Strixhaven, Episode 2: The Mystical Archive + Kaldheim Potpourri
Strixhaven‘s Mystical Archive is not coming to Pioneer or Modern, but at least one card that we know of will be included in Modern Horizons 2. What does the future hold for Abundant Harvest? Meanwhile, Faithless Looting is back in the headlines, for all the wrong reasons.
On the Flashback, we tested some truly speculative builds with Peace of Mind and “Oops All Legends.” The good news is that Alrund’s Epiphany has been stronger than anticipated, and David’s Narset Bring to Light deck might be just be the best deck in Pioneer.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Artwork: Opt by Riem
Flashback: Hero’s Blade, Alrund’s Epiphany, Vorinclex, Peace of Mind
Sultai Narset Bring to Light: 5-0, 5-0, 4-1, 3-2
Izzet Wizard Legends: 0-3
Gruul Legendary Beats: 2-3
Temur Vorinclex Epiphany: 3-2
Temur Epiphany (updated list)
Abzan Peace of Mind: 0-4 Abzan Peace of Mind (updated list)
New: Full Episode Transcript!
Automated transcripts are not 100% accurate. Please use this transcript only for cursory reference. If you need to quote any of our content, please contact us.
Daniel Schriever: [00:00:00] You are listening to Faithless Brewing a Magic: the gathering podcast for the rogue deck builder. Each week, we design new decks in modern and pioneer. We put our creations to the test and share our findings, on the air. Coming up on the Roundup. It looks at the Strixhaven mystical archive Then on the flashbacks testing results with Hero’s Blade, peace of mind and Alrund’s epiphany.
This is episode two of Strixhaven season. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
David Robertson: [00:01:01] hello and welcome to the faithless brewing podcast. I am David joined by Damon Alexander Damon what’s up.
Damon Alexander: [00:01:07] Hey, not too much, just a living in my sparkly, clean apartments.
David Robertson: [00:01:12] Good to hear, gotta treat yourself sometimes. We are joined by a man who prizes cleanliness. Uh, he is Cavedan online. He is Daniel Schriever.
Dan what’s up.
Daniel Schriever: [00:01:22] I’m doing well. Good to see you guys.
David Robertson: [00:01:24] So a quick reminder, we are releasing two episodes per week. On Friday, we went through a good chunk of the latest and greatest spoilers of Strixhaven. Today, we are going to talk about some of the Mystical Archive previews, as well as an early MH2 preview.
And we have a few decklists we took a look at last week, so let’s jump right into it. First of all, Mystical Archive. What are we looking at, Damon?
Damon Alexander: [00:01:51] Yeah. So Mystical Archive, uh, consists of 63 instants and sorceries from Magic’s history that you get one of each draft booster, and then there there’s all this, you know, distribution stuff in a collector’s boosters, there’s Japanese, alt arts, etched foil variants, et cetera, et cetera.
So how you actually get them is kind of confusing. We won’t focus on that. These are legal if you draft them and they are also legal in Historic. This doesn’t change any of these cards legality in Standard, Modern or Pioneer. And there are seven cards that they left out of Historic in the form of Bolt, swords of plowshares ritual demonic tutor channel natural order counterspell. Historic
does it get some interesting cards in the form of a, you know, ephemerate, brainstorm. Time warp, faithless looting, the inquisition of kozilek lighting helix, and then some storm cards in the form of mind’s desire and Grapeshot. So we’ll see how it changes historic. I’ve seen some interesting theories about how the rarities here are really meant to extract the wildcards from people’s, you know, Arena
pockets. I don’t really know. I don’t actually play arena.
Daniel Schriever: [00:02:52] Let me just, can I jump in there for a second? When they announced that these cards are actually going to be legal and historic, I mean, this is such a huge shake-up of the Historic format. You’re rattling off some of the most powerful cards in Magic’s history, a faithless looting banned in Modern. Brainstorm, a card that perhaps should be banned for power level reasons in legacy, but it’s not, now that’s coming to historic.
Brainstorm and Looting in Historic is crazy. You’re not to mention Ephemerate, a card that while perhaps a little bit overlooked at first has become absolute all-star in modern. So it’s just like a stunning roster of cards. They did give them all the rare or mythic rarity. So this will cost you to do it.
