UW Sagas

[kombatkiwi]

I have had this idea floating around in my head for a while and finally got the chance to test it a bit over the weekend

1 Scalding Tarn
4 Prismatic Vista
4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
5 Plains
1 Tundra

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Council's Judgment
2 Replenish

4 History of Benalia
3 Estrid's Invocation
4 Spreading Seas
2 Counterbalance

1 Soothsaying
1 Dovin's Acuity
1 The Mirari Conjecture
1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
1 Detention Sphere
1 Cast Out

In the past there have been versions of Miracles that play 4x Mentor in the maindeck (https://www.minmaxblog.com/magic/2019/4/23/speak-little-do-much-understanding-monastery-mentor?rq=miracles). History of Benalia performs a similar function. History has a lower ceiling, but an important consideration in the current format is that with so many planeswalkers (Wrenn, Narset etc) it is important to have some early creatures that can pressure these. If you tap out for Mentor and they Bolt/Decay it then you lose your entire investment. With History you at least get to keep either a Knight or the enchantment itself.

Estrid's Invocation has seen some play in a green-based list that is a more familiar Enchantress-style deck, but the limit in that list for things to copy was something like Oblivion Ring effect, Abundant Growth (draw 1), Doomwake Giant, Enchantress's Presence. Even then it is still quite good, because a Phyrexian Arena that draws 1 on etb is already pretty strong and the additional utility is relevant. But with History of Benalia it becomes an overwhelming threat. An important thing to remember is that Invocation blinks in upkeep but Sagas tick up at the start of the mainphase:

Turn 3 History, make a Knight
Turn 4, tick up History get a Knight, play Invocation copying History make another Knight, attack for 2
Turn 5 blink Invocation copying history, get a Knight, tick up Invocation, get another Knight, tick up History to 3, attack for 3x4 = 12
Turn 6 you can choose to blink Invocation to copy something else or go to stage 3 and attack for 5x4 = 20

If you have 2 Invocations both copying History then you can keep blinking them to copy each other. They will never be sacrificed because they never reach stage 3 and you get 4 knights every turn.

Spreading Seas is included to increase the density of enchantments that do something on etb (for Estrid's Invocation). It also keeps the blue count up for Force and can be a hurdle against heavy-multicolour decks while providing 'removal' against annoying lands like Port/Depths/Cavern/Post/Boseiju etc. Copying an aura doesn't require a target, so with Invocation you can often hit fetchlands with Seas or force the opponent to crack them at awkward times.

Then we have 2 Counterbalance, which functions similarly as in normal miracles with 4 BS 4 Ponder, we might be lacking extra cantrips like Portent but there is 1 Soothsaying to help stack the top of the deck, and 2 Enlightened Tutor to help find it (or to directly put whatever cmc on top of the library to counter a spell). Enlightened Tutor can also help to find Estrids Invocation or any of the 1-ofs (or SB cards).

Dovin's Acuity was originally meant to be a fun-of, but 2 life per turn with an Invocation is actually quite significant and even outside of enchantment synergies the card itself is not terrible in a UW control deck with Plow and Brainstorm

Detention Sphere and Cast Out are just some reasonable removal options
- Sphere: 2-for-1 potential, Pitches to Fow
- Cast Out: can cycle if no targets (flexibility, Replenish), flash (important vs Depths etc), cmc4 for counterbalance

2 Replenish can never be too bad because History naturally sacrifices itself, but they also act as big haymakers against any deck interacting with you with removal or counterspells.

The last weird card is 1 Mirari Conjecture, which is already ok in a UW control deck with instants (FoW, Brainstorm, Plow) and sorceries (Ponder, CJ) but it also forms a loop with Replenish to give infinite instant/enchantment recursion. Because the third mode of Conjecture copies Replenish the opponent needs two counterspells to stop it.

In testing the deck was surprisingly solid. The biggest hole was against resilient creatures that normal UW Miracles decks answer with Terminus. The Sigil of the Empty Throne was also probably win-more. Some alt wincon is probably necessary as people may try to extract History to leave you dead in the water, but this can be put in the sideboard.

So for additional removal options maindeck, it would preferably be an enchantment for the utility with Tutor/Replenish, and something that can answer TNN/Mom.
Options are:
- Humility (strong vs certain decks but disables the strength of History of Benalia, could be a good SB option)
- Solitary Confinement (Hard to maintain and doesn't actually remove the creatures, again could be a good sb option)
- Doomwake Giant (Extremely powerful card, Invocation synergy, but adds a vulnerability to Plow and requires a 3 colour manabase)
- Porphyry Nodes (Has dis-synergy with History and could be very annoying in situations where you don't want to return it with Replenish, although maybe you would be so far ahead in the game at that point that you wouldn't care. I also just realised that on an empty board in this situation it would die with the History triggers on the stack anyway. Good SB option again).

I don't think going 3c is a good idea at the moment (and I can't think of anything other than Giant to justify the splash) so I will try -1 EmptyThrone +1 Porphyry Nodes.

The sb is still a WIP but some obvious inclusions are probably:
- Grafdigger's Cage (it's still valid for E-Tutor and unlike RIP it doesn't interfere with Replenish / Conjecture)
- Stony Silence
- Seal of Cleansing
- Back to Basics
- Some extra wincon like Sigil of the Empty Throne or Sacred Mesa
- Humility

Then some more fringe picks like
- Solitary Confinement
- Rule of Law/Nevermore/anti-combo stuff

Then generic options like Surgical Extraction or Dovin's Veto or whatever

Let me know if you have any thoughts on the main or side.
I wasn't sure if it was correct to play any other nonbasics like Serra's Sanctum or Hall of Heliod's Generosity

[Mr. Safety]

Very cool concept. Enchantments are fairly hard to deal with in Legacy, mostly because you don't see enough to consider them a threat (besides the usual suspects like Counterbalance and the occasional Enchantress player.) A couple of enchantments that might be worth some playtesting are Porphyry Nodes and Myth Realized. Nodes could do some work and might even warrant including Hall of Heliod's Generosity. If they let it die to it's own triggers you can threaten to get it back at any time to prevent them from rebuilding. Myth Realized always impressed me with it's ability to work in a control shell (I tried it in UW Landstill with an ETutor package) because it can be activated cheaply and rewards you for just playing your normal game, then you swing for 5+ a turn.

The upside of playing a set of Spreading Seas is that Depths is rampant. It's not the most efficient hoser, but drawing you a card is great and the surprise factor is pretty funny.

EDIT: I read the whole OP, saw you were already on Porphyry Nodes. Sorry for missing that!

[kombatkiwi]

Very cool concept. Enchantments are fairly hard to deal with in Legacy, mostly because you don't see enough to consider them a threat (besides the usual suspects like Counterbalance and the occasional Enchantress player.) A couple of enchantments that might be worth some playtesting are Porphyry Nodes and Myth Realized. Nodes could do some work and might even warrant including Hall of Heliod's Generosity. If they let it die to it's own triggers you can threaten to get it back at any time to prevent them from rebuilding. Myth Realized always impressed me with it's ability to work in a control shell (I tried it in UW Landstill with an ETutor package) because it can be activated cheaply and rewards you for just playing your normal game, then you swing for 5+ a turn.

The upside of playing a set of Spreading Seas is that Depths is rampant. It's not the most efficient hoser, but drawing you a card is great and the surprise factor is pretty funny.

EDIT: I read the whole OP, saw you were already on Porphyry Nodes. Sorry for missing that!

Yeah the interaction with Heliod's Hall is another interesting thing about nodes.
I considered Myth Realised and I think the card is ok, but similar to Doomwake it has the problem of enabling the opponent's Plow.

Standstill is interesting, and another similar card I thought about playing was Zur's Weirding.
If you can get ahead on the board with History and then resolve Weirding you might just win on the spot (especially vs combo).

[Unlif3]

From a purely theoretical standpoint, albeit I find the concept extremely cool, there are a few points I do find slightly disturbing.

There are a lot of "cool" cards that don't go a long distance in winning actual games of Legacy. Sigil of the Empty Throne, Dovin's Acuity, Soothsaying, or even Cast Out and the second copy of Replenish don't look like cards I would like to have more often than not. They're either overcosted (Sigil, Cast Out), narrow (Dovin's Acuity), or underpowered (Soothsaying, even in conjunction with a 2-of Counterbalance, really does not pull a lot of weight). In other words, if you want tutorable 1-ofs you want to be able to tutor for -1 CD (Enlightened Tutor), they'd better be backbreaking when you slam then on the table.
The deck actually doesn't reward you this much for playing enchantments. Sure, you have Estrid's Invocation (but that only really works with Benalia, the 1-of Conjecture and marginally with Spreading Seas), a value-Replenish w/o discard outlets, but apart from that it just seems that some enchantments are there for flavor's sake.
Imho, too much of a fuss has been made around "blanking removal". While this may be true for Doomwake Giant (a much more solid reason is the black cost), Snapcaster Mage is a good card in a deck that seems like it wants to play the long game, has instants and sorceries and doesn't play RiP/Field or RiP/Helm MD.
I fail to see how Humility nonboes with Benalia. Sure, your 2/2 vigilance Knight tokens become 1/1 Knights, but this does seem a very low cost to pay if your opponent is casting 1/1s for actual mana/cards instead of having access to TNN, Lage, Angler, Tarmogoyf, Griselbrand, Thought-Knot Seer. Humility, on the other hand, does nonbo with the Snapcasters aforementioned, but even then I would suck it up because resolving Humility is a win vs. a lot of decks.


tl;dr I'm wondering if some generically strong cards wouldn't be better than 1-ofs which purpose seems more to make you look smart when you play them than winning an actual game of Magic. :eyebrow:

[FTW]

The best enchantment to ETutor for is mysteriously absent from this deck: Rest in Peace.

After that, a good follow-up is Helm of Obedience or Energy Field, which could be 1-ofs but actually threaten to take over the game instead of providing a very slow minor incremental advantage.

Another strong choice that should be in the 75 is Back to Basics.

[Fox]

Regardless of deck design, any multi-colored list with E-Tutors main should be strongly considered as incorrect without a 1x Astrolabe (and the snow basics) until proven otherwise. In this deck, for example, you can’t afford to mull hands with Plains + E-Tutor + blue cards. This becomes more imperative when you construct more balanced color requirements. In this case 5x Islands and 5x Plains is waaaaaaaay less stable than traditional 6x Island and 2x Plains (accompanied by far less emphasis on slots with white mana).

While the deck name is “Sagas,” there is no way you’re winning more games by making 2/2 knights while skipping on wraths. There’s a fairly high burden to do something distinctly different [i.e. more fundamentally broken] than either 3x Snapcasters (for Plow) or the combo kill (RiP/Helm), as these are known entities with demonstrable levels of success.

Spreading Seas is incredibly suspect by itself, but it’s also completely unsupported (no mana denial). This will cost you games b/c you drew it. So we have to measure 4x dubious topdecks against say a build with Stifle + Wasteland, which (b/c of E Tutor) can run a single Parallax Tide to murder 5 lands and Stifle the single return trigger. Alternatively your deck could have Thespian’s Stage and Song of the Dryads. Just some examples of additive [combo] power you’re probably going to need, as these close the door on a game, rather than prolonging the game to the point that the decks flaws (no reset buttons with wrath) cannot be avoided.

With 10 basics and the style you laid out, I think you start from square 1 with E Tutor and Land Tax. Mox Diamond on top would be fine, but they also made Lotus Field.

[FTW]

If you want to build around Sagas, what about these ones:

Phyrexian Scriptures - board reset and grave hate

The Eldest Reborn - slow, but incremental card advantage that impacts board state

Sagas also seem good with effects that add or remove counters (e.g. Proliferate).

I think you're better off building this as a control deck than a midrange token deck. Tapping out to make 4 2/2s on turn 4 seems like a bad way to play Legacy. Maybe it would work in Modern. Although this is based on Miracles, they have more control tools (Terminus, counters, more ways to control Counterbalance, etc.). This deck has much more durdle and less interaction.

If you want to play UW but beat early walkers without getting blown out by Bolt (like Mentor), just play TNN.

[kombatkiwi]

There are a lot of "cool" cards that don't go a long distance in winning actual games of Legacy. Sigil of the Empty Throne, Dovin's Acuity, Soothsaying, or even Cast Out and the second copy of Replenish don't look like cards I would like to have more often than not. They're either overcosted (Sigil, Cast Out), narrow (Dovin's Acuity), or underpowered (Soothsaying, even in conjunction with a 2-of Counterbalance, really does not pull a lot of weight). In other words, if you want tutorable 1-ofs you want to be able to tutor for -1 CD (Enlightened Tutor), they'd better be backbreaking when you slam then on the table.
This point seems overblown, although I mostly agree about Sigil hence why I explained I cut it for Nodes. I don't see how Dovin's Acuity narrow, it's just a cantrip (think Renewed Faith or Wall of Omens whatever). Just because it's a 1-of in the deck doesn't mean that it's there to be tutored for, although against e.g. burn it would be nice to have that option. Imagine that I want about ~5 Estrid Enablers but I can only play 4 Seas, then what is the next best option to choose? Yes cast out is expensive for what it gives you, but you can always cycle it. You could be right about the 2nd replenish.


The deck actually doesn't reward you this much for playing enchantments. Sure, you have Estrid's Invocation (but that only really works with Benalia, the 1-of Conjecture and marginally with Spreading Seas), a value-Replenish w/o discard outlets, but apart from that it just seems that some enchantments are there for flavor's sake.
This is possibly a fair criticism but has no real value without specifics, I assume you mean you would cut Soothsaying for Preordain or something along those lines. Estrids Invocation is really powerful and the E-tutor being able to assemble that while also finding relevant disruption seems like an upside.


Imho, too much of a fuss has been made around "blanking removal". While this may be true for Doomwake Giant (a much more solid reason is the black cost), Snapcaster Mage is a good card in a deck that seems like it wants to play the long game, has instants and sorceries and doesn't play RiP/Field or RiP/Helm MD.
I never mentioned Snapcaster at all and obviously if they spent a card to plow your 2 mana creature that already provided value on ETB then you don't really care. The reason why I didn't include snap was:
- The deck has no flashbackable card advantage spell (think AK or predict) because these slots are occupied by enchantments
- Most of the SB cards are going to be enchantments where possible so that you can tutor for them and Replenish gets them back (e.g. you are going to want to play Seal of Cleansing rather than Disenchant)
- The current build of the deck doesn't play any Counterspell, or sorcery sweeper, the only non-plow removal is 1 CJ, etc, so the utility of Snapcaster is very limited
- There doesn't appear to be space to fit Snap without breaking up some of the enchantment synergies, which are powerful enough that the addition of Snap didn't seem worth it


I fail to see how Humility nonboes with Benalia. Sure, your 2/2 vigilance Knight tokens become 1/1 Knights, but this does seem a very low cost to pay if your opponent is casting 1/1s for actual mana/cards instead of having access to TNN, Lage, Angler, Tarmogoyf, Griselbrand, Thought-Knot Seer. Humility, on the other hand, does nonbo with the Snapcasters aforementioned, but even then I would suck it up because resolving Humility is a win vs. a lot of decks.
I mean it does nonbo with Benalia because it makes the 2/2s into 1/1s, you can argue that it has such powerful effect on the majority of decks that it should be played anyway, which is possible.


tl;dr I'm wondering if some generically strong cards wouldn't be better than 1-ofs which purpose seems more to make you look smart when you play them than winning an actual game of Magic.
Maybe soothsaying is a meme but there is a reason why I included CJ rather than like, Ixalans Binding or whatever, I like to think my head isn't totally in the clouds


The best enchantment to ETutor for is mysteriously absent from this deck: Rest in Peace.

