Has anyone come back to the idea of a 1 of mikaeus? Recruitable which turns a late game recruiter into a bomb instead of just a great card, I find that I often end up sitting back on 5-8 mana by the game starts to close out with little way to use the excess mana outside of ports, batterskull recasts, and Sea-Gate Wreckage activations.
Cons:
No Tax
XCMC creature
No Protection
meh in opening hand
Can't be flickered to save it
Pros:
Late game bomb
Tutorable
Potential pumper against sideboard hate
Will often overpower tarmogoyf when cast in the late game
1 white symbol
Gets stronger turn by turn in stalemates
Psuedo-Steel Overseer
Awesome Art
Would Thalia's Lieutenant just be better in a human heavy build since it can throw counters onto most of your board while being saved by Flickerwisp and getting bigger as we add humans to the board. I guess Mikaeus is legendary so he has that going for him given karakas shenanigans. The fact he doesn't play well with Vial in concerning however.
If you're looking for a tutorable "bomb", you may want to consider Mirror Entity. 3-drop, so works very well with Vial. Can be cast uncounterable from Cavern, even if you named Elemental or whatever. Turns your whole board into a killing machine for just a few drops of mana - I used it to some success in Imperial, but I think an incremental approach at killing your opponent is ultimately superior to trying to drop bombs.
So after looking at the results from this weekends Legacy Classic, that's the 3rd Open/Classic that D&T hasn't landed a single copy in top 32/16 respectively.
Is this just people getting unlucky or is anyone noticing the field packing a few more D&T-specific trump cards in their SB for us?
Kinda surprising given how much better the deck is supposed to have gotten recently. All of a sudden, no results.
So after looking at the results from this weekends Legacy Classic, that's the 3rd Open/Classic that D&T hasn't landed a single copy in top 32/16 respectively.
Is this just people getting unlucky or is anyone noticing the field packing a few more D&T-specific trump cards in their SB for us?
Kinda surprising given how much better the deck is supposed to have gotten recently. All of a sudden, no results.
Has anyone played around with a list from before all of our new toys came to be? It's hard to deny the power of Recruiter, Sanctum, and THC, but like people have pointed out, they don't seem to be helping us put up results. If anything, we've fallen off the map a bit. It could be that there is more hate out there, but part of me questions if maybe our abundance of new cards has pulled us off course.
Has anyone played around with a list from before all of our new toys came to be? It's hard to deny the power of Recruiter, Sanctum, and THC, but like people have pointed out, they don't seem to be helping us put up results. If anything, we've fallen off the map a bit. It could be that there is more hate out there, but part of me questions if maybe our abundance of new cards has pulled us off course.
It's definitely not that. The SCG wasn't even all that big either at 53 people. Hell, that GPT at a store where I played Will Kim (elpresidente) in the semifinals - and which he went on to straight win - that was 71 people. His list had all the new toys. Just a mixture of variance of the game, or less people happened to play DnT at the last few SCG cities, who knows? Anyway, just by numbers, Kim's win was more impressive than that paltry Knoxville "Classic".
4 - All is Dust
1 - Massacre
3 - Dread of Night
1 - Toxic Deluge
1 - Engineered Plague
1 - Golgari Charm
And I probably missed a couple.
The wealth of new cards we gained was great, but maybe it turned our deck in to more of an ebb and flow meta choice than a consistent contender. Much like Affinity in modern, the deck is good when people forget about it, but then it makes a top showing and people start packing the hate again. I hope to be proven wrong!
Hey guys, it's been a while since I last played Legacy (or any Magic at all, since I've spent the summer traveling and then moved to a place with no Legacy within a 300km radius) but this weekend I was visiting a fairly large city and there was a Legacy event yesterday so I couldn't pass up on the opportunity. Was very pleased to end 3-0 on first place with a list that I put together with the goal to maximize the fun I was going to have because I wanted to make the most out of the few hours I had of playing Magic in a very long time.
