkiwi

12-20-2020, 07:02 AM

x4 Birth of Meletis x0 Wall of Omens seems really weird to me
If we assume that etb tutor 1 plains is exactly equal to drawing 1 card then

Meletis Pros:
- Gain 2 life
- If they use creature removal on the wall you still get 1 devotion for a bit

Wall of Omens Pros
- You don't have to wait 1 turn to actually get the wall (can block immediately)
- The nontoken permanent doesn't self-destruct after a few turns

The lifegain vs getting the immediate wall seems about equivalent but getting to keep the non-token permanent forever seems like a big upside in favour of Wall of Omens. Not only does it mean you keep the devotion forever but also if you draw e.g. Teferi/AstralDrift/Yorion much later you still have a value permanent to bounce/flicker.

And then importantly I also think that etb draw 1 is actually better than etb tutor a plains.

Another idea for the yorion build is to play a SFM package
- SFM->Skull is a fine wincon for the kind of midrange/control backup plan with thin ice / teferi etc etc in the lategame with Nykthos mana you can bounce and replay it
- Yorion can blink skull to reset it or blink SFM to search another equip
- Yorion out of the SB gives reliable access to a flying creature to equip
- SFM can search for a white equip e.g. Maul of the Skyclave to add more devotion

CaptainTwiddle

12-21-2020, 02:47 PM

x4 Birth of Meletis x0 Wall of Omens seems really weird to me
If we assume that etb tutor 1 plains is exactly equal to drawing 1 card then

Meletis Pros:
- Gain 2 life
- If they use creature removal on the wall you still get 1 devotion for a bit

Wall of Omens Pros
- You don't have to wait 1 turn to actually get the wall (can block immediately)
- The nontoken permanent doesn't self-destruct after a few turns

The lifegain vs getting the immediate wall seems about equivalent but getting to keep the non-token permanent forever seems like a big upside in favour of Wall of Omens. Not only does it mean you keep the devotion forever but also if you draw e.g. Teferi/AstralDrift/Yorion much later you still have a value permanent to bounce/flicker.

And then importantly I also think that etb draw 1 is actually better than etb tutor a plains.

My experience is that tutoring up a plains is actually better than drawing a blind card, as we want to hit our land drop every turn. Yes, if the game draws out, which it does do with some regularity, drawing an action card would be nice, but I have Omen of the Sea and Mazemind Tome for that. If I were playing Astral Drift, I'd likely want Wall of Omens, but as is, I've been happier with Birth. That said, I am considering trimming a copy, but I'm not sure for what. I suppose I could try a 3/1 split between Birth and Wall.

Edit: Tried 3/1 split on Birth/Wall of Omens & really liking it. I love to have one Birth in the first 2-3 turns, but Wall is often better thereafter.

kombatkiwi

12-26-2020, 02:05 AM

My idea for a yorion build

31 Lands
1 Hall of Heliod
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Arch of Orazca
4 Temple
4 Nykthos
20 Plains

4 Wall of Omens
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Skyclave Apparition

4 Lotus Bloom
4 Enduring Ideal

4 On Thin Ice
4 Runed Halo
4 Astral Drift
4 Leyline of Sanctity

1 Batterskull
1 Godsend / Maul of the Skyclaves
1 Extra equipment (e.g. Sofai)

1 Dovescape
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Unlife
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Sphere of Safety

+5
- Cast Out
- Nevermore
- Extra creatures (not sure what, but there is maybe a lack of things to put equipment on)
- Extra wincon (Heliod etc)
- Exclusion Ritual / ECD (maybe a bit slow)
Also worth considering cutting 1-2 plains for e.g. Temple 5+, Boseiju, Castle Ardenvale

I really think this has a lot of potential because the threat density of the usual build is too low.
Too many games with like 10+ mana and a stable board and not drawing ideal for several turns and just dying to something random.
Just having a big flyer in the command zone is already nice for that and Yorion has pretty decent interaction with other good cards (Wall, Apparition etc)

SFM is a pretty divergent plan from Ideal but I think equipment are important for making Yorion more of a threat. Another option is to play Auramancer, which can be a draw engine with Astral Drift, then play more e.g. Cast Out to have targets for it, play ECD to bring back with it, etc, but this doesn't seem as powerful (also I like that SFM makes the deck more proactive). You could also just fill the deck with a bunch of extra enchantments that don't have any particular synergy with Yorion (Nevermore etc) but idk if this is effective/necessary.

CaptainTwiddle

01-09-2021, 05:01 PM

I noticed an Enduring Ideal deck top 8'ed an online Prelim recently, here's the list:

Enduring Ideal by Rinko - 6th place MTGO Prelim 6-JAN-2021
2 Skyclave Apparition
3 Lotus Bloom
3 Oust
4 Silence
2 Treasure Map
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
1 Blood Moon
2 Deafening Clarion
3 Nine Lives
2 Phyrexian Unlife
3 Solemnity
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Dovescape
4 Enduring Ideal
2 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor
2 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
1 Mistveil Plains
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
6 Plains
4 Sacred Foundry
3 Temple of Triumph

Sideboard
1 Word of Seizing
3 Torpor Orb
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Grand Abolisher
3 Containment Priest
2 Boil
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon

I think this list is interesting; there's a lot that I like about it and some things that I don't quite understand. I'm just starting to test it "as is" before making any changes to see if there are some factors I hadn't considered, but these are my initial thoughts:

Pros - I like the inclusion of Solemnity with both Phyrexian Unlife and Nine Lives as combo pieces. Having those locks available at a reasonable mana cost makes the deck much less reliant on resolving Enduring Ideal. I also like that leaning into red a bit allows for Form of the Dragon to more realistically be hardcast. Deafening Clarion is a decent sweeper, but is going to be meta-dependent. Maindeck Blood Moon is a way to steal some games.

Cons - I question some of the card choices. Oust seems OK, but I think I'd rather have On Thin Ice or Chained to the Rocks, as they add to your devotion, but both would probably require some adjusting to the mana base. I'm not a huge fan of Silence, as adding an 8th mana to to force through Ideal is often a pretty big ask, delaying your casting by a turn. Perhaps it belongs in the sideboard? Though this board already has Grand Abolisher. Treasure Map is kind of odd in this deck. My first thought was that it seemed inferior to Mazemind Tome, but then I realized how each card interacts with Solemnity; Tome becomes useless, whereas Map still lets you pay 1 to scry, though it won't be able to transform. So, I guess we're stuck with Map in that slot, which isn't terrible, as flipping the Map (assuming you don't have Solemnity in play) could get you a needed mana boost to resolve a big spell.