After that, a good follow-up is Helm of Obedience or Energy Field, which could be 1-ofs but actually threaten to take over the game instead of providing a very slow minor incremental advantage.

Another strong choice that should be in the 75 is Back to Basics.
I didn't feel like RIP did enough against the meta to have it maindeck and preferred to focus on the Replenish angle instead, this might be wrong though.
Winning the game instantly isn't inherently better than winning the game in a few turns, the only relevant thing to focus on is what % of games are won. Helm and Field don't really do anything by themselves (certainly much less than e.g. Dovin's Acuity) although I agree that if you are already in a situation when RIP is maindeckable then these are obviously good complements to that.
Agree on B2B, it should be in a 75 somewhere


Fox
Regardless of deck design, any multi-colored list with E-Tutors main should be strongly considered as incorrect without a 1x Astrolabe (and the snow basics) until proven otherwise. In this deck, for example, you can’t afford to mull hands with Plains + E-Tutor + blue cards. This becomes more imperative when you construct more balanced color requirements. In this case 5x Islands and 5x Plains is waaaaaaaay less stable than traditional 6x Island and 2x Plains (accompanied by far less emphasis on slots with white mana).

While the deck name is “Sagas,” there is no way you’re winning more games by making 2/2 knights while skipping on wraths. There’s a fairly high burden to do something distinctly different [i.e. more fundamentally broken] than either 3x Snapcasters (for Plow) or the combo kill (RiP/Helm), as these are known entities with demonstrable levels of success.

Spreading Seas is incredibly suspect by itself, but it’s also completely unsupported (no mana denial). This will cost you games b/c you drew it. So we have to measure 4x dubious topdecks against say a build with Stifle + Wasteland, which (b/c of E Tutor) can run a single Parallax Tide to murder 5 lands and Stifle the single return trigger. Alternatively your deck could have Thespian’s Stage and Song of the Dryads. Just some examples of additive [combo] power you’re probably going to need, as these close the door on a game, rather than prolonging the game to the point that the decks flaws (no reset buttons with wrath) cannot be avoided.

With 10 basics and the style you laid out, I think you start from square 1 with E Tutor and Land Tax. Mox Diamond on top would be fine, but they also made Lotus Field.
You have correctly noted that there are sometimes some mana problems with the fact that CB wants UU on turn 2 and History needs WW on turn 3, hence the split of basics way more in favour of plains than normal Miracles (I'm not 100% sure this split is correct but the W demand is clearly higher). Astrolabe is something I considered, but as only a 1-of I'm not sure that it's worth playing. A 1 land plains etutor hand is probably not keepable even with an Astrolabe in the deck. The Land Tax idea is really interesting, and seems worth testing, but I think in these situations you might be forced to mulligan anyway because it's so punishing if you are leaning on Tax to bail you out of a bad mana situation and they counter it. Mox Diamond and Lotus Field seem like bad ideas, to achieve the consistency needed to overcome the drawbacks (card disadvantage on mox, Field is a etb tapped land not playable until turn 3) you would have to increase numbers of all of these and at that point you're just UW Parfait without the invocation stuff. I did consider a green version for Abundant Growth, which does some of the 'astrolabe' function while also allowing some/all of the Seas to be replaced, but wasn't sure how the overall manabase would work.

The main reasoning for spreading seas is
- Estrid's Invocation is a powerful card with History of Benalia
- The deck needs additional positive interaction with Invocation to justify its inclusion, fortunately Invocation is also very powerful as a painless Phyrexian Arena that draws a card on ETB
- There is no other remotely playable cantrip enchantment with cmc <3 in UW colours.
Under this reasoning the fact that it's not reliably "1U stone rain draw a card" is acceptable, and the "lose games because you drew it" seems like an exaggeration for a card that at worst cantrips for 2 mana. You can compare it to the first AK, which costs 2 to cycle and you only realise the payoff (more cards with Invocation) later. Suggesting stifle/waste in a deck with so many 3+drops is absurd and the Tide combo doesn't solve the problem of not having a reset button. While I do think that History turns the corner faster than you probably realise (and can overwhelm most battlefields), the observation that 'you need some kind of combo kill otherwise you are aiming for the flawed plan of prolonging the game with no reset button' has been demonstrably true on multiple occasions, especially with non-plowable creatures.


If you want to build around Sagas, what about these ones:
Phyrexian Scriptures - board reset and grave hate
The Eldest Reborn - slow, but incremental card advantage that impacts board state
Sagas also seem good with effects that add or remove counters (e.g. Proliferate).
I think you're better off building this as a control deck than a midrange token deck. Tapping out to make 4 2/2s on turn 4 seems like a bad way to play Legacy. Maybe it would work in Modern. Although this is based on Miracles, they have more control tools (Terminus, counters, more ways to control Counterbalance, etc.). This deck has much more durdle and less interaction.
If you want to play UW but beat early walkers without getting blown out by Bolt (like Mentor), just play TNN.
These cards are ok but it then becomes a question of whether it's worth adding the 3rd colour (also Eldest Reborn would probably need some creature/PW inclusion).
Don't get hung up on the 'Saga' name, I just wanted a snappy thread title, no need to add some weird proliferate card (or anything with type Saga just for the sake of it).
The idea is that it still is a control deck, just like how Miracles decks play Mentor. I'm not as familiar with piloting control decks in legacy so I thought I could get away with having less interaction and overwhelming the board; maybe not. If you have more of an idea of what a 'control build' would look like rather than the 'midrange token' build you should post it.
The TNN comment is fair but it's a much slower clock against uninteractive decks, people are already prepared for it with Plague Engineer etc and it doesn't have the ability to turn around a boardstate without removal

[Fox]

@kombatkiwi on Lotus Field + Land Tax, the point there is that you get to nuke your land count below an opponent's count to retrigger a draw 3. It's not really about speed or ramp, but the hexproof + taps for 3 [insert color] is a nice bonus. The next level analysis is that with keyword hexproof you're able to be the only deck can realistically cast a card like Verdict against DnT's Ports. So we've got this card that plays into your early game/value plans and also allows you to cast uninteractive reset buttons.

I feel like there's not much time in legacy to use turn 2 for Seas, turn 3 for Estrid, turn 4 for Benalia. I see the whole value loop thing, but it just feels like you die to Goyf and a single Daze...and even if you pulled it off, you're still in the Goyf abyss.

[FTW]

@kombat: RiP got a little less maindeckable without DRS and DTT. But look at all the decks it does interact with: BR Reanimator, Buried Phoenix, Delver (Gurmag Angler/Arcanist), Wrenn and Six.dec, Hogaak Depths/Dark Depths, Loam, ANT. I don't think it's a total write-off.

The main difference between winning this turn and winning in a few turns is how much opportunity the opponent has to interact and recover. ETutor is card disadvantage. If you use that card disadvantage to find a win condition (Helm), being behind in cards doesn't matter. If you use it to find incremental advantage (e.g. Estrid, Dovin, Soothsaying, Sigil), you're playing down a card while the opponent has a chance to do things and get back in the game, especially if you're just making some 2/2s or drawing back the cards you missed. You have zero board wipes, so how do you recover from a dominant board position other than spamming 2/2 knights?

Yes, Miracles plays Mentor. Control decks can play creatures. Why do I differentiate between "control" and "midrange tokens"? Mentor takes up 3 slots, while your enchantment plan takes up a lot more, so they have more room for control pieces. They can run board resets (Terminus), more countermagic (Counterspell), card advantage (AK/Predict), Snapcaster to reuse spells, and planeswalkers. That makes them a much more interactive control deck. You have to cut all that to run the enchantment package.

The reason I picked those black Sagas is because they at least offer control tools: killing creatures and providing card & board advantage. You showed the Saga mechanic interacts well with Estrid. You don't have to play any Sagas, but it should help if more of those enchantment slots do something more interactive than cantripping and spamming 2/2s: Humility, Porphyry Nodes, Back to Basics (Spreading Seas doesn't make them Basic Islands).

@Fox: I think his plan his turn 3 Benalia (+2 tokens), turn 4 Estrid (+4 tokens), so he does get board presence a turn earlier than in your version. But yeah, I agree that main plan just seems too slow and uninteractive for Legacy. In that plan his only interaction is Force of Will (no Force of Negation backup), Spreading Seas (except 60% of Legacy decks play Brainstorm, so they can not only use the blue mana but use it to cantrip into another land, making Seas significantly worse than Wastelanding it), and maybe an errant Plow on turn 4 if he hits all his land drops.

[Fox]

@Fox: I think his plan his turn 3 Benalia (+2 tokens), turn 4 Estrid (+4 tokens), so he does get board presence a turn earlier than in your version. But yeah, I agree that main plan just seems too slow and uninteractive for Legacy. In that plan his only interaction is Force of Will (no Force of Negation backup), Spreading Seas (except 60% of Legacy decks play Brainstorm, so they can not only use the blue mana but use it to cantrip into another land, making Seas significantly worse than Wastelanding it), and maybe an errant Plow on turn 4 if he hits all his land drops.

I get that, but in the theoretical “dies to Goyf” stress test, you just lose if Benalia doesn’t resolves. I don’t think you can ever afford to play that on turn 3 into a Daze, so you have to bait out the interaction with the value engine. Imagine how disastrous it would be to go Seas -> Benalia (Daze kills Seas) -> Estrid’s with nothing to copy. Say you go Seas into Estrid and get Dazed and lose everything; at least Benalia will resolve and you’ll have a 2/2 to chump Goyf twice - it’s not good, but it’s kinda the best you can hope for.

[FTW]

I get that, but in the theoretical “dies to Goyf” stress test, you just lose if Benalia doesn’t resolves. I don’t think you can ever afford to play that on turn 3 into a Daze, so you have to bait out the interaction with the value engine. Imagine how disastrous it would be to go Seas -> Benalia (Daze kills Seas) -> Estrid’s with nothing to copy. Say you go Seas into Estrid and get Dazed and lose everything; at least Benalia will resolve and you’ll have a 2/2 to chump Goyf twice - it’s not good, but it’s kinda the best you can hope for.

I forgot about Daze.

Daze is another reason why Spreading Seas is terrible in Legacy. They can just return the land to hand and replay it. That's a "dies to Legacy" stress test.

[kombatkiwi]

@kombatkiwi on Lotus Field + Land Tax, the point there is that you get to nuke your land count below an opponent's count to retrigger a draw 3. It's not really about speed or ramp, but the hexproof + taps for 3 [insert color] is a nice bonus. The next level analysis is that with keyword hexproof you're able to be the only deck can realistically cast a card like Verdict against DnT's Ports. So we've got this card that plays into your early game/value plans and also allows you to cast uninteractive reset buttons.

I feel like there's not much time in legacy to use turn 2 for Seas, turn 3 for Estrid, turn 4 for Benalia. I see the whole value loop thing, but it just feels like you die to Goyf and a single Daze...and even if you pulled it off, you're still in the Goyf abyss.

I understand how Field works with Tax. The problem in a deck with e.g. Ponder/Brainstorm etc is that do you really want to have a land in your deck that you can't even play until turn 3? That doesn't ramp your mana and only helps an enchantment which you probably aren't even playing too many copies of? The port thing is cute but as soon as you play another land then their Port is equally live again so what did you achieve really


I forgot about Daze.

Daze is another reason why Spreading Seas is terrible in Legacy. They can just return the land to hand and replay it. That's a "dies to Legacy" stress test.
In Delver matchups you play around this by casting Spreading Seas on your own lands
Again it functions much more as an Accumulated Knowledge type of card in blue matchups rather than "hurhurhur good luck casting your spells Jund/Tron opp"


Yes, Miracles plays Mentor. Control decks can play creatures. Why do I differentiate between "control" and "midrange tokens"? Mentor takes up 3 slots, while your enchantment plan takes up a lot more, so they have more room for control pieces. They can run board resets (Terminus), more countermagic (Counterspell), card advantage (AK/Predict), Snapcaster to reuse spells, and planeswalkers. That makes them a much more interactive control deck. You have to cut all that to run the enchantment package.
The only relevant part of this is counterspell/terminus
Every other part of this is supplied by the enchantments:
- Card advantage
- Reuse spells from the graveyard
- "Planeswalkers" (permanents that provide incremental advantage and a wincondition)

but I agree that the lack of this interaction seems like it might be an issue
If it is expected that early threats are going to be such a problem and that sweepers are needed then possibly both the Sigil of the Empty Throne and the Council's Judgment (or the Cast Out) can be cut for 2 Porphyry Nodes, which also boosts replenish. The CJ effect is still available in DSphere

[Fox]

I understand how Field works with Tax. The problem in a deck with e.g. Ponder/Brainstorm etc is that do you really want to have a land in your deck that you can't even play until turn 3? That doesn't ramp your mana and only helps an enchantment which you probably aren't even playing too many copies of? The port thing is cute but as soon as you play another land then their Port is equally live again so what did you achieve really

It's not a 4x, but you could play 2x or so. The point of E Tutor is that you don't have to play many copies of cards, so you can get away with 1-2 Tax. It really comes down to what the deck is trying to do. Field is heavily skewed towards being able to spam uncounterable reset buttons, so taking a turn [mostly] off is fine. In terms of the Port stuff, your next land casts Verdict and Port can't stop it (+/- Thalia on board). The traditional problem with Verdict is that DnT just Ports down 2 plains and UW decks can't ever cast it, and Field really does solve this problem (as much as any 1 card can).

It's not about ramp so much as the land doing what your deck wants (Tax engine) on a card that's even more uninteractive than a basic land, which then is letting you cast an uninteractive board wipe. Your 4 mana play right now is generally going to be Benalia against getting beat down by theoretical Goyf, or turn 3 vs a more control-oriented deck which can handle 2x 2/2s and only needs to counter the Estrid. I just don't think you get turns 2, 3, and 4 to make a 2/2 so that you can have a big turn 5 of 3x 2/2s in a deck that doesn't have any risk of reach vs life total.

We can also look at your deck doing its thing from the point-of-view of FoW. With @FTW's idea you're using FoW to protect a game-ending combo. With an uninteractive reset strategy FoW can go purely on the disruption plan vs anything that would sidestep the reset. With the Saga stuff, FoW kinda doesn't have anything worth protecting but you're basically priced into using it like that anyways (b/c it's the only way your deck can win). It's even worse than that for your deck, as your deck has barely any wincons...in a post-board game FoW is 100% on counter Surgical which is going to target a suicidal enchantment.

[FTW]

Again it functions much more as an Accumulated Knowledge type of card in blue matchups rather than "hurhurhur good luck casting your spells Jund/Tron opp"


Isn't that extremely underpowered then? Competitive Legacy is 60% Brainstorms, which means maybe 65% decks that can use blue mana, 5% decks that try to go off before you can resolve a 2 cmc enchantment, and some decks that run redundant basics (D&T, stompy, Elves).

Sure it can really hose Dark Depths if they don't play around it (Crop Rotation/Elvish Reclaimer EOT) and shut down Caverns and Port and Eldrazi Post, but too often it does essentially nothing (cycles for 2 mana) unless you resolve Estrid to combo with it. Is there some other card that could fill the card advantage role instead?



The only relevant part of this is counterspell/terminus

That's an important part. The incremental card advantage is less important, anything could provide that. It wouldn't be Miracles without Terminus. That is literally the namesake of the deck. The 1 cmc instant board reset is what lets the deck get away with playing the slow control game. Otherwise you lose to creatures. 4 Plow + 0 Snapcaster + 0 Energy Field is not enough to handle creatures.

Counterspells also let you trade 1-for-1 with cards that can't hit the board. 4 Force by itself isn't enough countermagic for control, and the 2-for-1 hurts against fair decks like Delver and D&T.

