Wow. Hadn't meant to kick off that sort of flurry. I'm still getting cards together, but I'll probably try both eventually.
I've only recently started playing Legacy over Modern, so my eye for evaluating the interactive aspects of the toolbox build isn't all that great yet. I just haven't seen enough decks and enough lines of play to really have an intuitive sense for it. The toolbox seemed a little light compared a lot of decks, but still better than sitting idle for a few turns if your first Opalescence gets countered or you just never draw into it or a tutor. Also, I like the idea of at least having outs to a turn 1 or 2 Blood Moon or even just an aggressive Wasteland plan, even if they're 1 or 2 ofs I'd have to draw into naturally. Better odds than just conceding when a Moon drops. But even on an all-in build, I'd probably still dedicate at least 1 slot to a Helm of Obedience if only because it can also be a turn 1 kill with a good hand.
However, another thing I ran into with the toolbox builds, beyond sometimes lacking the early pressure, was that a 2 or 3 leyline hand can occasionally simply not being able to generate enough mana off of Sanctum to even cast an Opalescence in hand. Then you have to get lucky on draws or blow tutors into Suppression Fields/O-Rings/Ghostly Prison/etc in order to get up to the critical 4 or more mana. And when the majority of your tutors put things on top of library and not into hand, that can mean 2 or 3 turns before you have the mana to actually cast the Opalescence, assuming you don't need to draw into yet more tutors to get to it.
There's some tech in the older threads about the archetype I think might still be good. Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library seem like a good way to dig for Opalescence or a tutor, though the lack of easy shuffle effects other than your tutors hurts. City of Solitude seems to have not panned out, but even just Orim's Chant/Silence is something a lot of people underestimate. Forcing them to burn a counter just to be able to use any other counters on the things you care about for a single seems like a good deal against any deck that's not packing 12+ counters. And if things are going to plan, white mana is something you should probably have spare. Maybe too much win-more?
In newer sets, other than Spirit of the Labyrinth, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx seems like it might be worth playing as a one of, if only because any single Leyline is going to let it fix enough mana to cast any other Leyline of the same color, and in white especially it could easily be generating as much or more mana than Serra's Sanctum. Once you have your Sanctum, you can burn the next Crop Rotation to get that instead of another Sanctum.
Heliod, God of the Sun could be good in the sideboard (or even a singleton in the main). No one seems to be running Revoke Existence, Erase or the like, so if you're not yet on the Opalescence plan, he can turn spare mana from Sanctums into chump blockers, or even a semi-decent clock. On the downside, if he turns on as a creature he is vulnerable to more things in Legacy than Standard or Modern (Swords, Edicts, even Karakas) unless you also dedicate slots to something like Sterling Grove or Greater Auramancy, and his token ability is a bit of a non-bo with Suppression Field. Not sure if the indestructibility, stronger tokens, and granting vigilance to the leylines is better than the cheaper tokens from Sacred Mesa or even Mobilization.
But against some decks, you could probably ride a 5/6 indestructible creature to victory, especially if he also had shroud. RUG, BUG and even 4c Delver decks in particular don't seem to have a good answer to a resolved Heliod except sideboard Submerge, Toxic Deluge or Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and seem to make a pretty high percentage of the meta. Jund is only a little better, with plenty of edicts, but between Leyline of Sanctity and making Cleric tokens those could have a hard time getting through. Those seem to be the archetypes to beat at the moment, so maybe the big guy is worth it.
Oppressive Rays is the other one I have my eye on, for the sideboard. Probably better in an outright enchantress shell, but at least some decks seem vulnerable to this.
I've only recently started playing Legacy over Modern, so my eye for evaluating the interactive aspects of the toolbox build isn't all that great yet. I just haven't seen enough decks and enough lines of play to really have an intuitive sense for it. The toolbox seemed a little light compared a lot of decks, but still better than sitting idle for a few turns if your first Opalescence gets countered or you just never draw into it or a tutor. Also, I like the idea of at least having outs to a turn 1 or 2 Blood Moon or even just an aggressive Wasteland plan, even if they're 1 or 2 ofs I'd have to draw into naturally. Better odds than just conceding when a Moon drops. But even on an all-in build, I'd probably still dedicate at least 1 slot to a Helm of Obedience if only because it can also be a turn 1 kill with a good hand.
However, another thing I ran into with the toolbox builds, beyond sometimes lacking the early pressure, was that a 2 or 3 leyline hand can occasionally simply not being able to generate enough mana off of Sanctum to even cast an Opalescence in hand. Then you have to get lucky on draws or blow tutors into Suppression Fields/O-Rings/Ghostly Prison/etc in order to get up to the critical 4 or more mana. And when the majority of your tutors put things on top of library and not into hand, that can mean 2 or 3 turns before you have the mana to actually cast the Opalescence, assuming you don't need to draw into yet more tutors to get to it.
...
In newer sets, other than Spirit of the Labyrinth, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx seems like it might be worth playing as a one of, if only because any single Leyline is going to let it fix enough mana to cast any other Leyline of the same color, and in white especially it could easily be generating as much or more mana than Serra's Sanctum. Once you have your Sanctum, you can burn the next Crop Rotation to get that instead of another Sanctum.
Heliod, God of the Sun could be good in the sideboard (or even a singleton in the main). No one seems to be running Revoke Existence, Erase or the like, so if you're not yet on the Opalescence plan, he can turn spare mana from Sanctums into chump blockers, or even a semi-decent clock. On the downside, if he turns on as a creature he is vulnerable to more things in Legacy than Standard or Modern (Swords, Edicts, even Karakas) unless you also dedicate slots to something like Sterling Grove or Greater Auramancy, and his token ability is a bit of a non-bo with Suppression Field. Not sure if the indestructibility, stronger tokens, and granting vigilance to the leylines is better than the cheaper tokens from Sacred Mesa or even Mobilization.
But against some decks, you could probably ride a 5/6 indestructible creature to victory, especially if he also had shroud. RUG, BUG and even 4c Delver decks in particular don't seem to have a good answer to a resolved Heliod except sideboard Submerge, Toxic Deluge or Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and seem to make a pretty high percentage of the meta. Jund is only a little better, with plenty of edicts, but between Leyline of Sanctity and making Cleric tokens those could have a hard time getting through. Those seem to be the archetypes to beat at the moment, so maybe the big guy is worth it.
Oppressive Rays is the other one I have my eye on, for the sideboard. Probably better in an outright enchantress shell, but at least some decks seem vulnerable to this.
Wow! Nykthos is very interesting. I'm not sure how consistent it would be (requiring multiple mana from somewhere else) but if you want to go really big this seems like a great way to do it.
The issue with Helm is that it's a dead draw 60% of the time (when you didn't start with Leyline of the Void), so drawing it directly is often bad. If you have 4+1 mana Opalescence probably gets the job done.
The "all-in" list definitely bites it to Blood Moon, which is something I hadn't really considered. However, it is actually more resilient to Wasteland, as you can get going off a single Petrified Field. You don't need to find an additional green source to Crop Rotation away. It is also more likely to get a turn 1 Suppression Field, because it is more likely to start with multiple Leyline on turn 1. Suppression Field on turn 1 is several times better than turn 2 or later, as it stops more fetch lands if you get it on an earlier turn. The early Suppression Field helps fight Wasteland as well.
I will say that the "all in" list often uses tutors as pseudo ramp spells, most commonly finding Suppression Field. I think you have to do it less often and requiring fewer cards, but it is definitely a line of play that is required rather than optional.
Heliod also caught my eye, but again my concern is just one of consistency. I don't know how reliably you will have double white Leyline to turn him on. Potential uncounterability seems really nice, and might be the biggest upside. Finally, I think depending on time stamps Opalescence might actually shrink him, which makes him that slight bit less attractive.
Oppressive Rays would be an auto-include if it were not an aura (that is, if it did that to their whole team). As is, I don't know. Some decks will probably just pay the 3 and be okay with that. Others might be more disrupted.
I've explained plenty of theory and tech, and posted an link containing much more explanation. I think you should read before saying things like that. Or, if you did read all of my posts, perhaps stop flat out lying just because you can't give up any ground on your precious position and admit that someone else has said something that disagrees with your view.
To those who are not actively in denial, and wish to see productive discussion, this is how I would implement Spirit.
Suppression Field does have anti-synergy with both Canopy and Mikokoro. However, if you have the mana to play Suppression Field, it is almost certainly off a Sanctum. This means your Sanctum taps for at least 3, enough to activate Canopy through one Field, and one-short of activating Mikokoro. A Spirit, Sterling Grove, a third Leyline, or another land all make Mikokoro function smoothly.
Sterling Grove had to go up to 2, because Shroud is much more important on Spirit. This also means an extra virtual copy of all your other enchantments, which is pretty good.
Field also interrupts Parallax Wave, but if you know that you can make the combo happen, just perma-exile your own Suppression Field for 4 mana, and then go off.
Solitary Confinement is very good by itself. With Mikokoro, it's an indefinite wall. With Horizon Canopy, it's a good stalling tactic. With neither of those, it's a multi-turn fog and Sanctity.
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Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I've explained plenty of theory and tech, and posted an link containing much more explanation. I think you should read before saying things like that. Or, if you did read all of my posts, perhaps stop flat out lying just because you can't give up any ground on your precious position and admit that someone else has said something that disagrees with your view.
Theory: a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based
Tech: random cards you like
Yes, there is a ton of tech here. You have offered precious little theory, only basically saying "my list is good because it has a toolbox and toolboxes are good".
I haven't lied. That accusation has no place in this discussion. I would argue that it's much more "childish" than my sarcasm for your heavy reliance on two-card combos. On which point: "Crop Rotation into Serra's Sanctum into Academy Rector into anotherCrop Rotation into Phyrexian Tower" is not a plan. It's a wish list.
I have actually shared some theory. Each Leyline is a mana source with Sanctum and strengthens your threat with Opalescence, so running more Leylines fundamentally makes the combo faster and stronger. It also makes you much more vulnerable to the first Wasteland, which is why I recommend 4 Suppression Field and 4 of either Petrified Field or Noxious Revival. Finally, you have to resolve fewer spells to actually win the game. This is an advantage against blue counter decks. Additionally, it makes you much scarier in top-deck mode, as you can rip a single card that will allow you to crash in for 10+ damage very quickly, rather than being able to pull a card which will allow you to attack for 6 or 8 damage.
These simple truths about Serra's Sanctum and Opalescence constitute a theoretical basis for adopting more Leylines.
We can even re-frame the advantages of the build in terms of traditional magic concepts like card, mana, and permanent advantage.
Each Leyline provides a mana right from the start with Sanctum, so there is a direct and obvious mana advantage. This carries over to post-board games in which you bring in alternate win conditions like creatures. You start the game with a mana advantage of 2-4 mana over your opponents 1.
You have a permanent advantage right from the start as well, with Leylines starting in play and threatening to become creatures. If you resolve the Opalescence, your mana advantage is heavily compounded. 3-4 hasty 4/4s are probably worth 12 or 16 mana, which means that to get the same result in a "fair" deck would be impossible at that early stage of the game.