Overall, I do think I like this direction for the deck. I think some numbers could probably be adjusted and there are certainly other cards that can be considered, but the Solemnity combos do seem like a solid angle.

kombatkiwi

03-03-2021, 04:03 AM

The white rune from kaldheim could be a decent pick for the Yorion build too:

Rune of Sustenance 1W
Enchantment - Aura Rune
Enchant Permanent
When ~ enters the battlefield, draw a card.
As long as enchanted permanent is a creature, it has lifelink.
As long as enchanted permanent is an equipment, it has "Equipped creature has lifelink"

- On turn 2 you can just put it on a land or whatever to draw a card and gain 1 devotion, then later in the game when you play Yorion you can flicker the rune to draw another card and give lifelink to Yorion
- You can put it on your opponnent's Death Shadow / Scourge of the Skyclaves as a pseudo removal

[In a fringe case if you are playing SFM you could put it onto your Sword of Fire and Ice or something but this doesn't seem too amazing or likely]

31 Lands
4 Wall of Omens
4 Skyclave Apparition
4 Bloom
4 Ideal
4 Ice
4 Rune
4 Halo
4 Drift
4 Leyline
5x Ideal Toolbox (Dragon, Dove, Splendor, Unlife, Sphere)
[72]
So one option for the remaining 8 cards would be like Heliod + 4 SFM + 3 Equips or something like that but I would be willing to consider other alternatives (like a bigger Enduring Ideal toolbox or some Cast Out / Path to Exile)
Another option: 4 Ranger Captain of Eos and then like 1 Giant Killer 1 Weathered Wayfarer 1 Thraben Inspector or something weird like this
Other option: 4 Search for Glory 1 Elspeth Conquers Death 3 Something (in a pinch it can already search for On Thin Ice / Plains)

Edit:
Actually I think I do quite like the search for Glory idea. The fact that it searches for any legendary permanent means it can also search for Boseiju, Hall of Heliod, and Nykthos, which is quite a lot of utility. Add ECD and Heliod in addition to the aforementioned On Thin Ice and there are a good range of options for different situations.

The other 4 slots are just 4 Path to Exile, which are the "best" removal spell for a modern white control deck. I avoided playing Path in the past because it puts you 'down a card' and doesn't add any devotion but with Yorion in the deck you have a reliable way to build into a fat Mulldrifter if you stall at 5 mana, so this should be less of an issue.

[31 Lands]
4 Temple of Triumph
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Arch of Orazca
19 Snow-Covered Plains -> Can possibly carefully trim these for a couple extra temples or a Castle Ardenvale or maybe a storage land / Emeria the Sky Ruin, Field of Ruin maybe who knows

4 Wall of Omens
4 Skyclave Apparition
1 Heliod, God of the Sun

4 Lotus Bloom
4 Path to Exile
2 Search for Glory (possibly you could trim stuff to fit 1-2 more copies of this but you don't want to have too many of these clunking your draws by spending 3 mana to not affect the board, especially when you have the 3 mana play of wish for Yorion as well)
4 Enduring Ideal

4 On Thin Ice
4 Rune of Sustenance
4 Runed Halo
1 Phyrexian Unlife
4 Astral Drift
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Elspeth Conquers Death
1 Dovescape
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor

------

SB ideas:
1 Yorion (companion)
Grand Abolisher
Mana Tithe / Lapse of Certainty
Generous Gift
Nevermore / Gideon's Intervention
Worship
RIP

Options Tutorable by SFG:
Reidane (for the Shield side which might be good vs Burn / Storm / Ballista Combo etc)
Honden of Cleansing Fire / Lyra Dawnbringer / Something that gains life
2WW Linvala vs any kind of coco/heliod etc nonsense (this one seems pretty good)
Iona? If there is a good reason maybe
Elspeth Sun's Chamption / Similar Big PW card
The Immortal Sun?
Mangara? Just to try stone rain a tronland or something. Bit slow (but it does combo with astral drift which is funny). I really want a better tutor target to beat tron but I'm not sure what, I don't think there is some kind of Legendary Mindcensor etc and turn 4 is kind of slow anyway (it might be possible to try to cheese wins by going turn 3 search for Karn liberated or Immortal Sun or some other big thing, play it on turn 4 with lotus accel. In which case if you were planning on casting it off lotus there is more freedom with the colours. Not sure if this is a good idea either, might just have to accept that the matchup is not salvageable). The other option would be to have like a massive transformational sb into taxes with Leonin Arbiter etc but idk if this is a good idea either.
Urza's Ruinous Blast (don't think this makes sense in the deck but it's interesting to be aware of and there is Yorion to enable it)

Edit:
Still thinking about those last few slots (Heliod + ECD + 2 Search for Glory)
I really like the idea of playing 1 Skybind, the floor on it is not *terrible* (okay 3WW for a sorcery Cloudshift is not great but at least you get 2 devotion) but the loop with Yorion seems probably pretty backbreaking in a bunch of matchups
Heliod is so mana intensive that it's not very good at stabilizing a board by itself so that seems like an okay swap for Skybind, but e.g. then search for glory gets worse without heliod as an option, so maybe you can play a different card in those 2 slots that has more immediate impact and more synergy with Skybind like Cavalier of Dawn or Arcanists Owl etc

Edit again:
In my first event trying this I used a version with instead of the 2 search for glory and 1 Heliod maindeck it had a Serra Benevolent a Cavalier of Dawn and a Skybind just to try and get more mileage out of the Yorion.
In my experience this probably felt incorrect and after the event I wished I had used the original list above with the Search for Glory idea. The other 4-5 drops I was playing clunked up my hand too much and the ability of SFG to search for Nykthos/Lands would have been very impactful in several situations.

I cut the Temples for Field of ruins too which weren't super useful in the matchups I faced but they should help a bit vs Tron, and CIPT lands are worse when you have more cantrips like Rune of Sustenance and also Yorion because you generally have more things to be spending your mana on

I'm also more attracted to the idea of playing damping sphere in the sb. In the non-yorion version of the deck it felt like an awkward idea because it disables Nykthos but with the Yorion support you have more card advantage to naturally draw 7 lands and the flying bird noodle to act as a wincon if your opponent is stuck under the sphere (good against both tron and amulet too).

So with the search for glory maindeck something like
1 Yorion
4 Grand Abolisher
4 Damping Sphere
1-2 Reidane / Linvala / Lyra
1 Nevermore/Gideons Intervention
3-4 X (Unsure, need to take time to sit down and figure out more of a SB map)

kombatkiwi

05-12-2021, 01:36 AM

The spoilers for the new DND theme set include a card that's probably playable

"Portable Hole"
Artifact
{W}
When portable hole ETB, exile target nonland permanent with cmc 2 or less an opponent controls until portable hole leaves the battlefield.

Lack of instant speed compared to path could be a drawback in some spots but it also doesn't give the opponent a land and gives you a devotion, and it can hit a few important noncreature permanents like Wrenn / Amulet etc. When it's released I will probably make that swap

CaptainTwiddle

05-17-2021, 09:53 PM

The spoilers for the new DND theme set include a card that's probably playable: Portable Hole

Lack of instant speed compared to path could be a drawback in some spots but it also doesn't give the opponent a land and gives you a devotion, and it can hit a few important noncreature permanents like Wrenn / Amulet etc. When it's released I will probably make that swap

Portable Hole seems great. Path has kind of been down in terms of playability of late, as giving an additional land to some decks can be extremely punishing (vs. Prowess decks, for example). I suspect the fact that PH hits nonland permanents more than makes up for the targeting restriction of mana value 2 or less (it can hit Wrenn and Six, Aether Vial, Utopia Sprawl, and most creatures that are going to be relevant in the early parts of a game).

