Feels like the sort of thing that could give Top players fits, but I haven't tried it. I wouldn't want more than 1 in the deck.
I played a little bit of vintage Leovold last week. The mana cost is no joke, and you really can't afford too many colorless lands. I played Wastes/Strip, but I could see Wastes/Sanitarium as a legacy kit. He played very, very well with Bob and DRS since it overloads removal. They can't afford to let any of it sit around without taking over.
Indeed, interestingly enough, if they draw a Miracle with Leo out (yeah, I am calling him Leo from now on) and they have no other cards in hand, you can rip it with Sanitarium while the trigger on the stack, which is kind of neat (sorry if I am point out the obvious). I will probably try 3 Wastelands/1 GRS when I do get a chance to play though, colorless lands are definitely a liability.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Two pages in guys, you know it's double-draw town with Divert and Misdirection right? #MakeItRayne
I'm a huge fan of this card and accidentally built a deck for him a couple days before he was spoiled! This is a deck I played at the NJ SCG classic, I posted a small report in the Team America control/midrange thread so I won't repost here, but I will say that playing 7 DRS and 5 Goyfs in your deck is insane:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
2 True-Name Nemesis
2 Tarmogoyf
1 Trygon Predator
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Ponder
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Sylvan Library
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Volrath's Stronghold
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Thoughtseize
1 Life from the Loam
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Engineered Plague
1 Krosan Grip
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Pithing Needle
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Dread of Night
Right off the top I would cut the True-Names for Leovold; while TNN is a good card, it's not as backbreaking without equipment to back it up (it's basically just a Sulfuric Vortex).
From there I think the number of Strix could be messed with a bit since Leovold WILL draw you cards in any matchup where the Strix draw matters except for Eldrazi. Could expand the GSZ package a little bit more (just watch out for Iona I guess).
Hand disruption also seems good with Leovold so maybe a Thoughtseize/Liliana approach would be better than daze.
Building around it is a possibility because there is no shortage of tutors to find him and whatever other piece you want, but I think this card's greatest strength will be its ability to nerf large portions of many decks while being a substantial body and rarely costing you a card when removed. It will change the face of BUG and spawn a different kind of deck in that color combo than we've seen. For example, I don't see this card slotting into the existing Shardless deck because the card to cut would be actual Shardless Agent and then your deck changes quite a bit. And it's not really great in a Delver deck because it's a 3 mana creature (that's not to say you can't play it there, just that it's less optimized).
Hi again,
after somebody mentioned symmetric effects are likely so-so irl (looking at you,Howling Mine), unless they can be controlled... I did done some diggin, searching for more synergistic spells. Here are my top three finds:
Not sure yet, which one has the most potential. What's your opinion?
Anyway, here's a new draft:
3 Leo
4 Dakra Mystic
3 Strix
4 DRS
2 Thing in the Ice
2 Goyf
1 Angler
4 BS
4 Ponder
2 Decay
2 Dismember
4 FoW
4 Therapy
3 Probe
((42))
Seems like a good start to me. For legacy, I would probably cut the Trygon Predator and 2 TNN from that list, and keep the Strixes. That maintains the mana distribution. I know Trygon is nice to have in certain matches, but it seems a lot less necessary in the with 4 Decays.
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Trest Tribal
Seriously though perhaps it could be ok as a 1-of in order to turn your Strixes into a secondary draw engine?
Imho, Notion Thief is strictly better.
The only upside there is a little more thoughtness (resist to Pyroclasm, Forked Bolt and Disfigure).
And the veeeery light protection (it still allows the opponent to destroy whatever he needs, it just nets you a card).
Thief has Flash and give you so much more card advantage immediately to make the second ability of Leo almost useless.
Brainstorm into Thief can is gg >50% of the times
Thief isn't as proactive as a play, and is 4 mana instead of 3. Thief comes down t3 or later, while Leovold can come down t2 on the play via DRS.
I'm mostly with you on this one, and I'm not a big fan of two card combo approaches that feature spells that suck on their own, yet I did play Thopters.dec for a while
After realizing that Holwing Mine was bad, not due to its symmectric effect, but due to its uncontrollability, my next step was to dig for potent spells that can indeed be controlled/timed, do have a more or less relevant effect on their own and go nutz while Leo sticks around.
In this light, Dakra Mystic reads:
pay & tap during your opponent's turn, draw a card / chump block a fatty to buy time / ping for one if the road is clear / flashback Therapy and take off a TitI token, pitch to FoW (some improvements over Mine, I daresay)
Lorebroker reads:
Tap during your opponent's turn, draw a card, then discard one (for Angler/DRS fodder), s.a. [...] + your opponent discards a card.
Day's Undoing reads:
Unless the board state is terribad, you win the game. Also: double-screw you Reanimator, Loam.dec, Dredge.dec, etc..
I'm not saying those cards will rock your world, but I'm positive they, and probably some that have yet to be discovered are worth testing.
Day's undoing is a neat card to pair with Leo indeed. As for this in comparison to thief, there's no comparison. Thief hits things that draw cards. This hits those AND wasteland, port, jitte, tendrils, burn, decay, and a ton of stuff that's used in legacy. Not to mention you can GSZ for Leo. 3 CMC vs. 4 is also a world of difference in a format with 1 cmc mana dorks namely DRS.
Could just slot him into a shardless BUG type of shell. Elves could use him as a GSZ target. BUG Delver could use him. Aluren could use him too. I find his ability to find mindbreak trap after they target you with a bunch of tendrils to be hilarious and also very good as it means they need to answer him before they tendrils or risk a blowout.
Dakra mystic is super nice with him. Remember when that card came out it had some potential. With Leo dakra mystic could be good in a delve BUG shell.
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Originally Posted by Vacrix
Yeah, I was looking at Cephalid Coliseum and Dack Fayden as interesting choices, but those would stretch the mana base pretty hard, and I'm not sure compulsive research is a viable legacy card.
There's also the 'other half' of Leo: he's good with permanents that draw targeted hate, and those tend to be decent cards in their own right, even if getting multiple creatures swept can be painful.
This card is pretty busted...no need to play bad cards to make a good card even better.
A straightforward bug mid-range deck like shardless bug would be a good starting shell for this. It's also fine as a 1 or 2 of in grixis and bug delver.
4 DRS
2 noble hierarch
4 Goyf
3 Bob
2 strix
4 Leovold
2 LotV
1 JtMS
4 BS
4 FOW
1 spell pierce
1 flusterstorm
4 abrupt decay
2 thoughtseize
19 colored sources
3 wasteland
Main advantage of this build is you get to play cheaper interaction now that you don't have shardless agent, so you're better vs. combo.
Leovold just shuts down so many decks that it shouldn't be difficult to win if he sticks around.
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