This is the coolest shell I've seen yet for Approach of the Second Sun . Thank you for sharing this.

Some potential improvements:

• If someone uses an extraction effect like Lost Legacy or Unmoored Ego on your Approach, you literally have no way to win the game. I would have one alternate win con in the sideboard. Conveniently, Mastermind's Acquisition permits you to directly tutor whatever's in your sideboard...
• You have a lot of fog effects to blank aggro, but control and combo tend to care less about those. I'd suggest maybe replacing a couple with Duress (or sideboard them, all depends on what you usually play against).
• If it's not out of budget range, I would suggest Timely Reinforcements . It's better than Renewed Faith as it usually gives you a bunch of chump blockers.
• Instead of Repel the Abominable , Dawn Charm could possibly work against burn. The second mode isn't really relevant for your deck, but the third mode directly counters a Bolt or similar (it also counters targeted discard effects, lol), and it still provides a fog effect in the first mode if that's what's needed.

xtechnetia: thanks a lot for the comment. I've had some problems with opening TO at the end of march, so I didn't see the notification.

Your first point is totally true. Do you have any ideas on what to use here? I have thought about a transformative sideboard to win by Sylvan Reclamation . Another idea is Aetherflux Reservoir , though that seems too slow. What do you think about those?

Timely reinforcement is interesting. It would even be a great replacement for faith curvewise. The problem I see is twofold: the three tokens, although I'll basically always get them, don't help too much. And the conditionality of the lifegain is problematic as well. I actually do prefer renewed faith here, as the possibility to cantrip with it is very useful.

The third mode on dawn charm actually is worse than Repel the Abominable . The ceiling for dawn charm is somewhere near countering a big Fireball , whereas repel is versatile enough to do that while still negating most combat damage for that turn.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on my response. Did I missevaluate anything? Please let me know.

seshiro_of_the_orochi:

• I'm not really sure what an ideal alternate win condition is. I usually think of either planeswalkers or hard-to-get-rid-of creatures, but I feel like that's not really in flavor for the deck :) I trust you to come up with something thematic and appropriate. I mostly just wanted to raise awareness of the potential weakness.
• If you like cantripping lifegain, might I suggest Revitalize ? It doesn't have the option of being normally cast for 6 life, but if you're planning to cycle Renewed Faith more often than actually casting it, perhaps Revitalize suits your needs better.
• I think your points on Dawn Charm are fair. I don't have any great love for the card either, I just thought it was a possible alternative.

xtechnetia:

I'll do my very best. I'll try to find something.

Regarding Revitalize : another very interesting decision, but again I prefer renewed faith, as it can be both a big life swing and a cantrip. In addition, it's a card in the 3-mana-section that I can still use at two mana open. Another upside in versatility.

Dawn charm definitely has its uses, but just isn't that great here.

Another question: In your original post, you suggested adding some copies of Duress . If you were to add it to the mainboard, how'd you do it?

seshiro_of_the_orochi:

So me personally, I'd take out a couple of the fog effects for Duress (maybe some Ethereal Haze as that's the same cmc). The hope is that taking a key card from your opponent's hand saves you at least the same amount of life as the fog effect.

Although this depends since Duress doesn't hit creatures, so if you play against lots of creature heavy decks, maybe Duress isn't so great.