Another card I have my eye on is Brainstone from MH2 [since the image isn't linked at time of posting: Artifact for 1. 2, T, sac: draw 3, put 2 back on top of your library]. It's a bit mana intensive, but not horribly so, and being able to put your Enduring Ideal targets back into your library is something that I've wanted for a long time. Between fetchlands and The Birth of Meletis, there should be ample shuffle effects to get max value. I'll definitely be testing it out in some capacity.

I've been reassessing the archetype as a whole and thinking about more of the fundamentals. My starting point is to be able to cast Enduring Ideal as quickly, with a relatively high a level of consistency, as possible. This means being able to generate 7 mana ASAP. As far as I've been able to figure, turn 4 seems like the realistic threshold here, which can be achieved most simply by suspending Lotus Bloom on turn 1 and hitting your land drop each turn. Alternatively, you could generate 7 mana by hitting your first 4 land drops with the last one being Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, assuming you manage to add W, WW, WWW to your devotion on the first 3 turns, which is pretty unrealistic, though freely deployed Leyline of Sanctity can make this somewhat more likely. Ultimately, I don't think that having Enduring Ideal ready to cast on turn 4 is going to be good enough on its own a fair amount of the time, though it obviously depends what you've played up to that point. This is why I've been liking the Solemnity + Nine Lives/Phyrexian Unlife combo, as it's a fairly effective lock that you can just play out naturally and the individual pieces can buy time to resolve Ideal. So, really, it's 1 and 2 drops where I find myself hung up. Having permanents to play that add to devotion and also help dig/filter to more relevant cards and ensure land drops continue to be made seems key, but options are somewhat limited. Alternatively, cards that interact with opposing threats can occupy this space and buy time, which translates into seeing additional cards over the course of the game.

With white 1 drops specifically, there are some good options for interactive pieces (e.g. On Thin Ice or Portable Hole), but those are only worth playing on turn 1 if you're on the draw and your opponent has deployed a target. As for white 2 drops, Wall of Omens and The Birth of Meletis are the frontrunners. I generally have liked Wall of Omens more, as you get a blocker immediately and it adds a pip of devotion. The Birth of Meletis grabbing a land is really nice, as are the wall that it makes later, and the life gain is welcome as well, but the saga being sacrificed to its own trigger make it an unreliable devotion enabler. One thing that does make me potentially lean towards Birth is that I think I want to run Torpor Orb in the sideboard, as beating the Ephemerate decks feels nearly impossible (Overwhelming Splendor is your only hope). Runed Halo is a great devotion enabler that, while not providing card draw/filtering, can neutralize one or more threats and buy you time. The biggest downside to the Halo is simply that it is a narrow answer that won't be particularly good against some decks, though it can be almost game winning on its own against others.

Looking outside of white, we get some solid options in things like Omen of Sea and Teferi, Time Raveler, but going into additional colors makes the devotion lines even less reliable. So, that begs the question: Is it worth going into another color and slowing the deck down to be more reliable? I think the answer may well be yes, but part of the added color providing increased card selection means that we are going to want potent options to select from to buy time.

TL;DR - When I started brewing this deck, I didn't realize how each of the various axes on which it is constructed really pull on the others. The simple fix would be getting some new white cards that provide the card draw/selection we want while simultaneously contributing to devotion, but that seems like a big ask that likely breaks the color pie.

kombatkiwi

05-18-2021, 04:27 AM

I've been reassessing the archetype as a whole and thinking about more of the fundamentals. My starting point is to be able to cast Enduring Ideal as quickly, with a relatively high a level of consistency, as possible. This means being able to generate 7 mana ASAP. As far as I've been able to figure, turn 4 seems like the realistic threshold here, which can be achieved most simply by suspending Lotus Bloom on turn 1 and hitting your land drop each turn. Alternatively, you could generate 7 mana by hitting your first 4 land drops with the last one being Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, assuming you manage to add W, WW, WWW to your devotion on the first 3 turns, which is pretty unrealistic, though freely deployed Leyline of Sanctity can make this somewhat more likely. Ultimately, I don't think that having Enduring Ideal ready to cast on turn 4 is going to be good enough on its own a fair amount of the time, though it obviously depends what you've played up to that point. This is why I've been liking the Solemnity + Nine Lives/Phyrexian Unlife combo, as it's a fairly effective lock that you can just play out naturally and the individual pieces can buy time to resolve Ideal. So, really, it's 1 and 2 drops where I find myself hung up. Having permanents to play that add to devotion and also help dig/filter to more relevant cards and ensure land drops continue to be made seems key, but options are somewhat limited. Alternatively, cards that interact with opposing threats can occupy this space and buy time, which translates into seeing additional cards over the course of the game.

Yes I had a big discussion about this on the Enduring Ideal discord which I found recently

Basically in my opinion the deck can be thought of in roughly 3 different ways
1. Mono White Ad Nauseam
2. Mono White Scapeshift
3. Mono White Splinter Twin (the 2 card combo being Solemnity + Unlife/Nine)

I think #2 (Scapeshift) is the most effective approach, and more importantly I think it's very bad when you try to merge these together

For example let's say you decide that you want to play the "Splinter Twin" combo in the maindeck
- Wouldn't you want to play cards like Serum Visions etc to make sure that you can find this combo reliably? Rather than just assume you will naturally topdeck your way into it, which will probably be too inconsistent
- If the combo is so good that it effectively wins the game, why does your "actual" wincondition need to be an overwhelmingly powerful 7 mana sorcery? Rather than something like (for example) Dawn of Hope or Sigil of Empty Throne or a similar card which can eventually close the game out but has more application in the early turns (i.e. does something before you get to 7 mana).
- If the combo is not so good that it effectively wins the game, is it really worth attempting in the first place? Considering the number of times you will draw only half of the combo and have that card not do anything

I see some people playing decks that play many copies of solemnity + unlife/nine in the maindeck but also play almost 0 library manipulation and also have Ideal as the wincondition, why? It doesn't make sense. If you want your wincondition to be a sorcery that wins instantly but costs a million mana and requires a bunch of deckbuilding concessions then you want to make sure all of your defense/interaction leading up to it is as reliable as possible. You could easily have a build of Scapeshift splashing W for Solemnity/Unlife to prevent all damage and stall the game until it gets 7 lands to cast Scapeshift but when you put this combo in the context of another deck like this the idea seems more obviously ridiculous. All the interaction played by those decks is stuff that just "works" by itself (e.g. the 5C BTL builds right now are playing some mix of Helix/Bolt/Guile/Path/Remand). The comparision to this deck for options that just "work" by themselves is Runed Halo, Skyclave Apparition, Thin Ice, Wall of Omens etc. Sure you don't instantly win when you Lightning Helix your opp creature, just like you don't instantly win when you name Stormwing Entity with Runed Halo, but you have built your deck with the plan to win of casting the big sorcery. Shoving multiple winconditions (2 card combo + the big sorcery) into 1 deck doesn't increase the winrate, it just means when you need to assemble your combo you have a big sorcery stuck in your hand or your Lotus Blooms doing nothing and when you want to survive to cast your big sorcery you have some combo piece stuck in your hand doing nothing.