So on the one hand, I felt like a strong temptation to like start brewing in Historic. But on the other hand, I was like, Oh gosh, how will we actually get access to a collection for this? That it seems like a nightmare to keep up with.
Damon Alexander: [00:03:43] Yeah. I saw some interesting commentary on Twitter about like, what is the direction of Historic?
It seemed like it was meant to be, you know, kind of like Pioneer, but with these cards is looking much more like an Arena friendly version of Legacy.
Daniel Schriever: [00:03:57] So I think that was a mistake that people made thinking that it was similar to pioneer or comparing its power level to pioneer. I think maybe the goal was always to be something bigger.
Like as long as they believe in arena, they would want to keep adding their IP to it. And that means that over time Arena would have a bigger card pool than Pioneer. You would have a bigger cardpool than Modern. And we started to see that with the first Historic Anthologies, adding cards from Legacy. So it’s going to be the equivalent of like a curated legacy esque format.
I mean, it’s could potentially be even more powerful than Modern, although I assumed they’ll never add the fetch lands to Arena because that is what makes Modern, so broken. I don’t know. David, do you feel any temptation to brew in Historic from these?
David Robertson: [00:04:38] No. And I think a bunch of cards are gonna have to get banned, but we’ll let the grinders sort that out.
Daniel Schriever: [00:04:43] You don’t believe in this list of seven pre banned cards to, for perfect balance of the format.
David Robertson: [00:04:48] I think those cards need to be banned as well, but we’ll see if people enjoy it, you know, Brainstorm and Faithless Looting with your favorite Phoenix. We’ll see how we’ll see how they like that.
Damon Alexander: [00:04:57] Yeah, their Mystical Archive also featured some really cool art and then the Japanese versions also have different art.
And those all tend to look really cool with a couple of interesting pieces of controversy. The first was over Faithless Looting, where people were really trashing the artist for her, I would say, interesting style. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. And then Crux of Fate, which the more I look at this art, like, Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this person got paid money to illustrate this, or in particular plagiarized parts of it.
Daniel Schriever: [00:05:26] Two different art controversies in one week. I followed both of these very closely cause Faithless Looting is a card that is near and dear to my hearts. It did nothing wrong. It should not have been banned for modern. I liked it so much that, you know, we named our whole podcast after Faithless Looting and really it’s never had a good artwork until now.
I mean, I think this artwork is absolutely stunning. I love it. A lot of people really don’t like it, but there’s a clear takeaway from all this. It’s like, you can dislike things. That’s fine. Do not be a dick about it. And a huge swath of the Magic community massively failed that test. I mean, it was really embarrassing to just see how that played out.
I was extremely disappointed in a lot of the discourse. People are unable to distinguish between, I don’t like this, and I’m going to be a dick about it and explain how bad it is. Basic rule of thumb, ask yourself, Am I being an asshole when I’m trying to make this comment? And in many cases, people would be like, Yeah, I guess I am, it just seemed like everyone else was piling on so it’d be fun to say something.
Damon Alexander: [00:06:22] Although are we allowed to pile on to Crux of Fate? Because the more I look at this, like this art is just bad.
Daniel Schriever: [00:06:27] Well, that’s different. I mean, it’s not a question of whether it’s bad, but that was actually, the artists seems to have not just referenced, but actually directly
copy pasted almost if such a thing as possible. Copied a piece of fan art off of deviant art for their figure of Nicol Bolas, which is maybe unethical. It’s not strictly illegal because of the wizards fan policy. If you make fan content using Wizards IP, like there are, are allowed to use that in their own products without compensating you, but the artists in this case shouldn’t have done that.
And wizards has essentially cut ties with them. They put out a statement today. So a controversy is aside. I think it is fair to say that art was both the regular Mystical Archive and the Japanese versions are perhaps the coolest thing Magic has ever done. So I kind of want to just focus on the positives though, and you know, these are absolutely sweet
I would love to own them. We’d love to play with them.
Damon Alexander: [00:07:20] Yeah. Do we know if versions have different art or are they just simply the etching on the original card? So you’ll have like a regular brainstorm foil brainstorm at etched foil brainstorm. All with the same art?