So, you must be asking what the hell is happening here, and the answer is: I added a combo finish to the deck (multiple in fact), and nearly everything in the deck is tutorable in some way or another. Captain Sisay has been a project of mine for a very, very long time, and in fact one of my original goals for developing the green builds is to add said card to the kit, but her costing 4 and overreliance on drawing a copy of her in order for the deck to work properly held it back. Until now. Thanks to the printing of Recuiter I was able to revisit the the blueprints I had for the deck, and so far I'm very, very happy with the end result. The combo is very consistent without being dead at any stage of the game, and it's a blast to play.
The Sisay toolkit and combo has very different options depending on the boardstate and what you want to do, aside from providing a ton of utility to close the game with, without any of it being overbearing. If you have a Vial in your starting hand and get a Recruiter, you can 3 counter drop Recruiter and up to 4 to drop Sisay all on curve, which is pretty devastating. So what can you do with Sisay once she's in play?
- Get a Karakas to protect herself. So one of the thing I like the most is that she not only can assemble multiple combos all by herself, but she can also get a Karakas to protect herself in the process, so getting rid of her isn't easy at all once you can untap with her in play.
- Get Mangara to assemble the Karakas + Mangara combo.
- Get Gaea's Cradle and Oviya Pashiri for the huge tokens and plenty of mana to power Equipment with.
- Get Jitte. No need for SFM there, she can find any legendary card, including artifacts.
- Get and extra white source in Flagstones of Trokair.
- Get sideboard bullets on demand, like Gaddock Teeg and Gisela, the Broken Blade. Gisela is there as a tutorable WLL for those grindy matchups like Jund and especially BUG, since she steamrolls Baleful Strix and can race through a Goyf thanks to lifelink while being unkillable.
There's a lot more that can be done with Sisay, this is just the first build I've taken to a real life setting to test out. The matchups I won against were Lands, Shardless BUG and Jund. It's quite an experience to play a competitive 60 card EDH deck!
I think you'd have to promote Gisela to MD before talking about about some Bruna SB nonsense, but you know what, **** it, we're this far out there, might as well.
If you really want to get Sisay online generally, do you possibly want 1 less Karakas to hopefully avoid the ole' legendary lotus petal mode of multiple Karakas. Getting stuck on 2 seems like it may be tough when developing your mana.
Even with Teeg in the SB, doesn't a silver bullet deck like this want GSZ? Even as a 1 or 2 of? Or does the Thalia, GOT+Tax package make it just infeasible?
@mykatdied He is playing 8 MB Legendaries, plus 2 more in the side. Maybe Karakas is that important to the deck?
@Frenadol That list looks way too ambitious, especially on the manabase. I get the feeling you are going to see a very high number of downright unplayable off colour hands that can't go anywhere, even if you don't get Wastelanded and Stifled into oblivion. Recruiter of the Guard is already fairly slow and durdly as a 3 drop, I don't think any self respecting opponent is going to let you twiddle your thumbs for 3 consecutive turns starting a Captain Sisay tutor chain that has no immediate board impact before you assemble everything. If you're trying for a toolbox approach, I believe building it around the Recruiter who can immediately get you your silver bullet at T3 the earliest, compared to Sisay who needs to survive till earliest T5 barring any Gaea's Cradle explosive starts, which I believe that shell is unable to accomplish. I think GW Maverick does what you're trying to do, and better.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The only certainties in life are death, taxes and White Weenie."
@Frenadol: that list is hilarious, and lord do I want to try it at GP Denver next weekend; my addiction to foils, however, will likely render that impossible.
On another note, have you/anyone else given any thought (in light of everyone and their mums packing Dread of Nights/Massacres/G. Charms) to running back the 24-land Resto/Moat build that had been getting tossed around a while back? I've got it sleeved up for a local event next week, seems like it might be a solid choice (with some of the new hotness built in, if at all possible).