Finally, the fact that you only have to resolve 1-2 spells provides virtual card advantage. An early Opalescence will likely win by itself, even through a single Swords to Plowshares, while other builds will need to resolve several spells to win the game. Disruption on some of those opens you up to further interaction and disruption, potentially leading to an eventual game loss.
What does your deck do to pursue these advantages? Well, it has some two-card combos that provide overwhelming advantage if you happen to get them. Perhaps the theory guiding your deck construction is that if you have some tutors and enough 2-card combos you will inevitably get some of these 2-card combos. You generate mana and permanent advantage by resolving permanents from your hand. Oblivion Ring if you happen to already have a Serra's Sanctum gives you a permanent, takes away an opposing permanent, and generates a single mana in each future turn. A Leyline in the opening hand instead of Oblivion Ring gives you the mana and permanent advantage sooner, but does not take away an opposing permanent. In this sense, the heavier Leyline build is much better suited for a fast combo, but will struggle if the game goes very long. (Of course, the deck is dedicated to making certain that the game does not go very long).
That earlier advantage is critical for maximally using the few non-Leyline cards in the deck. The heavy Leyline build is virtually guaranteed to land a turn 1 Suppression Field if it draws it, while the toolbox build is much less likely, being a full 33% to NOT have two Leylines (in a 7-card hand) and being much more likely to keep an opening hand without Serra's Sanctum. Suppression Field generates the same mana and permanent for the casting player if they have Sanctum regardless of the turn it is played, but generates a larger mana advantage if it is played on an earlier turn, as it can stop a larger number of opposing lands from being fetched or Wastelands from being activated.
All of this leads me to this conclusion:
The "all-in" build wins (if at all) by generating overwhelming mana, permanent, and virtual card advantage in an early turn.
The toolbox build wins (if at all) by generating permanent advantage gradually (if at all), mana advantage gradually, and actual card advantage very gradually, with some 2-card combos to give you an explosive finish.
Based on the above, the "all-in" build should be classified as a combo deck. It has the same advantages (in the most general sense) as Charbelcher decks.
Based on the above, the toolbox build should be classified as control or combo/control. It has the same advantages (in the most general sense) as Tezzeret or Lands decks. It can draw a combo in the opening hand (just as these combo/control decks can draw their combo early) but it is not likely to do so (just as these are not either).
Again, I encourage anyone interested to actually test both lists.
By my count, this is 65 card mainboard. Is that intended?
Sadly, I'm finding neither the pure all-in-combo nor the wide toolbox seems to be "just right".
The all-in version ajfirecracker is currently on simply fails to find good enough hands too often (feels like about 25-30% of the time in goldfishing), and folds to even the most trivial single counter hands (force, and even spell pierce or daze frequently), non-damage removal (swords, path, etc on the opalescence), turn 1 discard, or Blood Moon. It usually takes at least 2 turns, sometimes 3, of completely non-interactive play, to rebuild, if it can at all. The plus side is that in about 15-20% of games it just flat wins on turn 2 or even 1, swinging with between 3 and 5 4/4 creatures (this is about as good as Belcher, from what I can see, and much less vulnerable to the normal T1/T2 stabilizers against Belcher's Empty the Warrens plan like Golgari Charm or Engineered Explosives). It's the middle 40% I don't have a good way to evaluate. How many decks in legacy will let you spend 1 or 2 turns uninterrupted, waiting to draw into your tutor to Opalescence plan? Sanctity and Void do give you some breathing room against many decks, but not always and sometimes not enough.
By comparison, the serenechaos' toolbox version seems to fail to generate the instant win, except for extremely rare occasions. Almost never swings for 20 on turn 1, and even has problems reliably playing Opalescence on turn 3 (2-ish Leylines in an otherwise keepable hand seems pretty typical in goldfishing, plus a suppression field or similar on turns 1 & 2). On the upside it seems much more likely to actually have a game if it doesn't go off early. It's much easier to build up to getting back into the game, both via having non-Sanctum mana, a number of mini-draw engines like Horizon Canopy, and having more 2-3 cost enchants that it can drop to build up critical mass. And the stepping stone enchants are often relatively effective at stalling out the game against many decks. On the other hand, tutoring up answer enchants is still pretty slow, and a lot of the individual parts of the toolbox are no good without other parts also being available. Rector is no good without a Tower, Wasteland and Canopy are not engines without Crucible, and all the tutors except maybe Crop Rotation are fairly slow (Idyllic costs too much to cast then play the result in the same turn early on, Enlightened and Sterling put things on top of library, which means you also need draw power or a turn to make them pay off, which ends up putting them into expensive or slow, depending on the situation). That's a lot of interlocking pieces that need proper sequencing and I feel like it's just giving disruption more time to find a chink to wedge into your gameplan and stall you out.
So what do I think Leylines needs?
I think 12 lands seems the absolute minimum. Below that you just have to mulligan too much. Even with Serum Powder, mulliganing to Sanctum isn't reliable enough, with only 4 viable targets to hit. The Crop Rotation plan does take up slots, but also enables some other interesting options, like actually hard casting non-white Leylines and in gold fishing it seems to seriously up the rates of keepable hands. I do like the Horizon Canopy tech in particular, as green as a second mana color enables a few interesting things (Crop Rotations, Sterling Grove, possibly Mana Bloom to fix colors from Sanctum or get up to the 4th mana for an Opalescence). Mikokoro, Center of the Sea is less compelling; repeatable is good, but it's also expensive (effectively 3 mana), and produces only colorless, which means it effectively doesn't count unless you already have a Sanctum, Canopy, or other source to jumpstart you into your lowest end of enchants. I do like Petrified Field as a substitute or supplement for Crucible of Worlds, though not sure I like a full 4. I'd ideally like to be able to hard cast any leyline in the deck, but right now I don't see a way to do that and still maintain the draw utility of Canopy and Mikokoro. Adding a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx seems the closest, but still relies on having at least one leyline of the color you want to cast out, for devotion, and only works if you've got a Sanctum online to provide the starting mana. Still, Nykthos can also accelerate in W fairly reliably, and does tap for 1 otherwise, so it's probably playable as a Crop Rotation target, at least.
36 Leylines is clearly too many (and you'd never run 4 Singularity anyhow), but even 32 seems like a bit of overkill. I think 20 or less isn't enough, though, as you end up decreasing the value of Sanctum too much. The IQ list had 28, and felt pretty okay in goldfishing. I could see even dropping to 25 +/- 1 to squeeze in a few more cmc 2-3 enchants to help stabilize hands you'd otherwise have to mulligan. I'd probably cut Leyline of the Meek if it weren't the only non-essential one you can cast strictly off Sanctum mana. As is, I'd probably shave 1 or 2 each from Meek, Leyline of Punishment, Leyline of Lightning and Leyline of Lifeforce. Each is situationally useful or could be cast off the primary white and green colors.
For non-Leylines, I don't think anyone has really objected to the idea of 3 or 4 of Suppression Field. It ups your enchant count, it hoses a lot of early game action, it's in the primary color. Beyond that, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Oblivion Ring and Ghostly Prison seem obvious other possibilities.
Rest in Peace is a little dangerous, as we would like to be able to rescue wasteland'd Sanctums with Crucible or Petrified Field, but beyond that, nothing we have cares about graveyards. And while we main 4 Leyline of the Void, it seems to me that many of the very fast combo decks in this format use their graveyard heavily (Reanimator, Dredge) and several more use it moderately (Storm, Tide), and many non-combo decks use it at least incidentally (anything else with DRS, Snapcaster, Punishing Fires or Cabal Therapy, etc). It's also a cmc 2 white enchant, which fits right into the plan of ramping up to Opalescence on a less than perfect draw. And unlike Void, actually castable in game 1 if we find we're up against a graveyard deck.
Finally, Stony Silence. Nothing in Leylines is vulnerable to it, unless you're running the Helm combo. It's Null Rod but a white enchant, making it power up both Sanctum and Nykthos, and being tutorable by more cards. It turns off Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, Chrome Mox, Mox Opal, signets, the equip abilities of swords, Jitte, and Batterskull (and Batterskull's return ability), Birthing Pod, Grindstone, and a ton of other incidental stuff. Landing this on turn 2 after a turn 1 Suppression Field seems like it could just completely lock out a fair number of decks. As with RIP, this is something we could tutor and play in game 1 against a deck relying on artifact mana or equipment or a game-ending artifact combo.
Other slightly more offbeat stuff I found while looking for things to make Nykthos better with WW cards: Runed Halo is surprisingly awesome in a lot of games (it can even name True Name Nemesis), though probably still better as a sideboard card. Rise of the Hobgoblins is a decent sink for white mana that gives us potential blockers and a combat enhancement for animated enchantments (allowing Suppression Fields to block profitably against bears and Leylines to handle Batterskulls).
Mainboard is similar to the IQ list, but shaves just a few Leylines for a couple more toolbox-y answers that also make playing up the mana chain a little more likely, and revamps the manabase with some of the ideas from this thread.
Sideboard is not transformational, but rather mostly shoring up things. There's a pair of basics to crop rotate for, another Petrified Field, and a Crucible to deal with decks that attack mana (via Wasteland) and an Aura of Silence to further help against Blood Moon. The extra Leylines and Field can come in to get closer to ajfirecracker's all-in-combo against decks where that is the only possible answer. The Heliod/Sterling Grove/Meek/Lifeforce package is a bit of a thought experiment meant for very long grindy control games like Miracles. Finally, the singleton Parallax Wave is mostly just for cute, but as serenechaos points out, it can gain you infinite life under the right circumstances and disrupt creature based strategies like Elf Combo.
As does your list, aj. Losing to Blood Moon is something none of our lists are geared to deal with, and will probably remain so unless we add specific hate for it in the 75.
DaR, your list looks alright, although I suggest Sterling Grove over Idyllic Tutor yes, it is slower, and yes, it can be harder to cast. But it is an enchantment itself and grants shroud, both very huge.
I did not notice that the list Inposted was 65 cards, I was going back and forth on a lot of numbers, and toying with cutting Powders. I must have added them back in and forgotten to cut 4 more cards.
I think the main disconnect here is in utilizing the toolbox. Not that you are utilizing it wrong, just that any deck with a large toolbox tuned to beat meta decks is almost impossible to goldfish. You can't use singleton answers and lines of play based on multiple tutors against an opponent who isn't doing anything. Without playing against real opponents, it's not possible to analyze the efficacy of the toolbox, or work out optimal lines of play.
The other important factor is speed. We keep discussing it, but we never discuss the intricacies of speed, just whether or not we can kill on turn 1.
First of all, even as a combo deck this deck is not designed to kill turn 1. A turn 1 Opalescence is strong, but generally the deck is killing turn 2-3. Pregame 2-4 Leylines, Turn 1-2 Opalescence, swing, turn 2-3 swing. Or, alternately, Pregame 2-4 Leylines, Turn 1 E. tutor, turn 2 Helm (or enchantments to hit 4), turn 3 activate (or cast Helm). Yes, Sanctum+Opalescence+5 Leylines is cool. No, none of these list are going to pull it off even half the time.