Control decks need more interaction than 4 Plow + 4 Force. Countersliver ran that much interaction and it's an aggro deck :p.

[FTW]

What about something like this?


//Spells: 22
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Counterspell
1 Force of Negation
1 Council's Judgment

//Creatures: 3
3 Snapcaster Mage

//Enchantments and Artifacts: 13
2 Porphyry Nodes
1 Arcum's Astrolabe
1 Spreading Seas
2 Counterbalance
4 History of Benalia
2 Estrid's Invocation
1 Detention Sphere

//Planeswalkers: 2
1 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

//Lands: 20
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
6 Snow-Covered Island
3 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Karakas
1 Tundra
1 Scalding Tarn

//Sideboard: 15
2 Back to Basics
3 Rest in Peace
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Humility
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Spreading Seas
1 Damping Sphere
1 Pithing Needle
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Stony Silence
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Force of Negation


Against graveyard decks you can just board into RiP + Helm, because 1 Helm is so little cost to include when you're already playing RiP and ETutor.

Other SB toolbox choices depend on the metagame and what matchups are weak.

Jace has obvious synergies with Counterbalance and winning at Magic.

Teferi protects you from having your enchantments interfered with. It can also -3 to reset History, Snapcaster, Estrid, Porphyry or Seas.

1-of Astrolabe seems like an auto-include to smooth your costs in a manabase with 9-10 basics. At worst it cantrips for 1 mana.

You reduce the need for Spreading Seas as a "backup enchantment" by reducing the number of Estrids (which are too slow and conditional in some matchups anyway). In the slow matchups where the long-term value chain is good, you can board in a 2nd Seas, though Back to Basics is even better in a wider range of matches.

Snapcaster fills the roles of increasing interaction (+Plows +Counters), filling the 2 cmc slot when cutting Seas, and providing an alternate source of card advantage.

[kombatkiwi]

Isn't that extremely underpowered then? ...Is there some other card that could fill the card advantage role instead?
I thought that the deck needed the increased number of Invocation Enablers and in UW colours there really isn't anything better. I agree that it's on the low end of power level for cards that see play in legacy but I think that the incidental hate vs some land-based things is reasonable and 2 cmc draw a card (even at sorcery) kind of caps how bad it is?


That's an important part. The incremental card advantage is less important, anything could provide that. It wouldn't be Miracles without Terminus
You made the point that "look at all the things miracles has that this deck doesn't" and I replied with "actually it has most of those but you're right that the relative lack of interaction could be a problem" so it seems we are on the same page here


deck
This looks okay, but I think this also has holes.
There still isn't any Terminus despite saying how important that effect supposedly is, and even though you have cut the GY dependence (no Replenish/Conjecture element) for the RIP plan in the board you have replaced it with 3 other GY-dependent cards in the form of Snapcaster. If this is viable then I guess the original version of the deck could play rip/helm as a SB plan just as easily

Essentially this seems like a less-powerful more-consistent way to build the deck, cutting some of the enchantment synergies and the weird/situational singletons for generic good cards in counterspell/pw/snap.
I think that with only 4 Benalia and 1 Seas the Invocation becomes too unreliable, and that card was a large part of why the deck seemed good.
The version with counterspell and snap and far less of the enchantment synergy is like an uncomfortable middle-ground where it becomes a lot harder to argue that History is better than Mentor would be.
But I appreciate the suggestions and Teferi is an interesting idea

[aedemiel]

I'm affraid this whole thread will be yet another example of «You want to play UW? Juste play Miracles».
Although all the Estrid's Invocation interactions are sweet (and god knows I love this card), it's juste more expensive and slower than a straight Brainstorm+Fetch, less card advantage than a single Terminus, and not game ending like a protected Monastery Mentor.

I would love to abuse Estrid's Invocation (hell, I've been playing Enchantments-based decks my whole Legacy player life!) but I think this is just too slow, especially in a non-stompy shell.

[FTW]

I would love to abuse Estrid's Invocation (hell, I've been playing Enchantments-based decks my whole Legacy player life!) but I think this is just too slow, especially in a non-stompy shell.

You can abuse it. UW control just may not be the deck to do it. UG Enchantress uses the card really well.

Maybe an enchantment-based Stompy deck could too. Could even be UW (e.g. Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Oblivion Ring, Parallax Tide, Moat, Riptide Chimera, Propaganda, Replenish, Eidolons, some draw engine or abusable ETB triggers, etc.).

The problem is if you try to stick Estrid's Invocation into the shell of another deck that is not enchantment-based. Then you're just fighting for slots, between getting in enough enchantments and having the main plan (e.g. control) work properly.

[aedemiel]

parallax tide
Now we're talking!

[FTW]

Parallax Tide has synergies with...

Estrid's Invocation: Keep the original Tide on full counters. Copy it with Estrid. Exile up to 5 lands with the copy. On the upkeep when Estrid will fade away, stack the upkeep triggers with Estrid on top. Blink Estrid first (lands return) and have it return copying Parallax Tide. Exile 5 lands again. This basically keeps 5 lands off the board for 5 turns (until the original Tide is gone). Even better if you get a 2nd Estrid involved.

Riptide Chimera: Exile up to 5 lands. On your upkeep, both triggers go on the stack. Bounce Parallax first. The lands return, but then you can replay Parallax and remove the lands again. Unfortunately this costs 2UU every turn so it's awkward.

Auratog/Phantatog/Seal of Cleansing: Stack 5 exile abilities. In response, sacrifice Parallax Tide to the Atog. Lands are exiled permanently. The "Oblivion Ring" trick works with this old templating.

Propaganda/Sphere of Safety: Opponent can't attack you if they can't generate 2 mana on main phase.

Chalice/Spheres: Opponent has a hard time beating resistors without lands

Replenish: Reuse Parallax enchantments like the old Standard deck

3cc Teferi: Completes the soft lock by stopping instant tricks in the window between. -3 to reset a Parallax on 0 counters.

This deck could really break Parallax Tide. Parallax Wave is decent too, maybe 4 Tide + 2 Wave main?

[aedemiel]

We talked a bit about Opal-Wave a moment ago, here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?30810-Developmental-GW-Opal-Wave
But that was before Estrid's Invocation. Maybe there is something here.

[FTW]

We talked a bit about Opal-Wave a moment ago, here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?30810-Developmental-GW-Opal-Wave
But that was before Estrid's Invocation. Maybe there is something here.

Does Opal-Wave work again? When it was in Standard, they power-errata'd it hard so you needed 2 Waves

That deck is interesting but seems like an underpowered version of Enchantress. What about a UW stompy shell with both Parallaxes and Estrid's Invocation? Blue also gives the UW Teferi to complete the lock. Dual-colored stompy is also easier now with Prismatic Vista to help fix basics.

LOL Parallax Tide even has a back-up function to save your City of Traitors before you play a land.



//Lands: 20
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Flooded Strand
2 Prismatic Vista
2 Tundra
2 Island
2 Plains
1 Serra's Sanctum

//Artifacts: 11
4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere

//Enchantments: 25
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Spreading Seas
4 Estrid's Invocation
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Propaganda
4 Parallax Tide
3 Parallax Wave
3 Opalescence
2 Trial of Knowledge

//Planeswalkers: 2
2 Teferi, Time Raveler

//Spells: 2
2 Replenish

//Sideboard: 15
3 Eidolon of Rhetoric
4 Rest in Peace
2 Helm of Obedience
2 Ghostly Prison
1 Stony Silence
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Phyrexian Revoker


Probably too durdly and inconsistent. The one nice thing about the GW version is the early draw engine in Enchantress' Presence and Sylvan Library.

Some cute interactions:
Spreading Seas - draws cards with Estrid blink. can be used on yourself to avoid Ancient Tomb/City suicide. You can keep the original on your own land, put the Estrid copy on theirs, and then blink Estrid off it when you're ready to Tide away lands.

Seal + Parallax = exile 5 things permanently

Opal + Wave = permanently exile creatures at will

Opal + Wave + Tide = permanently exile creatures and lands at will, aka Win the Game

Trial + Estrid = draw many cards

Tide + Estrid = landlock opponent for many turns

Teferi + Tide + Estrid = Opponent cannot play Magic. Exile 5 lands looping the Tide copy. Opponent can't cast spells in between. Use Teferi to bounce and replay the original Tide to save it from fading.

[kombatkiwi]

I liked the look of the GW-wave deck in the youtube videos that were posted, that deck made very good use of Kruphix's Insight.
That deck felt much more like a combo deck that was trying to ramp up with Wild Growth/Serra's Sanctum, not a control/prison deck, because with the combo online it's near-impossible for fair decks to beat the pairing of Opal/Wave.
It also randomly hoses some of the combo decks like SNT and Depths.
I'm sceptical that Parallax Tide is a playable card in legacy though because 4 mana is a lot for something that doesn't win the game or do anything when you're behind on the board. At least by itself PWave can keep a Dreadhorde Arcanist exiled for a few turns while you try to dig for Opalescence.

I think the GW opalwave version has the problem that you are a dog to combo (especially reanimator and storm) but it can probably be tuned to be a kind of 'fair deck killer'. Relying on the combo of x2 4-drops to help stabilize against Delver is always going to be suspect though, even if you do have stuff like Serra's Sanctum or Replenish or Carpet of Flowers to try and power through disruption.

This UW Opal with chalice and stuff has the problem that you are just a stompy shell with the typical near-zero library manipulation but all of your threats are weird multi-card pairings rather than stuff that's high-impact on its own like Chandra or Rabblemaster etc.

[kombatkiwi]

Bump
Some more testing:
I think the Enlightened Tutors need to be moved to the SB, as the card disadvantage is probably too much of a liability vs fair decks
At least 2 Porphyry Nodes in the main seems correct

So from the list on the first page
-1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
-1 Council's Judgment
+2 Porphyry Nodes
-2 Enlightened Tutor
+2 Something

A third nodes is possible.
Other options would be some kind of Predict-esque enchantment for the Replenish synergy but there aren't great options available.
Font of Fortunes is 'fine' but costs a lot of mana, Ior Ruin Expedition is similar and probably slightly worse. Compulsion is an interesting way to churn through the deck but again costs a lot of mana. A 2nd Dovin's Acuity doesn't seem awful either. That card has impressed me a lot and has much better synergy with Estrids Invocation than these 2-cmc options.

I am unsure if I want to add a 2nd Cast Out or cut the first one. Without maindeck ETutor you lose the utility of being able to Tutor for a cmc4 for CB but it gives a nice kicker for Replenish for little opportunity cost.

Edit: maybe the extra card advantage slot can be 1 Azcanta. It doesn't combo with Invocation or B2B but otherwise it seems ok.
It can set up Replenish by milling enchantments into the graveyard and if it flips and they waste it you can still Replenish it back

[Mr. Safety]

Is Deafening Silence worth building around? You have so much card advantage with the Sagas that it seems very powerful, and a way to slow the game down (in most matchups) so your inevitability can take over.

[kombatkiwi]

Is Deafening Silence worth building around? You have so much card advantage with the Sagas that it seems very powerful, and a way to slow the game down (in most matchups) so your inevitability can take over.

In most matchups I don't think it slows the game down in a meaningful way (or at least in such a way that it doesn't compensate for the card you spent on it).
Like any player can just go turn 1 delver turn 2 ponder leave up pierce mana or turn 2 tarmo with daze backup and not be affected by this at all, it just doesn't do enough against fair decks.
You can get CA from the sagas but you have to survive first and I don't think this helps enough.

[Mr. Safety]

Yeah, I thought it was just like Canonist where it was only one non-artifact spell. It's worse than useless in most cases due to it being non-creature. Decks can now drop their dudes and still have Force/Daze/Pierce up for your removal spell because you can only cast one. Sideboard card only.

[FTW]

Azcanta seems like a good choice for that last slot. Even if it doesn't "combo" with your other pieces, it helps compensate for the loss of card selection by cutting tutors.

[kombatkiwi]

Yeah, I thought it was just like Canonist where it was only one non-artifact spell. It's worse than useless in most cases due to it being non-creature. Decks can now drop their dudes and still have Force/Daze/Pierce up for your removal spell because you can only cast one. Sideboard card only.

Canonist might still be better anyway because tutor can still find it and it can also attack
Depends how many hate pieces I have room for I guess

Edit: Some more testing yesterday, a few games against my friend's blue-soup 4c control deck

Was ok/competitive
I played with the suggestions mentioned above (3 Porphyry Nodes and 1 Azcanta)
Sometimes it felt like it was drawing too much removal but that's probably just the nature of the matchup we were playing, this deck with 4 Plow and 3 Nodes shouldn't really be any different to Miracles in that regard with 4 Plow and 3-4 Terminus and you probably want to max out on all of that to beat Delver decks.

I went off with the 3rd stage of Mirari's Conjecture as well and chained like 5 cantrips in 1 turn.

The Azcanta seems like a really good choice.

I think I like most of the deck:
20 Lands
UW Core (Brainstorm Ponder FOW Plow)
4 History 4 Spreading Seas 3 Invocation 1 Acuity
2 cb
1 Azcanta 1 Mirari 1 Dsphere
2 Replenish
And then at least 2 nodes is probably correct.

So the remaining 3 questionable slots are the 3rd nodes, the cast out, and the soothsaying.

I'm tempted to keep the 3rd Nodes for now until I can test the Delver matchup more.
The Soothsaying seems so 'free' to play but maybe it's just a bad card or at least not good enough to spend 1 card on.
Cast Out still seems pretty borderline/underwhelming and maybe it should be a Font of Fortune or something else (2nd Azcanta maybe, or CJ or a 3rd CB, or maybe just a Preordain).
Will start mapping out the SB soon, need to narrow down which tutor bullets I want to play.

[kombatkiwi]

update:

List is now
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Porphyry Nodes
4 Spreading Seas
2 Font of Fortunes
2 Counterbalance
1 Search for Azcanta
4 History of Benalia
3 Estrid's Invocation
1 Dovin's Acuity
1 Detention Sphere
2 Replenish
4 Force of Will
1 The Mirari Conjecture
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Tundra
5 Plains
5 Island

Sideboard
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Humility
1 Dawn of Hope
1 Back to Basics
1 Ethersworn Canonist / Deafening Silence / Anti-Combo tutor target
6 Flusterstorm/Hydroblast/Veto/Surgical/Force of Negation/Cpriest

Thoughts:
I cut Soothsaying because it seemed like if I was going to spend that much mana on it I would rather spend the mana into Font of Fortunes and just draw the cards. Having to spend 3 mana to look at 3 rather than 1 like with Top is a big difference. Soothsaying is probably better in the super lategame (especially with CB) but this is more of a tap-out deck (lack of Snapcasters etc) so it's less likely the deck will have mana open anyway. Font of Fortune is also a better Replenish enabler than Soothsaying

For the SB I think thats probably about the maximum deck can afford to get away with in terms of tutor targets.

Other Miracles/UW decks are already playing 6-7 cheap counters in the SB (with Snapcasters main to go with them) and they usually have Pierce main as well, in combo matchups I am hoping that Enlightened Tutor can do some of the work but against decks like Delver it's probably too punishing to try to resolve E-tutor, and necessary to have cards like Hydroblast, Fluster to fight over early Wrenns and Stifles and such.

