WOE's
{w/b} archetype is auras, so there's a very high number of vaguely relevant cards. The winner by a landslide is
Slumbering Keepguard - the one mana cost makes him effortless to sequence in whenever, and the fact the scry triggers on constellation means the spirits help dig. As such, the card helps smooth early and then allows for more aggressive haymaker fishing later. I'm almost certain it's going in, but I was not expecting to need to find room and am unsure what to cut.
Archivist of Oghma was praised during testing but then kind of blended into the deck. Yeah, costing two is great, but being reliant on the opponents is less so. It does go ham if going up against a ramp-heavy deck, which is a good fraction of my meta.
Mesa Enchantress is clunky in early sequencing and can be dismal if encountered late with no fodder. However, the enchantment density coupled with other auxiliary draw means those situations don't happen super often.
Phyrexian Arena is the three-drop draw enchantment classic, unexciting but operational.
Other notable WOE cards:
- Court of Ardenvale looks pretty exciting, but the deck just isn't that good at holding on to monarchy when it would be relevant here. I gave it a playtest, the Court came out, the monarchy promptly departed into the board, and I got to repeatedly recycle a fetch from the bin. If Crucible of Worlds were still in the deck, I'd probably take it out for this. Sevinne's Reclamation seems superior though.
- I'd probably playtest Discerning Financier if it was a two drop. I doubt it would make it in, but the design appeals to me.
- Eriette of the Charmed Apple is a super cool legend, and if I didn't have Daxos I'd almost certainly be building her. Nice political use of auras, faux-goad that's not as infuriating as the real thing and more effective in the final 1v1, a built-in clock, and the threat of having her whacked and getting surprise punched if getting too greedy with aura amplification. Honestly probably a better {w/b} aura.dec commander than the cheap cantrippy take on Daxos that was occasionally mentioned here.
- Expel the Interlopers is technically a tunable wipe, but somewhat expensive for what it offers. LTR gave us The Battle of Bywater, which is perfectly calibrated to the default use case and costs a paltry three to this thing's five. Yeah yeah, you can use this to just wipe everything in a pinch, or choose different thresholds, but most of the time three would be the magic number.
- Whoof is, well, white Hoof. We don't go wide enough reliably enough to abuse this, but it might be appreciated by swarm Daxos. Even then, Akroma's Will strikes me as a more versatile card that can offer alpha strike prowess as part of its application.
- Stroke of Midnight is another decent three mana instant removal spell. By now we get to be discerning enough to run just exile effects though.
- Three Blind Mice's populate could be used to make the card be mana positive, but it's slow as hell.
- The Virtues are an interesting combination of early game cheeser spells with a decently relevant enchantment for later. Virtue of Loyalty could spit out a 2/2 if there's nothing better to do pre-Daxos and wait in exile for later, when it could start dispensing counters and offering "vigilance". Virtue of Persistence could whack a small creature before becoming a Debtors' Knell.
- Archetype chaff rapid-fire! A bunch of the enchantment death stuff is largely redundant with creature death stuff in practice, as most of our enchantments will have legs attached to them as the game goes on. Ashiok's Reaper is a death draw variant, which exist at three for creatures. Cooped Up is a slightly better Pacifism, Spectral Grasp remains my favourite of the category. Knight of Doves is nearly strictly inferior to Teysa, Orzhov Scion. Neva, Stalked by Nightmares is a value pile of an Auramancer and a death-scry. Rimefur Reindeer is largely outperformed by Court Street Denizen for one mana less. Warehouse Tabby is a super cheap swarmer... of super irrelevant bodies. I'd be interested to see where this thing will find its home. Wicked Visitor is just about a Zulaport Cutthroat, but with the technically aforementioned slightly broader reach.