So now, the question becomes "What is our opponent doing while we set up the turn 3 kill?" Obviously they are not goldfish. So, if, instead of passing Turn 1 without killing them, we drop a Spirit, or a Field, we are stalling them. Sometimes this slows us down as well, because we need to E. tutor as well, or we need to pay 3 for Canopy. But even when it does, it will almost never be balanced. We get ramped by playing these cards. We have unfair amounts of mana and disruption a la Sanctity, Void, Anticipation. And we topdeck tutors and more disruption while we are stalling, or potentially we just topdeck an autowin.
How about the speed of our answers? Most of our tutors go to the top of the deck. Without Mikokoro or Canopy, that's a whole extra turn away. Well, how fast is your opponent doing things you need to answer? Did they just plop down a Goyf on turn 2? Well, if you're worried, you can E. Tutor right now and Oring it as soon as you untap. Probably though you can take a few hits and (if you haven't just won yet) tutor when EOT when you need to. Liliana? Yeah, they'll get a +1 off her (unless you have Field out). And then you find Field or Oring EOT and hit it. Really, nothing we can do can answer it faster than that unless we start playing counterspells.
You can take out creatures with tap effects before they can be used, go find Wave before their army is enough to kill you, fetch up Opalescence and win before they combo out. Speed is not really an issue since almost all threats require a turn to start being useful.
Show and Tell is somewhat of an exception here. If they drop a jellyfish, you have a turn to find Oring, but it's still best to have it right then. Really, just hope for the best and in Game 2, tutor up what you need right away.
So, the reason that I feel a toolbox is necessary, is that when you are aiming for a Turn 2-3 win, you have to have things to do turns 1-2. Show and Tell does it with Ponder/Brainstorm/Force of Will, we do it with tutors and miser meta-answers. Our answers are broad and do a lot of splash damage, and all of our pieces work together in lots of ways.
As an aside, have you ever considered that Rector is a multi-fog if your opponent is scared to swing, and a tutor+mini fog with Anticipation out? It seems to me that mediocre alone+broken with one of 10 other cards is worthy of inclusion.
I will say that I don't really care for Stony Silence maindeck. Maybe sideboard. But it hits so few decks and also, incidentally, hits Tree of Tales and prevents Helm Combo in the lists that run it.
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Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
Hrm. True. Forgot Opalescence is "other". Still, counters and discard are both very hard to come back from if you have absolutely no additional draw of any sort. And while Petrified can recover wastelanded Sanctums, that's another '4 in 50' scenario, which is not terribly good odds. Having a few mana sources that would let you at least drop Suppression Fields might give you the time to draw into them.
Both your list and the list of serenechaos lose to an early Blood Moon with near certainty (even after sideboarding).
In game one, absolutely. Dead on table. I could fix that by maybe swapping one of the other utility/hate cards for a mainboard Oblivion Ring, but that feels weaker to me in many match ups.
After side board, if you know it's there, you at least have a chance. You have to forgo the idea of the immediate win unless you actually have a sequence that involves 4 Leylines into Opalescence in your opening 7.
You can only beat a turn 1 Blood Moon if you're on the play with very specific hands/draws. I'm ignoring Serum Powders and mulligans, because this is a quick-ish forum post, not a PhD thesis.
Any 4 Leylines, a Sanctum, and Opalescence. (1.5% chance)
Any 4 Leylines, any green source, a Crop Rotate, and Opalescence. (0.2% chance)
Any 3 Leylines, a Sanctum, and the Aura of Silence. (1.4% chance)
Any 3 Leylines, a green source, and a Crop Rotation, plus the Aura of Silence. (6.2% chance)
A plains in hand, and then 2 other lands and either Aura of Silence or a Tutor in hand or drawn (~4% chance by turn 4)
A green source and Crop Rotation in hand, then seeing 2 more land and either Aura or Tutor (~6% by turn 4)
The scenarios aren't mutually exclusive, but the Leyline + Sanctum scenarios don't overlap much with the immediate basic land scenarios, so the probability gets weirder than I'd like to actually calculate, but it's more than 10% and less than 20%, and more towards the former. For sake of argument, call it 13-14%. And again, this ignores any mulligans with or without Serum Powder. Once you add those in, I'd say you probably realistically have a 15-20% chance to be able to fight out of Blood Moon that comes down on the opponent's Turn 1 on the draw.
Turn 2 you have a much better chance, though the probabilities again get beyond my ability to calculate in short order, as you're now chaining multiple dependent events, as Leylines only matter in hand on turn 1, and any sequence which lands a plains on turn 1 or 2 does not need to land a basic forest to crop rotate later, so this requires multiple HGD calculations per turn over multiple turns. However, you have the following broad sequences of play:
Either play or rotate into a Sanctum and have the Aura on turn 2 either naturally or via tutor on turn 1, and then either have 2 Leylines and another land or 3 Leylines in play to cast Aura on 2.
Have or Rotate into a Plains by turn 2 and then tutor/have the Aura and draw into 2 land (probably tutoring Tale of Trees via Plains and Enlightened Tutor, even if it becomes a Mountain in play)
Have a basic Forest and at least one Crop Rotation for any other land into Plains, then proceed as above.
Doing some rough estimation that handwaves over the event chaining with via "fudge factors", it should be somewhere around 25-30% odds that you can set up a line that can prevent the Bloodmoon on 2 via Aura's tax, and rising to about 45-50% that you can cast and then immediately crack the Aura by no later than turn 4 on the play via having a Plains and additional lands in play. Add in mulligans and those go up to probably 35-40% chance to stop it on turn 2, and about 50-55% to break out of it by turn 4.
If the Blood Moon doesn't come down to the opponent's turn 3 on the draw, the chance gets even better, as you now have potentially multiple tutors resolving to guarantee both Aura and extra land, or to drop things like a Suppression Field on turn 2 to further power up your Sanctum for possible tutor + casting on turn 3. I'm not even going to try and enumerate the paths, but my gut instinct is that you're probably approaching 65-70% likely to be able to stop or immediately brick any Blood Moon, if you suspect it is coming and play accordingly.
Now, mind you, that's *only* breaking/stopping the Blood Moon, and advancing your board state only via land drops and maybe an incidental tutors along the way, and you may have had to burn tutors to get there, so unless the rest of your hand was already perfect, you're in a fair bit of trouble still. However, if you have a Leyline of Anticipation, you may actually be able to advance your board mostly normally, as long as you have the Aura in hand. You can hold mana to react with rotations/aura of silences if they do drop the Moon, then drop whatever you need at their end of turn if they don't.
It's not a fight you want to have, but a couple of basics and the Aura at least give you a chance to make it a real game instead of just extending the hand. That said, my only answer main or side to a Magus of the Moon is the "joke" Parallax Wave, and casting that under a moon effect is impossible with only one Plains, so it's either have it or die.
Practically speaking, there's only a few decks I know of that run Blood Moon regularly enough to matter (Imperial Painter, AIR and Dragon Stompy, with the rare RUG Delver deck I could find in older event deck listings), and most of the ones that do also seem to run Magus. Which means if I am serious about having an out to the moon effect, I also need to ensure that I can legitimately remove a Magus while under Moon effect. That probably means something like swapping Aura of Silence for an all purpose answer like Oblivion Ring or ditching some other cards to add a Journey to Nowhere. Swords could work, but you'd need a 4 of, as you have no way to tutor for it unlike O-Ring or JtN.
Incidentally, since I had my HGD stuff up, I did up exact percentages for the variants of turn 1 Opalescence:
ajfirecracker's 32 Leyline, No Crop Rotation: 4.3% on the play, 9.2% on the draw.
IQ List with 28 Leylines, 4 Crop Rotation, 7 Green Sources: 3.2% on the play, 8.7% on the draw
my 24 Leyline, 4 Crop Rotations, 5 Green Sources: 1.7% on the play, 5% on the draw
serenechaos' original toolbox version, 21 Leyline, 4 Crop Rotation, 10 Green Sources: .9% on the play, 2.8% on the draw
The Rotation plan adds about 20% reliability versus the same deck without Rotations. 24 Leylines with no rotations converts about 1.5% on the play and 4% on the draw. 28 Leylines with no rotations converts about 2.7% on the play and 6.4% on the draw. At 32 Leylines adding in the rotations would convert about 4.8% on the play and 11.6% on the draw (assuming you could find room for it).
Given Belcher seem to post about 12-15% turn 1 kills, and TinFins a little better (I saw one comment that indicated as high as 18%, but I don't know how reputable it was), but not excessively so, according to a few random threads I found, this the all-in version is surprisingly not too far off the mark. Though I suppose technically unless you get the perfect 5 Leyline, Opalescence, Sanctum hand, it's technically not a turn 1 kill, but rather a turn 2 kill.
These numbers don't really say anything about overall quality, though, as I suspect TinFins is a lot more resilient to common hate and a lot faster to rebuild if one of the reanimation spells gets countered/discarded.
I think knowing that the Crop Rotation plan adds about 20% likelihood to go off on the first turn is the valuable takeaway here. Assessing that against needing roughly 8 slots in the mainboard is relevant.
If nothing else this has made me consider what it might take to power things out even faster, more consistently, or through more disruption. I don't think there's really room for a counterspell suite at all, so that's probably out, leaving only going faster or using things which are resilient to normal counters or being able to go off again more easily.
Serum Powder helps with mulligans, but it seems most combo decks eschew it in favor of more fast mana or deck manipulation/selection tools like Sensei's Divining Top or Brainstorm. This is clearly not a BS sort of deck, but Top or Scroll Rack could work, especially in concert with all the tutoring to top of deck that gets done (nice symbiotic relationship, the tutors act like fetches in most top decks to shuffle away chaff, while top's draw or rack's swap lets us get the tutored answer into hand immediately for with minimal additional mana). On the downside, neither helps power up Sanctum, unlike Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library. They are easier to cast, though, and both can be activated on demand, rather than requiring the draw step to work.
On the fast mana front, Mox Diamond and Mox Opal both lack appropriate conditions in the deck. Chrome Mox might work, but there's not a ton of spare cards to pitch, given how much of our hand we want to lay on the table immediately. I could see using Lotus Petal to help guarantee a first turn drop of a Suppression Field and still cast a tutor or maybe to find that 4th mana for an Opalescence in a 3 Leyline hand. It also helps face check for counters. Elvish Spirit Guide and Simian Spirit Guide avoid the counters, but R isn't very useful, so only ESG is really useful for casting anything we'd want to cast (Crop Rotation if that stays, Sterling Grove if that ends up main). I briefly considered some mana rocks (Talisman of Unity, Mind Stone, Prismatic Lens, Prophetic Prism) for ramp/fixing, but they're all dead draws if things are going well, and don't really accelerate into an immediate comeback if they're not.
On the pure resilience front, I can't think of anything that's going to really help much there. There aren't many more tutors that hit things we'd care about, nor easy way to recur things from the graveyard. There's no Boseiju equivalent for enchantments. Vexing Shusher would work, but GG is harsh and GGG to cast and use it in one turn is more or less impossible without seriously changing the deck's design.
