THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT ON THIS DECK!!!
- Position #1 in Legacy Ranking
- Position #3 in Overall Ranking
I am humbled and thankful for everyone who has enjoyed this Deck. I am quite proud of it myself and it has been a long-time favorite of mine that has stood the test of time for many, many years now (Between 2010-2011 was the first incarnation of these combos & this deck build). Seeing it still relevant online even all this time later (albeit with one or two new additions) is an amazing compliment.
Thank You and Enjoy!
LOOKING FOR INPUT:
PRIMARY WIN CONDITION (INFINITE DEFENSE):
Pariah + Spirit Mantle and/or Flickering Ward on the same creature = Infinite Defense from All Attacks (even Poison Counter decks!). This still allows for Attacking each Turn, and Protection from Creatures is essentially the same as Unblockable (only better since even stuff like Royal Assassin won't work). With all 3 Enchantments on the same creature there is really not much an opponent can do at all; though often just Pariah and one of the other two is enough to lock it down.
Suggestions/Comments (and Upvotes) highly appreciated!
As it stands now, this deck is already a monster. Still, there could be room for improvement...
I have to say the card draw from both Kor Spiritdancer combined with all of the 1-mana enchantments, as well as the draw-burst from Sage's Reverie really pushes the deck along well - much better than I thought it would even when it was under construction initially. It's been holding its own even against some of the newer Standard/Modern combos & cards that have come out.
Protection as a whole is just super-nasty, and it is the crux of this Deck's power. A lot of the newer players to M:tG I've been playing against with it have had some confusion, so just to recap:
Protection uses the acronym DEBT; meaning permanents with Protection cannot be
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Damaged by sources of the specified quality
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Enchanted or Equipped by permanents of the specified quality
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Blocked by creatures with the specified quality
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Targeted by Spells or Abilities with the specified quality
This makes Spirit Mantle just insanely powerful, not only since it equates to "Unblockable" (or, more technically/accurately, "Can't be Blocked by Creatures"), but especially with a lot of the Activated Ability combos that are available on creatures now with more recent set releases that it renders them immune to as well (the Royal Assassin is only one example of many I've run into). It also affects colorless creatures for what that's worth; I haven't noticed many artifact/colorless builds in mainstream Legacy, but should I run up against one this'll still work...unlike:
Flickering Ward which is similarly mana-efficient for its power, and the color-specificity on it means that it extends to targeted Instant/Sorcery spells and most Planeswalker abilities as well. It's also easy to change in/out as needs evolve with multi-color decks with the cheap Return-to-Hand effect, or if you're playing against a deck you need to pick White for (so you can remove/recast it to additionally enchant the creature), or if you need to save the Enchantment itself from being targeted by something.
Primary Combos:
- Pariah paired on the same creature as Spirit Mantle and/or Flickering Ward can be (and often is) a complete shut-down depending on the deck the opponent is playing. Either combo has the potential to grant you total immunity to all creature-based Combat Damage. Multi-color decks can sometimes find small workarounds for Flickering Ward, but generally this isn't too large an issue since a majority of attacking creatures tend to share at least 1 color in most deck constructions.
- Ethereal Armor gets absolutely out of control (and quite quickly) with all of the Enchantment Creature types and 1-mana Enchantments in the deck.
- Sage's Reverie and Eidolon of Countless Battles are even more out of control than Ethereal Armor is with all of the Enchantment Creature types that almost everything shares. Also, with Sage's Reverie, it plays late enough in the game (4 mana) that it's close to a full hand draw when it enters play which really helps speed things along.
- Kor Spiritdancer ...this card is just horridly overpowered, especially with how many cheap enchantments this deck has. The main hurdle to having a mono-white deck that plays so quickly is that you quickly find yourself with no hand. This problem is solved with this one little 2-mana creature, and its power/toughness just skyrocket in conjunction with this. Truthfully, I'd have put her in even just with the Card Draw ability alone. She combos FANTASTICALLY with Flickering Ward since it's possible to return & re-cast it very cheaply for no other reason than card draw (it's had the "Aura - Enchantment" tag retroactively added into the rulings on the card, so it does in fact trigger her). With multiple Spiritdancers in play, the effect is only more amplified & worthwhile. Still, even with only 1 in play a 2-mana infinitely repeatable Card Draw mechanic for Mono-White is awfully hard to come by.
Card Draw:
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Kor Spiritdancer; paired with literally just about every other card in the deck
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Flickering Ward; paired with Spiritdancer above, recasting/returning as much as needed for more cards
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Sage's Reverie; for late-game mass card draw
Other Strategies:
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Having Rebuff the Wicked in the deck is a MUST for any Aura-centered build, imo. The greatest risk is losing a creature you're building up, and most people certainly don't expect a Mono-White deck to throw a Counterspell at them (for ONE mana no less!). This is a beautiful fit.
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Prison Term is another one of my all-time favorite cards due to its versatility. Any deck with a particularly nasty target allows you to cast one spell and then have it just sit there until the real target comes into play. For example, combined with the massive amount of First Strike enhancements in this deck, and with only a single Prison Term in play, I managed to completely shut down a (now outdated) tournament Goblin deck which ran on primarily on the use of Krenko, Mob Boss. Even playing down a second copy of a Legendary creature allows you to keep the combo(s) locked down with only the one Prison Term, since you can just transfer it to the (newly cast) version. Additionally, Auras only "Target" when they're on the stack, so as long as this is already in play, the wording on its last ability even allows it to be moved onto a creature with Hexproof or Shroud (making it the only Aura you can put on creatures with those abilities). It can be a real pain to compete with.
