I love build around cards, and Approach of the Second Sun is certainly an interesting one.
The first obstacle with a card like this is how to make it usable in an actual game. Playing it on turn 7 and then burying 7 cards down and going for a turn 15 win is not a winning strategy. At all. You have to decide how to speed that up and there's a few ways to do it. The two I wrestled with were either adding black so you can do something like Diabolic Tutor or adding Blue so you can do something interesting like bounce it back to your hand with Unsubstantiate because it doesn't have to resolve twice, you just have to cast it twice.
Another option that isn't very exciting is accelerated draw, but that's just boring.
Blue is not only a more interesting option, but there are more ways to do it. Either color combo has nice control and tempo options so you really could go either way with it.
The second hurdle is acceleration. None of these colors have an amazing means of ramp, and blue does have Curious Homunculus
, but there's a third issue that needs addressed as well and that's plan B. As far as simple ramp I like
Hedron Crawler
because I can use the mana towards anything. Once you have a Holdout Settlement you can also tap him for colored mana if you need to which can be huge when trying to pull off the finale.
In searching for a solution to both issues, I remembered a combo deck that uses Inspiring Statuary to Improvise higher cost cards and generates a fair amount of tokens doing so. When Amonkhet came out I had a thought about how cool Improvise could be with the new Throne of the God-Pharaoh to do damage as you ramp. Perfect. Now I have ramp and a backup plan to deal damage with tapped creatures that are gaining mana for the more expensive card options.
Throw in a little counter for protection like Dispel and a little removal like Declaration in Stone and things are shaping up nicely and looking very playable. Plan C to buy even more time became Exquisite Archangel to reset your life total instead of dying. A neat trick.
Sram's Expertise into Servo Exhibition is a huge turn 4 move to drop 5 tokens at once that can be used to Improvise big spells like Second Sun or the Archangel as soon as turn 5. The big reason to wait on casting the Sun too early is that you want to be able to put it back in your hand with
Failure / Comply
. You might still be able to do both on turn 5, but it depends on your land drops and what you played turns two and 3. A
Cogworker's Puzzleknot
on two and Statuary on 3 with the Expertise on 4 would mean you'd have up to 13 "mana" already on turn 5 which is almost enough to just cast Second Sun twice in one turn, but certainly enough to cast it and return it and even protect it with a Dispel if needed. Actually, throw down an Ornithopter any time in those 5 turns and you'd have access to 14 mana which means you could cast it twice in a row if you actually had both copies in hand.
That's pretty damn fast. This makes me consider adding a second pair of Suns in the sideboard to increase saturation just in case.
Ornithopter is like a free colorless mana rock when you get the Statuary online. Trophy Mage helps get you there and is decent to drop with Expertise.
The sideboard is 100% control. Exile creatures and permanents, counter spells or abilities. Stall the boars. This is for the long game to try and just run your opponent out of gas before going for your finisher. It seemed like the best defense against burst damage and super fast aggro that doesnt top deck very well.
Now I just need to play test it :)