Hmm. That is a very cogent analysis, although something is niggling at me as I look at your turn 1 probabilities.
Are you simply doing HGD to find the odds of [4+ Leylines] AND ([Sanctum] OR [Crop Rotation+Green Source]) AND [Opalescence]?
Belcher puts up much better numbers than that for turn 1. Maybe 50%. But really, this is just an illustration of my point earlier; this isn't supposed to be a turn 1 deck. It's a Turn 2-3 deck. On turn 2 you get to do things like chain Sanctums and/or Rotations so that you can cast Opalescence off only two Leylines. You get to do things like increase your odds of having Opalescence from 40% to ~80% by utilizing tutors. Turn 2 is easily the crucial turn in this deck. Not the turn you should be auto-winning, mind you. Just the crucial turn.
Top is easily a possible inclusion in these decks. I would generally cut Powders for it first, as it essentially does what Powder does, more slowly and a little less reliably (but more safely and with better synergy). The link I posted earlier had some discussion about cutting Powders in certain variants, I'll see of I can dig up their words on the subject.
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Slowly breaking.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
Hmm. That is a very cogent analysis, although something is niggling at me as I look at your turn 1 probabilities.
Are you simply doing HGD to find the odds of [4+ Leylines] AND ([Sanctum] OR [Crop Rotation+Green Source]) AND [Opalescence]?
I don't believe you can do [4+ Leylines] AND ([Sanctum] OR [Crop Rotation+Green Source]) AND [Opalescence] as [Crop Rotation + Green] is complementary to [Sanctum] (You can't have Rotation + Green + Sanctum in a hand that also has 4 Leylines and an Opalescence in 7 cards). You have to do P(HGD(Combo With Sanctum)|HGD(Combo With Rotation+Green)). The dependent but exclusive events were why I didn't even try to actually work out exact probabilities for anything on turn 2 or later, as you have to start accounting for the fact that the sequence of 3 Leylines + Opalescence in hand and drawing the 4th Leyline is fundamentally different than 4 Leylines in hand and drawing the Opalescence. The fact that the game state gets so large so fast is part of what makes MtG so interesting.
Belcher puts up much better numbers than that for turn 1. Maybe 50%. But really, this is just an illustration of my point earlier; this isn't supposed to be a turn 1 deck. It's a Turn 2-3 deck. On turn 2 you get to do things like chain Sanctums and/or Rotations so that you can cast Opalescence off only two Leylines. You get to do things like increase your odds of having Opalescence from 40% to ~80% by utilizing tutors. Turn 2 is easily the crucial turn in this deck. Not the turn you should be auto-winning, mind you. Just the crucial turn.
Aha! And a light turned on, explaining why serenechaos and ajfirecracker have such differing views of how things are working.
I believe ajfirecracker has been using "turn X" to mean "opponent's health reaches 0 or they concede to an untenable board state", whereas serenechaos seem to be approaching it from Zvi Mowshowitz's "fundamental turn" theory where that's the turn where the deck attains critical momentum and does its thing to achieve sudden but nearly inevitable victory. I was using the same "opponent loses" terminology as ajfirecracker, which is why I pointed out that technically we can only turn 1 kill on the perfect Sanctum + Opalescence + 5 Leyline hand, and 4 leyline hands don't actually kill until 2 turn, despite having "gone off". If you instead use the "fundamental turn" approach, then yes, the toolbox version of the deck will fairly reliably achieve a board state on turn 2 or 3 where they have locked enough things down with Suppression Fields or other tech, gotten enough mana or combos onto the board to be able to cast Opalescence or Helm when it's advantageous and start the (fairly short) clock of actually killing them unless they have The Answer.
On the Belcher front, I got the numbers from here: This PDF . His methodology was Monte Carlo, rather than exact, but Belcher's simple enough that it's a straight forward program and thus seems "good enough".
Belcher "goes off" unopposed about 60% of the time on turn 1, it's just that doesn't always generate a kill, because on the Empty the Warrens plan even if they somehow get to 20 goblins it takes at least one more untap step to kill. More practically they generate around 12-14 goblins, which turns into a clock that can take 2-3 combat steps to actually move someone's life to 0, giving time for outs like a Golgari Charm, Massacre, etc. Only an actual Belcher+Activation is enough to generate an outright kill, which seems to happen between 9 and 11% of the time depending on exact deck composition, which I padded a little to account for still effective mulligan hands and any variations in tech he wasn't using or hadn't been developed when he did the analysis many months ago.
By "fundamental turn" approach, Leylines is generally a Turn 1 deck on the all in approach and a turn 2-3 deck if you're on the toolbox plan. By the "opponent loses" approach, it's only a turn 1 deck a minuscule percentage of the time (< 1%, even on the all-in style deck, and still under 2% if you up to 36 Leylines and only 4 Sanctums for land and pray you don't get 2 Singularities). There's a few lines of play that lead to actual turn 2 deaths:
4 Leylines on the table, Sanctum, Turn 1 Opalescence (5-12%, depending on build)
5 Leylines on the table, Sanctum, Turn 1 Tutor for Opalescence. (around 2-6%, depending on build)
5 Leylines on the table, Rotate into Sanctum, natural draw Opalescence on turn 2 (very small)
5 Leylines on the table, Opalescence in hand, natural draw Sanctum on turn 2 (equally small)
5 Leylines on the table, Opalescence and Green Source or Rotate in hand, natural draw into the other for Sanctum on turn 2 (still very small, but slightly less so)
However, once you've hit end of turn 3, there's many lines of play that could lead to having turned sideways for 20 or more damage. All you need is to animate at least 3 Leylines on turn 2, or 4 + 2 cmc 2 enchants on turn 3.
I'm pretty much aiming for a turn 3 actual death, with just enough support to ensure that if I get knocked off this plan I am at least theoretically capable of recovering. Thus why I want at least some tech like Nykthos, which lets me in theory actually cast at least a few of my non-white Leylines after the game start, and Canopies to actually draw into answers if I got Toxic Deluged for 4 and lost my board.
Top is easily a possible inclusion in these decks. I would generally cut Powders for it first, as it essentially does what Powder does, more slowly and a little less reliably (but more safely and with better synergy). The link I posted earlier had some discussion about cutting Powders in certain variants, I'll see of I can dig up their words on the subject.
Normally I hate Serum Powder, as a Powder in hand after turn 1 starts is complete dead weight, and even significantly up your chances of fizzling when you go off. A lot of the decks that want to use it can't ever cast it. Plus, there are times where you simply can't even use it as intended because other critical pieces are in your hand that you can't afford to permanently exile.
My complaint with Powder is actually slightly less in this deck than many others. Leylines cost 4, and a 3 drop that accelerates you into a 4th mana when you only have 12 lands in deck represents represents a legitimate, if less than optimal, play. Especially since a hand with 2 or 3 Leylines and another cmc 2 enchant represents a fairly common occurrence.
That said, Lotus Petal seems to offer the same effect a lot of times, namely getting you to that critical mass of mana to cast Opalescence (either directly or by jumping a Sanctum up a notch via a cmc 2 enchant) or cast an early tutor or rotation. It actually gives you another line to get lethal damage on turn 2, as Sanctum + Lotus Petal could cast a turn 1 Opalescence on only 3 Leylines. Or even 2 Leylines with 2 Petals, which is still a turn 3 lethal clock against a goldfish, and gives you at least 3 mana off a Sanctum. I'd probably have to write a program for monte carlo simulation to see if Petals or Powder were more effective in generating keepable hands.
On the utility front, it probably slightly improves the Crop Rotation package in general, giving you more virtual green sources. And like Tree of Tales, you could tutor for it via Enlightened Tutor if you absolutely had to. Petals also could get you up to 3 mana for anti-Blood Moon cards like Oblivion Ring or Aura of Silence. And, in absolute worst case in a game gone horribly long and wrong, you could potentially use 2 to play a non-white Leyline and jumpstart devotion for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx in order to cast otherwise dead-in-hand leylines of that color. However, at that point, you're probably actually better off with Chrome Mox, as imprinting a card you couldn't cast anyway to gain permanent mana is almost always better.
Between Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack, I'm not sure which I like more. I like that Top is 1 to cast and free to flip, making it a very nice synergy with all the top of deck tutors, plus being nearly unkillable. Rack on the other hand lets you dig much harder and get rid of things like uncastable leylines in hand. It also gets around Spirit of the Labyrinth, which makes that a more interesting option. They both have the downside that a lot of times a Sanctum is our only mana source, and thus we'll be constrained in when we use it, to avoid draining our whole mana pool at end of phase. That closes off a lot less upkeep before draw shenanigans, and gives us much less opportunity for opponent's turn setup. By the same token, they do serve as a nice sink for the excess mana that'd go to waste when you have to tap for 3 to cast a cmc 1 tutor or cmc 2 enchant.
This is the Spirit list I will start testing after I get home and rest some. I will probably try several variations, mostly around bringing Powders in and out to see whether they are necessary.
I'm definitely going to run a single copy. More than two is way too heavy. 5 mana is right over the critical cmc for the deck (4) and it might be harder to turn on than you expect. But getting back an enchantment every turn is amazing.
How are your transformational slots working for you?
Chancellor of the Annex may be a decent SB slot to protect you against counters on Opalescence. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben may be worth it as the restriction probably hurts them more than you, especially postboard if you board into beatdown plan.
For the creature win strategy, Heliod, God of the Sun? The tokens get pumped by some of your Leylines and count as enchantments, making Sanctum give you even more mana. With two white Leylines out (or 1 Leyline + Opalescence or 1 Leyline + Suppression + O-Ring), Heliod also goes crazy beatdown.
I have the Chris Wolfmeyer version, but with Nevermore main as a way of improving the Force of Will issue. Critters that are enchantments are all usable on the 75, but hero of bladehold is not that stellar vs all the swords decks...
The deck needs four Opalescence to maximise the chance of the nut hand, surely?
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i had choose creature because can't be countered with leyline of life force, opal can be countered, its more critic if should be countered, i add some CCM2 for have 3 mana turn 2.if you play all in deck its not very competitve in long time .i try with blue leyline for include FOW but its same...she stick in the hand.
Im french, metagame should be different? sure she take in face swords....but you have minus sword than differents counter deck
I have the Chris Wolfmeyer version, but with Nevermore main as a way of improving the Force of Will issue. Critters that are enchantments are all usable on the 75, but hero of bladehold is not that stellar vs all the swords decks...
The deck needs four Opalescence to maximise the chance of the nut hand, surely?
yes only 3 lands for 3 land tax, its for filter the deck and upgrade topdeck...not need more lands...and im not dead on one blood moon
i had choose creature because can't be countered with leyline of life force, opal can be countered, its more critic if should be countered, i add some CCM2 for have 3 mana turn 2.if you play all in deck its not very competitve in long time .i try with blue leyline for include FOW but its same...she stick in the hand.
Im french, metagame should be different? sure she take in face swords....but you have minus sword than differents counter deck
I can see creatures get better with Leyline of Lifeforce, but I would probably aim at not using Hero- 3 cc maybe. I agree trying to play with Force is not good. I could not get it to work either.