I think the best generic anti-combo tutor option is Canonist. You can turn 1 tutor turn 2 canonist which stops storm from winning until they get rid of it, makes your counters much stronger against SNT, hinders the opponent's ability to cantrip out of it, and puts 2 power on the board

- Deafening Silence is similar but I think the fact that canonist can attack is too much of an upside. Being an enchantment is not exciting because you can't Replenish it back if they kill it the turn they go off and it doesn't do anything if you copy it
- Zur's Weirding is a super spicy option but for it to be lights out you need to have a better board and a better hand, in which case you're probably already winning anyway. (If you cast it on an even board then you end up in this weird cat-and-mouse game which might not favour you because your deck isn't very threat-dense, and even if you have some Knights it effectively says to your opponent "try to win right now" so you still need a way to stop them from doing that in case they have it. E.g. they had the combo in hand already but didn't go for it yet because they were looking for Duress/Boseiju).
- Trinisphere and Aegis of the Gods aren't good against SNT,
- CPriest isn't tutorable and does nothing vs Storm.
- Spirit of the Labyrinth and In the Eye of Chaos are out because the effect is symmetrical.
- Decree of Silence is powerful but costs too much mana.
- Induced Amnesia is interesting as a way to disrupt the opponent's hand, and you can also use it on yourself to sculpt your hand, and it gets copied with Invocation to burn through their (or your) library, but is probably too low-impact without any Leovold-effect. (and is super punishing if you use it on your opponent and then they Pyroblast it).
- Nevermore is interesting because you have ways to copy it which lets you cover multiple angles, but it costs more mana than Canonist (like most options) and Nevermore doesn't disrupt the opponent's cantripping to answer it (or they're playing a deck like SNS and you name the wrong one out of show/sneak).
- Solitary Confinement is hard (but possible) to maintain and does nothing against SNT
- Lilting Refrain has no immediate impact and takes a while to build up to a point where it's hard to play around
- Standstill might not favour you on an empty board
- Lunar Force (and the 2-mana one, I forget the name), fun with Replenish but too easy to play around
- Dovescape might not favour you on an empty board, just as easy to cast Decree of Silence

idk if there's something spicy I'm missing but I think I've considered most of the options
It's also possible that Cage/Counterbalance/Humility already gives you coverage vs every combo deck and it's just an unnecessary slot

Edit: maybe the white 1/4 Eidolon is alright because it still gives you a clock (even if it's only 1 power) and it's better against Bomberman/Mystic Forge. (This reminds me that I didn't include Stony Silence but maybe there's no room for it)
Copying the canonist effect with Invocation isn't irrelevant actually because (in the case of Eidolon) it gives you another attacker and even if the effect doesn't stack it still means they need to find e.g. a 2nd Decay

[FTW]

That looks a lot more interactive and better at playing the control game. How does it perform in testing?

[kombatkiwi]

That looks a lot more interactive and better at playing the control game. How does it perform in testing?

It's pretty good actually, I'm thinking of playing it at a big tournament at the start of November

I think in the maindeck the only changes I would consider are swapping the Azcanta/Font/CB for spell pierce or Force of Negation. There are some Jeskai Mentor or UW Helm decks that have more counterspells (instants) main and counterbalance in the SB so I'm wondering what the best choice is. I think having CB main is pretty good in this list in particular, because against fair decks it can be Replenished back if they counter or decay it, but having more options to fight e.g. early Wrenns is also important

From there it's just a question of figuring out what to put in the SB like what I outlined in the last post
Curse of Exhaustion doesn't seem terrible actually because storm can't decay it and being 1-sided means a lot against SNT but maybe it's too slow

[aedemiel]

//List
Pretty good.
The way I see it, there are still some weak/cute cards (Font of Fortunes, Mirari Conjecture...) but this looks much better already.


I think in the maindeck the only changes I would consider are swapping the Azcanta/Font/CB for spell pierce or Force of Negation

I don't know about that. Don't you think it will dilute your gameplan? As you said, you're more a tape-out control deck.

Also, could you do a video/repport?

[kombatkiwi]

Pretty good.
The way I see it, there are still some weak/cute cards (Font of Fortunes, Mirari Conjecture...) but this looks much better already.

I don't know about that. Don't you think it will dilute your gameplan? As you said, you're more a tape-out control deck.

Also, could you do a video/repport?

Yup there are some weaker cards but they are necessary to enable the 'combos', hopefully it balances out in the end.
It does dilute the core tapout/enchantment gameplan to play things like pierce but if I win more by playing those instants then I should do that :P Still unsure what the best config is

I won't be able to e.g. record a league on mtgo but if I do play the deck in a paper tournament I will do a video decktech / report.

Edit
So far my preliminary SB is something like
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Seal of Cleansing
1 Back to Basics
1 Humility
1 Dawn of Hope
1 Stony Silence
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Dovin's Veto
1 Flusterstorm
1 Force of Negation
1 Hydroblast

I think this gives a pretty good spread for different decks
Wondering if the Stony and the Needle should just be like a 3rd veto and 2nd hydro/fluster
Edit: Might make the stony a curse of exhaustion because it's applicable vs control and SNT while also still being effective against storm/bomberman

[kombatkiwi]

First tournament of UW Sagas

Same maindeck as in the previous post and the same SB as suggested, with Curse of Exhaustion instead of Stony Silence

Round 1 Eldrazi (Aggro version with Mimic and Endless One etc)

G1 I halt the early aggression with Nodes (killing Mimic + Endlessone + Ballista) and then Invocation + History hold off a bunch of medium Eldrazi. I FoW a midgame chalice and D-Sphere on Endbringer allows an alpha strike with the +2/+1 for game

G2 My opponent has 2 fast Thorns, I plan to use the D-Sphere in my hand to eliminate them both when I get to 5 mana, but then my opponent plays some creatures so I need to Nodes, but they have Chalice at 1 so I need to use the Seal of Cleansing I topdecked to clear out the Chalice first, and by the time I get through all of this they have Ratchet Bomb for the Nodes and I die.

G3 A few spreading seas act as speed bumps for my opponents mana and I resolve a Humility. My opponent taps out for All is Dust to clear everything but I untap and slam Back to Basics and the game is pretty much over from there.

Round 2 BUG Nicfit

G1 I let my opponent chip me down really low with some Explorers plus Coatls. I clear out their small creatures with Nodes + Plow and use the Explorer ramp to set up a board. They Deed and I Replenish everything back to almost certainly lock up the game but they have another Deed and I die to their manland. I probably couldve won this game if I was just more conservative with my life total and didn't try to get so greedy with Nodes

G2 I have 2 nodes to try and kill my opponent's Leovold but they Decay/Trophy them both and I die to Questing Beast + Leo before my flipped Azcanta can bail me out

Round 3 Mardu Zombardment

G1 their clock is pretty anemic, my nodes chips down their lingering souls tokens while I build up a board with History/Invocation and attack for lethal
G2 My opponent has multiple fast bloodghasts/gravecrawlers and I can't find a History to hold them off
G3 My opponent mulligans to 5 and I play Cage on turn 1. I Spreading Seas their black sources and they are never really in the game

Not a bad result, and after playing exclusively Daze decks for like the past 5 years I am having to pick up some different skills, but it seems to be a decent deck. Hopefully I can play against more 'meta' decks next week

[aedemiel]

Well that's encouraging.
I hope you will tell us how it fare against the current top tier decks like RUG, 4c Snow, ANT and Depths.

[kombatkiwi]

Another tournament:
Round 1 Mono B Reanimator 2-1
G1 My opponent goes for a cleanup discard plan which gives time for me to lock him out with Spreading Seas and CB
G2 I have to Force of Negation to protect my Enlightened Tutor (for cage) from a Thoughtseize but he has the immediate combo
G3 My opponent has a chancellor trigger but no fast combo and I play turn 2 cage for game

Round 2 Sneak and Show (no Omni) 0-2
G1 he resolves SNT into Gris, I plow it and set up some good CB flips but draw7s are too much and he grinds me out with an eventual sneak into 2x Emrakul.
G2 I play turn 2 Seas on the play on my opponents Boseiju and he forces it. I think for a bit before Forcing back. In hindsight I shouldn't have done this and probably just banked on my opponent not having the combo for one turn and tried to use the E-tutor in my hand for Humility. (I should already know that my opponent isn't playing Omni because he has shown me Dazes. If I can E-tutor Humility into my hand then his SNT will be dead, and then I can use the FoW to fight over Sneak with the fluster in my hand, while eventually playing toward casting the Humility). Anyway I don't really draw anything for a few turns and he casts Sneak into my Fluster that doesn't do anything

Round 3 UR Scroll of Fate Nought 1-1-0
G1 He gets under me with Factory into Standstill, which I have to crack, I eventually die to Factory + bolts
G2 I give my opponent like 3 standstill triggers because I have Invocation online so I don't care: it's too hard for his deck to beat Plow/Seal/Needle after sideboarding and StifleNought is a disaster into Dovins Veto. I go to 1 life at one point but I have plow/Veto protection, and overwhelming board. He's not a very fast player and by the time I find Knights to kill him there's no time for G3

not the most useful data lol
I don't expect the SNT matchup to be that great (just like for Miracles) even though I'm boarding in 14 cards

Going to play it at another event on thursday before deciding whether to play it at the big tournament in the weekend

[aedemiel]

Hey data is still data!
I'm still missing several cards to test this. It will probably be on MTGO before any actual event


Going to play it at another event on thursday before deciding whether to play it at the big tournament in the weekend

Wait, are you going to MF Lyon?

[kombatkiwi]

Hey data is still data!
I'm still missing several cards to test this. It will probably be on MTGO before any actual event

Wait, are you going to MF Lyon?

No, China
I think eternal weekend in the USA is this weekend too so it's a big weekend for legacy haha

Edit: I've just seen a new spoiler from the upcoming Theros set:

Omen of the Sea 1U
Enchantment
Flash
When Omen of the Sea enters the battlefield, scry 2 then draw a card.
2U, Sacrifice Omen of the Sea, Scry 2.

This is the perfect card for the deck, like if you had asked me to design my own spreading seas replacement it probably wouldn't have even been as good as this.
1) Has flash
2) Scry 2 AND Draw
3) Can self-sac to get back with Replenish
4) Activate to scry 2 at instant speed with CB or clear off dud cards with Brainstorm

The manadenial element of spreading seas has been surprisingly good but this new card has way too much upside.
It almost makes me want to stop playing the deck until this card is released

Its an entire cycle of enchantments with "Flash, ETB do something, 2C + Sac to scry 2" and the green and black ones have also been leaked (unless the leak is fake) but I haven't seen the white one yet.

Edit again
The first set of leaks I saw only showed the commons (it was on a pauper forum) but apparently Sagas are also back? This one seems playable:

Medomai's Prophecy 1U
Enchantment - Saga
[1] - Scry 2
[2] - Name a card
[3] - When you cast the named card for the first time this turn, draw 2
[4] - Look at the top card of each player's library

If Omen of the Sea is an upgraded Spreading Seas then this is an upgraded Font of Fortunes
- Costs less mana overall, which is better in general but there's also far less chance of a Stifle blowout
- More synergy with Estrid's Invocation
- If you are e.g. hunting for your 3rd land then it still helps with that even though the draw is delayed because of the scry 2 on ETB

Looking forward to more playable cards from this set, especially if there are more sagas and a general enchantment theme.
There is a 2B black enchantment that draws 3 on ETB but I don't think it's great for this deck because it has the drawback of damaging you whenever you cast a spell: I don't think it's necessary to splash another colour just to give the opponent a Cindervines.
There's also a 2UU flash enchantment which functions like a Counterspell/Ixalans binding Hybrid, which has interesting implications for Enlightened Tutor but 4 mana for that effect in legacy is probably too expensive.

[aedemiel]

Edit: I've just seen a new spoiler from the upcoming Theros set:

Yeah, I just saw the spoilers as well. It's interesting, but I'm pretty sure it's a fake.

[kombatkiwi]

Yeah, I just saw the spoilers as well. It's interesting, but I'm pretty sure it's a fake.

I think there's a pretty good chance it's real,
There are so many new and high-quality artworks included in the leaked photos, this would be a lot of effort for somebody to go through just for a hoax

[kombatkiwi]

I tested this with the new cards against my friend's 4C Oko deck

To reiterate:

1 Tundra
1 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
5 Plains
5 Island

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares

3 Porphyry Nodes
4 Omen of the Sea
2 Medomai's Prophecy
2 Counterbalance
1 Search for Azcanta
4 History of Benalia
3 Estrid's Invocation
1 Dovin's Acuity
1 Detention Sphere
2 Replenish
1 The Mirari Conjecture

Felt really good. The way the game plays out against these kind of fair midrange decks is that there are too many must-counters for the opponent. Your opponent doesn't want to allow CB, Estrids Invocation, Azcanta etc to resolve because they snowball hard as the game continues but if your opponent does spend resources countering them then it supercharges your inevitable Replenish later.

Omen of the Sea is a significant upgrade to Spreading Seas (the extra scry 2 on the ETB trigger is the main thing, especially when you repeatedly blink your Estrids Invocation on it) and the Prophecy is also a big upgrade to Font of Fortunes. Not having to pay an extra 2 mana to draw 2 is solid and scry 2 on ETB helps to set up a turn 3 play, or set up CB. The overall shell makes a lot of sense to me. If I scrub out of GP Nagoya (Pioneer) I will probably try to play this in the 'legacy championship' side event on Sunday. We aren't even halfway through the new Theros spoiler so maybe there will be even more playable cards! Exciting

[mistercakes]

1 Tundra
1 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
5 Plains
5 Island

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares

3 Porphyry Nodes
4 Omen of the Sea (enchantment flash preordain 1U)
2 Medomai's Prophecy (saga for 1U)
2 Counterbalance
1 Search for Azcanta
4 History of Benalia
3 Estrid's Invocation
1 Dovin's Acuity
1 Detention Sphere
2 Replenish
1 The Mirari Conjecture


is there a benefit for running a singleton serra's sanctum?

[kombatkiwi]

is there a benefit for running a singleton serra's sanctum?

I did think about it.
I don't think it's a terrible idea but:

1 - Unlike normal enchantress there are no 1 mana enchantments you can play on turn 1 (E.g. Wild Growth or Mirri's Guile) so it's more likely to be a brick early
2 - Unlike normal enchantress you don't have ramp in the form of Growth/Sprawl so you're pretty reliant on making all your landdrops to cast your spells and really want to avoid getting wastelanded
3 - Unlike normal enchantress you don't have actual enchantress effects that let you keep chaining spells and you aren't playing the massive top-end like Sigil of the Empty Throne or Emrakul or whatever, so theres a much lower cap on what you can do with the extra mana
4 - Slightly awkward with B2B in the sb

Mostly the combination of 1 and 2 makes me think it's not worth it, if I could guarantee not to play against wasteland ever then I think it would probably be correct to replace a plains

[kombatkiwi]

With the full spoiler now we have 1 more possibly-playable card:

Omen of the Sun 2W
Enchantment
Flash
When ~ enters the battlefield, gain 2 life and create 2 1/1 White Human Soldier tokens
2W, sacrifice ~ : Scry 2

This would be competition for the History of Benalia slot

Advantages for Omen:
- Flash (so it can be a combat trick to flash block, or you can hold up counterspells/removal)
- Only costs 2W instead of 1WW (This is more significant than it might first appear due to also wanting UU for Counterbalance on turn 2 and having so many basics in the manabase)
- Lifegain
- Only dies when you want it to, which can be beneficial for Estrids Invocation purposes
- Scry option

Advantages for History
- Way more combat stats (and Vigilance) for the same amount of mana
- It dies without spending any extra mana, which is sometimes good for Replenish
- 2/2 tokens don't die to plague engineer
- Bigger tokens are more synergistic with Porphyry Nodes (because if you have Knights and your opponent has 2/x creatures you can kill theirs first, but not if you have 1/1 soldiers instead).