I think a deck built around the Solemnity combo can work but I don't think it should have the card Enduring Ideal (or Lotus Bloom) in it. (Explained above)

I think you could build Enduring Ideal like an Ad Nauseam deck (i.e. you minimize interaction with the opponent and instead play more cantrips/rituals (Pentad Prism) to combo off faster and more consistently) but then for a deck like this Enduring Ideal doesn't seem a better wincondition than actual Ad Nauseam (Pact of Negation) or even maybe Dragonstorm.

So with the scapeshift approach:
- The ultimate gameplan is play the big sorcery.
- Because you instantly win when you play the big sorcery your disruption doesn't need to totally annihilate your opponent's gameplan by itself, it just needs to be enough to survive to play the big sorcery.
- You can have some "ad nauseam hands" where you suspend lotus turn 1 and win on turn 4 but this is just something you luck into sometimes and can't even pretend it's close to the plan A.
- The upside compared to the card Scapeshift is that rather than play cards like Explore you have devotion permanents, which can be powerful disruption AND ramp. Lotus Bloom costs 0 mana to play and adds 3 mana to the big sorcery, compared to Explore which costs 2 mana and only adds 1.
- The downside is that the deck is less consistently proactive than Scapeshift and has more polarized matchups (You can play against matchups where the effects of Leyline/Halo don't do anything, and then they don't work as ramp if you don't find a Nykthos. Explore is just generic ramp that helps you to cast your 3 and 4 drops but using Bloom feels very bad (-1 card) to cast anything that's not Enduring Ideal. Using Lotus also makes you weak to counterspells, and so does having no (or bad) backup winconditions in the deck, e.g. the BTL shift decks can also play Omnath or use BTL for Tibalt if they don't have enough lands yet, or can win with Dryad into natural Valakuts without a Scapeshift, whereas this deck is maybe playing like 1 maindeck Heliod or something to win outside of resolving Ideal, it's very 1-dimensional).

Another card I have my eye on is Brainstone from MH2 [since the image isn't linked at time of posting: Artifact for 1. 2, T, sac: draw 3, put 2 back on top of your library]. It's a bit mana intensive, but not horribly so, and being able to put your Enduring Ideal targets back into your library is something that I've wanted for a long time. Between fetchlands and The Birth of Meletis, there should be ample shuffle effects to get max value. I'll definitely be testing it out in some capacity.
I don't think the card is terrible but I suspect it costs too much mana.

[31 Lands]
4 Nykthos
4 Field of Ruin
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Boseiju
1 Hall of Heliod
19 Snow Plains
1 Mistveil Plains

4 Wall of Omens
4 Skyclave Apparition
1 Heliod God of the Sun

4 Path to Exile / Portable Hole
4 On Thin Ice
4 Runed Halo
4 Rune of Sustenance
4 Astral Drift
4 Leyline of Sanctity

4 Enduring Ideal
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Search for Glory

1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Elspeth Conquers Death
1 Dovescape
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Form of the Dragon

SB
1 Yorion
4 Grand Abolisher
4 Damping Sphere
1 Reidane
1 Lyra
1 Serra Benevolent
1 Elspeth Conquers Death
1 Nevermore / Gideons Intervention
1 ???? Linvala / Worship / RIP / idk

The SB 1 ofs are a bit dubious, trying to decide whether to maximise the utility of Search for Glory and have more proactive cards against midrange/control vs playing like 4x RIP or something

Also I realised that Nyx Lotus is legendary which could be an interesting SFG target too but probably just searching for Nykthos is good enough

Reeplcheep

05-18-2021, 09:19 AM

kombatkiwi

05-18-2021, 10:56 AM

Has anyone tried splashing black for curse of misfortunes? It ups your tutor to target ratio since a lot of the good big enchantments are curses anyways. This would let you play more disruption or ramp instead of cantrips. Elspeth conquers death could easily be cruel reality and sphere of sanctity could be deaths hold. It improves your threat density too. Also 5 mana<<7 mana

1 card comboes >> 2 card comboes in a deck that doesn’t have much selection.

Totally biased ofc

Honor-Worn Shaku plus legendary enchantments could be a possible third source of on brand acceleration.

I think it's a slightly (totally?) different deck
Even though Ideal is much harder to cast than Misfortune it's also meaningfully better by far in many situations
In my mind Curse of Misfortune could be effective as the top end of some kind of more midrangey GB Ponza shell (similar to how GR builds play cards like Glorybringer or Elder Gargaroth or Lukka)
You can have a more "normal" deck without needing Lotus or Nykthos, which is an upside
It could definitely be a viable alternative especially against metagames where you don't expect cards like Leyline of Sanctity to be good

The Shaku is a fun idea but I don't think there are enough good legendary cards to combo with it

CaptainTwiddle

05-18-2021, 10:18 PM

Yes I had a big discussion about this on the Enduring Ideal discord which I found recently

Basically in my opinion the deck can be thought of in roughly 3 different ways
1. Mono White Ad Nauseam
2. Mono White Scapeshift
3. Mono White Splinter Twin (the 2 card combo being Solemnity + Unlife/Nine)

This whole post was really insightful. If we assess various builds of Enduring Ideal in the context of these 3 archetypes, I think the deck is essentially just a worse version of each (and even though Splinter Twin isn't an actual deck currently, there are other A+B combo decks that seem like they perform better that what we're looking at here). So, with that in mind, I think if we're realistically going to make Ideal competitive, we need to find a different path.

When I top 8'ed a PTQ with Ideal, it was with a build that is noted earlier in this thread. That was before Nine Lives was printed and my deck was running things like Ghostly Prison, Detention Sphere, and Runed Halo. If I had to describe the archetype or general play pattern of that build, I'd say it was sort of a "build a prison" concept. Sure, I could cast a turn 4 Ideal, which made assembling a hard lock pretty easy most of the time, but the way many games played out was that everything I committed to the board was another obstacle my opponent had to work through or around. By making my opponents play on my terms, they lost the advantage that their faster decks would normally have, and eventually the game would be sealed in my favor because they simply couldn't execute their offense effectively. Against control decks, I'd bring in anti-counter magic cards, but also use things like Mistveil Plains to just grind them out. It's also notable that maindeck Leyline of Sanctity will effectively win a surprising amount of games. Anyway, I think that this general strategy of throwing down various roadblocks until they form an impenetrable fortress may be the 4th path that Ideal needs to take to be relevant.

Some thoughts on Lotus Bloom...

Bloom is pretty polarizing. It's generally great to see in your opening hand, but feels pretty bad to draw after turn 1. That stated, I really am still surprised by how often I use Bloom not to cast Ideal, but Form of the Dragon. Getting RRR from Bloom is pretty great, as it lets you avoid going too heavy into red with your mana base. I really don't like the idea of playing cards that can't be cast, particularly when those cards are big game-winning effects. So, despite the pitfalls, I'm inclined to stick with Lotus Bloom in my builds. Now, something to consider or look for going forward, would be cards that allow us to get Lotus Bloom into play without having to suspend it. There are options that exist currently, but none of them seems quite right. As Foretold could potentially be route worth exploring, but there are already decks built around that card which seem to use it more effectively. Plus, it doesn't let us deploy Bloom any earlier; it just lets us do it on the normal schedule of turn 4, even if we drew it after the first turn.