@Frenadol That list looks way too ambitious, especially on the manabase. I get the feeling you are going to see a very high number of downright unplayable off colour hands that can't go anywhere, even if you don't get Wastelanded and Stifled into oblivion. Recruiter of the Guard is already fairly slow and durdly as a 3 drop, I don't think any self respecting opponent is going to let you twiddle your thumbs for 3 consecutive turns starting a Captain Sisay tutor chain that has no immediate board impact before you assemble everything. If you're trying for a toolbox approach, I believe building it around the Recruiter who can immediately get you your silver bullet at T3 the earliest, compared to Sisay who needs to survive till earliest T5 barring any Gaea's Cradle explosive starts, which I believe that shell is unable to accomplish. I think GW Maverick does what you're trying to do, and better.
Yes, but your argument also applies to every single "new" build that is chock full of 3-drops. The reality is that the format right now simply just isn't that fast to begin with, and the vast majority of games will go to turns 6 or 7 without much happening. Of course the opponent is not going to sit there doing nothing while you assmeble the pieces of the combo, but what can they do? You literally get to tutor for free each turn, even if they kill Sisay after one or two activations you are still massively ahead, and the rest of the deck, being GW, already has a huge advantage over mono white in the mid to lategame. The deck is just insanely consistent when it comes to its ability to close games, and you don't even sacrifice that much in the early game in order to get there. The manabase is basically the same than that of the regular GW builds I've played for a year, with a Gaea's Cradle tackled in as a 24th "non-land". And the old GW builds I made had no problems whatsoever going toe to toe against Delver and combo, just look at the sideboard to see what you can do with green mana. I've tested the manabase long enough to know there's no issue against Wasteland and Stifle decks at any stage of the round. RUG Delver is still a free matchup and you walk all over mono-W D&T especially now that you can Recruiter for Qasali Pridemage.
I simply think this is the best version of the green variant I've made so far, and it takes the color combination in a new direction and provides something unique the monowhite version lacks, which is consistency and inevitability. Also the cheese alone already makes it worth trying, literally nobody expects how this deck finishes games.
Of course the deck has some "weaknesses" that I'm not even sure need addressing since I don't even think they're that much of a downside at all (63 card deck for the extra not-quite-a-land and 2 tutor targets just like in Elves) but the purists in this thread will give me hell for daring to play more than 60 cards despite my 24 land Resto Moat builds have always had 61 cards on it and it's well known to give good results.
@Frenadol: that list is hilarious, and lord do I want to try it at GP Denver next weekend; my addiction to foils, however, will likely render that impossible.
On another note, have you/anyone else given any thought (in light of everyone and their mums packing Dread of Nights/Massacres/G. Charms) to running back the 24-land Resto/Moat build that had been getting tossed around a while back? I've got it sleeved up for a local event next week, seems like it might be a solid choice (with some of the new hotness built in, if at all possible).
One problem I've found when revisiting that build is that both Resto and Avenger are non tutorable, making Recruiter a subpar option as the deck shines with lots of copies of those fliers (preferably 4 Wisp 3 Avenger 3 Resto). The old version without Recruiter is still fine imo, but yeah. it doesn't make that good use of the new cards that have come out lately than other builds. THC and Prelate should still be good since there's not that much competition for the CMC3 slot, so I was thinking on trying something like 3x Prelate and cut down on the number of Moms to 2-3x as the deck has plenty of redundancy and Resto is inherently already hard to kill. Prelate in particular has been a card I'm very impressed with how well she performs, so I'm definitely looking for ways to fit more in the deck.
ANother thing is that there's potential for lots of value with 7 bounce effects for the Recruiters but Resto isn't usually used this way (I rarely bounce SFM for an extra equipment for example) and you could try to fit something like a Mangara as a tutor target, but space considerations become real and the deck isn't really designed to do that kind of stuff anyways. I believe the deck's lategame is already good enough to not need tutorable durdle.
Well Frenadol, you know I am all about spice and color-splashes, diminutive as mine is currently with just Orzhov Pontiff. Rooting for you to put up a Top 8 with that build.