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The worst part about this deck is its a six-card combo with 8 lands and no alternative win condition that loses immediately to a resolved Force of Will, Surgical Extraction, or Thoughtseize. Bad deck is bad. It's neat in theory to play a bunch of free Leylines, drop a Sanctum and then power out Opalescence on turn 1 making a bunch of 4/4s, but its not going to happen like...ever.
that's why I do not count on opalescence...heaum should be a win condition if i have void in start hand..if i have mass leyline in hand i can try the opalescence out but the main direction is token and creature...i can put on battlefield without affraid to be countered...with with leyline token can attack a 3 each...and win life with the green leyline...its synergic. I think its a track to test
The worst part about this deck is its a six-card combo with 8 lands and no alternative win condition that loses immediately to a resolved Force of Will, Surgical Extraction, or Thoughtseize. Bad deck is bad. It's neat in theory to play a bunch of free Leylines, drop a Sanctum and then power out Opalescence on turn 1 making a bunch of 4/4s, but its not going to happen like...ever.
It does not happen very often, for sure....
Its not really a belcher-esque deck, though. When it wins it often does so via three methods. "Free" scoops, once in a blue moon, due to Leyline of the Void/Sanctity. The odd deck just scoops to them. At an LGS where you know your opponent is on dredge, for example, you will see your LOTV with 4 serum powder in the deck. Almost every time. About 40% of the wins are via Leyline/Helm. Remember the deck runs 4 E tutors and Idyllics, assembling the combo is not that hard. Its like a bad parfait deck, without the long game control elements of parfait or ability to go landtax/scroll rack draw 3 a turn extra. The rest of the wins are via the Opalescence, often t3/4.
It is certainly not a "good" deck- won't argue there. But it has been played by the odd player in SCG level events every couple of years and they have produced decent records with it. The deck tech on the Wolfmeyer version and youtube coverage show the deck doing ok considering the event.
I personally use Nevermore over Suppression field, I think it baits out the force and adds to the 2 actually interactive Leylines, and often it can be cast t1/2 where 4cc can't.
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the biggest problem of opalescence way for main kill is counter deck (around 60%) metagame have some counters.I prefer choose the way of creature can't be counter in main kill (with this creature, and leyline token powered around 10 damage each turn).
Hero of Bladehold pass over, bolt decay, counter... with leyline in battlefield, win life each turn if other green leyline in battlefield, with this all leyline is use for kill, the only big problem for me is we have no gestion card board :(, no disrupt, its very hard to find some free slot.
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I've only recently started playing Legacy over Modern, so my eye for evaluating the interactive aspects of the toolbox build isn't all that great yet. I just haven't seen enough decks and enough lines of play to really have an intuitive sense for it. The toolbox seemed a little light compared a lot of decks, but still better than sitting idle for a few turns if your first Opalescence gets countered or you just never draw into it or a tutor. Also, I like the idea of at least having outs to a turn 1 or 2 Blood Moon or even just an aggressive Wasteland plan, even if they're 1 or 2 ofs I'd have to draw into naturally. Better odds than just conceding when a Moon drops. But even on an all-in build, I'd probably still dedicate at least 1 slot to a Helm of Obedience if only because it can also be a turn 1 kill with a good hand.
However, another thing I ran into with the toolbox builds, beyond sometimes lacking the early pressure, was that a 2 or 3 leyline hand can occasionally simply not being able to generate enough mana off of Sanctum to even cast an Opalescence in hand. Then you have to get lucky on draws or blow tutors into Suppression Fields/O-Rings/Ghostly Prison/etc in order to get up to the critical 4 or more mana. And when the majority of your tutors put things on top of library and not into hand, that can mean 2 or 3 turns before you have the mana to actually cast the Opalescence, assuming you don't need to draw into yet more tutors to get to it.
There's some tech in the older threads about the archetype I think might still be good. Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library seem like a good way to dig for Opalescence or a tutor, though the lack of easy shuffle effects other than your tutors hurts. City of Solitude seems to have not panned out, but even just Orim's Chant/Silence is something a lot of people underestimate. Forcing them to burn a counter just to be able to use any other counters on the things you care about for a single seems like a good deal against any deck that's not packing 12+ counters. And if things are going to plan, white mana is something you should probably have spare. Maybe too much win-more?
In newer sets, other than Spirit of the Labyrinth, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx seems like it might be worth playing as a one of, if only because any single Leyline is going to let it fix enough mana to cast any other Leyline of the same color, and in white especially it could easily be generating as much or more mana than Serra's Sanctum. Once you have your Sanctum, you can burn the next Crop Rotation to get that instead of another Sanctum.
Heliod, God of the Sun could be good in the sideboard (or even a singleton in the main). No one seems to be running Revoke Existence, Erase or the like, so if you're not yet on the Opalescence plan, he can turn spare mana from Sanctums into chump blockers, or even a semi-decent clock. On the downside, if he turns on as a creature he is vulnerable to more things in Legacy than Standard or Modern (Swords, Edicts, even Karakas) unless you also dedicate slots to something like Sterling Grove or Greater Auramancy, and his token ability is a bit of a non-bo with Suppression Field. Not sure if the indestructibility, stronger tokens, and granting vigilance to the leylines is better than the cheaper tokens from Sacred Mesa or even Mobilization.
But against some decks, you could probably ride a 5/6 indestructible creature to victory, especially if he also had shroud. RUG, BUG and even 4c Delver decks in particular don't seem to have a good answer to a resolved Heliod except sideboard Submerge, Toxic Deluge or Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and seem to make a pretty high percentage of the meta. Jund is only a little better, with plenty of edicts, but between Leyline of Sanctity and making Cleric tokens those could have a hard time getting through. Those seem to be the archetypes to beat at the moment, so maybe the big guy is worth it.
Oppressive Rays is the other one I have my eye on, for the sideboard. Probably better in an outright enchantress shell, but at least some decks seem vulnerable to this.
Wow! Nykthos is very interesting. I'm not sure how consistent it would be (requiring multiple mana from somewhere else) but if you want to go really big this seems like a great way to do it.
The issue with Helm is that it's a dead draw 60% of the time (when you didn't start with Leyline of the Void), so drawing it directly is often bad. If you have 4+1 mana Opalescence probably gets the job done.
The "all-in" list definitely bites it to Blood Moon, which is something I hadn't really considered. However, it is actually more resilient to Wasteland, as you can get going off a single Petrified Field. You don't need to find an additional green source to Crop Rotation away. It is also more likely to get a turn 1 Suppression Field, because it is more likely to start with multiple Leyline on turn 1. Suppression Field on turn 1 is several times better than turn 2 or later, as it stops more fetch lands if you get it on an earlier turn. The early Suppression Field helps fight Wasteland as well.
I will say that the "all in" list often uses tutors as pseudo ramp spells, most commonly finding Suppression Field. I think you have to do it less often and requiring fewer cards, but it is definitely a line of play that is required rather than optional.
Heliod also caught my eye, but again my concern is just one of consistency. I don't know how reliably you will have double white Leyline to turn him on. Potential uncounterability seems really nice, and might be the biggest upside. Finally, I think depending on time stamps Opalescence might actually shrink him, which makes him that slight bit less attractive.
Oppressive Rays would be an auto-include if it were not an aura (that is, if it did that to their whole team). As is, I don't know. Some decks will probably just pay the 3 and be okay with that. Others might be more disrupted.
Check it out!
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part-1-one-shot-resources/
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part2-tempo/
I've also written a short primer on Manaless Dredge in Vintage:
http://www.eternalcentral.com/the-dredge-of-glory-an-introduction-to-manaless-dredge-in-vintage/
To those who are not actively in denial, and wish to see productive discussion, this is how I would implement Spirit.
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Leyline of Vitality
3 Leyline of Lifeforce
4 Opalescence
1 Helm of Obedience
4 Crop Rotation
4 Enlightened Tutor
2 Academy Rector
2 Sterling Grove
1 Expedition Map
3 Spirit of the Labyrinth
4 Suppression Field
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Parallax Wave
1 Solitary Confinement
3 Gemstone Mine
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Tree of Tales
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Wasteland
4 Orim's Chant
2 Rest in Peace
2 Ghostly Prison
1 Trinisphere
1 Solitary Confinement
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Oblivion Ring
Suppression Field does have anti-synergy with both Canopy and Mikokoro. However, if you have the mana to play Suppression Field, it is almost certainly off a Sanctum. This means your Sanctum taps for at least 3, enough to activate Canopy through one Field, and one-short of activating Mikokoro. A Spirit, Sterling Grove, a third Leyline, or another land all make Mikokoro function smoothly.
Sterling Grove had to go up to 2, because Shroud is much more important on Spirit. This also means an extra virtual copy of all your other enchantments, which is pretty good.
Field also interrupts Parallax Wave, but if you know that you can make the combo happen, just perma-exile your own Suppression Field for 4 mana, and then go off.
Solitary Confinement is very good by itself. With Mikokoro, it's an indefinite wall. With Horizon Canopy, it's a good stalling tactic. With neither of those, it's a multi-turn fog and Sanctity.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
Theory: a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based
Tech: random cards you like
Yes, there is a ton of tech here. You have offered precious little theory, only basically saying "my list is good because it has a toolbox and toolboxes are good".
I haven't lied. That accusation has no place in this discussion. I would argue that it's much more "childish" than my sarcasm for your heavy reliance on two-card combos. On which point: "Crop Rotation into Serra's Sanctum into Academy Rector into another Crop Rotation into Phyrexian Tower" is not a plan. It's a wish list.
I have actually shared some theory. Each Leyline is a mana source with Sanctum and strengthens your threat with Opalescence, so running more Leylines fundamentally makes the combo faster and stronger. It also makes you much more vulnerable to the first Wasteland, which is why I recommend 4 Suppression Field and 4 of either Petrified Field or Noxious Revival. Finally, you have to resolve fewer spells to actually win the game. This is an advantage against blue counter decks. Additionally, it makes you much scarier in top-deck mode, as you can rip a single card that will allow you to crash in for 10+ damage very quickly, rather than being able to pull a card which will allow you to attack for 6 or 8 damage.
These simple truths about Serra's Sanctum and Opalescence constitute a theoretical basis for adopting more Leylines.
We can even re-frame the advantages of the build in terms of traditional magic concepts like card, mana, and permanent advantage.
Each Leyline provides a mana right from the start with Sanctum, so there is a direct and obvious mana advantage. This carries over to post-board games in which you bring in alternate win conditions like creatures. You start the game with a mana advantage of 2-4 mana over your opponents 1.
You have a permanent advantage right from the start as well, with Leylines starting in play and threatening to become creatures. If you resolve the Opalescence, your mana advantage is heavily compounded. 3-4 hasty 4/4s are probably worth 12 or 16 mana, which means that to get the same result in a "fair" deck would be impossible at that early stage of the game.