One other avenue I haven't really explored is playing additional/alternate ramp. Pentad Prism is most explosive. Mind Stone offers card draw. Various Talismans or Signets could help with splash colors. I guess the idea of playing more permanents as enablers makes me nervous, as cards like Oblivion Stone are already pretty scary (and I do like the option of running Stony Silence in the board, even if it is a nonbo with Bloom).

kombatkiwi

05-19-2021, 04:14 AM

Anyway, I think that this general strategy of throwing down various roadblocks until they form an impenetrable fortress may be the 4th path that Ideal needs to take to be relevant.

This is just an illusion. The cards you describe (Halo, Ghostly Prison, Detention Sphere) don't create any sort of invincible fortress

- If you give your opponent enough time they will draw lands to pay for ghostly prison
- If you give your opponent enough time they will draw another threat with a different name to the one that you named with runed halo
- If you give your opponent enough time they will draw another threat to replace the one that you exiled with detention sphere

It's no different to the play pattern of any other combo control deck where if you give your opponent enough time they will draw a threat to replace the one hit by Path to Exile / Lightning Bolt

I.e. the deck you are describing is still essentially the Scapeshift version of the deck

And then as a reminder, if you do have the cards in the deck to build a real invincible fortress, then why do you need to play a 7 mana win condition on top of that? If the fortress is really "invincible" then your opponent should not be able to win anymore once assembled and then you can win incidentally with some other cheaper card (which goes back to what I said before about how having multiple Solemnity + Ninelives and Enduring Ideal in the same deck doesn't make much sense to me)

The best 2 mana "signet" effect for the deck might actually be Treasure Map.

A build of the deck without Lotus Bloom might be totally viable and I have tested it in the past. In a way playing Bloom is trying to merge the Ad Nauseam and the Scapeshift gameplans together (Lotus Bloom is absolutely not a good card for any kind of control deck) which (consistent with what I said before) I don't like much, but I also don't like having to rely on Nykthos as the only ramp to the 7 mana card.

You could take the build I have in the previous post and go -4 Bloom +2 Search for Glory +1 Nyx Lotus +1 something and it might be ok.
Maybe 4 Search for Glory isn't even necessary.

Bloom gets a little bit better with the Yorion build though because in situations without access to Enduring Ideal you have more stuff to spend the excess mana on.

I don't think Stony Silence is even a good card in modern atm, it doesn't really do anything against any meta strategy except
1) Ballista
2) Map/Sphere/Star
3) any rando still trying to make Hardened Scales work

You have other tools against ballista and against Tron stony silence isn't even super effective anyway, if you want a card that's basically only good against that matchup there are other better options available

Edit

You could take the build I have in the previous post and go -4 Bloom +2 Search for Glory +1 Nyx Lotus +1 something and it might be ok.
This idea is actually more and more appealing the more that I think about it
With the last card as 1 Reidane
Hopefully 4x 3 cmc tutor isn't too many ways of spending mana that doesn't affect the board, if not then I think this could be quite a good approach

CaptainTwiddle

05-20-2021, 12:30 AM

...if you do have the cards in the deck to build a real invincible fortress, then why do you need to play a 7 mana win condition on top of that? If the fortress is really "invincible" then your opponent should not be able to win anymore once assembled...

The best 2 mana "signet" effect for the deck might actually be Treasure Map....

The value of Ideal in the "impenetrable fortress" is that the final piece that truly locks the game up varies depending on the match up. Since the main lock pieces are 6-8 mana spells, it's more efficient to play Ideal, to save deck slots & even mana (in the case of Overwhelming Splendor).

As for decks eventually finding a way around obstacles, yes, that can happen, but the idea is that by the time they get over hurdle A, there's a different hurdle B they more have to contend with. Eventually, the hurdle are too high or numerous. Also, specifically thinking about Runed Halo, think about how many decks actually only play a few different wincons. Prowess and Death's Shadow decks, for example, only play like 3-4 different creatures. Halo is also amazing against Burn when you get to name Eidolon of the Great Revel.

Treasure Map is pretty good. Transforming it provides similar boost and fixing to Bloom; it's just slow & interacts awkwardly with Solemnity.

Search for Glory seems great, but I just don't see enough worthwhile targets as of yet. Definitely something I'll be keeping my eye on.

kombatkiwi

05-20-2021, 03:08 AM

The value of Ideal in the "impenetrable fortress" is that the final piece that truly locks the game up varies depending on the match up. Since the main lock pieces are 6-8 mana spells, it's more efficient to play Ideal, to save deck slots & even mana (in the case of Overwhelming Splendor).

Yeah but again I don't think this is the right way to think about it.
Enduring Ideal just wins even from an empty board, why treat it like a tutor that finds "the missing piece of the puzzle" when it functions perfectly well even if you haven't played any other "puzzle pieces" yet?
Like if the card was just 5WW super-Approach-of-Second-Sun-sorcery and you win the game immediately when it resolves instead of finding enchantments, would that affect your decision to play Runed Halo vs Ghostly Prison vs Wrath of God or any other piece of interaction? I don't think it should

Of course there is the minor aspect of "oh I already have solemnity in play and my ideal resolves? Boom get 9lives, now I'm protected" but in my experience even with nothing on the board you can get Unlife with the first Ideal search, then pass the turn and get Solemnity/Dragon with the next one, and it's still a winning play in the vast majority of situations

As for decks eventually finding a way around obstacles, yes, that can happen, but the idea is that by the time they get over hurdle A, there's a different hurdle B they more have to contend with. Eventually, the hurdle are too high or numerous. Also, specifically thinking about Runed Halo, think about how many decks actually only play a few different wincons. Prowess and Death's Shadow decks, for example, only play like 3-4 different creatures. Halo is also amazing against Burn when you get to name Eidolon of the Great Revel.
Sure, but ultimately Runed Halo is just a doom blade variant. It's better against e.g. Deaths Shadow or Reality Smasher than actual Doom Blade, but worse vs e.g. Meddling Mage, Elvish Archdruid.
I think that by choosing to play Enduring Ideal over the 'default' combo control deck (Scapeshift) you are making the claim that cards like Runed Halo and Leyline in your maindeck are particularly backbreaking vs the expected metagame compared to having more 'generic' interaction (e.g. Lightning Helix), but I don't think that means the two strategies have any significant fundamental difference.

Treasure Map is pretty good. Transforming it provides similar boost and fixing to Bloom; it's just slow & interacts awkwardly with Solemnity.
Yup, I just watched a guy play it on stream for a bit and it seemed reasonable.
Both of the downsides you identify are valid.

Search for Glory seems great, but I just don't see enough worthwhile targets as of yet. Definitely something I'll be keeping my eye on.