Daniel Schriever: [00:07:33] I think both versions are regular and Japanese will have all three of those versions.
If I understand correctly
Damon Alexander: [00:07:39] So that leaves us with, I guess, six copies of Brainstorm. Interesting. I’d be curious to see how the etched foil variants look, especially if that is our main way of avoiding Pringles on the foil front.
Daniel Schriever: [00:07:50] So apart from collectability or there’s a card, a particular interests. Included in the Mystical archive because it is actually not a reprint it is a pre-print from Modern Horizons 2.
So this card will become modern legal in June. When the rest of Modern Horizons is released to the public of all, you’ll be able to get it and booster packs as soon as Strixhaven comes out. So, David, do you want to tell us about the Abundant Harvest?
David Robertson: [00:08:11] Abundant harvest. One green sorcery choose land or non land reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal the chosen kind, put that card in your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. What do you guys think?
Daniel Schriever: [00:08:26] Well what do you think?
David Robertson: [00:08:27] I think it’s a powerful cantrip and so powerful cantrips slot into a bunch of different kinds of decks.
Damon Alexander: [00:08:33] The easiest comparison point seems to be the card Opt. A lot of times, you know, you keep like a one or two land hand with Opt and you’re like, all I want is a land. I really want a land. And sometimes it’s not a land and you lose the game. A Abundant Harvest will always get you a land in that situation, which is already pretty cool.
Conversely, with Opt in the late game, sometimes you’re like, All I want is not a land. And you scry a land to the bottom and draw land and Abundant Harvest also dodges that problem. The question is more like around the mid game where you’re like, kind of trying to select you’re like, I want a Cryptic Command, but I don’t want a Lightning Bolt or something like that.
This is a sorcery. So first off you don’t even get the, you know, the ability to react quite so well. And secondly, you don’t get the selection over, you know, which land or which spell you’re getting. So it’s really seems to be unbalanced like about as good as opt, but in a color that is not supposed to get good cantrips, but suddenly she seems to get all the best cantrips for the last two years are all green.
Daniel Schriever: [00:09:29] I imagining a deck like Phoenix, where you, you really often find yourself in both scenarios needing the land early or needing to just chain any kind of cantrips later in the game. And I almost think like would splash for Abundant Harvest. Is that crazy?
Damon Alexander: [00:09:43] Uh, the mana would be a little bit tough for that.
This is the card that you want on land mode quite early. So I could understand why you would want a splash, but I’m skeptical that you can make the mana base work.
Daniel Schriever: [00:09:55] We’ll have the ability to test this out, to put it through its paces a bit later on. That being said , just shall we talk about some of the decks that we played?
David we’ll start off with you. What were you playing last week?
David Robertson: [00:10:08] We went through a bunch of decks that we were tooling around with in Kaldheim right before the Strixhaven previous came out. But I want to give one last run through with my, uh, Sultai Narset Bring to Light deck. I had just missed a Five-O before and I was like, Oh, this deck is really sweet.
I think I should just give it another shot and see if I can Five-0. And then I did. And then I know Dan, you were so intrigued. You took it through two leagues, three leagues. And you also trophied. So you had two trophies with the same list, plus the Four-One in my previous league. And we’re starting to talk about a pretty impressive showing from, from the shell.
Daniel Schriever: [00:10:47] Well, you told me that you thought it might be the best deck in Pioneer. And I can never tell if you’re being serious or not, but the deck just looks too fun to not play. And after now playing three, actually I think I played four leagues with it now, I do get that strong best deck in Pioneer vibe from it.
It’s amazing to just feel like, okay, I have Narset, and Thoughtseizes and a lot of my opponents are trying to play control and they don’t have Narsets for whatever reason, those match-ups are really great. The match-ups that I think are still tricky are any kind of aggro deck. I think green Planeswalkers are kind of tricky.
And Izzet Phoenix is a tough, tough matchup to navigate. I’m still learning my way around the edges of that match up. The specifics of recursive threats plus an equal amount of card draw is a little bit tough to figure out. But on the whole, I was like, man, this deck is fantastic.
David Robertson: [00:11:38] Yeah. I also think that spirits is a really tough matchup for this tech.
