I apologize in advance for the preparedness of this post. I have been playing standard since Ravnica release competitively (off and on), and I was playing casual kitchen table games since Ice Age or so (off and on). Some of my favorite cards have made it to the top tier legacy decks, namely Life from the Loam. With that said, during the Ravnica/Coldsnap/Time Spiral standard I made a W/G/R control deck centered around Tamanoa and Searing Meditation. Given a larger card pool and a key rule change since then, I think Searing Meditation has the potential to be relevant in Legacy. Here is my idea:
Obviously, this deck is far from perfect. I am not a legacy player, I have no idea what my meta would be and this deck probably has glaring mistakes and choices that would just be better as other things.
Essentially, the idea is to stick Searing Meditation and gain incremental life in various ways. The pain lands may seem like strange choices, and they are, but they trigger the Tamanoa/Searing Meditation interaction. Braid of Fire seems to be a little broken now, as mana no longer causes mana burn, so this mana hungry deck over time can produce enough mana to do some silly things.
Please be kind, I am someone looking to break in to Legacy and I prefer to build my own decks. The glaring issue I am aware of is that this deck falls over to permission, I would like help in solving that issue.
I have very little knowledge of the vast card pool, so I am very open to suggestions. If there is another thread open for a similar list it wasn't apparent on the first page and I apologize for my blithering.
Definitely need to add Lightning Helix! Also, doesn't really seem like Braid of Fire will do you much good since there aren't any instants that you can use with it. I'd toss in Kitchen Finks since they are a good creature by themselves and gain you life to use with the meditation. Doesn't seem like you need that many Enlightened Tutor either since you have the Sterling Grove.
Depends as well whether or not you want this to be a combo deck (focusing on the meditation), or a combination of an aggro deck with a combo element. If you want to go for the former, I'd toss in Moat, since you can search it up with the Sterling Grove and provide yourself with more time to bring down the opponent.
So far I'm not seeing much use for the Life from the Loams aside from recurring Wasteland, which isn't horrible, but you should have something else to use them with if you want that many. Only thing I can think of would be Seismic Assault, but at that point it would be better to just play Aggro-Loam.
That's all I have with my tired mind, but it seems like a fun deck
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life from the loam + zuran orb and/or peace of mind+ life from the loam + at least 1 land in hand @wubrgamer Obviously you didn't look to closely at the deck list to see this interaction. That being said, I do think you could easily cut down to 2 e-tutors and add in two lightning helix. Good suggestions there wubrgamer.
Ajani's pridemate could be an interesting psuedo-tarmogoyf for your deck.
Having never played this deck, my question would be how often you actually cast the firemane angel, or does it usually just get dredged into the yard with life from the loam/peace of mind discarded to gain 3?
Depending on the need, Ajani's mantra is super slow, but could fill this role for you or be a tutorable singleton.
Another possibility would be to take a page from Rubin Zoo and use the grove of the burnwillows + punishing fire engine. A little slow, but good agains fish/goblin decks and really good if you can stick a tamanoa.
City of solitude might help against permission decks, but it is slow. choke is a great sideboard card that takes the wind right out of blue permission decks sails also.
Also, I would cut a between 3-5 actual dual lands for fetch lands to give you more good loam targets and also to help you mana fix. Windswept heath, wooded foothills or arid mesa find you any of your duals and could help you find the needed one.
@ wubrgamer Braid of Fire allows me to not spend my mana on removing aggro's board with Searing Meditation. Braid of Fire is possibly the only thing that makes this whole thing viable speed-wise because each activation of it is 2 mana. Seismic Assault could be better than Peace of Mind conditionally (With Tamanoa out) Life from the Loam is essentially to use Searing Meditation/Peace of Mind interaction. Lightning Helix could be really good, yes. I think Dueling Grounds may actually be better for my strategy than Moat, it is quicker and it creates a soft lock with Searing Meditation because I can burn out the attacking creature.
I am not sure about cutting the e-tutors because I like being able to use them to search for Zuran Orb, which could have really good interaction with the Loam.
@Clownbaby - Firemane Angel never should be cast really. However, it is one of the few cards I can think of that has interaction from the 'yard. Gaining a life during my upkeep nets me two damage with Braids/Meditation.
It might be good to add a little parallel with Seismic Assaults to the deck. If anyone can think of a card that does the Tamanoa effect I would also love that.
I thought about City of Solitude. I am wondering if there are some points at which it would just hurt me.
sesmic assault would be good. you may add granite shard as well since you run red. how bout banefire or comet storm?
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Buy All the planeswalkers!!!
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@dondee likely comet storm before banefire because of its instant speed, but I have seen a lot of Gaddock Teeg floating around the format (not that it particularly matters with the other parts of the deck). Granite Shard seems a little slow. If I were hurting for a Cursed Scroll effect, I should probably just go with the namesake, mostly because it can come down T1, and 2 can often be a more relevant number than 1.
Being a perfectionist, I've been working on a searing meditation deck for the past 3 years, so I've done lots of playtesting and tried lots of card choices. It's only recently that I'm finally content with the deck, as there are lots of synergestic cards, each one filling multiple roles.