I don't think it will be correct to play a mixture of them because the tribal Knight buff of History scales well when you have multiple.
I could consider playing 4 History and 1 Omen (e.g to replace the Dovin's Acuity for the lifegain utility), but 4 Omen could also be correct.

I think in a lot of fair matchups the deck wins by totally grinding the opponent out and so it often doesn't matter too much whether the tokens are 1/1s or 2/2s, but Knights can be good for pressuring planeswalkers and are better at letting you you switch roles to the aggro deck (kind of like Mentor).

Then against combo decks, the fast clock of History can be good, but the "Ambush Viper" mode of the Omen can also be good so that you don't need to tap out.

I think both cards are very close and I will be thinking about this in testing

[aedemiel]

I think Omen is just worse because it's more expensive in a long run. I can see the appeal but History seems just better to me.

[kombatkiwi]

Short report: 2-1 at locals

Round 1 Burn 0-2
G1 I keep a hand thats like FoW, Brainstorm, CB, Nodes, Lands. My Brainstorm only gives me more lands and I get run over.
G2 I think I am stabilized, and I get the Omen/Invo engine going for a couple of turns, first I draw1 FoW and, then E-Tutor so next turn I plan to play Dovins Acuity but I die to Exquisite Firecraft

Round 2 ANT 2-1
G1 I protect my Counterbalance from discard with Brainstorm and it carries me to victory
G2 I keep a hand thats like 4 lands 2 FoN 1 FoW, my FoW gets discarded. I play cage but he is able to set up for a spot where he plays Ad Naus in my endstep when FoN can't counter it
G3 I keep a risky hand of Plains, Tutor, Cage, Fow, Omen, 2 more spells. I play turn 1 cage, he discards my FoW, luckily I draw Island then he plays another discard spell so I tutor in response for Deafening Silence, I lose Omen and I draw Silence but we both are very low on resources and play draw-go for a while. He plays Xantid Swarm the turn before my Medomais Prophecy 3-stage so I play Brainstorm to trigger it, then D-Sphere his Xantid with 2 cards backup. He Decays my Deafening Silence then untaps and Duresses my Estrids Invocation (Brainstorm is my last card and I'm tapped out) then makes 14 Goblins. I draw for turn then 4th stage of Prophecy reveals I have Replenish on top, so I take 14 from the Goblins going to 5 then I untap and Replenish back Invocation + other stuff, which allows me to copy Detention Sphere and eat all his Goblins and then next turn I start blinking to copy Omen and I lock up the game

Round 3 Lands 2-1
G1 I have a slow hand which doesn't really do anything, he plays around plow and doesn't go for the combo, gets his engine going and I eventually die to zombies from Field of Ruin
G2 He keeps a risky hand of 2 Veil 2 Crop Rot but needs to find green sources, I play turn 2 Omen Turn 3 History Turn 4 History and he dies before he can do anything
G3 Quite a drawn out battle where he has double port and is threatening the combo so I keep having to leave a bunch of Plains untapped, but eventually I extract loam and get my card draw engine going, and slowly I totally lock out the game by tutoring for B2B to disable Port then using Mirari Conjecture to get back Surgical to remove K-Grip, eventually I make some Knights and in a last-ditch effort he activates the combo but I have Plow and he's totally locked under B2B with FoW backup. I Replenish for the lols and he concedes to my 30-ish permanents

Decklist:

5 Island
5 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Polluted Delta
1 Tundra

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Replenish
4 Force of Will

3 Porphyry Nodes
4 Omen of the Sea
2 Medomai's Prophecy
2 Counterbalance
1 Search for Azcanta
4 History of Benalia
3 Estrid's Invocation
1 Dovin's Acuity
1 Detention Sphere
1 The Mirari Conjecture

SB:
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Seal of Cleansing
1 Back to Basics
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Deafening Silence
1 Dawn of Hope
1 Humility
2 Dovin's Veto
2 Force of Negation
1 Surgical Extraction

Comments:
- Omen of the Sea is very good and the synergy with Estrid's Invocation is ridiculous
- I think replacing Curse of Exhaustion with Deafening Silence is probably correct even if it's slightly worse (or just outright bad) as a tool against fair decks
- Medomai's Prophecy is kind of slow/clunky but I'm still trying to figure out whether its necessary as this kind of consistency/"glue" card that holds the synergies together
- Still not clear whether History or Omen of the Sun would be better, History definitely helped to win G2 against lands, but apart from that the games I won were all due to locking up the game, not beatdown, and the Omen lifegain could have been good against burn
- Possibly could play a 3-1 split or 4-1 split History/Omen main (cutting the Dovin's Acuity, or maybe the Medomais Prophecy) to open up the Dawn of Hope sb slot
- The Veto/FoN sb slots can be shifted around / exchanged for flusterstorm etc

[kombatkiwi]

I made some slight changes to the above list:

Main:
-1 Dovin's Acuity
+1 Dawn of Hope
Side:
-1 Dawn of Hope
+1 Flusterstorm

And played to the following record over side events at GP Nagoya:
2-0 UR Delver
0-2 UG Omni Tell
2-0 RUG Delver
1-0 BYE
0-2 Tinfins
2-0 Grixis Urza War
0-2 DNT
1-1-1 Mono U Urza
2-0 Tinfins
2-1 Chalice Post
0-2 UR Delver
2-0 Riddlesmith Breach
2-0 4C Foodchain
1-1-1 4C Snowko
1-1-1 UW Miracles
1-2 Grixis Delver
1-2 UR Delver
2-0 Slivers
(If rounds were untimed I would have beaten the UW and Urza players and probably lost to the 4C Snow player)

Overall I think the biggest issue was that the deck is just slightly too clunky which makes it very difficult to play against good Delver players.
I also have no lifegain except for the Dawn of Hope (or Plow your own Knight token) which is very slow to stabilize (compared to something like blinking Invocation on Dovin's Acuity).

I don't think the Replenish / Conjecture options are relevant against enough of the metagame given how much they punish you in tempo matchups for how much mana they cost.

Going forward I would play the following list, with -2 Replenish -1 Conjecture +2 Sevinne's Reclamation +1 Teferi

5 Island
5 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Polluted Delta
1 Tundra

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Sevinne's Reclamation
4 Force of Will

1 Teferi, Time Raveler

3 Porphyry Nodes
4 Omen of the Sea
2 Medomai's Prophecy
2 Counterbalance
1 Search for Azcanta
1 Dawn of Hope
4 History of Benalia
3 Estrid's Invocation
1 Detention Sphere

SB:
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Seal of Cleansing
1 Back to Basics
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage OR Rest in Peace
1 Deafening Silence
1 Dawn of Hope
1 Humility
2 Dovin's Veto
2 Force of Negation
1 Surgical Extraction

Sevinne's Reclamation feels like an upgrade to Replenish for the following reasons
- Even though sometimes you do Replenish back a ton of enchantments (there was 1 memorable game where I got back 2 Omen of the Sea, 2 Medomai's Prophecy, 3 History of Benalia, and maybe 1 more) it doesn't happen often enough that only returning 1 or 2 enchantments is not a notable downgrade
- Everything costs 3 or less except the SB Humility so that restriction isn't really a downgrade either
- 3 mana vs 4 is important eg. when trying to return Nodes to stabilize
- Having flashback makes it a more powerful grindy card

and then Teferi is just a good card
- Bounce opponent threat to stabilize
- Bounce own permanent for value
- Can return with Reclamation
- Can give Reclamation flash to use as trick, or Ponder to set up CB flip, etc

RIP can maybe be played in the SB instead of Cage because against the Storm/Reanimator decks where graveyard hate is good, you don't really need the grindy value of the recursion plan and typically board it out anyway.

[kathor]

I think the recent changes are good choices. I would probably at least add one Omen of the Sun to get the lifegain value and reliable way to trigger Dawn of Hope. Another Teferi would probaly also help do get in more value, maybe even more than the second Sevinne's Reclamation, since you can Bounce your Enchantments two replay them later on.

Medomai's Prophecy reminds me little bit of Standstill, but i allows you to progress your gamestate, but it seems to be kind of slow in a lot of matches. How long did most of your matches go?

Do you think 1-2 Spell Pierce or Counterspell might have helped in some matchups to stall the game a little longer? Sideboarding brings Veto and FoN, which should help quite a bit.

If you are running creatureless, don't you expect them to remove most creature removal? Might a one of value creature make sense in this vacuum spot?

[kombatkiwi]

I think the recent changes are good choices. I would probably at least add one Omen of the Sun to get the lifegain value and reliable way to trigger Dawn of Hope.
I considered various splits of these effects e.g.
4x Omen of the Sun 1x Dawn of Hope
4x History of Benalia 1x Omen of the Sun
In the end I decided that playing 4x History was correct because of the greater impact that it has on the board than these others and that 1 Dawn of Hope was the best use of that other slot because of its higher standalone power level. I think that the mix I played (4x History 1x Dawn) is ok but having some etb lifegain effect (whether that is Omen of the Sun or Dovins Acuity) is good because it helps to stabilize much faster with Estrids Invocation. (The deck uses its life total as a resource in order to take advantage of Porphyry Nodes as removal so there were many games where I felt like I was 1 turn from stabilizing and died to their last creature or a burn spell). The synergy with Dawn of Hope (more draw-card triggers) isn't very important I don't think.


Another Teferi would probaly also help do get in more value, maybe even more than the second Sevinne's Reclamation, since you can Bounce your Enchantments two replay them later on.
Maybe, I will consider it


Medomai's Prophecy reminds me little bit of Standstill, but i allows you to progress your gamestate, but it seems to be kind of slow in a lot of matches. How long did most of your matches go?
I think that this was one of the weakest cards in the deck, but I thought it was necessary to have some kind of cheap 2-for-1 card advantage effect and that this card had relevant synergy with Estrids Invocation and Replenish. Actually those synergies don't really matter much, and while the card itself is not that bad, I think it's probably replaceable. I would like to just swap it for Dovin's Acuity but I am worried it screws up the mana curve too much.


Do you think 1-2 Spell Pierce or Counterspell might have helped in some matchups to stall the game a little longer? Sideboarding brings Veto and FoN, which should help quite a bit.
Yes, possibly, these can also go in the Medomai's Prophecy slots


If you are running creatureless, don't you expect them to remove most creature removal? Might a one of value creature make sense in this vacuum spot?
Yes, that would be possible, but e.g. Delver decks will still leave in bolts to aim at your face and having an enchantment-based option (i.e. Dawn of Hope) in this slot has other upsides because even if it can be killed by Disenchant you can tutor for it if you need to, copy it, replenish gets it back, etc. Also what would it be? Mentor?

[kathor]

Yes, that would be possible, but e.g. Delver decks will still leave in bolts to aim at your face and having an enchantment-based option (i.e. Dawn of Hope) in this slot has other upsides because even if it can be killed by Disenchant you can tutor for it if you need to, copy it, replenish gets it back, etc. Also what would it be? Mentor?

I started thinking about this problem and will probably proxy this deck together and test it to get a feeling for how it plays. I don't miss many cards and will have some better insights then.

For generally possible slots I was looking at this list:
Random Hate Pieces(not really my first choice):
Containment Priest, Hushwing Gryff, Aven Mindcensor, Lavinia

Value Creatures:
Sram, Senior Edificer
Protean Thaumaturge
Archon of Sun's Grace

Beatdown:
Monastery Mentor
Brazen Borrower
True-Name Nemesis

From this list I would probably try Brazen Borrower and Archon of Sun's Grace. I tried to keep them under CMC 3 for Reclamation value. Accidental Hatepieces will probably not really be worth it only if there is a single matchup we really really need to buff up. I don't think there is enough spell chaining for Mentor or synergy with TNN. Borrower should allow us to remove difficult pieces on the board and buy us time to set up our enchantment engine.

[kombatkiwi]

Thinking about this deck again

I think the core of the deck is this 50:
Those 20 Lands
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Plow
4 Force
4 Omen
4 History
3 Invocation
2 Counterbalance
1 Detention Sphere

Then I think I want to play
3 Porphyry Nodes
2 Dovin's Acuity
1 Dawn of Hope
2 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Spell Pierce (or possibly some mix of Force of Negation / Dovin's Veto / Teferi Time Raveler)

I think some kind of extra removal is needed.
Before this was Nodes, because it had obvious synergy with Replenish, but I don't want to play Replenish anymore, so maybe Nodes is not needed? I am not sure I want to play Terminus either, because I don't have Mystic Sanctuary, don't have Snapcaster to Brainstorm, don't have JTMS to Brainstorm. Supreme Verdict? I think I might just keep Nodes for now.

Medomai's Prophecy was included in the deck before, also for its synergy with replenish and somewhat for its synergy with Estrids Invocation, but the synergy with Invocation is not great because any turn that you copy it, it only scrys 2. The card is just not very good on its own so I think it can go, but I think the deck needs extra copies of something that works with Invocation so the Invocations are more reliably functional. Dovins Acuity is actually not that bad of a card, it helps to stay out of burn range against Delver and you can get value off it even without the invocation combo. The deck becomes a little bit heavy on threes but I think it's ok because it's not playing Replenish/Conjecture anymore.

1 Copy of Dawn of Hope is still fine as a wincon/value engine and it can proc off Dovin's Acuity as well. I think that Azcanta becomes significantly worse without having Replenish to recur it 'for free' and the effect is probably a little too greedy anyway.

2 Sevinne's Reclamation seems like a good choice as a flexible value card ("Snapcaster" variant), it can get the self-sacrificing removal (Nodes) and threats (History) and value (Omen) and then you also have any CB/Sphere/Acuity/Invocation that gets countered or discarded.

Then there are 2 more slots and I think the deck can just go with something like Spell Pierce to have extra cheap interaction in the early game to bridge the gap to casting the powerful threes. If you use it to protect your own spells in your own mainphase it also gives you more ways to pick up Dovin's Acuity.

Then the previous sb was mostly ok I think:
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Seal of Cleansing
1 Back to Basics
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage OR Rest in Peace (just need to be a little bit careful with cage now with a flashback spell in the deck, but as previously noted you don't generally need the grindy recursion value in matchups where graveyard hate is important)
1 Deafening Silence
1 Humility
2 Dovin's Veto
2 Force of Negation
1 Surgical Extraction
1 [free slot]

[aedemiel]

So... Should you play Yorion?
There is a deck in Pioneer that is basically the same strat, since it pairs well with sagas.

[Reeplcheep]

So... Should you play Yorion?
There is a deck in Pioneer that is basically the same strat, since it pairs well with sagas.

You should definitely play yorion. I am playing wb yorion curses, and triggering all your enchanments is insane. Furthermore, if you splash black for animate dead you can set up a slow worldgorger loop. https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/status/1258746510679969793/photo/1

https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/status/1258746510679969793/photo/1

[Reeplcheep]

I splashed white for yorion and suppression field in my curses deck. You may want to check my post in that thread for ideas.

[kombatkiwi]

Yorion might be ok, the deck is creatureless so it can also just play Kaheera as well

Shark Typhoon is also interesting, some kind of Sharknado/Standstill/Nodes/Replenish control deck is tempting but it might be too silly

[aedemiel]

Shark Typhoon is also interesting, some kind of Sharknado/Standstill/Nodes/Replenish control deck is tempting but it might be too silly

Damn, that sounds exactly like the kind of deck I would play.

[kombatkiwi]

Part of what makes that idea appealing to me is that if you play Sharknado instead of History of Benalia then your WW commitment is significantly reduced, so you can cut a lot of the plains from the manabase to enable mystic sanctuary, which seems pretty strong with Replenish/CB

[aedemiel]

I hear you. Although i don't think cutting History of Benalia altogether is a good idea, being "more blue" is definitely appealing.