For those perhaps new to the GW builds, Frenadol and I championed them heavily around the time of Dig Through Time. Without even having played this version, I know right off the bat that Qasali Pridemage is a most welcome guest, especially since my days of success with it were from when before it was Recruitable. Mono-white simply has no good options for "destroy artifact or enchantment". War Priest of Thune is great, but it only hits half the equation, and artifacts are weighted more heavily in the format than enchantments just on frequency of play, so he's not good enough, and Leonin Relic-Warder is just... annoying, and only really effective against Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives, as the LtB trigger essentially does nothing. Otherwise, there is always that liability factor where you opponent gets back his card at the cost of only 1 piece of removal or a flash blocker. At least with Palace Jailer's "return opponent's creature" effect, it's a more complicated web to escape, as the inherent likeliness that your opponent cannot deal combat damage to you comes precisely from Monarch's "exile creature" effect.
Green affords you some pretty great options far as artifact and enchantment hate, not just from Pridemage. You might even sideboard a singleton Reclamation Sage like Elves, which is now better than the oft-used Harmonic Sliver. The advantage here is that you keep the body after the destroy-effect, but it requires a Vial@3 to handle instant-speed instead of 1 mana. The pre-destruction part of having Pridemage is not to be underestimated too, as you can go aggro into most anything but Tarmogoyf on turn 3. It's likely that Pridemage is superior to Reclamation Sage, but in longer matches where you're more likely to park Vial at 3, a spare Sage in addition to your Pridemage(s) could be a better Recruiter target late-game.
I do wonder, in the overall, if Palace Jailer isn't just a better version of Captain Sisay. Jailer basically gives you a net advantage of 2 cards on the turn it enters play, so using the scenario where you perfectly curve from Vial@3 >> Recruiter >> 4-Drop creature, Jailer is already ahead by 2 cards and stays ahead by 2 as long as you have Monarch. Additionally, Jailer himself requires no protection, you only really need to protect yourself, which is generally easier than normal once you are drawing 2 cards per turn. That said, rock on with that spice fest if it works.
Though I largely agree with where you're coming from on the Sisay v Jailer discussion, I think there's something to be said for the card quality coming off Sisay. If your opponent does nothing, Jailer threatens to give you an extra random card in your deck at the end of every turn. If your opponent does nothing, Sisay threatens to end the game. There's a difference in both viable card selection and quality of the threat itself.
I'm definitely interested in watching that WG list, though as I said above, I don't think I could handle such a monster properly.
Of 55 Death and Taxes, one got to top 8 in the GP, which is kinda to be expected given the natural variance of the deck by virtue of nor running blue for the Brainstorms and Ponders.
The list has Palace Jailer and a somewhat ambitious 22 land manabase. Also surprised he ran a tutorboard given the already cramped space available. Otherwise pretty standard.
^Well, I'd say given the somewhat homogenous nature of the Chiba meta (read: all Miracles), 22 lands might actually have been the right call. That DnT player has the only Wastelands in Top 8. I didn't see every match to be sure, but I saw no Delver whatsoever, so it's at least not as common over there.
Chiba Top 8
Elves
Storm
Miracles
Miracles
Miracles
Sneak and Show
Sneak and Show
Death and Taxes
The main is pretty standard in the sense that it has a very limited use of the new cards (2/2) and is very close to the old standard lists. 3 of the 5 spots come from dropping 1 each of Phyrexian Revoker, Flickerwisp, Serra Avenger; 1 from dropping a land; 1 from what would traditionally be a Mangara or SotL.
Sideboard, I am guessing 2 SE are for Reanimator and Dredge. WLL? Was there a lot of BUG Delver? Or was it just since Palace Jailer is already there, why not go to 4 on Vial? Cataclysm over Gideon, I am guessing. SoLaS is very interesting, especially if you expect to play DnT and trade on blocks to it and Eldrazi.
Cons:
No Tax
XCMC creature
No Protection
meh in opening hand
Can't be flickered to save it
Pros:
Late game bomb
Tutorable
Potential pumper against sideboard hate
Will often overpower tarmogoyf when cast in the late game
1 white symbol
Gets stronger turn by turn in stalemates
Psuedo-Steel Overseer
Awesome Art
Thoughts?