I think the fact that it also searches for lands is a huge boon and maybe you are underrating that aspect slightly

Just in that list there are
- Plains
- A land that makes Ideal uncounterable (Boseiju)
- A land that ramps mana (Nykthos)
- A recursion land for grindy situations (Hall of Heliod)
- Cheap removal (Thin Ice)
- A more expensive value removal (ECD)
- A wincon in games that are stalled/stabilized (Heliod)
- A mana ramp spell (Nyx Lotus)
- A defensive lockpiece (Valkmira vs Ballista/Valakut/ETW/Grapeshot/prowess guys and lava darts etc)

In a 60 card version it's probably harder to find enough space for some of those (plus the SFG itself)

CaptainTwiddle

05-20-2021, 11:11 PM

I was just testing out another build of the deck that I found on Channel Fireball which was piloted by MTGO user, Rinko, from whom I had previously posted a 6th place MTGO Prelim list. The list is a little dated, but it's very straightforward.

Enduring Ideal by Rinko Sep 2020
2 Wall of Omens
4 Lotus Bloom
4 On Thin Ice
3 Silence
2 Greater Auramancy
3 Suppression Field
4 Nine Lives
2 Phyrexian Unlife
4 Solemnity
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Enduring Ideal
2 Form of the Dragon
18 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Sideboard
2 Archon of Sun's Grace
2 Gideon's Intervention
4 Grand Abolisher
1 Pithing Needle
3 Rest in Peace
3 Torpor Orb

I didn't play very many matches, but my initial impressions were that I found myself having trouble hitting my land drops and I often ended up in topdeck mode, hoping to draw my second lock piece or addition. That said, having the full 4 Solemnity + 6 copies of Nine Lives/Phyrexian Unlife made naturally drawing the combo reasonably reliable. I think this build may make better use of The Birth of Meletis than Wall of Omens, but that could just be my small sample size leading me to the conclusion that drawing sufficient lands is difficult. The inclusion of 3 Torpor Orb in the board suggests to me that Rinko had encountered similar difficulty dealing with Skyclave Apparition and its ilk. One other thing that I like about The Birth of Meletis is that this build doesn't play any other shuffle effects (excluding Ideal). I had to mulligan a few times and it was always worrying to put Enduring Ideal on bottom, knowing that I'd effectively be limiting myself to only the other 3 copies, but keeping a 7 cost spell on a mulligan is dubious.

I do like Greater Auramancy in the maindeck. I suspect that going forward, more and more decks are going to have maindeck answers to enchantments, as current design seems to be pretty influenced by best-of-one play, which has lead to an increase in the number of modal cards. So, even if there isn't a tier one deck that's playing relevant enchantments, it wouldn't surprise me if the number of decks that can answer an enchantment with their main 60 has increased. I did miss having Overwhelming Splendor and Dovescape at my disposal, but Greater Auramancy picks up some of that slack.

The other things that I missed most were Mistveil Plains and Hall of Heliod's Generosity. I really like the safety net that those cards can provide, as winning after your Form of the Dragon(s) end up in the yard is difficult with this build.

So, the cards that I'd like to try the most now are Treasure Map, Mistveil Plains (with a few fetch lands), and Hall of Heliod's Generosity, but those are all at odds with Suppression Field, which I must say, was great. I've long felt that Suppression Field may actually be one of the most powerful cards in Modern that sees very little play; the reason being that it comes with an incredibly high deckbuilding cost. I really don't know if the cost is worth it though, and unfortunately, it's not really something you'd want to plan to sideboard in, as you'd still have to make just about the same sacrifices in deckbuilding.

kombatkiwi

05-21-2021, 03:19 AM

I do like Greater Auramancy in the maindeck. I suspect that going forward, more and more decks are going to have maindeck answers to enchantments, as current design seems to be pretty influenced by best-of-one play, which has lead to an increase in the number of modal cards. So, even if there isn't a tier one deck that's playing relevant enchantments, it wouldn't surprise me if the number of decks that can answer an enchantment with their main 60 has increased. I did miss having Overwhelming Splendor and Dovescape at my disposal, but Greater Auramancy picks up some of that slack.

The other things that I missed most were Mistveil Plains and Hall of Heliod's Generosity. I really like the safety net that those cards can provide, as winning after your Form of the Dragon(s) end up in the yard is difficult with this build.

Having Greater Auramancy in the maindeck is more important if you are using the Solemnity combo because without it all your defense can "unravel" with 1 removal spell.
If you go On Thin Ice into Runed Halo into Skyclave Apparition into Path to Exile etc without relying on Solemnity then if they Disenchant 1 of your pieces then it isn't such a big deal, so having Greater Auramancy to protect your enchantments isn't really any better than just having some other impactful / interactive enchantment

Then you are right that Splendor/Scape in the deck overlaps a lot with Auramancy in this regard but I think those 2 cards are very important to have in the deck to make sure that your Ideal is powerful enough. I also don't like relying on the 2 card Solemnity combo in this kind of Wr build without any cantrips / card selection etc because I think it's just too inconsistent. So, that's kind of how I end up with the list that I was using.

Yeah I think Hall of Heliod especially, is just a good card to be playing in the archetype. Idk if you need mistveil as well, now that I think about it a bit more, but it seems fine

A possibly important new spoiler is the new tutor

Profane Tutor
{No manacost, like Ancestral Vision etc}
Search your library for a card, put it into your hand, then shuffle (i.e. Demonic Tutor)
Suspend 2 - {1}{B}

This is nice because if you suspend lotus turn 1 it gives more ways to find ideal
Or if you have Nine Lives in your hand you can search for solemnity

e.g. a good core for the deck could be like this

23 Land including boseiju (valid tutor target)
- BW Temple
- BW Pathway (could be meaningfully worse than caves of koilos or whatever because of the amount of WW cost in the deck)
- Fetid Heath
etc

4 Lotus Bloom
4 Ideal
4 Profane Tutor
1 Nyx Lotus (I think this is the best manasource to tutor for on turn 4 in situations where you have the ideal in hand already, but there might be something else, the perfect card would be something like a white Irencrag Feat)
[Sidenote maybe BR dragonstorm could be a deck with this]

4 Nine Lives
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Solemnity (maybe 2)
1 Dovescape
1 Overwhelming Splendor
etc
Form of the Dragon is maybe not needed/optimal with the solemnity lock in the deck

You can maybe play suppression field in a list like this because you are more focused on / able to comboing off quickly
I don't like Suppression Field in the more "normal" builds of the deck because you don't have any other manadenial to pair it with, and the lack of consistency in finding Ideal means too often you give the opponent enough time to draw mana to pay for it

CaptainTwiddle

05-26-2021, 12:42 AM

Coming in MH2:

"Terrain Shift" 3G
Sorcery
Search for a basic land card from your library, put it into the battlefield, then shuffle.

Rebound

This could be relevant to Ideal in that it enables another way to hit 7 mana on turn 4:
T1 land (1)
T2 land (2), Rock/Explore/Rampant Growth (3)
T3 land (4), Terrain Shift (5)
T4 rebound (6), land (7), Ideal

Maybe this isn't a good direction for the deck, as it basically turns you into more of a classic ramp strategy, which hasn't been successful in Modern generally, but it's another option to consider.

kombatkiwi

05-26-2021, 01:15 AM

CaptainTwiddle

05-26-2021, 04:31 PM

there are already a bunch of explosive vegetation variants legal
ramp has been good in modern, titanshift etc
The question if you do this (ramping lands), is why is Enduring Ideal the payoff card instead of titan/valakut

Completely accurate. I hadn't considered Explosive Vegetation, so I guess there's no reason to get excited by Terrain Shift.