Finally, the fact that you only have to resolve 1-2 spells provides virtual card advantage. An early Opalescence will likely win by itself, even through a single Swords to Plowshares, while other builds will need to resolve several spells to win the game. Disruption on some of those opens you up to further interaction and disruption, potentially leading to an eventual game loss.
What does your deck do to pursue these advantages? Well, it has some two-card combos that provide overwhelming advantage if you happen to get them. Perhaps the theory guiding your deck construction is that if you have some tutors and enough 2-card combos you will inevitably get some of these 2-card combos. You generate mana and permanent advantage by resolving permanents from your hand. Oblivion Ring if you happen to already have a Serra's Sanctum gives you a permanent, takes away an opposing permanent, and generates a single mana in each future turn. A Leyline in the opening hand instead of Oblivion Ring gives you the mana and permanent advantage sooner, but does not take away an opposing permanent. In this sense, the heavier Leyline build is much better suited for a fast combo, but will struggle if the game goes very long. (Of course, the deck is dedicated to making certain that the game does not go very long).
That earlier advantage is critical for maximally using the few non-Leyline cards in the deck. The heavy Leyline build is virtually guaranteed to land a turn 1 Suppression Field if it draws it, while the toolbox build is much less likely, being a full 33% to NOT have two Leylines (in a 7-card hand) and being much more likely to keep an opening hand without Serra's Sanctum. Suppression Field generates the same mana and permanent for the casting player if they have Sanctum regardless of the turn it is played, but generates a larger mana advantage if it is played on an earlier turn, as it can stop a larger number of opposing lands from being fetched or Wastelands from being activated.
All of this leads me to this conclusion:
The "all-in" build wins (if at all) by generating overwhelming mana, permanent, and virtual card advantage in an early turn.
The toolbox build wins (if at all) by generating permanent advantage gradually (if at all), mana advantage gradually, and actual card advantage very gradually, with some 2-card combos to give you an explosive finish.
Based on the above, the "all-in" build should be classified as a combo deck. It has the same advantages (in the most general sense) as Charbelcher decks.
Based on the above, the toolbox build should be classified as control or combo/control. It has the same advantages (in the most general sense) as Tezzeret or Lands decks. It can draw a combo in the opening hand (just as these combo/control decks can draw their combo early) but it is not likely to do so (just as these are not either).
Again, I encourage anyone interested to actually test both lists.
Check it out!
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part-1-one-shot-resources/
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part2-tempo/
I've also written a short primer on Manaless Dredge in Vintage:
http://www.eternalcentral.com/the-dredge-of-glory-an-introduction-to-manaless-dredge-in-vintage/
By my count, this is 65 card mainboard. Is that intended?
Sadly, I'm finding neither the pure all-in-combo nor the wide toolbox seems to be "just right".
The all-in version ajfirecracker is currently on simply fails to find good enough hands too often (feels like about 25-30% of the time in goldfishing), and folds to even the most trivial single counter hands (force, and even spell pierce or daze frequently), non-damage removal (swords, path, etc on the opalescence), turn 1 discard, or Blood Moon. It usually takes at least 2 turns, sometimes 3, of completely non-interactive play, to rebuild, if it can at all. The plus side is that in about 15-20% of games it just flat wins on turn 2 or even 1, swinging with between 3 and 5 4/4 creatures (this is about as good as Belcher, from what I can see, and much less vulnerable to the normal T1/T2 stabilizers against Belcher's Empty the Warrens plan like Golgari Charm or Engineered Explosives). It's the middle 40% I don't have a good way to evaluate. How many decks in legacy will let you spend 1 or 2 turns uninterrupted, waiting to draw into your tutor to Opalescence plan? Sanctity and Void do give you some breathing room against many decks, but not always and sometimes not enough.
By comparison, the serenechaos' toolbox version seems to fail to generate the instant win, except for extremely rare occasions. Almost never swings for 20 on turn 1, and even has problems reliably playing Opalescence on turn 3 (2-ish Leylines in an otherwise keepable hand seems pretty typical in goldfishing, plus a suppression field or similar on turns 1 & 2). On the upside it seems much more likely to actually have a game if it doesn't go off early. It's much easier to build up to getting back into the game, both via having non-Sanctum mana, a number of mini-draw engines like Horizon Canopy, and having more 2-3 cost enchants that it can drop to build up critical mass. And the stepping stone enchants are often relatively effective at stalling out the game against many decks. On the other hand, tutoring up answer enchants is still pretty slow, and a lot of the individual parts of the toolbox are no good without other parts also being available. Rector is no good without a Tower, Wasteland and Canopy are not engines without Crucible, and all the tutors except maybe Crop Rotation are fairly slow (Idyllic costs too much to cast then play the result in the same turn early on, Enlightened and Sterling put things on top of library, which means you also need draw power or a turn to make them pay off, which ends up putting them into expensive or slow, depending on the situation). That's a lot of interlocking pieces that need proper sequencing and I feel like it's just giving disruption more time to find a chink to wedge into your gameplan and stall you out.
So what do I think Leylines needs?
I think 12 lands seems the absolute minimum. Below that you just have to mulligan too much. Even with Serum Powder, mulliganing to Sanctum isn't reliable enough, with only 4 viable targets to hit. The Crop Rotation plan does take up slots, but also enables some other interesting options, like actually hard casting non-white Leylines and in gold fishing it seems to seriously up the rates of keepable hands. I do like the Horizon Canopy tech in particular, as green as a second mana color enables a few interesting things (Crop Rotations, Sterling Grove, possibly Mana Bloom to fix colors from Sanctum or get up to the 4th mana for an Opalescence). Mikokoro, Center of the Sea is less compelling; repeatable is good, but it's also expensive (effectively 3 mana), and produces only colorless, which means it effectively doesn't count unless you already have a Sanctum, Canopy, or other source to jumpstart you into your lowest end of enchants. I do like Petrified Field as a substitute or supplement for Crucible of Worlds, though not sure I like a full 4. I'd ideally like to be able to hard cast any leyline in the deck, but right now I don't see a way to do that and still maintain the draw utility of Canopy and Mikokoro. Adding a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx seems the closest, but still relies on having at least one leyline of the color you want to cast out, for devotion, and only works if you've got a Sanctum online to provide the starting mana. Still, Nykthos can also accelerate in W fairly reliably, and does tap for 1 otherwise, so it's probably playable as a Crop Rotation target, at least.
36 Leylines is clearly too many (and you'd never run 4 Singularity anyhow), but even 32 seems like a bit of overkill. I think 20 or less isn't enough, though, as you end up decreasing the value of Sanctum too much. The IQ list had 28, and felt pretty okay in goldfishing. I could see even dropping to 25 +/- 1 to squeeze in a few more cmc 2-3 enchants to help stabilize hands you'd otherwise have to mulligan. I'd probably cut Leyline of the Meek if it weren't the only non-essential one you can cast strictly off Sanctum mana. As is, I'd probably shave 1 or 2 each from Meek, Leyline of Punishment, Leyline of Lightning and Leyline of Lifeforce. Each is situationally useful or could be cast off the primary white and green colors.
For non-Leylines, I don't think anyone has really objected to the idea of 3 or 4 of Suppression Field. It ups your enchant count, it hoses a lot of early game action, it's in the primary color. Beyond that, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Oblivion Ring and Ghostly Prison seem obvious other possibilities.
Rest in Peace is a little dangerous, as we would like to be able to rescue wasteland'd Sanctums with Crucible or Petrified Field, but beyond that, nothing we have cares about graveyards. And while we main 4 Leyline of the Void, it seems to me that many of the very fast combo decks in this format use their graveyard heavily (Reanimator, Dredge) and several more use it moderately (Storm, Tide), and many non-combo decks use it at least incidentally (anything else with DRS, Snapcaster, Punishing Fires or Cabal Therapy, etc). It's also a cmc 2 white enchant, which fits right into the plan of ramping up to Opalescence on a less than perfect draw. And unlike Void, actually castable in game 1 if we find we're up against a graveyard deck.
Finally, Stony Silence. Nothing in Leylines is vulnerable to it, unless you're running the Helm combo. It's Null Rod but a white enchant, making it power up both Sanctum and Nykthos, and being tutorable by more cards. It turns off Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, Chrome Mox, Mox Opal, signets, the equip abilities of swords, Jitte, and Batterskull (and Batterskull's return ability), Birthing Pod, Grindstone, and a ton of other incidental stuff. Landing this on turn 2 after a turn 1 Suppression Field seems like it could just completely lock out a fair number of decks. As with RIP, this is something we could tutor and play in game 1 against a deck relying on artifact mana or equipment or a game-ending artifact combo.
Other slightly more offbeat stuff I found while looking for things to make Nykthos better with WW cards: Runed Halo is surprisingly awesome in a lot of games (it can even name True Name Nemesis), though probably still better as a sideboard card. Rise of the Hobgoblins is a decent sink for white mana that gives us potential blockers and a combat enhancement for animated enchantments (allowing Suppression Fields to block profitably against bears and Leylines to handle Batterskulls).
Right now I'm thinking I would start here:
4 Serra's Sanctum
4 Horizon Canopy
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Petrified Field
1 Tree of Tales
Artifacts
4 Serum Powder
Enchantments
4 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Vitality
2 Leyline of Lifeforce
2 Leyline of Punishment
2 Leyline of the Meek
2 Leyline of Lightning
4 Opalescence
3 Suppression Field
1 Rest in Peace
1 Stony Silence
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
4 Crop Rotation
4 Enlightened Tutor
2 Idyllic Tutor
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Petrified Field
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Aura of Silence
1 Rest in Peace
1 Parallax Wave
2 Leyline of the Meek
2 Leyline of Lifeforce
2 Heliod, God of the Sun
2 Sterling Grove
Mainboard is similar to the IQ list, but shaves just a few Leylines for a couple more toolbox-y answers that also make playing up the mana chain a little more likely, and revamps the manabase with some of the ideas from this thread.
Sideboard is not transformational, but rather mostly shoring up things. There's a pair of basics to crop rotate for, another Petrified Field, and a Crucible to deal with decks that attack mana (via Wasteland) and an Aura of Silence to further help against Blood Moon. The extra Leylines and Field can come in to get closer to ajfirecracker's all-in-combo against decks where that is the only possible answer. The Heliod/Sterling Grove/Meek/Lifeforce package is a bit of a thought experiment meant for very long grindy control games like Miracles. Finally, the singleton Parallax Wave is mostly just for cute, but as serenechaos points out, it can gain you infinite life under the right circumstances and disrupt creature based strategies like Elf Combo.
Both your list and the list of serenechaos lose to an early Blood Moon with near certainty (even after sideboarding).
Check it out!
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part-1-one-shot-resources/
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part2-tempo/
I've also written a short primer on Manaless Dredge in Vintage:
http://www.eternalcentral.com/the-dredge-of-glory-an-introduction-to-manaless-dredge-in-vintage/
DaR, your list looks alright, although I suggest Sterling Grove over Idyllic Tutor yes, it is slower, and yes, it can be harder to cast. But it is an enchantment itself and grants shroud, both very huge.