Uh, in my experience. So I think Spirits is the worst matchup. I also think Spirits is like always better than people think it is. I feel like it always should be near the tier one. Every time I play against it, if I’m playing against a good Spirits opponent with any variant of lists, I ever play a from this podcast or even just in, on my own time, I always feel like that deck is very underrated in Pioneer.
Daniel Schriever: [00:12:02] I haven’t seen it in a long time.
David Robertson: [00:12:04] I know, and every time I play it, I’m like, man, why aren’t people playing this more often? I just seem so good, but I dunno, maybe, maybe it’s only good against the decks I play. I don’t know. But yeah, if you want something that just dominates, uh, Five color Niv Mizzet, all the Yorion lists, and Lotus Combo, like that’s what this list does. It just, those match-ups aren’t close. Are your opponents will bitch a lot in chat. If that’s what makes you happy, which it does make me happy. And yeah, it’s just easy. You just, it’s all on easy mode and you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to make any tough plays.
You don’t have to make any tough decisions. It’s really sweet.
Damon Alexander: [00:12:33] Yeah. Looking through your guys’s list of match-ups. It certainly backs up that statement. Lotus combo, 2-0. Niv Mizzet, 2-0 cetera, et cetera.
Daniel Schriever: [00:12:42] So we’ll have a list in the show notes and at Faithless Brewing dot com and you can also find it in the deck dumps from last week
David Robertson: [00:12:49] If i had to make a change.
I guess the one thing I’d say is I probably play the second Censor over Growth Spiral. I have not been looking at the Growth Spiral very much. It was an artifact of when I was playing four Growth Spiral for Sylvan Caryatid. And so I should have just turned it, I think in literally anything else or maybe in a main deck Abrupt Decay.
Damon Alexander: [00:13:05] Would you guys play more sweepers given that you’re saying that the tough match-ups are the creature based ones.
Daniel Schriever: [00:13:11] Well, I actually want to play that new removal spell from Strixhaven that they just previewed. It’s like the three and a blackexile a creature orplaneswalker, but you can cast it for one and a black, if you will let them draw a card. I think I need something like that. That is cheap enough to be relevant early and also can take down a Nissa if they do sneak a Nissa into play.
The growth spiral was not super impressive, actually never Censored anything in all my 20 matches with it, with this deck in the last few days. So I think those are like open slots. I brought the acuity.
David Robertson: [00:13:42] Yeah I actually like that new spoiled card. Cause if you upkeep it with Narset play, they don’t even get the card.
It’s just a one and a black. Exile anything. So I’m all like,
Daniel Schriever: [00:13:51] Oh, that seems good. Definitely highly recommend this deck. Yeah. Hopefully we can get some more results. I think it’s a good time for me to try to farm some tickets before Strixhaven drops, because I’m sure we’re going to be losing a lot once these new cards require testing.
Speaking of losing a lot. We had the tail end of our Kaldheim season, but some cards that we didn’t feel as strongly enough to feature for an entire episode, but we thought it might be worth exploring as well as one-offs in a build or two. And I was particularly interested in the all legendary deck featuring the equipment card
Hero’s Blade. This is a equipment for two that gives an equipped creature plus three plus two. Costs a million manna to equip, but it free attaches to legends when they come into play. And I had a whole spiel last week in our Sunday episode about, you know, haste legends that can synergize with this Kari Zev synergizing, et cetera, et cetera.
I played a build. A Damon, even took a crack at a build and well, interesting results. Damon, do you want to talk about what you found?
Damon Alexander: [00:14:54] .Yeah. So I saw a blue, red wizard legend blade deck through a, not even a full league and that’s how it kind of went. And so this time it was based off the premise, they said we want to play a lot of legends with the heroes blade.
And one of the most exciting legends to me to do there was. Adeliz because it comes down right on curve. Uh, at three mana so you played turn to heroes blade turns three Adeliz and all of a sudden you’re hitting for five haste and a daily, put a wizard on one. And so on then on your turn four, you can start really trying to just win the game.
But I was also suckered into playing someKari Zevs as being another good card with the heroes blade. And what I learned is that it doesn’t work. You can’t actually say that. Well, heroes played is good with legends, Adeliz is good with wizards. And so it’s okay if I have a little bit of, you know, non synergy, because what happens is you’re going to go Kari Zev into Adeliz a lot.