MH2 is looking good though: Seal of Cleansing, Soul Snare, & Out of Time all seem like solid pick-ups.

kombatkiwi

05-27-2021, 01:39 AM

Completely accurate. I hadn't considered Explosive Vegetation, so I guess there's no reason to get excited by Terrain Shift.

MH2 is looking good though: Seal of Cleansing, Soul Snare, & Out of Time all seem like solid pick-ups.

Yeah I do like Out of Time as a sideboard option or maybe a 1-of maindeck just as a reset button to find off ideal, maybe there are some situations where Phyrexian Unlife is not good enough as defense for example but it definitely doesn't seem absolutely necessary. I generally don't like cards that just delay the opp for a bit, because this deck cannot close the game very reliably (see why I don't like Suppression Field either). Id rather play cards like Skyclave Apparition that cleanly answer the opponent's card

Seal of Cleansing is a decent pickup but Aura of Silence already did exist and for a monoW deck that can pay WW easily the tax is pretty useful

Soul Snare could be solid as well but there is a lot of competition for this slot from On Thin Ice and Path to Exile and the upcoming Portable Hole etc

Edit:
Solitude 3WW
Creature - Elemental Incarnation 3/2
Flash, Lifelink
When Solitude enters the battlefield, exile up to 1 other target creature. That creature's controller gains life equal to its power
Evoke - Exile a white card from your hand

This seems very good in a list similar to the previous one I posted as a 4x in the Path to Exile / Portable Hole slot

- You can make devotion from the 3WW cost with the evoke trigger on the stack
- You're a midrange devotion white deck you can easily make 5 mana to hardcast it and remove something then get a decent creature with +2 devotion
- Yorion is a free white card to put in your hand to help pitch to / offset the cost
- You can evoke it and then blink it with Astral Drift with the sac trigger on the stack
- If you hardcast it you can blink it with Yorion too
- It's a good target to revive with ECD

like this

4 Wall of Omens
4 Skyclave Apparition
1 Reidane God of the Worthy
1 Heliod God of the Sun
4 Solitude

4 Enduring Ideal
4 Search for Glory

4 On Thin Ice
4 Rune of Sustenance
4 Runed Halo
4 Astral Drift
4 Leyline of Sanctity

1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Elspeth Conqers Death
1 Dovescape
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Overwhelming Splendor
1 Nyx Lotus

4 Nykthos
4 Field of Ruin
19 Snow Plains
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Hall of Heliod
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Boseiju

Companion: Yorion

kombatkiwi

05-31-2021, 12:56 AM

The reprint of Solitary Confinement has been confirmed in MH2

Solitary Confinement 2W
Enchantment
Skip your drawstep
At the beginning of your upkeep sacrifice Solitary Confinement unless you discard a card
You have shroud
Prevent all damage that would be dealt to you

This is a possible option for the "protect myself from damage" lock instead of Phyrexian Unlife + Form of the Dragon. (But if you have a build of the deck with multiple Unlife + Solemnity etc then the situation / argument is a bit different)

Just considering the pros/cons of Solitary Confinement vs Unlife alone:
- Solitary Confinement protects vs infect whereas Unlife doesn't (but dovescape mostly safely KOs that deck anyway so this isn't a huge issue)
- Solitary Confinement offers 'total protection' whereas Unlife can be overwhelmed by eg a ton of burn spells or first/doublestrike creatures or valakut triggers etc. (The above 2 points may allow Sphere of Safety to be cut from the deck).
- Phyrexian Unlife can be played pre-ideal to stay alive for a few extra turns whereas Solitary Confinement can't
- Unlife protects from non-targeted non-damage lifeloss whereas Solitary Confinement doesn't (not exactly sure if there are any relevant examples of this in the format but might as well mention it)
- Skipping your drawstep and acting as a discard outlet after your Enduring Ideal has gone off can sometimes be an upside, as it stops you from drawing your important enchantments which you might want to tutor later, and if you have any such enchantments in your hand already it gives you an outlet to discard and put them back in the deck with Mistveil/Hall. It also means you can win easily by decking after locking the opponent. (This is usually easy to do anyway with Hall/Mistveil in the deck but e.g. those don't work if there is rest in peace in play for example, well I guess be careful in that instance because then Skyblade also wouldn't work)
- However skipping your draw step can also be a downside, as it stops you from drawing into the Mistveil/Hall, and it stops you from drawing extra mana sources to activate Heliod or whatever

Then in terms of the supporting cards you have either Endless Horizons or a new card Skyblade's Boon

Endless Horizons 3W
Enchantment
When Endless Horizons enters the battlefield search your library for any number of Plains cards and exile them.
At the beginning of your upkeep return a card exiled with Endless Horizons to your hand

Skyblade's Boon 1W
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and has flying
2W: Return Skyblade's Boon from the graveyard or the battlefield to your hand

Endless Horizons Pros/cons
- Does something useful in the midgame (card advantage, finds lands)
- Can search for Mistveil Plains after Enduring Ideal has resolved
- Only protects you for a number of turns equal to the number of plains in your deck
- Needs 1 turn delay before it puts cards in your hand (i.e. if you are hellbent when you use Ideal to get Confinement then Ehorizons can't help you)

Skyblade's Boon
- Not a very useful card by itself
- Works with confinement indefinitely
- Provides a card to discard immediately when you tutor for it so it works if you are hellbent
- There needs to be a creature on the battlefield to be able to tutor it from your library (you can get your own Heliod / Heliod Token, so it's not totally reliant on the opponent, or even a dovescape token)

Of course there are other more convoluted options like Dawn of Hope + Honden of Cleansing Fire but I think these are the only 2 options that function with only 1 card

Then we can consider the relative pros/cons of these 2 cards compared to Form of the Dragon

- Form of the Dragon is a wincon that kills the opponent quickly, can sometimes be relevant to have in your deck vs e.g. Tron where you don't have a good way to totally lock them and want to kill them before they draw ulamog etc
- But it's not strictly necessary as a wincon if you have e.g Heliod in the deck already, and you also have the ability to just lock the opponent and prevent them from doing anything then mill them out
- Form + Splendor provides a lock vs creatures that isn't Abrupt Decayable (particularly relevant because Decay isn't stopped by Dovescape)
- 4RRR manacost is difficult and provides no devotion, is especially annoying in a version of the deck with no Lotus Bloom as I have brewed in the last post, as it's literally uncastable
- Solitary Confinement offers protection by itself if you have extra cards in hand to pitch to it whereas you usually need to go directly from Unlife to Dragon in sequence to survive. (Whereas you can go Confinement, next turn discard random extra card, Dovescape, then the turn after that get e.g. Skyblade to keep the Confinement alive).

Overall I think the combo of Confinement + Skyblade could be worth playing (replacing unlife and form of the dragon).
Then ill think about whether Sphere of Safety can be cut as well (probably yes, maybe for 1 maindeck nevermore/gideons intervention).