I did not notice that the list Inposted was 65 cards, I was going back and forth on a lot of numbers, and toying with cutting Powders. I must have added them back in and forgotten to cut 4 more cards.
I think the main disconnect here is in utilizing the toolbox. Not that you are utilizing it wrong, just that any deck with a large toolbox tuned to beat meta decks is almost impossible to goldfish. You can't use singleton answers and lines of play based on multiple tutors against an opponent who isn't doing anything. Without playing against real opponents, it's not possible to analyze the efficacy of the toolbox, or work out optimal lines of play.
The other important factor is speed. We keep discussing it, but we never discuss the intricacies of speed, just whether or not we can kill on turn 1.
First of all, even as a combo deck this deck is not designed to kill turn 1. A turn 1 Opalescence is strong, but generally the deck is killing turn 2-3. Pregame 2-4 Leylines, Turn 1-2 Opalescence, swing, turn 2-3 swing. Or, alternately, Pregame 2-4 Leylines, Turn 1 E. tutor, turn 2 Helm (or enchantments to hit 4), turn 3 activate (or cast Helm). Yes, Sanctum+Opalescence+5 Leylines is cool. No, none of these list are going to pull it off even half the time.
So now, the question becomes "What is our opponent doing while we set up the turn 3 kill?" Obviously they are not goldfish. So, if, instead of passing Turn 1 without killing them, we drop a Spirit, or a Field, we are stalling them. Sometimes this slows us down as well, because we need to E. tutor as well, or we need to pay 3 for Canopy. But even when it does, it will almost never be balanced. We get ramped by playing these cards. We have unfair amounts of mana and disruption a la Sanctity, Void, Anticipation. And we topdeck tutors and more disruption while we are stalling, or potentially we just topdeck an autowin.
How about the speed of our answers? Most of our tutors go to the top of the deck. Without Mikokoro or Canopy, that's a whole extra turn away. Well, how fast is your opponent doing things you need to answer? Did they just plop down a Goyf on turn 2? Well, if you're worried, you can E. Tutor right now and Oring it as soon as you untap. Probably though you can take a few hits and (if you haven't just won yet) tutor when EOT when you need to. Liliana? Yeah, they'll get a +1 off her (unless you have Field out). And then you find Field or Oring EOT and hit it. Really, nothing we can do can answer it faster than that unless we start playing counterspells.
You can take out creatures with tap effects before they can be used, go find Wave before their army is enough to kill you, fetch up Opalescence and win before they combo out. Speed is not really an issue since almost all threats require a turn to start being useful.
Show and Tell is somewhat of an exception here. If they drop a jellyfish, you have a turn to find Oring, but it's still best to have it right then. Really, just hope for the best and in Game 2, tutor up what you need right away.
So, the reason that I feel a toolbox is necessary, is that when you are aiming for a Turn 2-3 win, you have to have things to do turns 1-2. Show and Tell does it with Ponder/Brainstorm/Force of Will, we do it with tutors and miser meta-answers. Our answers are broad and do a lot of splash damage, and all of our pieces work together in lots of ways.
As an aside, have you ever considered that Rector is a multi-fog if your opponent is scared to swing, and a tutor+mini fog with Anticipation out? It seems to me that mediocre alone+broken with one of 10 other cards is worthy of inclusion.
I will say that I don't really care for Stony Silence maindeck. Maybe sideboard. But it hits so few decks and also, incidentally, hits Tree of Tales and prevents Helm Combo in the lists that run it.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
Hrm. True. Forgot Opalescence is "other". Still, counters and discard are both very hard to come back from if you have absolutely no additional draw of any sort. And while Petrified can recover wastelanded Sanctums, that's another '4 in 50' scenario, which is not terribly good odds. Having a few mana sources that would let you at least drop Suppression Fields might give you the time to draw into them.
In game one, absolutely. Dead on table. I could fix that by maybe swapping one of the other utility/hate cards for a mainboard Oblivion Ring, but that feels weaker to me in many match ups.
After side board, if you know it's there, you at least have a chance. You have to forgo the idea of the immediate win unless you actually have a sequence that involves 4 Leylines into Opalescence in your opening 7.
You can only beat a turn 1 Blood Moon if you're on the play with very specific hands/draws. I'm ignoring Serum Powders and mulligans, because this is a quick-ish forum post, not a PhD thesis.
The scenarios aren't mutually exclusive, but the Leyline + Sanctum scenarios don't overlap much with the immediate basic land scenarios, so the probability gets weirder than I'd like to actually calculate, but it's more than 10% and less than 20%, and more towards the former. For sake of argument, call it 13-14%. And again, this ignores any mulligans with or without Serum Powder. Once you add those in, I'd say you probably realistically have a 15-20% chance to be able to fight out of Blood Moon that comes down on the opponent's Turn 1 on the draw.
Turn 2 you have a much better chance, though the probabilities again get beyond my ability to calculate in short order, as you're now chaining multiple dependent events, as Leylines only matter in hand on turn 1, and any sequence which lands a plains on turn 1 or 2 does not need to land a basic forest to crop rotate later, so this requires multiple HGD calculations per turn over multiple turns. However, you have the following broad sequences of play:
Doing some rough estimation that handwaves over the event chaining with via "fudge factors", it should be somewhere around 25-30% odds that you can set up a line that can prevent the Bloodmoon on 2 via Aura's tax, and rising to about 45-50% that you can cast and then immediately crack the Aura by no later than turn 4 on the play via having a Plains and additional lands in play. Add in mulligans and those go up to probably 35-40% chance to stop it on turn 2, and about 50-55% to break out of it by turn 4.
If the Blood Moon doesn't come down to the opponent's turn 3 on the draw, the chance gets even better, as you now have potentially multiple tutors resolving to guarantee both Aura and extra land, or to drop things like a Suppression Field on turn 2 to further power up your Sanctum for possible tutor + casting on turn 3. I'm not even going to try and enumerate the paths, but my gut instinct is that you're probably approaching 65-70% likely to be able to stop or immediately brick any Blood Moon, if you suspect it is coming and play accordingly.
Now, mind you, that's *only* breaking/stopping the Blood Moon, and advancing your board state only via land drops and maybe an incidental tutors along the way, and you may have had to burn tutors to get there, so unless the rest of your hand was already perfect, you're in a fair bit of trouble still. However, if you have a Leyline of Anticipation, you may actually be able to advance your board mostly normally, as long as you have the Aura in hand. You can hold mana to react with rotations/aura of silences if they do drop the Moon, then drop whatever you need at their end of turn if they don't.
It's not a fight you want to have, but a couple of basics and the Aura at least give you a chance to make it a real game instead of just extending the hand. That said, my only answer main or side to a Magus of the Moon is the "joke" Parallax Wave, and casting that under a moon effect is impossible with only one Plains, so it's either have it or die.
Practically speaking, there's only a few decks I know of that run Blood Moon regularly enough to matter (Imperial Painter, AIR and Dragon Stompy, with the rare RUG Delver deck I could find in older event deck listings), and most of the ones that do also seem to run Magus. Which means if I am serious about having an out to the moon effect, I also need to ensure that I can legitimately remove a Magus while under Moon effect. That probably means something like swapping Aura of Silence for an all purpose answer like Oblivion Ring or ditching some other cards to add a Journey to Nowhere. Swords could work, but you'd need a 4 of, as you have no way to tutor for it unlike O-Ring or JtN.
Incidentally, since I had my HGD stuff up, I did up exact percentages for the variants of turn 1 Opalescence:
The Rotation plan adds about 20% reliability versus the same deck without Rotations. 24 Leylines with no rotations converts about 1.5% on the play and 4% on the draw. 28 Leylines with no rotations converts about 2.7% on the play and 6.4% on the draw. At 32 Leylines adding in the rotations would convert about 4.8% on the play and 11.6% on the draw (assuming you could find room for it).
Given Belcher seem to post about 12-15% turn 1 kills, and TinFins a little better (I saw one comment that indicated as high as 18%, but I don't know how reputable it was), but not excessively so, according to a few random threads I found, this the all-in version is surprisingly not too far off the mark. Though I suppose technically unless you get the perfect 5 Leyline, Opalescence, Sanctum hand, it's technically not a turn 1 kill, but rather a turn 2 kill.
These numbers don't really say anything about overall quality, though, as I suspect TinFins is a lot more resilient to common hate and a lot faster to rebuild if one of the reanimation spells gets countered/discarded.
I think knowing that the Crop Rotation plan adds about 20% likelihood to go off on the first turn is the valuable takeaway here. Assessing that against needing roughly 8 slots in the mainboard is relevant.
If nothing else this has made me consider what it might take to power things out even faster, more consistently, or through more disruption. I don't think there's really room for a counterspell suite at all, so that's probably out, leaving only going faster or using things which are resilient to normal counters or being able to go off again more easily.
Serum Powder helps with mulligans, but it seems most combo decks eschew it in favor of more fast mana or deck manipulation/selection tools like Sensei's Divining Top or Brainstorm. This is clearly not a BS sort of deck, but Top or Scroll Rack could work, especially in concert with all the tutoring to top of deck that gets done (nice symbiotic relationship, the tutors act like fetches in most top decks to shuffle away chaff, while top's draw or rack's swap lets us get the tutored answer into hand immediately for with minimal additional mana). On the downside, neither helps power up Sanctum, unlike Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library. They are easier to cast, though, and both can be activated on demand, rather than requiring the draw step to work.
On the fast mana front, Mox Diamond and Mox Opal both lack appropriate conditions in the deck. Chrome Mox might work, but there's not a ton of spare cards to pitch, given how much of our hand we want to lay on the table immediately. I could see using Lotus Petal to help guarantee a first turn drop of a Suppression Field and still cast a tutor or maybe to find that 4th mana for an Opalescence in a 3 Leyline hand. It also helps face check for counters. Elvish Spirit Guide and Simian Spirit Guide avoid the counters, but R isn't very useful, so only ESG is really useful for casting anything we'd want to cast (Crop Rotation if that stays, Sterling Grove if that ends up main). I briefly considered some mana rocks (Talisman of Unity, Mind Stone, Prismatic Lens, Prophetic Prism) for ramp/fixing, but they're all dead draws if things are going well, and don't really accelerate into an immediate comeback if they're not.
On the pure resilience front, I can't think of anything that's going to really help much there. There aren't many more tutors that hit things we'd care about, nor easy way to recur things from the graveyard. There's no Boseiju equivalent for enchantments. Vexing Shusher would work, but GG is harsh and GGG to cast and use it in one turn is more or less impossible without seriously changing the deck's design.
Are you simply doing HGD to find the odds of [4+ Leylines] AND ([Sanctum] OR [Crop Rotation+Green Source]) AND [Opalescence]?
Belcher puts up much better numbers than that for turn 1. Maybe 50%. But really, this is just an illustration of my point earlier; this isn't supposed to be a turn 1 deck. It's a Turn 2-3 deck. On turn 2 you get to do things like chain Sanctums and/or Rotations so that you can cast Opalescence off only two Leylines. You get to do things like increase your odds of having Opalescence from 40% to ~80% by utilizing tutors. Turn 2 is easily the crucial turn in this deck. Not the turn you should be auto-winning, mind you. Just the crucial turn.