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I've noticed a lot more "Board Wipe" (Destroy all Creatures) effects coming up in play given how many options there are with the most recent set releases, so moving Umbra Mystic from the Sideboard to the Main Deck has been a pretty solid defense against them. Board wipe were one of this deck's main vulnerabilities anyway; just they're so common now it seems that leaving her on the Sideboard wasn't making much sense. I also tossed a couple Unbreakable Formation onto the sideboard just in case I run into lots of deck types with mass wipe effects.
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I've moved Silence out altogether, and Not of This World is now sideboarded as well. As it turns out, Rebuff the Wicked is the most reliable protection that I've found for keeping early-play consistent. Not of This World is nice, and is useful quite early on with 4x Kor Spiritdancer in the deck, but Rebuff can hit a wider array of targets. Still, I can swap things in/out as different deck types require.
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In addition to card draw and turn-delay, I've found Knight of the White Orchid to be quite helpful for "mana ramp". He's not 100% reliable, but is especially nice if you end up going second and find one in hand off the draw. Combined with the various Card Draw elements in this deck, it doesn't take much to really speed ahead of the opponent and start dominating the board. Also, between him and having 9 or 10 of my spells being only 1 or 2-mana to cast is how I get away with running only 18 Lands. He's quite often a double-land play so long as I draw cards first and play him before laying down any Lands I happened to draw. .
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The main vulnerability of this deck is Return-to-Hand effects on creatures who are NOT enchanted with Flickering Ward for protection. Even destroy effects (including Boardwipes) can usually be countered or at least mitigated with strategic use of the Totem Armor from Umbra Mystic, but "RTH" effects cause enchantments to dump to the graveyard, so I added in some Tragic Poets for a little bit of a buffer against this (especially for my key combo enchantments like Pariah).
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The newly-released Alseid of Life's Bounty has some really fantastic synergy with this deck. For one, he's a 1-mana Lifelink Enchantment Creature. Second, his activated ability can target either Creatures or Enchantments, meaning he can be used to protect a wide variety of key elements for this deck.
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The addition of a few Tragic Poets was massively helpful in helping to retrieve Pariah in the event it ends up in the graveyard since it's a "clutch-card" for the deck's most powerful combo. Also, for what it's worth, I can salvage a couple different creatures from my Graveyard since they've got the Enchantment type as well should the need arise (re-using Alseid of Life's Bounty's activated ability is a likely target for this).
Sideboard:
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Solemnity is a card which appears in a couple of fairly devastating combos in other deck builds. I've only included it for play against decks which rely ENTIRELY on +1/+1 counter generation. I like to think of it as the Mono-White option for Blightbeetle (who gets the same inclusion in a number of my Black decks). It also works towards my Enchantment count for Ethereal Armor and prevents Sagas and Level-Up Class Enchantments from working.
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Nevermore has proved quite handy against decks which may have a workaround for some of my mechanics, or if I'm playing against a deck that's just gung-ho crazy with the Boardwipes. This is an extremely versatile and reliable card provided I know what deck I'm playing against.
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Umbra Mystic is one I've always liked a lot since its release, so against target-destroy heavy deck types I like to toss 2 copies of her into the Main Deck just to augment the array of 1-mana Enchantments that I already run. Still, against a deck without much "target destroy" or "direct damage" power, she's one of the first cards to be swapped out for alternative Sideboard cards. These may in fact end up in the Main Deck.
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Another all-time favorite card for nostalgic reasons for me is Reverent Mantra. In general I'm a huge fan of alternate costs to cast for "oh crap" moments, and this card is particularly devious since it affects ALL creatures in play (even opponent's) which can prevent them from using their own spells/abilities to augment their own attackers/blockers if need be. (Sorry! You can't target your own creatures! Hahaha...)
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Unbreakable Formation is Sideboarded for Boardwipe-heavy builds (of which I run across quite a few nowadays). Between this and Nevermore I can cope pretty well against decks with multiple Boardwipes in their mechanic.
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Winds of Rath, on the subject of Boardwipes, is one I've been experimenting with since the effect has become increasingly popular (and effective) with some of the more modern builds. It's pretty evil given this deck's synergy with Creature Enchantments, I'm just not sold on the Mana Cost -- and also I'm not sure how required it actually is given that I run 4x Spirit Mantles. Protection from Creatures is basically Unblockable Plus V2.0 so I'm not certain how important it is to take out an opponent's creatures at all in this build.
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Not of This World is frequently mana-free quite early on when combo'd with Kor Spiritdancer and a couple of 1-mana Auras. I was running this in place of Rebuff the Wicked for a while, but ultimately Rebuff won out by a small margin. Against heavy target-destroy or target-exile decks though, I can use both.
Other Thoughts:
The Maybeboard is full of a couple other Enchantment options that I'm considering to further complement this dynamic as well as adding some additional defense/control type cards to help with different win conditions effects when playing against other types of decks than I'm used to. (Though, I'm a bit hard-pressed considering what to drop out for any of them.) Daybreak Coronet would be ridiculously OP in this deck, but it's more of a dream card to add as I'm trying not to over-indulge buying singles.
A couple Sigarda's Aid would allow me to use my Kor Spiritdancer + Flickering Ward combo on an opponent's turn, though I'm not sure just how much this would help since most turns I'm spending up most of my mana (usually just saving 1 for either Path to Exile, Rebuff the Wicked, or Silence).
Any suggestions would be more than welcome! Can anyone think of 'must have's' for this deck that I may have missed?
is up to a 3x count now too as it can double as a self land-tutor against a 1-mana creature in dire straits (not often, but once or twice). This deck can kick off with just 2 mana, but if one somehow gets destroyed or I'm forced by bad luck into multiple mulligans there's less risk of taking a 1-mana hand this way too.