[Reeplcheep]

I think if you are committed to the history& counterbalance plan you need to cut 1 ofs for a splashblack for animatou (- is extraestrids, +is bs) and tymaret's blessing (copies 5-8 of benalia).

[aedemiel]

tymaret's blessing (copies 5-8 of benalia).
Hum?
Which card is this?

[kombatkiwi]

Hum?
Which card is this?

I think they mean Tymaeret Calls the Dead

After playing with the History version quite a bit I'm pretty sure it doesn't need both History + Tymaeret or History + Sharknado

[Reeplcheep]

Now that commander is released you really need to fit nesting grounds in the deck, since its pretty insane with sagas (keep triggering them every turn)

[kombatkiwi]

I didn't want to make a new thread for this even thought it's more like a standstill list than Saga, because it developed from the same shell:

[20 Lands]
1 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Tundra
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
5 Polluted Delta / etc
6 Islands
1 Volcanic

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Porphyry Nodes

4 Standstill
2 Replenish
1 Ominous Seas
4 Shark Typhoon

~9 free slot

I think Porphyry Nodes might be a better use of that slot than the Myth Realised which the other builds were using.
There is some situations where you might replenish back both standstill + sharknado which is a bit of a nonbo but eventually you will draw another sharknado

[FTW]

4 Porphyry and 4 Sharknado sound like overkill. Porphyry will often 1-for-1 and then die. Against a wider board it's slow to answer the real problems, while Terminus is a faster solution for the same mana. The interaction between Shark Typhoon and Replenish is cool, but it's more of a lategame card. You could free up slots with -2 Porphyry -2 Shark. Maybe -1 Replenish (slow).

You're probably better off with these in some of those flex slots to have more interaction:
3 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Counterbalance
2 Terminus

Teferi enforces a soft lock with Standstill.

Snapcaster diversifies your plays: Snap+Plow does what extra Porphyrys would do against creature decks, while you can Snap+Brainstorm or Snap+counter against spell-based decks.

Counterbalance is the most powerful enchantment you can play in UWx control. Cutting some of the high end helps balance the curve too.

Terminus answers a wide board faster than Porphyry can, for the same mana.

For any remaining flex slots you might want 1-ofs like:
Sevinne's Reclamation
Dovin's Veto
Counterspell
Detention Sphere
Force of Negation
Spell Pierce

[Reeplcheep]

I tried a similar idea; I would recommend adding cast out as another cyclable enchantment that is not embarassing to hard cast, & a 1 of lay claim for the memes. this assumes you want to lean into replenish more.

[kombatkiwi]

This is potentially a home for the new 1U landfall hate enchantment
- a cmc 2 enchantment that draws a card on etb is synergistic with Estrids Invocation
- the ability stacks in multiples, so if you copy it and your opponent fetches then they have to bounce 2 lands

However I think it's easy enough to play around (and pretty low impact) that I still think it's definitely worse than Omen of the Sea, and I'm not sure it's even better than Dovin's Acuity or Spreading Seas

[kombatkiwi]

Tournament report with a slightly updated build of this
0-2 vs Lotus Cobra Maverick
G1 Im off to an ok start but I can't find the plow for the depths kill he is setting up
G2 I'm off to an ok start again but things go downhill after he Rec sages my Court of Grace before I can Invo copy it. Eventually I find humility but he's the monarch and I slowly die to 1/1 before I find a history or removal (Im having to dance my invocation around my Dsphere to alternately stall his creatures and unlock my islands from choke, crazy game

2-0 vs Karn Urza Echo
G1 I force a chalice and he dies to history+invo before he can do anything
G2 He miscounts his mana and gets coating with Karn when he could have got lattice and killed me, I eot kill the coating with Seal of Cleansing then untap and play Court of Grace which is basically GG

0-2 vs Chalice post
G1 I get chaliced and drop History but I get super flooded, I almost kill my opp just with history beats + kaheera but he has lifegain from glimmerposts and he slowly shoots my knights with ballista and topdecks Karn -> ensnaring bridge
G2 My opponent first few turns are post -> golos, on like turn 4 my opponent has like 12 mana and play chalice on 1, I resp with E tutor for B2B and he follows up with chalice on 3 which not only kills the B2B play but every other spell in my hand as well. Possibly I should realize that if my opp follow up play to the chalice 1 is like a Ulamog or a Karn then the B2B doesn't save me, so one of the main ways I lose is chalice 3 in which case I should have E tutor for Seal of Cleansing instead

decklist
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Polluted Delta
1 Tundra
5 Snow Plains
5 Snow Swamp

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
2 Force of Negation
2 Sevinne's Reclamation
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm

3 On Thin Ice
1 Detention Sphere
4 History of Benalia
3 Estrid's Invocation
4 Omen of the Seas
2 Counterbalance
2 Dovin's Acuity

1 Teferi, Time Raveler

SB:
1 Court of Grace
1 Back to Basics
1 Pithing Needle
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Rest in Peace
1 Humility
2 Dovin's Veto
2 Seal of Cleansing
1 Deafening Silence
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 ***Kaheera the Orphanguard***

I feel that the main shell of the deck is reasonably solid (the package of Reclamation / Invocation / History / Omen) but the CB/Acuity are not great. (Wrong MUs for them maybe, and possibly Estrid Invocation doesn't need so much help as 2x Acuity + the rest of everything) and trying to figure out the package of removal is tricky (whether On Thin Ice or the Porphyry Nodes I was using before or something different like supreme verdict etc)

However I think possibly a good approach is to drop the History entirely and just play Courts of Grace in the maindeck as the wincondition. The combo of Estrid/Court is extremely potent. As was pointed out to me by Reeplcheep You stack the upkeep triggers so that any Angel/Spirit triggers resolve after the Estrid flicker trigger, which means that flicker resolves and you copy Court to become the monarch first, so you always get to make Angels. Meanwhile you are also the monarch drawing an extra card per turn, it's pretty difficult for the opponent to recover from this.

Downsides:
- Lose the ability of fast history to just "get" people sometimes and/or pressure the opp to prevent them from dicking about with Narset / Sylvan library
- Having the wincon not targetable by Sevinne's Rec is a little bit of a worry (but you can switch to the angle of using sevinnes rec to resolve court with Tef, or put a blue court in the sb)

Upside
- 1 court is a much much more impactful card than 1 History which lets you spend extra slots on extra invocation/teferi etc and not be so reliant on assembling multiple history or history + estrid
- Not needing WW on turn 3 makes the mana better (if the deck is keeping CB at least for UU on turn 2 which may or may not be correct)
- Having both Estrid and History cmc 3 is good for Sevinnes Rec but semi-awkward for curve reasons, being able to play a 2-3-4 of like Omen-Estrid-Court is much nicer. (Well Omen->Estrid->History would still be a great start I suppose so maybe thats not too significant)

So something like
-4 History
-2 Acuity
+2 Court
+2 thing you can curve into invocation
+1 invocation
+1 teferi

i.e.

20 Lands (slightly fewer plains than before maybe)

4 Plow
4 FoW
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
2 Force of Negation (possibly more)
2 Sevinne's Rec

2 Tef Time Raveler

4 Omen of the Sea
4 Estrids Invocation
2 Court of Grace
2 Counterbalance (somewhat dubious I think, not exactly sure how good this card is at the moment)
2 cmc-2 thing that draws a card off estrids (so like Spreading Seas or Confounding Conundrum or whatever)
1 Detention Sphere
3 Other removal spells whether that's verdict or terminus or thin ice or porphyry nodes or whatever

Something like this is probably where I would start

[Reeplcheep]

Glad to hear you are still working on this deck. Post and maverick are inherently tough mus for enchantment based decks imo. Seems like the deck is fine but needs a bit of tuning to be great.

I agree acuity should be cut for a 2 drop for curve reasons. You said you didn’t like Medomais in the past right?

Now that you are less white intensive perhaps you can play mystic sanctuary? That improves counterbalance quite a bit, but perhaps you lack relevant instants along the curve.

If you build a more court focused list, Island Sanctuary could be great. Just it with court should win the game now that coatls are less played. And it isn’t great to curve estrids into but it does let you curve sanctuary -> estrids -> use sanctuary, court next turn copy court which is insane.

Ruined halo is another damage prevention effect that is worse than sanctuary against go wide but better vs certain combo decks and single attackers.

Alternative options are baffling end plus founding of meletis which are mediocre by themselves but let you removal with etb value (turn something into a 3/3, make a 0/4, turn something into a 3/3, make a 0/4 etc.

I might take your list and try to splash trial of ambition and aminatou, as my more discard focused list wasn’t working.

[kombatkiwi]

Glad to hear you are still working on this deck. Post and maverick are inherently tough mus for enchantment based decks imo. Seems like the deck is fine but needs a bit of tuning to be great.

I agree acuity should be cut for a 2 drop for curve reasons. You said you didn’t like Medomais in the past right?

Now that you are less white intensive perhaps you can play mystic sanctuary? That improves counterbalance quite a bit, but perhaps you lack relevant instants along the curve.

If you build a more court focused list, Island Sanctuary could be great. Just it with court should win the game now that coatls are less played. And it isn’t great to curve estrids into but it does let you curve sanctuary -> estrids -> use sanctuary, court next turn copy court which is insane.

Ruined halo is another damage prevention effect that is worse than sanctuary against go wide but better vs certain combo decks and single attackers.

Alternative options are baffling end plus founding of meletis which are mediocre by themselves but let you removal with etb value (turn something into a 3/3, make a 0/4, turn something into a 3/3, make a 0/4 etc.

I might take your list and try to splash trial of ambition and aminatou, as my more discard focused list wasn’t working.
Problem with medomais is that the synergy with Invocation isn't very good
I think I prefer spreading seas the most for that slot

I think the only reason island sanctuary became popular was because its cmc 2 so it worked with Lurrus right? Is there a reason why I wouldn't play Solitary Confinement over that? I assume costing an extra mana is worth having text vs depths / fireblast etc

I like the idea of Mystic Sanc if I am playing it with terminus (also with CB you are right) but yeah there aren't really 2drop instant/sorcery I want to play. Could be okay anyway as it's pretty low cost

Also I wonder if this should be a Yorion deck, I kind of lean towards no but maybe I'm irrationally attached to the idea of playing 60 cards

[Reeplcheep]

Other than curve, the reason I suggested island sanctuary instead is because it is -1 card every turn instead of -2 cards every turn. I am not sure if we have enough card draw to be able to support confinement.

I like yorion in my deck; it improves your grindy matchups but it does make your combo mus a bit worse.

[Vacrix]

Scroll Rack can synergy with Counterbalance. Hides cards against discard, set up the Terminus, fetchlands. I've played it a bit in EDH with success. It costs 2 is a bit rough in this format tho, activations costing 1 also could be a bit much. It does a bit more for card quality than Sensei's Divining Top, at a higher mana investment. Looks good if you're counting on a long, grindy game.

Curfew is a nice answer to a flipped Delver, SnT stuff since it doesn't target, and its symmetrical if you want to bounce Snapcaster Mage. Playing more 1 cmc removal seems good.


EDIT:
No love for Rhystic Study in Legacy yet I guess. Turn 1, Rhystic looks so strong. Chrome Mox or Petal into Rhystic, my opponent drops their hand, but I draw 4-7 cards?

[kombatkiwi]

Scroll Rack can synergy with Counterbalance. Hides cards against discard, set up the Terminus, fetchlands. I've played it a bit in EDH with success. It costs 2 is a bit rough in this format tho, activations costing 1 also could be a bit much. It does a bit more for card quality than Sensei's Divining Top, at a higher mana investment. Looks good if you're counting on a long, grindy game.

Curfew is a nice answer to a flipped Delver, SnT stuff since it doesn't target, and its symmetrical if you want to bounce Snapcaster Mage. Playing more 1 cmc removal seems good.


EDIT:
No love for Rhystic Study in Legacy yet I guess. Turn 1, Rhystic looks so strong. Chrome Mox or Petal into Rhystic, my opponent drops their hand, but I draw 4-7 cards?

Scroll rack is like almost-ok but I think it costs too much mana. I have tried Soothsaying in the past for a bit, and it was disappointing in a way that I expect to be similar.

Curfew is only good if you are picking up your own creature (or using it as specific hate for like SNT Emrakul or Slippery Bogle or something like this because your deck can't play edicts). This deck has no creatures to pick up and has white cards like Humility / Terminus if it needs to answer resilient creatures

Rhystic Study costs too much mana and giving the opponent the choice to ignore it at the cost of a card is too weak of an effect. If you drop your whole hand just to do that then you give the opponent time to draw an extra land to ignore it OR your opponent lets you draw 1 card to resolve their big game-winning spell in which case Rhystic Study was mostly a waste. In multiplayer games the fact it's asymmetrical (compared to e.g. sphere of resistance) is more powerful, and a big part of why it's so popular in commander is because the asymmetry and "I will let my opponent draw 1 card" is a lot more tolerable for most people from a "fun" pov than "both me and my opponents are simply unable to cast spells because of the tax". In a 2 player game the symmetry of sphere is not as bad I think and more importantly if you are building your deck to play Rhystic / Sphere on turn 1 then you have Sol Lands, Chrome Mox etc to give yourself a mana advantage so the symmetry of Sphere affects you less anyway

[FTW]

Soothsaying is much worse than Scroll Rack.

Scroll Rack is closer to a Top that costs 1 more to cast and the same to activate.
Soothsaying is a Top that costs 3 times as much to activate and can never draw you the top card.

That's just for the Counterbalance lock. Outside CB, Rack can also put new cards in your hand or hide cards from discard.

Rack deserves testing independent of Soothsaying now that Oko is gone.

[Fox]

You forgot the most important part: with a card in hand and a Scroll Rack you can't mill out. Beat those JTMS ults for days :cool:

[kombatkiwi]

Soothsaying is much worse than Scroll Rack.

Scroll Rack is closer to a Top that costs 1 more to cast and the same to activate.
Soothsaying is a Top that costs 3 times as much to activate and can never draw you the top card.

That's just for the Counterbalance lock. Outside CB, Rack can also put new cards in your hand or hide cards from discard.

Rack deserves testing independent of Soothsaying now that Oko is gone.

I understand that Scroll Rack is likely better than Soothsaying, it still has the problem of
1) Costs quite a lot of mana (2 to cast plus activations)
2) Unlike divining top it can't ever cantrip to shuffle away etc (i.e. it will always be -1 card, maybe not so much of an issue if you only play exactly 1 copy of it to avoid redundancy but still annoying)

"CB lock" isn't really a big part of this deck's gameplan (at least not the version with History of Benalia)
maybe I could consider it in the more miracles-focused version

At the moment the 2 builds are like

Sagas:

5 Snow Plains
5 Snow Island
4 Vista
4 Strand
1 Tundra
1 Delta

4 FoW
4 Plow
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Sevinnes
2 FoN

1 Teferi

4 History
3 Estrids
4 Omen
3 Thin Ice
1 D Sphere
2 Medomais Prophecy (maybe this isn't as bad as I thought because it's an okay sevinnes target, also alright with CB) / Spreading Seas / Confounding Conundrum
2 Counterbalance / Flex slot (Maindeck court also possible here but it hurts the combo matchup a lot probably)

Monarch Miracles:

3? Snow Plains
6? Snow Island
4 Vista
4 Strand
1 Tundra
1 Delta
1 Mystic Sanctuary

4 FoW
4 Plow
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Terminus
2 FoN

2 Court of Grace
3 Estrids
4 Omen
2 Counterbalance?
1 Detention Sphere
+7

The second deck could possibly play 1 Scroll Rack but I don't even know how good counterbalance is in the meta / the deck
The difficult thing about the second list is that cutting History breaks a lot of synergy because it becomes way too light on Estrid targets and the Sevinne's Rec also becomes not very good etc etc
One possible option that could be strong is a red splash for Pyroblasts and Omen of the Forge but maybe Omen of the Forge is too weak

[Reeplcheep]

https://i.redd.it/1esqc7d14v271.png

This seems very interesting. Replenish isn’t a card you want to turbo out most games anyways, and this is infinitely better vs daze. It doesn’t play super nice with standstill, but it is pretty awesome with sagas.