And every time you do, you’re going to feel kind of like an idiot and your opponent’s going to be, you know, probably laughing at you, wondering what you’re possibly think you’re doing.
Daniel Schriever: [00:15:53] Well, you are attacking for five damage. That’s something, right?
Damon Alexander: [00:15:56] Well, yeah, I’d actually draw heroes played that much, but I don’t think I needed to, to really learn.
Kari Zev has a lot of problems in this meta. There were a lot of, you know, Green plays a three-three and that blocks Ragavan he pulling through for one, a lot of Sylvan Caryatids that block a raggedy van. And he blinked through for one. Fatal Push, if you look up the stats, it is the most play card and pioneer 51% of decks are playing an average of 3.7 copies.
And so this is where the hero’s blade. Seems to not be good. Meanwhile, I guess model green, you know, I was doing all this work sheets and write a five, four Adeliz or a four or five cars I’ve and they just go green, green, green steel leaf champion. It’s a five, four with no extra work required. And I actually got close one game.
I got them down to one, but then I suffered from the oops, all Jolraels problems in game two, where I just need to draw some extra wizards. And those relays true were duplicates of the ones I had in play. There was one cool game. I got paired against none other than a cave, Dan himself in a late night queue, I was not aware he was playing and I use the Tyrie sanctum to make indestructible god. And that was enough.
Daniel Schriever: [00:17:03] Well, I thought it was a temporary thing, so I had two removal spills. I did one on the first turn and then the next turn I tried again and I was like a resolves. It turns out that Tyrite sanctum grants, a permanent indestructible counter on the card. So yeah, I lost that game.
“Still had Adeliz” as they say.
Damon Alexander: [00:17:20] Yeah. But of course he crushed me the other two games and they were not particularly close.
Daniel Schriever: [00:17:24] So I also took a crack at a hero’s blade. When we talked about this last week, David, you drawn up a Jeskai lists where you were suggesting that Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders , is granting flying to your attackers would actually be quite important in the pioneer meadow.
And I listened to everything you said, and I was like, yeah, he’s. He’s wrong and you know, you don’t need flying. What if I just stick with Gruul color there’s and you know, Arni Brokenbrow was pretty much as good as the Dalakos right. All kinds of haste, legends and Gruul like, uh, Gallia of the endless dances Zurgo Bellstriker, Surrak, the Hunt Caller.
I had a captain lannery storm in here. A Subira, Tulzidi Caravaneer, et cetera. Yeah. That was wrong. So I took this into a league and like, man, I kept on running into ground blockers. Every time. I thought it had a sweet sequence set up with heroes blade. I would look at the opponent’s board and it’s like, well, they have one blocker.
I’m not dealing damage this turn. Or they have a young Pyromancer and I’m never getting through it did not go very well. I scraped out to match winds against a Greeks as chiromancer and rectus chiromancer, but I lost to mano black agro. I lost through another rectus, paramount or deck, and I lost two ablates, you know, mano and chamber removal deck where they just went from 1 million till I died.
So this build was like, like a little bit off. Basically. I needed to play interaction. That was the takeaway that I had at a certain point. If you’re not playing it removal, which I really wasn’t accepted my sideboard. As soon as they have something bigger than your biggest legend. Uh, you, you just like can’t wait anymore.
Whether that’s a Kalitas or just the young parentsYoung Pyromancer are spitting out some blockers. So I basically a sideboard at the same way. Every time they took out a lot of the week, legends took out some of the Hope of Ghirapurs, , and Zurgos was and put in more Bonecrushers, more lava coils and some more Jaya’s Immolating Inferno.
And then I had like a more functional deck. Took out Mox Ambers. Cause actually it didn’t need the ramp. As much as I thought I would, I just needed more interaction. And then the deck felt like more or less functional, like a low synergy functional deck that didn’t actually want the draw of the heroes blade that often I found that maybe two was the right number, not for. The bright spot in the deck was Kolvori, god of kinship.
This was actually one of the cards that was actually allowing me to keep pace with removals because as Damon just explained fatal pushes everywhere. And in a low synergy legends deck, you’re, you’re really not drawing many cards, but Kolvori sticks around and pioneer is actually kind of hard to kill and you can start, you can activate it pretty easily to look at your top six and get more legends.
