Yeah, I just saw the spoilers as well. It's interesting, but I'm pretty sure it's a fake.
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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
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?
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
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
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.
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
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.
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?
I considered various splits of these effects e.g.Quote:
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.
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.
Maybe, I will consider itQuote:
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.
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.Quote:
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?
Yes, possibly, these can also go in the Medomai's Prophecy slotsQuote:
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, 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?Quote:
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?
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.
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]
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/statu...969793/photo/1
https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/statu...969793/photo/1
I splashed white for yorion and suppression field in my curses deck. You may want to check my post in that thread for ideas.
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
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
I hear you. Although i don't think cutting History of Benalia altogether is a good idea, being "more blue" is definitely appealing.
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).
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)
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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:
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
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)
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?