[kombatkiwi]

https://i.redd.it/1esqc7d14v271.png

This seems very interesting. Replenish isn’t a card you want to turbo out most games anyways, and this is infinitely better vs daze. It doesn’t play super nice with standstill, but it is pretty awesome with sagas.

Yes it's quite interesting
However I think Sagas are not enough of an incentive to play Replenish compared to Shark Typhoons

For example this was a deck I liked pre-MH2

4 Prismatic Vista
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Tundra
7 Island
2 Plains
1 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Karakas
1 Hall of Heliod

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
2 Force of Negation
2 Thirst For Meaning
2 Replenish
1 Counterspell

4 Standstill
4 Porphyry Nodes
4 Shark Typhoon
2 Cast Out
1 Search for Azcanta

I think the suspend replenish could be a potentially good replacement for actual replenish in this deck

2 Problems I commonly had with the Saga build was:

a) The fact that History costs 3 and Invocation also cost 3 is awkward because you want to curve out by copying History with invocation, the deck would be much more interesting if you could curve more cheaper enchantments into History (with Sarcomancy for example)

b) The deck was overall not aggressive enough, such that History often felt like a dead card until you had already taken control of the game. Occasionally you could draw e.g. 2 History in a row and have it be relevant but too often it felt like a useless card in hand (compared to typhoon where you can just cycle it)

In a build of the deck where all the enchantments cost 3 or less I still think Sevinnes Reclamation is better than even this new suspend replenish but yeah the deck seems to have too many other problems and I'm not very interested in pursuing it further. Maybe there is a more aggro UB build possible with cards like sarcomancy and tymaeret calls the dead (or maybe even dreadhorde invasion)

[Reeplcheep]

Yes the UB version seems to have more promise, but the problem is finding a payoff for making lots of zombie tokens (other than cabal therapy). Driven//Despair? Hogaak? Cull the meek into Liliana’s mastery?

[kombatkiwi]

Yes the UB version seems to have more promise, but the problem is finding a payoff for making lots of zombie tokens (other than cabal therapy). Driven//Despair? Hogaak? Cull the meek into Liliana’s mastery?

I think if you have to find additional payoffs then the deck isn't good enough.

Estrids Invocation is potentially really powerful but the pool of things to copy with it isn't very good
- Omen of the Sea is slightly overcosted for legacy
- History of Benalia also slightly overcosted for legacy
- Tymaeret Calls the Dead similarly overcosted
- Sarcomancy too underpowered
etc

If you go the other direction in terms of the mana and try to copy huge expensive haymakers with it (like court of grace or whatever) then it's hard to come up with a build of the deck that makes sense to me

I think the solution might be to go 3c so you can play abundant growth as a cheaper enabler (unfortunately I don't think the deck can be purely UG because there doesn't seem to be good wincons in green but maybe there is some food interation with Trail of Crumbs? Lol I have no idea)

[Reeplcheep]

I think if you have to find additional payoffs then the deck isn't good enough.

Estrids Invocation is potentially really powerful but the pool of things to copy with it isn't very good
- Omen of the Sea is slightly overcosted for legacy
- History of Benalia also slightly overcosted for legacy
- Tymaeret Calls the Dead similarly overcosted
- Sarcomancy too underpowered
etc

If you go the other direction in terms of the mana and try to copy huge expensive haymakers with it (like court of grace or whatever) then it's hard to come up with a build of the deck that makes sense to me

I think the solution might be to go 3c so you can play abundant growth as a cheaper enabler (unfortunately I don't think the deck can be purely UG because there doesn't seem to be good wincons in green but maybe there is some food interation with Trail of Crumbs? Lol I have no idea)

If you splash green the gb saga is great. But then you are left wondering why you are playing blue interaction and cantrips instead of just enchantress.

One idea is powerful cumulative upkeep stuff like rhystic study, but that risks losing your invocation.

[Reeplcheep]

The best new cheap enchantment is Urza’s saga. Perhaps that makes it consistent enough? The floor of always being a karn, scion of urza seems pretty good.

[rufus]

...
Estrids Invocation is potentially really powerful but the pool of things to copy with it isn't very good
...
If you go the other direction in terms of the mana and try to copy huge expensive haymakers with it (like court of grace or whatever) then it's hard to come up with a build of the deck that makes sense to me



There's a sort of paradox - if the enchantment can be cast for less then 3 mana, then Estrid's Invocation is likely to be a bad deal. If the enchantment can be cast for more than 3 mana and is worth playing in legacy then it's likely to win the game by itself and Estrid's Invocation is likely to be win-more. On top of that, you have to have an enchantment in play for it to do anything.

Estrid's invocation looks like a card that's unlikely to make sense outside of combo decks.

[FTW]

Estrid seems fine in UG Enchantress. History of Benalia just isn't a strong enough card to be worth copying, unless you're already far ahead.

Edit: I think the biggest advantage to the Saga-aggro strategy (before) was that you could pump out a board presence that was immune to Oko and could go wide around Elks. With Oko banned, does this make sense anymore?

[kombatkiwi]

There's a sort of paradox - if the enchantment can be cast for less then 3 mana, then Estrid's Invocation is likely to be a bad deal.

If the enchantment can be cast for more than 3 mana and is worth playing in legacy then it's likely to win the game by itself and Estrid's Invocation is likely to be win-more. On top of that, you have to have an enchantment in play for it to do anything.


The 2nd part of this is comment is mostly true but I disagree with the first part
Even copying something like Abundant Growth you have painless Phyrexian Arena which also triggers when it etb, which is solidly legacy playable imo

The other variation of this that might be viable I forgot is UR(w) because of Omen of the Forge is a decent copy target, maybe you can play the UR giant saga with bonecrushers or something


History of Benalia just isn't a strong enough card to be worth copying, unless you're already far ahead.
It can get you ahead very quickly with the rate that it spits out knights and buffs them but the problem is that it doesn't necessarily get you a relevant amount more ahead than copying a "smaller" effect would and History doesn't really mesh with the rest of the deck by itself


Edit: I think the biggest advantage to the Saga-aggro strategy (before) was that you could pump out a board presence that was immune to Oko and could go wide around Elks. With Oko banned, does this make sense anymore
Yeah this upside has kind of disappeared

[Reeplcheep]

Urza’s saga is an extremely cheap and uncounterable target for Estrid’s. Perhaps we could go to a more artifact token based version? Hidden stockpile, dark steel mutation?

[FTW]

Copying Saga seems nice and degenerate until other decks adequately hate it out. Would that work even better in blue stompy though?

Ancient Tomb gets Saga online faster, Tomb casts Estrid on turn 2, Chalice and Force stop enemy shenanigans. You could squeeze in room for other enchantments to copy like Omen of the Sea or Propaganda.

[Reeplcheep]

The degenerate thing is that saga{estrid copy} untaps before it flickers so you could potentially make 2 constructs per estrid per turn. There isn’t a ton of other good mono blue enchantments to copy other than reality acid however.

[FTW]

Omen of the Sea
Propaganda
The Antiquities War
Shark Typhoon
Thopter Spy Network
Mirrodin Besieged
Fleeting Memories
Induced Amnesia
Spreading Seas
Monastery Siege
Rhystic Study
Trial of Knowledge

Seems like there are enough playable ones, either for an artifact stompy strategy or for a prison strategy.

[Reeplcheep]

Paint-by-numbers draft:

MonoU LD:

4 Tomb
3 City
10 Island
4 Urza’s saga
1 Gemstone Caverns
2 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Confounding Conundrum
4 Reality Acid
4 Propoganda
4 Estrids Invocation
4 Parralax Tide
4 Force of Will
2 Riptide Chimera
4 Thopter Spy Network

[FTW]

Lol, copying Parallax Tide.

Such an enchantment heavy deck could also run Thirst for Meaning as card draw.

1-of Retrofitter Foundry seems good as a Saga target in a deck that already makes Thopter tokens.

[kombatkiwi]

Copying Urza's Sage doesn't even seem that good to me
Like you already have to pay 2 to make a construct from the original saga
Then to take advantage of the Estrids you have to pay an additional 2 to also make a construct from the copy in the same turn cycle
Idk if that's a kind of play pattern worth aiming for

[kombatkiwi]

New weird kind of enchantment


"Ranger Class" 1G
Enchantment - Class

[Level up keeps the abilities from the previous level. Level up only as sorcery]

When Ranger Class enters the battlefield, create a 2/2 Green Wolf token

1G: Level 2
Whenever you attack, put a +1+1 counter on target attacking creature

3G: Level 3
You can look at the top card of your library at any time and cast creature spells from the top of your library

So this is quite interesting because
1) It does the similar kind of Sarcomancy effect that its an enchantment that makes a token on etb that costs less than 3
2) The level 2 mode is kind of interesting if you are just attacking with icefang coatls or something, and if you copy with Estrid then pay 2 before combat then when you attack you get +2+2 which means your wolves grow 2/2 to 4/4 etc very quickly
3) The final mode is not likely to be super useful but not totally useless either assuming your deck has a few creatures in it and it can just help you decide when to fetch etc in the lategame

I am thinking of a list like this

20 Land
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Abundant Growth (the aura)
2 Ranger Class
3 Estrids Invocation
2 Sevinne's Rec
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Force of Negation
3 Prismatic Ending
2 Uro
3 Icefang
1 Endurance
2 Terminus

Possibly there are not enough enchantments here to make Estrids Invocation playable but I think it's worth experimenting

The other option is to go back to playing history again, using a 3C bant build to take advantage of abundant growth and prismatic endings, which might be ok, like this:
20 Land

4 Abundant Growth
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Prismatic Ending
1 Detention Sphere
4 Swords to Plowshares

2 Sevinne's Reclamation
3 Estrid's Invocation
4 History of Benalia
2 Counterbalance (maybe not)
4 Force of Will
2 Force of Negation

3 Whatever (like 2 uro + teferi or something)

[Reeplcheep]

Since it is not using counters for the level up, they should be copiable attributes. IE estrid's should go straight to level 3 if copying a level 3 class, which is pretty awesome.

It does push us in a bant tokens direction; there is the GW saga which may be worth considering over history.

Bant doesn't have many good payoffs for tokens however; just intangible virtue and opposition I guess?

[FTW]

That looks like a good direction, especially if the rules work that way.

I wouldn't bother with Counterbalance. It needs dedicated support to work, and you cut Omen of the Sea.

Uro seems pretty low risk to run. It also means the opponent has to side in different answers (grave hate for Uro, enchantment hate for the rest) rather than being able to answer everything with the same cards.

[kombatkiwi]

Since it is not using counters for the level up, they should be copiable attributes. IE estrid's should go straight to level 3 if copying a level 3 class, which is pretty awesome.

It does push us in a bant tokens direction; there is the GW saga which may be worth considering over history.

Bant doesn't have many good payoffs for tokens however; just intangible virtue and opposition I guess?

I don't think the Class level ups are copiable

I think the Estrid + Saga allows to overrun with tokens without needing to invest other cards to pump them.
The GW / UG sagas are ok but I think History is still the strongest 3mana one (assuming 1WW cost is not an issue).
And yeah I think counterbalance is probably not correct.

Another reasonable option for green is Trail of Crumbs
1) It's a maindeck source of lifegain
2) You potentially get 2 extra cards each time you copy it, for example if you blink Estrid copying Omen of the Sea then you only scry 2 and draw 1. If you copy Trail of Crumbs then sac the food you get 2x Trail of Crumbs triggers (1 from the original Trail and 1 from Estrid) meaning you get 2 'draws' (assuming you have permanents on top of your library). This is not good if you are hunting for counterspells (it only finds permanents) and it costs extra mana, but it does gain life and dig deep for cards. If you have other stuff to spend the mana on then you can still just make the food to save it for later.

There is also a green 'Sarcomancy' in MH2 that makes a 1/1 Squirrel, which is nice for a 1 mana thing that blocks Ragavan, and lategame if you have control of the game then making 1/1s could be good enough, but obviously it's a pretty weak card by itself

The other obviously really good thing about being uw+g is that it lets you play carpet of flowers
I might even consider playing a couple of copies of Utopia Sprawl in the maindeck just because there are so many important 3drops
It's possible that it could be built like a way more "enchantress" style of deck not playing so many cantrips / fow etc with blue being more of a splash colour for estrids invocation
Then you just have to make sure that you have enough SB cards for combodecks
I think that could work

I suppose then the question is like why do that over just playing 'normal' enchantress or what even is the difference
- History beatdowns as a wincon give you a clock vs combo and a better out to things like Narset / Karn
- No argothian to get plague engineered / wrathed etc (totally creatureless, well except for the tokens)
- Estrid draw engine may be more resilient / consistent than the traditional Argothian / Presence

Idk what the numbers look like exactly but I really like the idea of playing Utopia Sprawl on turn 1

For example you could play a list like this:
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Force of Neg
4 Plow / Thin Ice / Mix

4 Abundant Growth
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Estrid
4 History
2 Omen of the Sea / Trail of Crumbs
2 Sevinne's Rec
1 Detention Sphere
1 X

20 lands

Which still supports FoW and doesn't have any huge apparent flaws, but maybe is not actually using Utopia Sprawl very effectively i.e. those slots should just be something like prismatic ending instead

Whereas the deck could also be a list like this

4 Kruphix' Insight?
4 Thin Ice
4 Enchantress Presence
4 Wild Growth
4 Abundant Growth
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Estrid
4 History
2 Omen of the Sea / Trail of Crumbs (more?)
2 Sevinne's Rec
1 Detention Sphere
3 X
20? Lands

Which is now much more synergistic with the Wild Growth / Sprawl with more 3drops but you lose the safety valve of having Forces

[Reeplcheep]

I don't think the Class level ups are copiable

Yah I mixed up two things. The effects aren’t copiable but “gains ability” effects don’t go away if you copy something else. For us that doesn’t help since estrid exiles itself, but it is relevant for stuff like thespians stage plus Urza’s saga.

I guess why are we in Bant still rather than bug? Cabal therapy and the abrupt decay saga are both strong additions.

For the trail of crumbs idea, don’t you have to pay for both triggers? So it is a 4 mana draw 2 scry 2 gain 3 vs a 0 mana preordain.

[kombatkiwi]

I guess why are we in Bant still rather than bug? Cabal therapy and the abrupt decay saga are both strong additions.
I don't think cabal therapy is actually an effect that the deck wants

Binding the Old Gods I don't think is very good either. The deck doesn't make super good use of the ramp (this is a 4mana card remember) or the deathtouch so it's like 2GB vindicate with Estrid synergy? If I want to play a 4+ mana enchantment to combo with Estrid's I feel like Court of Grace is probably stronger. If I really want to destroy permanents it might even be better to play Reality Acid.

Also the other white cards like plow / thin ice / sevinnes are very good and so is enlightened tutor SB I think


For the trail of crumbs idea, don’t you have to pay for both triggers? So it is a 4 mana draw 2 scry 2 gain 3 vs a 0 mana preordain.
Yes, there are pros/cons

[Reeplcheep]

I guess it would be good to keep all the brainstorming ideas in order:


Bant tokens:
Enablers:
Ranger Class
History of Benalia
Utopia Sprawl
Abundant Growth
The Bears of Littjara

Payoffs:
Opposition
Intangible Virtue
Battle for Brittgard
Leyline of the Meek


Simple pros cons to enchantress as mentioned above.