I was making it a six, six vigilance attacker all the time. And by extension, I was making Arni Brokenbrow, seven power creature all the time. So there might be something here, just not the particular bill that I played. Maybe Dalakos was the key after all.
David Robertson: [00:20:01] Interesting. So the takeaway is that. Going all in on heroes blade.
It’s just not enough of a payoff to reward you for bending your, your deck list around it.
Damon Alexander: [00:20:11] Yeah. If there was like a good X proof legend that you could play multiple copies of in play at the same time, then you go a long way towards fixing some of the problems with heroes blade. But yeah, I mean, all the decks that are really shine on it, you know, making their creatures better are either playing hex proof, creatures, or creatures.
They don’t care if they die. Or are doing things like, you know, Stoneforge Mystic a Batterskull is equipment of choice.
Daniel Schriever: [00:20:36] These were not decks where we’re taking like a proven shell and adding some heroes blades. This is a very unproven, very speculative collection of cards that also included heroes blades.
So there were maybe like too many on no one’s to say for sure. But the heroes blade didn’t impress that much then the rest of the deck. Definitely. I think both my bills and Damon’s build felt a little bit off.
Damon Alexander: [00:20:57] Yeah, I see. Dan’s point. I think I also scratched my Kaza, Roil Chaser itch. That card is not, it doesn’t seem good.
Daniel Schriever: [00:21:06] So we’ll close the book on that for the time being there will always be new legends printed. We’ve talked about a bunch of them from Strixhaven already, and I’m sure we’ll have more to discuss next week. Always more legends. David, to round things out, or you tried out a couple of different lists, one built around Vora and collects, and the other built around peace of mind.
David Robertson: [00:21:26] Yeah. So my Vorinclex list was trying to take advantage of the fact that with Vorinclex in play a resolve Chandra, Ultimate’s immediately, uh, same with the resolve Nissa. Also Nissa pluses to make a six, six, every turn, which in conjunction with Vorinclex in theory is leading to your opponent dying very quickly.
I went three, two of my league and the list played okay. The car that actually really impressed was Shaundra on turn three. And then suspending either orange epiphany, a behold, the multi-verse or solid coming of Warren Klux itself is actually not that good in this list. It’s actually a kind of a win more card.
I found if Vorinclex is in play attacks. And then next turn, it’s still in play and get so tack again, you probably didn’t really need to cast a Chandra and ultimate it, and you probably didn’t need to cast a Nissa and plus it. You just done 12 with your six, six. So if you’d just been playing.
Llanowar Elf to a five, four, like Damon was describing, you would have just won the game. So the, all these extra machinations with Chandra actually didn’t feel worth it. And Vorinclex, doesn’t close out the game enough to stop you from getting destroyed by wrath or like a Niv-Mizzet going over it top of you.
So I think what I’d like to explore going forward is the Chandra into Alrund’s epiphany lines. If you ha, if you play Chandra on three, plus it suspend Alrund’s Epiphany. And then castle Alrund’s Epiphany on your following turn. If you have another Alrund’s Epiphany or another extra Turner card in whatever, the seven other cards you get to see, you actually get to ultimate Chandra that way.
And I found that to be actually like a super sweet line. So I think I want to go all in on that and just abandoned Vorinclex. I think Vorinclex is, is probably fine in the mono green list that have lots of other counters to interact with, but, or as a one of them, the Sultai ultimatum list. But I don’t think it’s worth it in this kind of show.
Daniel Schriever: [00:23:15] Can you explain again, the Chandra sequence? How do you ultimate that
David Robertson: [00:23:19] you Chandra comes into play on turn three? Let’s say plus twos, suspend Alrund’s epiphany. It has five loyalty. Next turn. You cast Alrund’s Epiphany from foretell, or if you have one, if you have another one in your hand, you play your fifth land and cast it from hand.
And then the next turn you cast Alrund’s Epiphany from for tell.
Daniel Schriever: [00:23:40] Oh, I see.
