Instant (20)
Sorcery (3)
Creature (17)
Sideboard
Instant (4)
Sorcery (1)
Creature (4)
Maybeboard
Let’s start with a funny anecdote.
I’m sure we’ve all been here at one point or another: You’re scouring the card lists, examining different cards from different perspectives, when all of a sudden you stumble onto a great combo. You hurry to tell your friends, thinking you’re the first person to discover this interaction, only to be informed that it’s already well known.
Well that’s what happened when I looked at Approach of the Second Sun + Remand , put two and two together and realized that this wincon can be vastly sped up. I rushed to preach the gospel of my new discovery, and my friend’s response went something like…
Despite having the wind taken out of my sails, it is indeed a pretty good little combo and I do feel some satisfaction discovering it on my own—even if I was hardly the first to do so. I threw together this Control oriented shell and I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out.
Nothing overly complicated going on here. The vast majority of spells are blue, and we run just enough white to ensure we can cast our wincon. For those on even tighter budgets, a fair amount can be saved by ditching the play set of Hallowed Fountain and running either taplands or just more basics.
Alternatively, if budget is less a concern or you happen to own a few, then Flagstones of Trokair will thin your deck and help speed things along.
•The artwork on this particular Hallowed Fountain isn’t as good as on the glorious Dissension version, but it’s a bit cheaper to run this one.
•Port Town will almost always enter untapped and is very easy on the wallet. No reason not to play it.
•The ratio of Islands to Plains heavily favors , and between the other sources of we have more than enough. Fortunately, Approach of the Second Sun only requires one pip; it could easily have cost something like which would be considerably harder to cast.
While we aren’t completely without a board presence, none of our creatures will have our opponent trembling in fear. They’re easy targets with fairly low defense, and yet are quite intrinsic to allowing us to cast our wincon earlier than we otherwise could. We need ways to protect them (and ourselves) from combat damage, direct damage or removal spells.
•Counterspell isn’t a problem to cast, with most of our mana sources offering .
•Mana Leak is a better early game deterrent, when mana is scarce both in color options and quantity.
•Spell Pierce is another great way to curb an aggressive opponent and rein them in.
•Holy Day is our only other white spell and it’s mercifully cheap to cast. Don’t squander your valuable coupons by chump blocking, instead simply wave that combat damage goodbye.
In the end, leave your opponent dazzled, dazed and confused as they stand staring at their impending demise.
I’m not sure what an inverted ramp would physically look like (that’s probably a matter for Neil deGrasse Tyson to ponder on his lunch hour), but the goal is to approach the idea of ramping from the opposite perspective. We won’t be increasing our available output of mana; instead we’ll be decreasing the costs of the actual spells themselves.
•Baral, Chief of Compliance is an astoundingly great card that really lets us hit the ground running. The perfect Turn 2 play, he comes with a coupon to take off any Instant or Sorcery we wish to cast—perfect for helping make Approach of the Second Sun more achievable.
•Haughty Djinn is certainly one of the better cards to come out of Dominaria United, and he too provides government assistance for our hefty shopping bills. Take another off our wincon.
Manfred Mann’s Homunculus Band Show
•Fae of Wishes is here more for the tutoring capability than for board presence, although casting it in a pinch does offer a bolt proof body to block with—and one that can be returned to hand later to acquire our wincon from the sideboard.
Under normal use, Approach of the Second Sun checks two things—and should this criteria be fulfilled, upon resolving you win the game. Those two things are:
1) You’ve cast the spell once before
2) You cast this second one from your hand
Of great interest is the fact that it makes no mention of whether the first spell was countered or if it resolved. That is absolutely irrelevant, and the key to the entire combo.
Using Remand we can counter our own spell, at which point it will be returned to our hand—thus bypassing the need to wait 7 more draws/turns. Simply casting it again immediately would win the game on the spot.
But Approach of the Second Sun weighs in at a hefty , so the next priority was finding a way to reduce that cost. I first turned to and its inherent predilection toward mana acceleration, but ultimately went with once I remembered Baral, Chief of Compliance. I figured ‘Surely there are other cards with similar effects’, and this proved true. It became possible to cast both copies of the spell in the same turn, and thus greatly increased the odds of winning.
•Cast as many cost reduction creatures as possible.
•Protect them (and ourself) with a plethora of countermagic and defensive spells.
•Cast Approach of the Second Sun at a steep discount, then immediately Remand it back to our hand. Cast it once more to win the game, letting the glorious sun rise to herald our victory…and our opponent’s defeat.
I could use some help here. I just threw some stuff together after completing the maindeck, and I’m sure there’s room for improvement.
•1 slot must be reserved for our 4th copy of Approach of the Second Sun so that Fae of Wishes has something to target.
•Kami of False Hope is another way to minimize combat damage early on while we work at setting our pieces up.
•Light of Hope for life gain, or to get rid of a prickly Enchantment.
”But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings…”
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Casual
95% Competitive
| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 1 year |
| Last updated | 8 months |
| Key combos | |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 20 - 1 Rares 8 - 0 Uncommons 20 - 8 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.27 |
| Folders | Modern, Modern, Other People's Decks I Like |
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