UWx:

Paladin Class
Monk Class
Omen of the sea
On Thin Ice

Closer to a true UWx deck. Paladin and monk class give pseudo mana ramp, and each are a half of 3feri. Turning estrids into a on curve Capsize seems strong.

Artifact aggro

Urza’s Saga
Baleful Strix
Hidden Stockpile
The Founding of Meletis
Aminatou, the Fateshifter

Payoffs:
Thopter Spy Network
Retrofitter Foundry
Tempered Steel
Nettlecyst
Phyrexian Scriptures

Possibly bad, but a 1 sided recurable plague wind seems great in fair matchups. And giving everything +4/+4 after making some servos will make people very very dead. Foundry plus stockpile makes a 4/4 every turn for free starting on t3.

[kombatkiwi]

Don't get hung up on the idea of being a tokens deck: Monastery Mentor makes tokens, but if anyone suggested playing Glorious Anthem or Opposition to 'combo' with Mentor then it would rightly be seen as going overboard

So again Paladin Class doesn't really make much sense for the deck because it's basically just a big glorious anthem
Monk Class is *okay* but it seems like it's rarely going to be better than copying something else with Estrid's Invo like abundant growth or whatever

The problem with the artifacts idea is that all the enchantments you supposedly want to copy cost way too much mana (except for Urza's Saga which has no great synergy with being copied anyway)

[Reeplcheep]

Paladin’s class was more because I felt the mini defence grid ability was worth a card in its own right. If you feel that part is not good enough than yah it’s bad.

In my opinion 1-2 mana bounce a card is stronger than 0 mana draw; more people play 3feri than narset.

If 2/2 tokens are strong enough by themselves, why not bug just for sarcomancy? In general anytime I drew 2 they got there but 1 didn’t have enough support or got decayed with only 1. Consistent streams of 2/2s could be good enough. Then you can fit in more interaction as you need less support cards and ramp.

Growth+sprawl+sarcomancy & omen+ranger+trial seems like the strongest possible core of <3 cmc targets.

[Reeplcheep]

Example list:

4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Abundant Growth
3 Wild Growth
2 Carpet of Flowers
4 Sarcomancy
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 inquisition of Kozilek
2 Cling to Dust

4 Ranger Class
4 Omen of the Sea
4 Trial of Ambition

4 Estrid’s Invocation
3 Riptide Chimera

1 Binding of the Old Gods

4 Forest
3 Island
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
4 Prismatic Vista
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta

———
1 Yorion


Comments:
Aminatou is much better than riptide but I wanted more than 4 payoffs and I wasn’t sure if the mana was viable.
Manabase is meant to go t1 ramp, t2 enchantment plus disruption.
All the ramp makes yorion better than in UWx builds.
Much more interaction/clock than enchantress.
Very low curve compared to my other builds.

[kombatkiwi]

I don't totally hate the idea of being BUG because I think using Sarcomancy is okay (1 mana for that effect can be a significant upgrade even if you only get 1x 2/2), but I don't really like Riptide Chimera and I dont think this deck really wants to play wild growth/utopia sprawl because you don't have enough payoffs. If you go turn 1 Sprawl/Growth into turn 2 Estrid/Chimera you don't even have anything good to copy/bounce. Trial of ambition is alright (the combo with Estrid is obviously not that bad) but you don't have any 1-mana removal which seems awkward

Like the more I think about it the more I do want to try something like the following idea

2 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
2 Plains
2 Island
[not totally sure about the manabase]

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Plow
4 Force
2 Negation
2 Prismatic Ending

4 History
4 Abundant Growth
2 Omen or 1 Omen 1 Crumbs
2 Thin Ice
4 Estrid's Invocation
2 Sevinne's Reclamation
1 Detention Sphere
1 Time Raveler

[Reeplcheep]

I do think history is great if we are willing to have 3 cmc targets. But as said earlier, perhaps copying 3 and 4 mana things is win more. If we only want 1 or 2 mana targets for curve reasons a BUG basis is more attractive.

I think abundant growth is totally fine to copy with saga. If we cut the ramp for fatal push, lands, more preordains and inquisition we can probably splash aminatou to upgrade chimera.

[kombatkiwi]

I do think history is great if we are willing to have 3 cmc targets. But as said earlier, perhaps copying 3 and 4 mana things is win more. If we only want 1 or 2 mana targets for curve reasons a BUG basis is more attractive.

I think abundant growth is totally fine to copy with saga. If we cut the ramp for fatal push, lands, more preordains and inquisition we can probably splash aminatou to upgrade chimera.

Yeah like if you take my suggestion and just straight swap white for black then you get something like this

2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Polluted Delta
2 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Island

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Push
4 Force
2 Negation
2 Abrupt Decay

4 Sarcomancy
4 Abundant Growth
2 Omen or 1 Omen 1 Crumbs
2 Trial of Ambition
4 Estrid's Invocation
1 Binding the Old Gods
3 ?? (discard?)

Which I guess is okay, but it's not a definite upgrade. Copying 3 mana things (History) might be arguably win-more, but History is also a relatively solid card by itself if you haven't found your Estrid yet or they counter it etc. One 2/2 zombie is a much slower clock than 2 knights plus the buff, and against e.g. delver if you just play 1 sarcomancy and then they bolt ithe token you have just put a curse of the pierced heart on yourself which doesn't seem great

The problem with splashing for Animatou is that a 60 card version already has a good ratio of Blinkers/Blinkees with just the 4 Estrid (which already might be 1 too many) so it only makes sense if you're going up to 80 cards, then by having Yorion as a companion you're less interested in doing anything aggressive so Sarcomancy makes less sense as a gameplan (you would rather try to slow things down with Binding the Old Gods etc), overall I'm not convinced that it's a good direction

[Reeplcheep]

I guess we need to decide on what the broken thing we can do is. Estrids is a powerful banedrifter, but so are uro, and, endurance. I think we need to go relatively deep to not just be bad Bant or stoneblade.

I think Serra’s sanctum plus classes are the answer. Classes provide a critical density of cheap enchantments for serras sanctum, and provides a bunch of mana sinks for all that extra mana. The current most common enchantment based decks either don’t have enough uses for white mana (enchantress) or enough enchantments (curses) to play 4 like elves does. Classes also means that we should always have a backup enchantment target so we can go deeper on synergies without being punished.

Theory crafting:

Paladin Class should be the starting point. It both enables and uses Serra sanctum the best. It is a poor mans version of Gaea’s cradle plus allosaurus shepherd.

Yorion is another low opportunity cost way to sink a bunch of white mana. Serras sanctum solves the issue of running a 5 drop in a low to the ground deck.

History of Benalia is better by itself and also is a nice use of extra white mana.

Legion’s Landing is similar to paladin class in that it is both a good enabler and utilizer of Serra’s sanctum.

3 Feri or monk class as generic interaction and solves the sarcomancy problem.

On thin ice is better than plow when it generates mana. Skewed fetches to white to enable it on t1.

Serra’s sanctum requires a higher land count and wants the deck to have lots of white mana sinks.

Draft:

4 Paladin Class
2 Legion’s Landing
4 Sarcomancy
4 On thin Ice
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Omen of the Sea
3 Trial of Ambition

4 Estrid’s Invocation
4 Aminatou
4 History of Benalia
2 Teferi, Time Raveler

4 Force of Will
4 Force of Negation

2 Snow-Covered Plains
3 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
2 Underground Sea
2 Scrubland
2 Tundra
4 Prismatic Vista
4 Flooded Strand
4 Marsh Flats
2 Polluted Delta
4 Serra’s Sanctum

———
1 Yorion


The deck seems promising, being more interactive than enchantress but with more CA than deathblade.

[kombatkiwi]

I guess we need to decide on what the broken thing we can do is. Estrids is a powerful banedrifter, but so are uro, and, endurance. I think we need to go relatively deep to not just be bad Bant or stoneblade.
Endurance is not a "Banedrifter", it's loaming shaman with reach and flash.
You do need to go "relatively deep" to build a better Uro but I'm already doing that lol (why else play cards like History of Benalia or Omen of the Sea in legacy).

I think Serra’s sanctum plus classes are the answer. Classes provide a critical density of cheap enchantments for serras sanctum, and provides a bunch of mana sinks for all that extra mana. The current most common enchantment based decks either don’t have enough uses for white mana (enchantress) or enough enchantments (curses) to play 4 like elves does. Classes also means that we should always have a backup enchantment target so we can go deeper on synergies without being punished.

Theory crafting:

Paladin Class should be the starting point. It both enables and uses Serra sanctum the best. It is a poor mans version of Gaea’s cradle plus allosaurus shepherd.

Extremely poor mans version lol
I think you are overrating the 1st ability on Paladin Class by a lot
Then I don't think the Glorious Anthem effect is even very good (the deck just doesn't have enough creatures in it and isn't aggressive enough)
The best enabler for Serras Sanctum is
1) abundant growth because it's a cheap enchantment that just replaces itself
2) Wild/Utopia sprawl because its a cheap enchantment that also ramps (so you can successfully cast your expensive cards even in games where you don't have serras sanctum).

I really don't understand this sudden obsession with Paladin Class


Yorion is another low opportunity cost way to sink a bunch of white mana. Serras sanctum solves the issue of running a 5 drop in a low to the ground deck.

What does "low to the ground" even mean here, the list is firmly midrange


History of Benalia is better by itself and also is a nice use of extra white mana.

Were there meant to be some in the list


Legion’s Landing is similar to paladin class in that it is both a good enabler and utilizer of Serra’s sanctum.

Is it? Paying 3 mana to make a 1/1
You also can't copy it with Estrid because it's legendary

[Reeplcheep]

Endurance is not a "Banedrifter", it's loaming shaman with reach and flash.
You do need to go "relatively deep" to build a better Uro but I'm already doing that lol (why else play cards like History of Benalia or Omen of the Sea in legacy).
In a delver format the 3/4 statline is incredibly relevant.



Extremely poor mans version lol
I think you are overrating the 1st ability on Paladin Class by a lot
...
I really don't understand this sudden obsession with Paladin Class


I like paladin class since by itself it will usually trade up on mana if not on cards, and it both uses and enables Serra’s sanctum well. It is pretty reasonable to expect your blue opponent to draw 1-2 counterspells and you to draw 0-1 serras sanctum. In which case you traded up on mana.

Utopia sprawl and growth enable Serra’s sanctum well, but it pulls you away from interactive cards and white payoffs.



What does "low to the ground" even mean here, the list is firmly midrange

Were there meant to be some in the list

Is it? Paying 3 mana to make a 1/1
You also can't copy it with Estrid because it's legendary

Perhaps legions landing isn’t good enough. But having a critical density of one drop enchantments and white manasinks seems powerful.

[kombatkiwi]

I think the maindeck Endurance in control decks pushes Sevinne's Rec out a little bit (and it was already a bit clunky)
I think I'd rather just play more / cheaper estrid targets

20 Lands
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Plow
4 Force of Will
2 Negation

4 Abundant Growth
4 Estrid
4 Benalia
1 Detention Sphere
2 Omen of the Sea
3 Prismatic Ending

2 Trail of Crumbs / Omen
1 ???
1 Teferi

I do also want to try omen of the forge as the wincon rather than History but not sure what colours/manabase to use
edit: im thinking straight jeskai and cut green

Like this

4 Prismatic Vista
4 Flooded Strand
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Plains
1 Mountain
5 Island
1 Volcanic
1 Tundra

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Prismatic Ending
2 Terminus
2 Force of Negation

3 Estrids Invocation
4 Omen of the Sea
2 Omen of the Forge
2 Counterbalance
1 Detention Sphere
1 [FREE SLOT / Wizard Class]

1 Teferi, Time Raveler
2 Jace the Mindsculptor

2 Snapcaster Mage

Sideboard
2 Court of Grace
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Blood Moon
1 Humility
1 Surgical Extraction
2 RIP
1 Energy Flux
1 Deafening Silence
3 Pyroblast

Having omen of the forge as additional flash removal is ok (vs ragavan / delver etc), and then with Estrid it becomes both like a 1-sided aether flash or 1 sided sulfuric vortex once you have taken control of the game. Overall I think this is probably a better fit for the strategy than a thing that makes tokens.
I'm thinking the free slot should be another enchantment just to hedge towards Invocation being as reliable as possible but I'm not exactly sure what it should be. (Otherwise 3rd Prismatic Ending could be ok)
There are a couple of other almost-viable copy targets (the giants saga, wizard class, sorcerer class, spreading seas, confounding conundrum) but nothing super exciting.

[Reeplcheep]

If you want to go creatureless, should we try court of cunning plus island sanctuary?

Court plus estrid will mill anyone out no matter in ~2 turns. It also enables our own sevinnes well.

Sanctuary into court should also kill quite fast. Porphyry nodes can be copied by estrids if the triggers are stacked correctly and is quite good at clearing the way for a t3 court as well.

It avoids having to use another colour, and is much better vs creatures less decks which could otherwise be problems.

[kombatkiwi]

If you want to go creatureless, should we try court of cunning plus island sanctuary?

Court plus estrid will mill anyone out no matter in ~2 turns. It also enables our own sevinnes well.

Sanctuary into court should also kill quite fast. Porphyry nodes can be copied by estrids if the triggers are stacked correctly and is quite good at clearing the way for a t3 court as well.

It avoids having to use another colour, and is much better vs creatures less decks which could otherwise be problems.

Court of Cunning is a liability if your opponent controls a cheap creature, Omen of the Forge is useful if your opponent controls a cheap creature.

It's nice to think like "oh if you have estrid + court it mills the opponent really fast and enables sevinne" but if you have court undisrupted for 1-2 turns you should be winning that game anyway regardless of what else you have.
I'd rather focus on stabilizing the game reliably and then win by small incremental advantage rather than play these more all-in cards that completely fall apart if the opponent can stick creatures and you don't have enough removal. (reminder: ragavan has dash)
I'm not super worried about creatureless decks (in which case the suggestions of island sanctuary and porphyry nodes also don't do anything).
The extra colour doesn't affect the manabase too badly and also gives some SB cards

It's possible that the deck could play some monarch card instead of Jace (and I do have monarch cards in the SB of the original list) but overall I don't think that's such a good direction
One court of cunning could be played main in the 'wizard class' slot too I suppose but idk if it's necessary/correct to go further down the rabbit hole with Sevinne's Reclamation / Porphyry Nodes etc

edit
On 2nd thought something like -2 Snapcaster -1 Teferi +2 Spreading Seas +1 Humility might be ok
- Having extra estrids targets seems good after goldfishing, it might be a better use of that card slot than snap
- Spreading seas gets an upgrade atm because it can function as 1U destroy Urzas Saga draw a card
- Humility is also nice atm because not only is it good vs "creature decks" it's also very good vs the most popular variant of control (bant)
- Humility also has synergy with copying Omen of the Forge because you can always ping down any creature and not worry about dying to 1/1s
- Cutting snap means there is nothing in the deck that uses the graveyard so the opponent can't get free value off endurance
- Humility is anti-synergy with snap/creatures
- Moving humility to the main opens up a SB slot

from there maybe there are options to trim 1 of the counterbalance or 1 of the jace etc

20 Land
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords
2 Negation
2 Prismatic Ending
2 Terminus

4 Estrids Invocation
4 Omen of the Sea
2 Omen of the Forge
2 Spreading Seas
2 Counterbalance
1 Court of Cunning / JTMS
1 Humility
1 Detention Sphere

1 JTMS