David Robertson: [00:23:41] So if you have two Alrund’s epiphany’s and your top. 11 or however many cards you get to see you actually just basically win cause you ultimate Chandra. And in fact, in a, an alternate build, I had tried that played four Alrund’s epiphany.
I was like, hoping my opponent would tap out for another visit on their turn four, which is kind of a crazy place to be. And they did. It’s like, well, Chandra can’t kill them. It’ll just resolve my NIV and draw four cards actually discard the Hansel as I’m sure they thought they were going to win easily.
And I just. Took two turns, ultimately Shaundra cast, you know, like the front half and back half a bone crusher, giant twice, and just did 20.
Daniel Schriever: [00:24:15] That’s amazing.
David Robertson: [00:24:16] So yeah, Chandra actually impressed me, but Vorinclex was a little unimpressive. Like I said, the times when is great is our games are going to win. Anyway.
If you resolve your six drop attack for six ONTAP attack for six again, and then get to resolve Shaundra, it’s like that could have been almost any card, but to, to beat your opponent.
Damon Alexander: [00:24:32] But it was Chandra.
Daniel Schriever: [00:24:34] True. So you’re suggesting a new build that removes all copies of Vorinclex, essentially.
David Robertson: [00:24:39] Yeah. And I’d want to get all, I’d want a ton of like the ability to just use that to manna from Chandra was actually insane.
So I want to go up to four Saw It Coming, for Alrund’s Epiphany and like maybe one behold, the multi-verse and then still keep the four bone crusher. Chandra just has this like incredible temple positive plays. Just really impressive.
Damon Alexander: [00:24:59] Yeah, it’s true. Whenever you play her and then just a deal 2d or opponent attorneys, she comes down in a controlling type of DECA.
It feels pretty underwhelming, but if you can use her to double spell it always, you feel like you come out ahead.
Daniel Schriever: [00:25:11] Did you resolve the Alrund’s epiphany Part the Waterveil question?
David Robertson: [00:25:16] Yeah.Alrund’s epiphany is better. I still don’t know why. Like the two one-on-ones didn’t really matter, but I guess sometimes I did, I did get to kill a new visit when they had to block my one-on-ones.
And I had Chandra’s ultimate going. The ability to suspend with Chandra specifically makes it insane. I was considering like, can I play like six turns cars? And just try to literally just like turbo Chandra, and then like increase the chance to do this multiple turns thing. I don’t know if you can like do that.
Cause it is a ton of air and if they like damaged Chandra or kill it, then you’re just, you know, literally casting six minute Explores. So yeah, that, that’s something to be explored as well. Hmm, but Alrund’s epiphany is better. I just don’t know why.
Damon Alexander: [00:25:54] I agree. And I also don’t know why.
Daniel Schriever: [00:25:57] Okay. Well, one to keep an eye on, obviously Alrund’s Epiphany has been kind of the quiet star, mid not quiet.
I mean, the car dominated standard, the car that I did not expect to be dominance, anything that’s good and standard and historic is probably good enough and pioneer as we’ve seen multiple times. So Ronnie thinks though, it’s tell us about your peace of mind exploration.
David Robertson: [00:26:17] Yeah. So Abzan peace of mind. I.
Wait. Oh, four drop. So let me preface that. The problem is that the peace of mind engine was requiring a bunch of setup. The rest of your deck doesn’t do that much. If you don’t hit peace of mind. So you have to play all these cars to find it. And then once you have a going, it takes a bunch of man.
Honestly, if the tap a white each for each of these iterations, and then that doesn’t do anything, unless you have a desecrated tomb in play. So, what I have on the board is like an updated list. I try to solve some of those problems that still wasn’t good enough. So I don’t know exactly how to fix this list.
I don’t think anyone should really fool around with it that much, but I do think that if you had somehow to make sure you always do peace of mind, then it would be sweet because peace of mind, desecrated tomb, deathless knight is like the SOC thopter sword combo. Only you’re getting three life for every man instead of one.
So like as assembled, it’s actually amazing, but like assembling, it requires you to play all these terrible cards. And then you’re like so far behind somehow the Thopter Sword combo, like can’t save you.
Daniel Schriever: [00:27:24] Well, we talked about a few Lorehold cards on Friday that have a trigger. Whenever something leaves the graveyard, physically that elephant cleric, Quintorius.