Prior to WOE spoilers, I kind of felt I got stuck in a rut, and resolving one of those huge game ender spells means I won, cool, go me, next game. That took a bunch of excitement out of the games, but then I went on a surprising anti-tear that reminded me that my odds of victory merely go up, but triumph is not guaranteed. I lost four games in a row where I resolved one of them. In the first,
Alesha assembled a
Reveillark combo and I had no way of busting it up. In the second, I got precariously low on life and
Breya was able to chuck enough junk at me, albeit at the cost of enough tempo loss that she ultimately lost the game. In the third, I had a somewhat lame draw via
Peer into the Abyss and was stuck on the
Replenish plan, which I needed to tutor the following turn. Alas, it got milled, along with
Skybind, before it got back to me. The opponent was subsequently able to copy my Peer while having one of those you-draw-they-mill enchants out and I died. This was an ultra punt on my end as I had
Hall of Heliod's Generosity - somehow the ability comes up so rarely I did not connect the dots that I could just pick up Skybind after the initial mill, and then keep myself alive after the second one. The fourth game had me chew myself down to single digits with
Bolas Rock, but I managed to find life gain and was about to turn the corner as
Rosheen burned a premature fireball on me to make sure I stayed down. Things have been back to normal since - three game-ending spells, three wins. The first one after the anti-streak felt particularly good, as it also happened to be the best Peer draw I had yet. I was able to assemble a crazy Skybind spirit factory immediately and won after untapping. Still, it was good to be reminded that there are still stakes in it.
One of the
Slumbering Keepguard test games was interesting enough to merit documenting. I found no other draw, so the Keepguard ended up the only means of card selection. Early on there was some interesting tension, as
Marrow-Gnawer set down
Scrib Nibblers. As such, I was actually disincentivised from trying to go for spectacular excavations, and settled for putting fetchlands at the top as I was sitting on
Brought Back. After eating two prepared fetches, Marrow-Gnawer lost interest and converted the Nibblers to tokens, allowing me more freedom of dig. About time, too - while I had good blocks against him for the time being,
Ghoulcaller Gisa landed an
Eldrazi Monument and took half my life with a single swing. Despite having a number of spirits and a
Serra's Sanctum, I could be prematurely out of the game. Thankfully Marrow-Gnawer drew some attention due to setting down
Whip of Erebos (as it turns out, lifelink is pretty spooky with huge
Rat Colonies), which bought me time to do massive scries into
Sphere of Safety and
Greater Auramancy. One could argue that since I was able to tap Sanctum for 20, the game was over in my favour anyway, but this was demonstrably not the case - Marrow-Gnawer was rapidly outswarming everybody, Gisa had flying,
Mazirek had... ramp? The sac value stuff affected me the least, so I paid it little heed. Meanwhile Gisa ripped a
Beseech the Queen for
Sudden Spoiling, and I sadly realised that flunging into him for the sake of getting rid of his survival trick was worth it, giving up a lot of spirits in the process. I was aware that I was being kept alive by the lightning rodded Sphere, so I carefully held up the Brought Back (along with a fetchland for an extra burst of ramp) in case anybody got funny. And at that point Mazirek figured it's time to get funny and plopped down
Reclamation Sage, eating the lightning rod. His board was gummed up with repeatable on-demand reanimation, there was
Champion of Stray Souls, there was a
Meren for the end step. My cheeser Brought Back with extra ramp got immediately snuffed out, and I was forced into sitting back on extreme defence and watching what he'd get up to.
Life // Death got cast as Life, awaking his lands, and they got super fat as a result of sac shenanigans. My board, while less tall, was apparently still intimidatingly wide from his perspective. Mazirek settled for maximising value, popped my Sphere as part of a massive Champion activation (the Life was not to pressure me but to give him enough fodder for that), and passed into the table for them to deal with the problem, as e.g. Gisa would have a much easier kill on me. Meren picked up RecSage, which took care of a
Dragon Throne of Tarkir that appeared on the rat board and would soon be a problem. Alright! No more RecSage shenanigans this turn! Brought Back went for the Sphere and lightning rod, and I was once again safe. Neither mono black deck figured out a way around me, and in my turn I flunged into Mazirek as I was out of shenanigans to keep myself alive.
Blind Obedience made his face quite easy to connect with, and the only thing that happened was Marrow-Gnawer quickly recycling RecSage yet again via
Nezumi Graverobber // Nighteyes the Desecrator to drop Greater Auramancy. At least the Sphere was still there, and it would probably take mono-black decks a second to figure out how to deal with it. The turn's new pile of spirits very quickly located Peer, which I drew and cast next turn. An answer to the extreme levels of gum was quickly identified in
Doomwake Giant, and Marrow-Gnawer/Gisa did not bother playing it out with my 15 or so white mana still available for follow-up plays.