Granted, I built this deck for casual, so it probably wouldn't work out too well in legacy, especially some of the "weaker" card choices like Quiet Disrepair, but I though I'd post the decklist up anyway. Perhaps you'll see some new card interactions you could apply in legacy?
As you can see, this deck is really geared against creature based decks. Wall of Reverence and Recumbent Blissserve double duty as creature control and life gain triggers. Sun Droplet soaks up early aggro damage to help us survive a little longer while we get the combo set up, but also works great with the painlands when we need some more life gain triggers. Lightning Helix doesn't really need any explaining.
Armillary Sphere keeps the lands coming since this is a mana hungry deck.
With all of these lifegain triggers stacking during upkeeps/end of turns, Ajani's Pridemate can get out of hand very fast.
And finally, There's the zendikar refuge lands. Pretty nice for a land drop
The biggest problem with this deck is that it is too slow for the legacy format, and there aren't any ways to stop storm/combo. In earlier versions I tried making the deck more competitive (for the old extended format) and I used cards like glittering wish to help me out against specific matchups.
Anyway, personally I feel searing meditation is just too slow for the format, but who knows, maybe you can get it to work out. I'm really rooting for ya, as I love the card and I like your deck concept. Hopefully my deck has given you a few ideas, even if it is just a casual deck. Good luck!
EDIT: someone earlier suggested using Grove of the Burnwillows + Punishing Fire. I think if you could fit it in, it would be great for the deck, as it fills a similar role to what you're trying to do with the meditation and well, it's always good to have another way to deal repeatable damage.
life from the loam + zuran orb and/or peace of mind+ life from the loam + at least 1 land in hand @wubrgamer Obviously you didn't look to closely at the deck list to see this interaction. That being said, I do think you could easily cut down to 2 e-tutors and add in two lightning helix. Good suggestions there wubrgamer.
Ajani's pridemate could be an interesting psuedo-tarmogoyf for your deck.
Having never played this deck, my question would be how often you actually cast the firemane angel, or does it usually just get dredged into the yard with life from the loam/peace of mind discarded to gain 3?
Depending on the need, Ajani's mantra is super slow, but could fill this role for you or be a tutorable singleton.
Another possibility would be to take a page from Rubin Zoo and use the grove of the burnwillows + punishing fire engine. A little slow, but good agains fish/goblin decks and really good if you can stick a tamanoa.
City of solitude might help against permission decks, but it is slow. choke is a great sideboard card that takes the wind right out of blue permission decks sails also.
Also, I would cut a between 3-5 actual dual lands for fetch lands to give you more good loam targets and also to help you mana fix. Windswept heath, wooded foothills or arid mesa find you any of your duals and could help you find the needed one.
punishing fire, and grove of burnwillows work great with life from the loam also, you don't care if you dredge them into the grave.
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Originally Posted by sephirothx
Trust me, if your choice is between Jace in the mail or a girl in your bed, take the girl and wait for Jace to rotate. Even when you lose in bed, you still win...kinda.
Ivory Tower wouldn't be bad. Remember though that I am going for repeatable mini-shots of life gain, preferably during my upkeep to abuse Braids of Fire/Searing Meditation. Tamanoa is a great way to do it, but likely I could only pull it off once. Also, blue isn't too far a stretch to get in here for enchantments, what does everyone think of Paradox Haze? Giving myself another upkeep could backfire, are there any decks that naturally make you pay for things during your upkeep? (Having a Braids of Fire that triggers twice a turn would be silly).
I find myself wondering if this deck wouldn't just be better with a sort of Lands shell, diverging in that it doesn't need Maze of Ith type lands to survive necessarily and it has a more proactive strategy (ie hopefully I wont win by opponent scooping).
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4 Tamanoa
3 Firemane Angel
Enchantments (13)
3 Searing Meditation
1 Dueling Grounds
4 Sterling Grove
4 Braid of Fire
1 Peace of Mind
4 Life from the Loam
4 Pyroclasm
Instant (6)
2 Worldly Tutor
4 Enlightened Tutor
Artifacts (1)
1 Zuran Orb
Lands (25)
3 Brushland
3 Battlefield Forge
3 Karplusan Forest
4 Wasteland
1 Kor Haven
3 Plateau
4 Savannah
3 Taiga
1 Serra's Sanctum
Obviously, this deck is far from perfect. I am not a legacy player, I have no idea what my meta would be and this deck probably has glaring mistakes and choices that would just be better as other things.
Essentially, the idea is to stick Searing Meditation and gain incremental life in various ways. The pain lands may seem like strange choices, and they are, but they trigger the Tamanoa/Searing Meditation interaction. Braid of Fire seems to be a little broken now, as mana no longer causes mana burn, so this mana hungry deck over time can produce enough mana to do some silly things.
Please be kind, I am someone looking to break in to Legacy and I prefer to build my own decks. The glaring issue I am aware of is that this deck falls over to permission, I would like help in solving that issue.
I have very little knowledge of the vast card pool, so I am very open to suggestions. If there is another thread open for a similar list it wasn't apparent on the first page and I apologize for my blithering.
