Gavi, Nest Warden
I stumbled into this idea of Solemnity + Decree of Silence as a bit of a hard lock piece and started brewing a concept around it. Obviously I was in at least UW for this concept and as I was thinking more on it I came across the idea of Delaying Shield + Solemnity which seems to protect me from damage as well. I explored a few UW commanders but ultimately I liked Gavi, Nest Warden with this since I could potentially free cycle Decree of Silence as a counterspell still if drawn.
From here I did a lot of deliberation on if I could make Enduring Ideal work as the means to assemble this mess. Lots of the issues with Solemnity and Delaying Shield is that they are a little bit sub par standalone cards. The problem I saw with Enduring Ideal though is that generally you need to get two triggers of it to set up the full counterspell lock first as slow rolling it will likely get Decree of Silence killed in the turn rotation as you wait. I contemplated forking it but most of the fork effects kind of sucked outside of this situation so I instead turned to flash with Teferi, Time Raveler, and Emergence Zone as my primary enablers. I contemplated running Quicken as well but at the last second I decided that Expedition Map into Emergence Zone was a better proactive gameplan with options of Kor Haven / Hall of Heliod's Generosity also as backing plays.
You might have also noticed a rather substantial Astral Slide package. I focused heavily into playable enchantments with cycling as a means to try to free cycle them, trigger Astral Slide, and flicker Auramancer type cards to recover them. This turns into a draw package as well as helping with some redundancy for if I play out the combo pieces without the epic casting. You can also create somewhat of a nasty counter loop using this with cycling Decree of Silence as a counterspell.
My backup plans might be some sort of beatdown with The Locust God / Avacyn, Angel of Hope or going for Approach of the Second Sun. It does feel like it can play a few different ways and its possible I might trim some of these options depending on if they feel unnecessary. Once I start up the epic spell I kind of lock myself in on that so hopefully that doesn't go sideways lol.
Decklist
Approximate Total Cost:
CONSIDERATIONS:
- Brilliant Restoration - Rezing all enchantments seems fairly good in an enchant heavy deck. My issue here is more that its expensive and I have a whole heap of enchantment recursion already (like 6 other cards currently).
- Forks - Copying the epic spell might be an option. My issue with forks is how little other synergy they have within this deck. Due to that I primarily pushed for flash instead as I felt like several of the flash cards had other viable uses to them.
- Desert of the Fervent - I had Herald of the Forgotten in my list for some time while crafting it and that was a big reason to max out on the cycling lands. I cut him as he didn't seem to be as central on what I was playing for and as part of that I think the need to run absolutely every cycling land has also dipped a bit with him going. I think my land count is at an acceptable number without this still but we will see how I feel after playing it some.