You don’t actually need to cast deathless Knight, right? I’m guessing that can just like only live in the hand so you could, you know, peace of mind is white. You could maybe go into Mardu colors. Would you be interested in that?
David Robertson: [00:27:47] Yeah, I need to solve. Problem of how to find deathless Knight. I tried like a variant where I was just like milling myself and playing Lurruses that’s the list you see up here, plus the commune with the gods.
Yeah. It’s like finding that peace of mind, like Deathrite Shaman is a cool card with desecrated ShawMan and, or a Desecrated TOmb. And maybe it would be a very good card with that elephant as well. I’m not sure I got to go back in the lab and, you know, tweak all these numbers out and see, see what we can see here.
Yeah. Like if you, if you could just guarantee that peace of mind is in your opening hand and just like play it on too, that would actually be sweet. Like every time you discard Silversmote Ghoul, get that going. And then you start like cycling deathless Knights. That is awesome. But. Every game, you don’t do it.
You just lose and it’s not even close. Like your opponent plays a Llanowar elf and then a five, four. And you’re just like a commune with the gods. Like try hit a two-minute enchantment, miss, like find a Silversmote Ghoul. Put it in my hand. Sometimes I was like, would not even pick it. Cause I guess it’s better than your graveyard, like resolve Stitcher’s Supplier pass the term, like take 12.
Damon Alexander: [00:28:51] So this is a deck that is just missing on the rule of eight.
David Robertson: [00:28:55] Yes. Exactly. If you had eight peace of mind effects or like an actual like lock tutor that was efficient or something like if Commune with the Gods wasn’t so bad, like it just so clunky and it doesn’t even hit peace of mind, like a huge percentage of the time you just miss and none of the creatures you find matter.
So, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know
Daniel Schriever: [00:29:15] So, Siege rhino would not have helped.
David Robertson: [00:29:17] No, because you just you’re bad at playing fair. Cause you’re not like playing fatal push or Thoughtseize. So like you resolved Siege Rhino, and it’s really good against the five, four or whatever, but they’ve got two other four or fives or whatever.
And so,
Daniel Schriever: [00:29:30] mm that’s a shame. I mean, the concept is so sweet, but it is fiddling around and. These fidgeters.
David Robertson: [00:29:39] So there is something there, like once I got it assembled, it was just like, single-handedly like beating decks. It’s just, there’s a million things that they can do to interact with you and stuff. So I got, I got to figure out how to, how to solve that, but, and then even like you assemble your whole engine, you could still lose it’s like they resolve Ugin, like Maya’s to like, Oh, that’s good.
Damon Alexander: [00:30:01] So something like Idyllic tutor would be a little bit too slow.
David Robertson: [00:30:05] Yeah, exactly. Like if there was a creature that like. Tutored for an enchantment that cost too exactly. Or something, you know, that was at least blocked before it died. I mean, I don’t know. You gotta have, you know, like a Treasure Mage, or Tribute Mage, but in white or I don’t know.
Daniel Schriever: [00:30:21] Yeah. You could Eldritch Evolution your a Stitcher’s supplier to find either Lurrus or Renegade Rallier and hopefully you blind mill with peace of mind.
David Robertson: [00:30:29] Okay. I’m interested in maybe in that anyway, I’ll have to tool around with it. I mean, this is literally just letting ticks on fire right now. So I can’t even recommend like, Avenues to pursue to anybody, I think just, yeah.
Cast Sylvan Caryatid and bring to light like a normal adult don’t uh, don’t be doing this
Daniel Schriever: [00:30:47] nonsense. Yup. Another Narset Bring to Light league to every recoup prepare the image. Okay. Well maybe that’s a good place to leave it here. Damon. You want to take us out?
Damon Alexander: [00:30:57] Yeah. So until next week we’ll have more spoilers.
And so just go out there and keep on learning. All right.
David Robertson: [00:31:04] Take care of
gentlemen.
Daniel Schriever: [00:31:06] That’s a wrap on episode two of Strixhaven season tune in next week for part two of Brewer’sguide to strict HavenStrixhavenand download the latest deck lists@fakenessbrewing.com. Support for this podcast is provided by brewers like you.
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