Depends as well whether or not you want this to be a combo deck (focusing on the meditation), or a combination of an aggro deck with a combo element. If you want to go for the former, I'd toss in Moat, since you can search it up with the Sterling Grove and provide yourself with more time to bring down the opponent.
So far I'm not seeing much use for the Life from the Loams aside from recurring Wasteland, which isn't horrible, but you should have something else to use them with if you want that many. Only thing I can think of would be Seismic Assault, but at that point it would be better to just play Aggro-Loam.
That's all I have with my tired mind, but it seems like a fun deck
Ajani's pridemate could be an interesting psuedo-tarmogoyf for your deck.
Having never played this deck, my question would be how often you actually cast the firemane angel, or does it usually just get dredged into the yard with life from the loam/peace of mind discarded to gain 3?
Depending on the need, Ajani's mantra is super slow, but could fill this role for you or be a tutorable singleton.
Another possibility would be to take a page from Rubin Zoo and use the grove of the burnwillows + punishing fire engine. A little slow, but good agains fish/goblin decks and really good if you can stick a tamanoa.
City of solitude might help against permission decks, but it is slow. choke is a great sideboard card that takes the wind right out of blue permission decks sails also.
Also, I would cut a between 3-5 actual dual lands for fetch lands to give you more good loam targets and also to help you mana fix. Windswept heath, wooded foothills or arid mesa find you any of your duals and could help you find the needed one.
I am not sure about cutting the e-tutors because I like being able to use them to search for Zuran Orb, which could have really good interaction with the Loam.
@Clownbaby - Firemane Angel never should be cast really. However, it is one of the few cards I can think of that has interaction from the 'yard. Gaining a life during my upkeep nets me two damage with Braids/Meditation.
It might be good to add a little parallel with Seismic Assaults to the deck. If anyone can think of a card that does the Tamanoa effect I would also love that.
I thought about City of Solitude. I am wondering if there are some points at which it would just hurt me.
Would Pyroclasm be better as Volcanic Fallout?
Ajani's Pridemate could get huge quick, aid in the soft lock with Dueling Grounds, and eat removal meant for Tamanoa.
I have not tested this deck, and I don't even have the cards for it yet (mostly the duals), it is my "foot test" into legacy.
EDH - UWGrand Arbiter Agustin IV
UBW Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
Modern - Mono U tron / Polymorph / NFTW (ninja for the win)GR tron GR
Buy All the Dual Lands!!!
Buy All the fetches!
Create tons of EDH Decks!!!
Eat Nothing but Oats!! (LOL, not true)
Train MMA!!!
Marry My girlfriend!!!
Get her Pregnant only Once!
Teach my Son/Daughter Sports and magic cards!!!
Continue my legacy son!!!/Daughter!!
Granted, I built this deck for casual, so it probably wouldn't work out too well in legacy, especially some of the "weaker" card choices like Quiet Disrepair, but I though I'd post the decklist up anyway. Perhaps you'll see some new card interactions you could apply in legacy?
4x Ajani's Pridemate
2x Tamanoa
4x Wall of Reverence
//Planeswalker
2x Ajani Vengeant
//Artifacts
2x Armillary Sphere
4x Sun Droplet
1x Stormbind
2x Quiet Disrepair
3x Searing Meditation
4x Recumbent Bliss
//Other Spells
4x Lightning Helix
//Lands
3x Jungle Shrine
2x Kazandu Refuge
2x Graypelt Refuge
3x Brushland
4x Battlefield Forge
2x Rugged Prairie
4x Plains
3x Mountain
2x Forest
Deck Notes:
As you can see, this deck is really geared against creature based decks. Wall of Reverence and Recumbent Blissserve double duty as creature control and life gain triggers. Sun Droplet soaks up early aggro damage to help us survive a little longer while we get the combo set up, but also works great with the painlands when we need some more life gain triggers. Lightning Helix doesn't really need any explaining.
Armillary Sphere keeps the lands coming since this is a mana hungry deck.
Stormbind is super secret plan B tech and works really well with Well of Lost Dreams.
With all of these lifegain triggers stacking during upkeeps/end of turns, Ajani's Pridemate can get out of hand very fast.
And finally, There's the zendikar refuge lands. Pretty nice for a land drop
The biggest problem with this deck is that it is too slow for the legacy format, and there aren't any ways to stop storm/combo. In earlier versions I tried making the deck more competitive (for the old extended format) and I used cards like glittering wish to help me out against specific matchups.
Anyway, personally I feel searing meditation is just too slow for the format, but who knows, maybe you can get it to work out. I'm really rooting for ya, as I love the card and I like your deck concept. Hopefully my deck has given you a few ideas, even if it is just a casual deck. Good luck!
EDIT: someone earlier suggested using Grove of the Burnwillows + Punishing Fire. I think if you could fit it in, it would be great for the deck, as it fills a similar role to what you're trying to do with the meditation and well, it's always good to have another way to deal repeatable damage.
punishing fire, and grove of burnwillows work great with life from the loam also, you don't care if you dredge them into the grave.
NeoFinnity... A Control Affinity Primer
playing:vintage: BDARK' timesB
legacy: WWdeath n' taxisWW
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