Maybe a list like
4x Flickerwisp
4x Mother of Runes
4x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3x Sanctum Prelate
2x Phyrexian Revoker
2x Recruiter of the Guard
1x Mikaeus, the Lunarch
1x Palace Jailer
1x Serra Avenger
3x Cavern of Souls
2x Karakas
10x Plains
4x Rishadan Port
4x Wasteland
Artifacts
4x AEther Vial
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Umezawa's Jitte
Instants
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Armageddon
2x Containment Priest
1x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Ghost Quarter
1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2x Gut Shot
1x Mirran Crusader
1x Pithing Needle
2x Rest in Peace
1x Sunlance
1x Sword of War and Peace
If you test it, let us know how it fares. It's an interesting idea.
Is this just people getting unlucky or is anyone noticing the field packing a few more D&T-specific trump cards in their SB for us?
Kinda surprising given how much better the deck is supposed to have gotten recently. All of a sudden, no results.
Has anyone played around with a list from before all of our new toys came to be? It's hard to deny the power of Recruiter, Sanctum, and THC, but like people have pointed out, they don't seem to be helping us put up results. If anything, we've fallen off the map a bit. It could be that there is more hate out there, but part of me questions if maybe our abundance of new cards has pulled us off course.
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
These were the numbers on hate cards in the top 7.
3 - Kozilek's Return
3 - Massacre
1 - Sulfur Elemental
1 - Supreme Verdict
1 - Sudden Demise
3 - Pyroclasm
The 8th deck was Elves.
Moving on to 9-16
4 - All is Dust
1 - Massacre
3 - Dread of Night
1 - Toxic Deluge
1 - Engineered Plague
1 - Golgari Charm
And I probably missed a couple.
The wealth of new cards we gained was great, but maybe it turned our deck in to more of an ebb and flow meta choice than a consistent contender. Much like Affinity in modern, the deck is good when people forget about it, but then it makes a top showing and people start packing the hate again. I hope to be proven wrong!
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
Here's the list:
4 Windswept Heath
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
3 Karakas
3 Savannah
3 Plains
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Gaea's Cradle
Spells
4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sylvan Library
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Batterskull
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Mother of Runes
3 Serra Avenger
4 Flickerwisp
3 Recruiter of the Guard
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Captain Sisay
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
2 Council's Judgment
1 Banisher Priest
3 Rest in Peace
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Gaddock Teeg
2 Choke
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Sylvan Library
1 Gisela, the Broken Blade
So, you must be asking what the hell is happening here, and the answer is: I added a combo finish to the deck (multiple in fact), and nearly everything in the deck is tutorable in some way or another. Captain Sisay has been a project of mine for a very, very long time, and in fact one of my original goals for developing the green builds is to add said card to the kit, but her costing 4 and overreliance on drawing a copy of her in order for the deck to work properly held it back. Until now. Thanks to the printing of Recuiter I was able to revisit the the blueprints I had for the deck, and so far I'm very, very happy with the end result. The combo is very consistent without being dead at any stage of the game, and it's a blast to play.
The Sisay toolkit and combo has very different options depending on the boardstate and what you want to do, aside from providing a ton of utility to close the game with, without any of it being overbearing. If you have a Vial in your starting hand and get a Recruiter, you can 3 counter drop Recruiter and up to 4 to drop Sisay all on curve, which is pretty devastating. So what can you do with Sisay once she's in play?
- Get a Karakas to protect herself. So one of the thing I like the most is that she not only can assemble multiple combos all by herself, but she can also get a Karakas to protect herself in the process, so getting rid of her isn't easy at all once you can untap with her in play.
- Get Mangara to assemble the Karakas + Mangara combo.
- Get Gaea's Cradle and Oviya Pashiri for the huge tokens and plenty of mana to power Equipment with.
- Get Jitte. No need for SFM there, she can find any legendary card, including artifacts.
