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By: CottonRhetoric, Cotton Rhetoric
Apr 29 2011 11:57am
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If you're familiar with my column, you might know that I like Titania's Song effects.  And so it also makes sense that I've been waiting very eagerly for this card to come online:

Opalescence

And now that it finally has, I'm rejoicing (and building several decks).

You've probably seen the tournament-winning combo deck back in the day, using cards like Replenish and Academy RectorI'm not going to do that.  I'm going to make casual decks only, and non-combo decks only.

1. Strategies

Since we're not going the combo route, and since the aggro route makes no sense, we're going the defensive route.  But within that, there are two basic options: with creatures and without creatures.

The benefits of each are simple: without creatures, we blank every card of our opponent's that mentions creatures, and we free ourselves to use global creature hate; with them, we have access to some good cards!  We're obviously running a lot of enchantments, so cards like Mesa Enchantress are an obvious fit.  Then there are cheap defenders, and other creatures to help us stall.  I can see running Wall of Essence in certain builds.

Spells should be included no matter what.  The temptation might be to just run lands and all enchantments, but that's overkill.  Once you drop the Opalescence, 8 attackers isn't really better than 6.  Make room for some Wraths, counterspells, and removal is my advice.

2. Enchantments

Let's just run through a list of the best defensive enchantments in each color.  Remember: NO AURAS.  Opalescence does nothing for those.  You can still include them for the sake of cards like Idyllic Tutor and Greater Auramancy, or just because you like what they do, but I'm not including that here for the same reason I didn't make a lists of wraths just above.

Journey to Nowhere     Oblivion Ring
Exactly the type of card Opalescence wants.

WHITE

BLUE

Rhystic Study     Propaganda
I'm sensing some synergy here....

BLACK

RED

GREEN

MULTICOLORED

Side note: I really love the flavor behind combining Opalescence with Form of the Dragon.  Because you're not just attacking with a dragon, or as a dragon, but with the fact that you are a dragon.  How cool!!!

3. Decks

So it's clear that blue and black are our winners.  We're already stuck with heavy white due to Opalescence itself.  Red could be splashed, but the problem is that (except for its Honden) the cards listed above have double-red (or more) in the cost and so aren't very splashable.  And I don't really want this to become a Honden deck, so red is just out entirely.  (Sorry Form of the Dragon!)  As for Green, its cards are perfectly splashable but either underwhelming or redundant with things in other colors.  Okay, Mirri's Guile is cool, but I don't really need to attack with a 1/1 late game anyway.

I noticed that most of the blue cards fell into a pattern of taxing the opponent.  And I noticed that most of the black cards fell into a pattern of killing things.  And THEN I noticed that half of the white cards synergized with the blue pattern and half of the white cards synergized with the black pattern.  So here's the plan: one white-blue deck and one white-black deck!

    Ghostly Prison

BLUE-WHITE

Taxing is the name of the game.  I've already mentioned cards like Propaganda, Rhystic Study, Shimmer, Energy Flux, and In the Eye of Chaos.  The more taxing cards you run, the stronger each one is, so I'll be doing that.  Suppression Field is also good in here, since there didn't end up being any cards with activation costs.

Of course, a couple of creatures will still slip through Propaganda's cracks, so we should be prepared with defenders.  White and blue have some fantastic choices with Wall of Omens, Fog Bank, Perimeter Captain, and Plumeveil.

With all the taxing going on, the perfect counterspell is Mana Leak.  Unfortunately, it's weakened by In the Eye of Chaos and is worthless when flipped over by an Ardent Plea... but I don't mind taking those out.  Mana Leak provides more value than both of them combined.

The rest of the card choices should explain themselves.  Like all my decks, this is intended to be casual and customizable:

Land (23):
12 Island
11 Plains

Creatures (5):
2 Perimeter Captain
2 Wall of Omens
1 Fog Bank

Nonenchantments (5):
4 Mana Leak
1 Idyllic Tutor

Enchantments (27):
1 Greater Auramancy
3 Suppression Field
3 Journey to Nowhere
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Aura of Silence
1 Energy Flux
2 Copy Enchantment
2 Ghostly Prison
2 Propaganda
2 Rhystic Study
1 Dissipation Field
1 Force Bubble
1 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Opalescence
1 Shimmer
1 Future Sight
Copy Enchantment Dissipation Field

I originally had Sunken Hope comboing with a heavier Wall of Omens concentration... but for all the games it helped, it hurt just as many other games due to the opponents abusing their own EtB triggers.

    The Abyss

Last up:

BLACK-WHITE

Black is the color of killin'.  Its enchantments are no different.

The Abyss, Call to the Grave, and Porphyry Nodes all take guys out one at a time.  Spot removal can help accelerate the effect.  And when it comes to swarms of small creatures, Night of Souls' Betrayal and Engineered Plague can be of great service.  They also weaken the big guys enough to make your lifegain more relevant before The Abyss gets to 'em.  Speaking of weakening creatures, that effect can combo nicely with Reverence.

A lot of those cards prevent us from wanting to use our own creatures.  So we won't.  However, Spirit Mirror can withstand all of the above, while also gumming up your opponent's offense as they desperately try to get through with their ever-dwindling army.

This deck has a greater need for lifegain, and as far as enchantment lifegain goes, Sunspring Expedition is about as efficient as it gets.  I was going to use Honden of Cleansing Fire, but the curve is already pretty steep and it needed some early drops.  Speaking of the steep curve, I added in a few Orzhov Signet.

A couple of cards from the previous deck are good enough to be used again, but not too many.  Just the Journey to Nowhere, Oblivion Ring, 1x Greater Auramancy and 1x Idyllic Tutor.  The rest is unique.  Here's the list!

Land (23):
11 Plains
11 Swamp
1 Ghost Town

Non-enchantments (4):
3 Orzhov Signet
1 Idyllic Tutor

Enchantments (33):
1 Planar Void
3 Porphyry Nodes
4 Sunspring Expedition
1 Greater Auramancy
4 Journey to Nowhere
4 Engineered Plague
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Lethal Vapors
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 No Mercy
4 Opalescence
1 Reverence
1 Spirit Mirror
The Abyss
Engineered Plague No Mercy

The Ghost Town is for the sake of those Sunspring Expeditions, although it's rarely necessary.

If you've got other combos for Opalescence, please let me know in the comments!  Please nothing involving Humility... my head hurts....

 

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