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Thread: UW Enduring Ideal

  1. #81

    Re: UW Enduring Ideal

    The reprint of Solitary Confinement has been confirmed in MH2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Overall I think the combo of Confinement + Skyblade could be worth playing (replacing unlife and form of the dragon).
    Then ill think about whether Sphere of Safety can be cut as well (probably yes, maybe for 1 maindeck nevermore/gideons intervention).
    Last edited by kombatkiwi; 05-31-2021 at 08:42 AM.

  2. #82
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    Re: UW Enduring Ideal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  3. #83

    Re: UW Enduring Ideal

    This was a conversation I also had on the discord

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

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

  4. #84
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    Re: UW Enduring Ideal

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Because of the card disadvantage of Grove as a tutor it's only worth running if the thing you are tutoring for is backbreaking and therefore if the thing you are tutoring for is backbreaking (Solemnity combo meaning you can't be killed) then why does your deck have to play this entirely separate wincon that's a 7 mana sorcery and requires you to play all these other weird uncastable cards in your deck like form of the dragon, dovescape etc
    This is very much valid. Ultimately, Ideal might just not be worth it for these reasons. However, I do think that Sanctum Weaver makes the "uncastable" cards issue less of a problem. I'm also interested in trying a deck built around Resurgent Belief, but it does seem like graveyard strategies are going to be on the upswing with MH2, so I expect there to be even more graveyard hate in the format.

  5. #85

    Re: UW Enduring Ideal

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Current maindeck:

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

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

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

    3 Search for Glory
    4 Enduring Ideal

    1 Nyx Lotus
    1 Kaldra Compleat
    1 Other Equipment

    edit:
    On second thought I may have underestimated the capacity for Yorion to offset the card disadvantage from Solitude (either by directly pitching to it or by blinking stuff in a longer game)
    Maybe consider some copies in the Astral Drift slot (which is probably the next-worst card in the deck)
    Last edited by kombatkiwi; 06-19-2021 at 01:54 AM.

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