- Get and extra white source in Flagstones of Trokair.
- Get sideboard bullets on demand, like Gaddock Teeg and Gisela, the Broken Blade. Gisela is there as a tutorable WLL for those grindy matchups like Jund and especially BUG, since she steamrolls Baleful Strix and can race through a Goyf thanks to lifelink while being unkillable.
There's a lot more that can be done with Sisay, this is just the first build I've taken to a real life setting to test out. The matchups I won against were Lands, Shardless BUG and Jund. It's quite an experience to play a competitive 60 card EDH deck!
*eybrow raises slowly*
I guess I'll add that to the green splash page on the website.
I love it so much, but I don't think I could handle such a spicy list.
A friend told me to add Bruna to the sideboard and cast her with the help of Gaea's Cradle for that spicy hot Brisela action.
If you really want to get Sisay online generally, do you possibly want 1 less Karakas to hopefully avoid the ole' legendary lotus petal mode of multiple Karakas. Getting stuck on 2 seems like it may be tough when developing your mana.
Even with Teeg in the SB, doesn't a silver bullet deck like this want GSZ? Even as a 1 or 2 of? Or does the Thalia, GOT+Tax package make it just infeasible?
@mykatdied He is playing 8 MB Legendaries, plus 2 more in the side. Maybe Karakas is that important to the deck?
On another note, have you/anyone else given any thought (in light of everyone and their mums packing Dread of Nights/Massacres/G. Charms) to running back the 24-land Resto/Moat build that had been getting tossed around a while back? I've got it sleeved up for a local event next week, seems like it might be a solid choice (with some of the new hotness built in, if at all possible).
Yes, but your argument also applies to every single "new" build that is chock full of 3-drops. The reality is that the format right now simply just isn't that fast to begin with, and the vast majority of games will go to turns 6 or 7 without much happening. Of course the opponent is not going to sit there doing nothing while you assmeble the pieces of the combo, but what can they do? You literally get to tutor for free each turn, even if they kill Sisay after one or two activations you are still massively ahead, and the rest of the deck, being GW, already has a huge advantage over mono white in the mid to lategame. The deck is just insanely consistent when it comes to its ability to close games, and you don't even sacrifice that much in the early game in order to get there. The manabase is basically the same than that of the regular GW builds I've played for a year, with a Gaea's Cradle tackled in as a 24th "non-land". And the old GW builds I made had no problems whatsoever going toe to toe against Delver and combo, just look at the sideboard to see what you can do with green mana. I've tested the manabase long enough to know there's no issue against Wasteland and Stifle decks at any stage of the round. RUG Delver is still a free matchup and you walk all over mono-W D&T especially now that you can Recruiter for Qasali Pridemage.
I simply think this is the best version of the green variant I've made so far, and it takes the color combination in a new direction and provides something unique the monowhite version lacks, which is consistency and inevitability. Also the cheese alone already makes it worth trying, literally nobody expects how this deck finishes games.
Of course the deck has some "weaknesses" that I'm not even sure need addressing since I don't even think they're that much of a downside at all (63 card deck for the extra not-quite-a-land and 2 tutor targets just like in Elves) but the purists in this thread will give me hell for daring to play more than 60 cards despite my 24 land Resto Moat builds have always had 61 cards on it and it's well known to give good results.
One problem I've found when revisiting that build is that both Resto and Avenger are non tutorable, making Recruiter a subpar option as the deck shines with lots of copies of those fliers (preferably 4 Wisp 3 Avenger 3 Resto). The old version without Recruiter is still fine imo, but yeah. it doesn't make that good use of the new cards that have come out lately than other builds. THC and Prelate should still be good since there's not that much competition for the CMC3 slot, so I was thinking on trying something like 3x Prelate and cut down on the number of Moms to 2-3x as the deck has plenty of redundancy and Resto is inherently already hard to kill. Prelate in particular has been a card I'm very impressed with how well she performs, so I'm definitely looking for ways to fit more in the deck.