Top is easily a possible inclusion in these decks. I would generally cut Powders for it first, as it essentially does what Powder does, more slowly and a little less reliably (but more safely and with better synergy). The link I posted earlier had some discussion about cutting Powders in certain variants, I'll see of I can dig up their words on the subject.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
Check it out!
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part-1-one-shot-resources/
http://www.eternalcentral.com/resource-advantage-in-magic-part2-tempo/
I've also written a short primer on Manaless Dredge in Vintage:
http://www.eternalcentral.com/the-dredge-of-glory-an-introduction-to-manaless-dredge-in-vintage/
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
I don't believe you can do [4+ Leylines] AND ([Sanctum] OR [Crop Rotation+Green Source]) AND [Opalescence] as [Crop Rotation + Green] is complementary to [Sanctum] (You can't have Rotation + Green + Sanctum in a hand that also has 4 Leylines and an Opalescence in 7 cards). You have to do P(HGD(Combo With Sanctum)|HGD(Combo With Rotation+Green)). The dependent but exclusive events were why I didn't even try to actually work out exact probabilities for anything on turn 2 or later, as you have to start accounting for the fact that the sequence of 3 Leylines + Opalescence in hand and drawing the 4th Leyline is fundamentally different than 4 Leylines in hand and drawing the Opalescence. The fact that the game state gets so large so fast is part of what makes MtG so interesting.
Aha! And a light turned on, explaining why serenechaos and ajfirecracker have such differing views of how things are working.
I believe ajfirecracker has been using "turn X" to mean "opponent's health reaches 0 or they concede to an untenable board state", whereas serenechaos seem to be approaching it from Zvi Mowshowitz's "fundamental turn" theory where that's the turn where the deck attains critical momentum and does its thing to achieve sudden but nearly inevitable victory. I was using the same "opponent loses" terminology as ajfirecracker, which is why I pointed out that technically we can only turn 1 kill on the perfect Sanctum + Opalescence + 5 Leyline hand, and 4 leyline hands don't actually kill until 2 turn, despite having "gone off". If you instead use the "fundamental turn" approach, then yes, the toolbox version of the deck will fairly reliably achieve a board state on turn 2 or 3 where they have locked enough things down with Suppression Fields or other tech, gotten enough mana or combos onto the board to be able to cast Opalescence or Helm when it's advantageous and start the (fairly short) clock of actually killing them unless they have The Answer.
On the Belcher front, I got the numbers from here: This PDF . His methodology was Monte Carlo, rather than exact, but Belcher's simple enough that it's a straight forward program and thus seems "good enough".
Belcher "goes off" unopposed about 60% of the time on turn 1, it's just that doesn't always generate a kill, because on the Empty the Warrens plan even if they somehow get to 20 goblins it takes at least one more untap step to kill. More practically they generate around 12-14 goblins, which turns into a clock that can take 2-3 combat steps to actually move someone's life to 0, giving time for outs like a Golgari Charm, Massacre, etc. Only an actual Belcher+Activation is enough to generate an outright kill, which seems to happen between 9 and 11% of the time depending on exact deck composition, which I padded a little to account for still effective mulligan hands and any variations in tech he wasn't using or hadn't been developed when he did the analysis many months ago.
By "fundamental turn" approach, Leylines is generally a Turn 1 deck on the all in approach and a turn 2-3 deck if you're on the toolbox plan. By the "opponent loses" approach, it's only a turn 1 deck a minuscule percentage of the time (< 1%, even on the all-in style deck, and still under 2% if you up to 36 Leylines and only 4 Sanctums for land and pray you don't get 2 Singularities). There's a few lines of play that lead to actual turn 2 deaths:
However, once you've hit end of turn 3, there's many lines of play that could lead to having turned sideways for 20 or more damage. All you need is to animate at least 3 Leylines on turn 2, or 4 + 2 cmc 2 enchants on turn 3.
I'm pretty much aiming for a turn 3 actual death, with just enough support to ensure that if I get knocked off this plan I am at least theoretically capable of recovering. Thus why I want at least some tech like Nykthos, which lets me in theory actually cast at least a few of my non-white Leylines after the game start, and Canopies to actually draw into answers if I got Toxic Deluged for 4 and lost my board.
Normally I hate Serum Powder, as a Powder in hand after turn 1 starts is complete dead weight, and even significantly up your chances of fizzling when you go off. A lot of the decks that want to use it can't ever cast it. Plus, there are times where you simply can't even use it as intended because other critical pieces are in your hand that you can't afford to permanently exile.
My complaint with Powder is actually slightly less in this deck than many others. Leylines cost 4, and a 3 drop that accelerates you into a 4th mana when you only have 12 lands in deck represents represents a legitimate, if less than optimal, play. Especially since a hand with 2 or 3 Leylines and another cmc 2 enchant represents a fairly common occurrence.
That said, Lotus Petal seems to offer the same effect a lot of times, namely getting you to that critical mass of mana to cast Opalescence (either directly or by jumping a Sanctum up a notch via a cmc 2 enchant) or cast an early tutor or rotation. It actually gives you another line to get lethal damage on turn 2, as Sanctum + Lotus Petal could cast a turn 1 Opalescence on only 3 Leylines. Or even 2 Leylines with 2 Petals, which is still a turn 3 lethal clock against a goldfish, and gives you at least 3 mana off a Sanctum. I'd probably have to write a program for monte carlo simulation to see if Petals or Powder were more effective in generating keepable hands.
On the utility front, it probably slightly improves the Crop Rotation package in general, giving you more virtual green sources. And like Tree of Tales, you could tutor for it via Enlightened Tutor if you absolutely had to. Petals also could get you up to 3 mana for anti-Blood Moon cards like Oblivion Ring or Aura of Silence. And, in absolute worst case in a game gone horribly long and wrong, you could potentially use 2 to play a non-white Leyline and jumpstart devotion for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx in order to cast otherwise dead-in-hand leylines of that color. However, at that point, you're probably actually better off with Chrome Mox, as imprinting a card you couldn't cast anyway to gain permanent mana is almost always better.
Between Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack, I'm not sure which I like more. I like that Top is 1 to cast and free to flip, making it a very nice synergy with all the top of deck tutors, plus being nearly unkillable. Rack on the other hand lets you dig much harder and get rid of things like uncastable leylines in hand. It also gets around Spirit of the Labyrinth, which makes that a more interesting option. They both have the downside that a lot of times a Sanctum is our only mana source, and thus we'll be constrained in when we use it, to avoid draining our whole mana pool at end of phase. That closes off a lot less upkeep before draw shenanigans, and gives us much less opportunity for opponent's turn setup. By the same token, they do serve as a nice sink for the excess mana that'd go to waste when you have to tap for 3 to cast a cmc 1 tutor or cmc 2 enchant.
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Leyline of Vitality
4 Leyline of Lifeforce
4 Opalescence
1 Helm of Obedience
4 Crop Rotation
4 Enlightened Tutor
2 Academy Rector
2 Sterling Grove
1 Expedition Map
3 Spirit of the Labyrinth
3 Suppression Field
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Parallax Wave
1 Solitary Confinement
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Tree of Tales
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Wasteland
4 Orim's Chant
2 Rest in Peace
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Trinisphere
1 Solitary Confinement
1 Aura of Silence
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Suppression Field
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
What's everyone take on Starfield of Nix from Origins? It's essentially Opalesence 2.0 and won't have trouble turning on. Certainly worth a look.
"There are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'good job'." -Terrance Fletcher, Whiplash (2014)
Edit: I might try something like this
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Vitality
4 Leyline of Lifeforce
1 Leyline of Lightning
4 Opalescence
1 Starfield of Nyx
1 Helm of Obedience
4 Enlightened Tutor
2 Sterling Grove
1 Expedition Map
4 Spirit of the Labyrinth
4 Suppression Field
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Solitary Confinement
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Tree of Tales
1 Wasteland
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
Chancellor of the Annex may be a decent SB slot to protect you against counters on Opalescence. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben may be worth it as the restriction probably hurts them more than you, especially postboard if you board into beatdown plan.
For the creature win strategy, Heliod, God of the Sun? The tokens get pumped by some of your Leylines and count as enchantments, making Sanctum give you even more mana. With two white Leylines out (or 1 Leyline + Opalescence or 1 Leyline + Suppression + O-Ring), Heliod also goes crazy beatdown.
CREATURES MODEL IS THE GOOD WAY, i try this version
// FORMAT : Legacy
3 [FUT] Horizon Canopy
3 [UNH] Plains
4 [JOU] Mana Confluence
4 [US] Serra's Sanctum
1 [BNG] Spirit of the Labyrinth
2 [JOU] Aegis of the Gods
4 [MBS] Hero of Bladehold
1 [AL] Helm of Obedience
4 [DS] Serum Powder
2 [UD] Opalescence
3 [4E] Land Tax
4 [GP] Leyline of Lifeforce
4 [M11] Leyline of Sanctity
4 [M11] Leyline of Vitality
4 [GP] Leyline of the Meek
4 [M11] Leyline of the Void
4 [UL] Crop Rotation
4 [6E] Enlightened Tutor
I have the Chris Wolfmeyer version, but with Nevermore main as a way of improving the Force of Will issue. Critters that are enchantments are all usable on the 75, but hero of bladehold is not that stellar vs all the swords decks...
The deck needs four Opalescence to maximise the chance of the nut hand, surely?
Im french, metagame should be different? sure she take in face swords....but you have minus sword than differents counter deck
yes only 3 lands for 3 land tax, its for filter the deck and upgrade topdeck...not need more lands...and im not dead on one blood moon
I can see creatures get better with Leyline of Lifeforce, but I would probably aim at not using Hero- 3 cc maybe. I agree trying to play with Force is not good. I could not get it to work either.
It does not happen very often, for sure....
Its not really a belcher-esque deck, though. When it wins it often does so via three methods. "Free" scoops, once in a blue moon, due to Leyline of the Void/Sanctity. The odd deck just scoops to them. At an LGS where you know your opponent is on dredge, for example, you will see your LOTV with 4 serum powder in the deck. Almost every time. About 40% of the wins are via Leyline/Helm. Remember the deck runs 4 E tutors and Idyllics, assembling the combo is not that hard. Its like a bad parfait deck, without the long game control elements of parfait or ability to go landtax/scroll rack draw 3 a turn extra. The rest of the wins are via the Opalescence, often t3/4.
It is certainly not a "good" deck- won't argue there. But it has been played by the odd player in SCG level events every couple of years and they have produced decent records with it. The deck tech on the Wolfmeyer version and youtube coverage show the deck doing ok considering the event.
I personally use Nevermore over Suppression field, I think it baits out the force and adds to the 2 actually interactive Leylines, and often it can be cast t1/2 where 4cc can't.
Hero of Bladehold pass over, bolt decay, counter... with leyline in battlefield, win life each turn if other green leyline in battlefield, with this all leyline is use for kill, the only big problem for me is we have no gestion card board :(, no disrupt, its very hard to find some free slot.