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[*]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.
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[*]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.
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[*]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
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[*]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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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