ANother thing is that there's potential for lots of value with 7 bounce effects for the Recruiters but Resto isn't usually used this way (I rarely bounce SFM for an extra equipment for example) and you could try to fit something like a Mangara as a tutor target, but space considerations become real and the deck isn't really designed to do that kind of stuff anyways. I believe the deck's lategame is already good enough to not need tutorable durdle.
For those perhaps new to the GW builds, Frenadol and I championed them heavily around the time of Dig Through Time. Without even having played this version, I know right off the bat that Qasali Pridemage is a most welcome guest, especially since my days of success with it were from when before it was Recruitable. Mono-white simply has no good options for "destroy artifact or enchantment". War Priest of Thune is great, but it only hits half the equation, and artifacts are weighted more heavily in the format than enchantments just on frequency of play, so he's not good enough, and Leonin Relic-Warder is just... annoying, and only really effective against Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives, as the LtB trigger essentially does nothing. Otherwise, there is always that liability factor where you opponent gets back his card at the cost of only 1 piece of removal or a flash blocker. At least with Palace Jailer's "return opponent's creature" effect, it's a more complicated web to escape, as the inherent likeliness that your opponent cannot deal combat damage to you comes precisely from Monarch's "exile creature" effect.
Green affords you some pretty great options far as artifact and enchantment hate, not just from Pridemage. You might even sideboard a singleton Reclamation Sage like Elves, which is now better than the oft-used Harmonic Sliver. The advantage here is that you keep the body after the destroy-effect, but it requires a Vial@3 to handle instant-speed instead of 1 mana. The pre-destruction part of having Pridemage is not to be underestimated too, as you can go aggro into most anything but Tarmogoyf on turn 3. It's likely that Pridemage is superior to Reclamation Sage, but in longer matches where you're more likely to park Vial at 3, a spare Sage in addition to your Pridemage(s) could be a better Recruiter target late-game.
I do wonder, in the overall, if Palace Jailer isn't just a better version of Captain Sisay. Jailer basically gives you a net advantage of 2 cards on the turn it enters play, so using the scenario where you perfectly curve from Vial@3 >> Recruiter >> 4-Drop creature, Jailer is already ahead by 2 cards and stays ahead by 2 as long as you have Monarch. Additionally, Jailer himself requires no protection, you only really need to protect yourself, which is generally easier than normal once you are drawing 2 cards per turn. That said, rock on with that spice fest if it works.
I'm definitely interested in watching that WG list, though as I said above, I don't think I could handle such a monster properly.
The list has Palace Jailer and a somewhat ambitious 22 land manabase. Also surprised he ran a tutorboard given the already cramped space available. Otherwise pretty standard.
Elves
Storm
Miracles
Miracles
Miracles
Sneak and Show
Sneak and Show
Death and Taxes
The main is pretty standard in the sense that it has a very limited use of the new cards (2/2) and is very close to the old standard lists. 3 of the 5 spots come from dropping 1 each of Phyrexian Revoker, Flickerwisp, Serra Avenger; 1 from dropping a land; 1 from what would traditionally be a Mangara or SotL.
Sideboard, I am guessing 2 SE are for Reanimator and Dredge. WLL? Was there a lot of BUG Delver? Or was it just since Palace Jailer is already there, why not go to 4 on Vial? Cataclysm over Gideon, I am guessing. SoLaS is very interesting, especially if you expect to play DnT and trade on blocks to it and Eldrazi.
4 Mother of Runes
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Serra Avenger
3 Flickerwisp
2 Mirran Crusader
2 Recruiter of the Guard
2 Sanctum Prelate
1 Palace Jailer
4 Swords to Plowshares
Artifact (7)
4 Æther Vial
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Batterskull
Land (22)
8 Plains
3 Karakas
2 Cavern of Souls
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Wilt-Leaf Liege
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Path to Exile
2 Rest in Peace
1 Seal of Cleansing
2 Council's Judgment
2 Cataclysm
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
Modern
Whir Prison
Legacy
5c Humans
"I'm a lead farmer... !" Quote ruined due to policy.