CaptainTwiddle

06-03-2021, 07:24 PM

Modern Horizons 2 has introduced a number of interesting cards which I think are worth considering for Enduring Ideal shells. Enchantments are a theme in the set and there are lot of tools for GW Enchantress archetypes, but I'm considering the following with respect to Enduring Ideal specifically.

I think there is good reason to now add green to the mix, specifically for Sterling Grove and Sanctum Weaver.

Sterling Grove, at a baseline, replaces Greater Auramancy as protection for your enchantments. It also has the added upside of being a tutor. I think this is going to be particularly helpful in the shells running Solemnity + Nine Lives/Phyrexian Unlife. Providing protection for Solemnity and Unlife is great, but what I really like is that it probably allows you to trim some redundant copies. I'd much rather draw a Sterling Grove that I can use to search for my second combo piece than a redundant copy of what I already have.

Sanctum Weaver, while admittedly fragile, provides potentially huge amounts of mana. That makes it easier to cast Enduring Ideal, but also facilitates timely deployment of the Solemnity lock, as you can play an enchantment on turn one, Weaver on two, Solemnity on 3 from your lands and then the Unlife/9Lives off of the Weaver. There's also the potential to use Freed from the Real with the Weaver as a means of generating infinite mana, though I don't know if that's really well suited to an Ideal shell, plus trying to enchant one of your enchantments when you're playing Sterling Grove is awkward. The mana generated from Weaver also helps to make Heliod, God of the Sun a more potent win condition.

If we do add green to the deck, we could also entertain the Arbor Elf + Utopia Sprawl package and maybe even Overgrowth as a means of generating copious amounts of mana.

Going into green seems like it will make Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx less potent, but I think green mana engines may ultimately be more consistent. That consistency may be enough to cut Lotus Bloom as well, which I'd very much like to do, as feel like the incoming number of suspend cards is going to result in an uptick of cards like Teferi, Time Raveler or Void Mirror, which hose Bloom pretty hard.

With Nykthos in mind though, I do think that Soul Snare is my preferred 1 drop removal piece, solely because it can be played proactively. That means it can count toward your devotion while it hasn't been "used," whereas On Thin Ice can't be deployed effectively on turn 1, unless you're on the draw and your opponent has played a target.

Solitary Confinement, as noted in the prior post, is also an interesting option, but it requires its own engine to function. I certainly wouldn't rule it out, but the shells I've imagined around it didn't want Ideal. That said, I do kind of love that Confinement causing you to skip your draw means that you should be able to cleanly win by decking your opponent, assuming you've put them in a hard lock. While that's largely already the case, assuming you're running Hall of Heliod's Generosity or Mistveil Plains, it's nice to have more redundancy on any line if that piece has other uses as well.

In any case, I'm excited to brew some different builds and see where things go.

kombatkiwi

06-04-2021, 02:54 AM

This was a conversation I also had on the discord

Yes you can become a kind of enchantress deck with sterling grove and utopia sprawl etc and tutoring for the Solemnity combo, and that might even be good, but does it need to play Enduring Ideal? Or can you just play a card like Sigil of the Empty Throne which can be tutored with Grove, costs less mana, triggers all of your enchantress effects etc

Because of the card disadvantage of Grove as a tutor it's only worth running if the thing you are tutoring for is backbreaking and therefore if the thing you are tutoring for is backbreaking (Solemnity combo meaning you can't be killed) then why does your deck have to play this entirely separate wincon that's a 7 mana sorcery and requires you to play all these other weird uncastable cards in your deck like form of the dragon, dovescape etc

CaptainTwiddle

06-05-2021, 11:58 PM

Because of the card disadvantage of Grove as a tutor it's only worth running if the thing you are tutoring for is backbreaking and therefore if the thing you are tutoring for is backbreaking (Solemnity combo meaning you can't be killed) then why does your deck have to play this entirely separate wincon that's a 7 mana sorcery and requires you to play all these other weird uncastable cards in your deck like form of the dragon, dovescape etc

This is very much valid. Ultimately, Ideal might just not be worth it for these reasons. However, I do think that Sanctum Weaver makes the "uncastable" cards issue less of a problem. I'm also interested in trying a deck built around Resurgent Belief, but it does seem like graveyard strategies are going to be on the upswing with MH2, so I expect there to be even more graveyard hate in the format.

kombatkiwi

06-18-2021, 06:48 AM

Trying a list like the one in my previous post with the new sample hand feature on the mtgfamiliar app

Thoughts:
- Colourless mana from the Field of Ruin is often detrimental and it might be a bit too greedy to play those
- Search for Glory is alright but 4 might be too many because it's punishing to have hands that contain multiples
- Solitude Might not be the right fit for the deck (at least playing so many) because it's hard for a monowhite deck like this to recover the card disadvantage of the evoke and relying on the hardcast mode is too slow
- I think the deck wants more impactful early plays as the manacurve still feels slightly too high

Revised decklist:
-4 Solitude
-1 Nevermore
-1 Search for Glory
-X Field of Ruin

+4 Stoneforge Mystic
+1 Kaldra Compleat
+1 another equipment? (maybe a white one for devotion reasons or just batterskull possibly)
+X White sources

SFM + Kaldra is a good fit for the deck I think for the following reasons
- Gives another good early play for low manacost to keep the curve down and impact the battlefield while providing devotion
- Attacks from a different angle to the rest of the deck and with kaldra 5/5 haste puts the opponent on the back foot very quickly (it's a low commitment to play it but it pressures the opponent to have early removal for creatures, which is otherwise not the case, so the opponent's deck is stretched to have a wider array of answers)
- SFM serves as a reasonable blink target (astral drift / yorion)
- You can blink Kaldra with Yorion to reset it if the opponent exiles the germ
- You can put Rune of Sustenance on Kaldra to build your own batterskull / lifelink

The only annoying thing is that it adds another hard-to-cast tutor target into the deck (Kaldra) but I suppose like Overwhelming Splendor it's not totally dead assuming you have devotion going. (You can also Search for Glory for it in clutch spots because it's legendary but it's probably a worse target than Heliod most of the time)

Current maindeck:

[+Yorion]
4 Nykthos
4 Other White Sources (You could play like 3 Plains and a Castle Ardenvale, or maybe play fewer field of ruins + plains, or 4 Temples, or just 4 plains etc)
19 Snow Plains
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Boseiju
1 Hall of Heliod

4 Wall of Omens
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Skyclave Apparition
1 Heliod
1 Reidane

4 Thin Ice
4 Runed Halo
4 Rune of Sustenance
4 Astral Drift
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Skyblade's Boon
1 Solitary Confinement
1 ECD
1 Dovescape
1 Splendor

3 Search for Glory
4 Enduring Ideal

1 Nyx Lotus
1 Kaldra Compleat
1 Other Equipment

edit:
On second thought I may have underestimated the capacity for Yorion to offset the card disadvantage from Solitude (either by directly pitching to it or by blinking stuff in a longer game)
Maybe consider some copies in the Astral Drift slot (which is probably the next-worst card in the deck)