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Main » Articles » The Heliod Deck I Didn't Play

The Heliod Deck I Didn't Play

Michael Flores
Posted on February 7, 2020
 Reddit

I don't have a ton of grand regrets in my Magic life, but a memorable one was not playing Aggro Ideal at Regionals 2006.

I was playing it for fun at the Invitational, and was asked to "save" the deck for Nationals that year. I had had a sweet run of US Nationals Top 8 designs... Years after Jon Finkel's Napster there was Hall of Famer Brian Kibler with the transformational G/W, followed by Kuroda-Style Red in the hands of Josh Ravitz in 2004 and 2005 respectively... But I considered Aggro Ideal my actual masterwork of deck design.

Aggro Ideal | 2006 Standard | Michael Flores

At the time I built it, it felt like all things to all matchups. For beatdown we had Sakura-Tribe Elder into Loxodon Hierarch. We could Gifts Ungiven (possibly using Boseiju, Who Shelters All, if necessary) to orchestrate any number of inevitable grinding scenarios... And if all else failed, we had a fully realized combo deck via a potentially un-counter-able Enduring Ideal!

The routines were so g-d elegant! We could out mid-range beatdown, we could Ramp ahead of other mid-range decks, and even shove our endgame down control's throat. We beat Tron just by getting Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree out and Wrath-ing all their big threats. Ping. Ping. Ping. (take one) Masterwork!

At the time it was usual and customary for me to play a lot out in the open on Magic Online; and one of my favorite memories was Aaron Forsythe messaging me "Well I didn't expect that" when it looked like my Tribe Elder-into-Hierarch game plan wasn't going to pan out. "Oh well, guess I'll search up this here Form of the Dragon and double-lock you."

We successfully kept a lid on it exactly long enough for it to go from the best... To completely unplayable.

By US Nationals the best deck was Solar Flare. Both Paul Cheon and Luis Scott-Vargas had their breakout tournaments that weekend; both with Solar Flare in front of them. Worse, approximately 50% of Day Two deck lists were all Solar Flare! Aggro Ideal could never, ever, beat Solar Flare. They had the same Plan A as us, but bigger; and actual Mortify to prevent us from winning on Plan B.

[Being too far ahead is the same as being wrong.]

So I didn't get to play the deck at Regionals; didn't qualify; and broke my Top 8 designs streak at Nationals (the bad way). Napster would not be proud.

Anyway, I'm writing this largely on the plane to Players Tour: Phoenix.

Up until this week, I was planning to play the coolest deck. IT IS THE COOLEST DECK! I mean check out this beaut:

Heliod Devotion | Pioneer | andal, 5-0 MTGO Pioneer League

We found this 5-0 MTGO list when preparing for the PTQs at MagicFest: New Jersey. I thought andal's effort was enchantingly novel.

It has the Heliod + Walking Ballista combo; but can increase its consistency with Idyllic Tutor. Idyllic Tutor can facilitate a "regular" enchantments-driven game plan. You can get the one-of Sigil of the Empty Throne and then almost every card in your deck is insane. You can start stacking copies of Sphere of Safety to make attacking you difficult, or in a pinch, find a Banishing Light (which can handle any kind of permanent).

I felt like the Leyline of Sanctity combo with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx put the deck over the top.

But as you might know, I didn't actually play this archetype at MagicFest: New Jersey, instead posting some disappointing results with a Gruul beatdown deck. But then I figured out the Dark Ritual.

Dark Ritual
Radiant Fountain

I had to go make sure Radiant Fountain was legal. Why was no one playing Radiant Fountain? I played against Radiant Fountain every week in Modern! Do you see what makes Radiant Fountain so cool here?

Typically, the Heliod combo goes like this:

Play Heliod, Sun-Crowned.

Play a 2/2 or larger Walking Ballista. Give it lifelink. Remove a counter to shoot the opponent's face. Deal one; gain one; replace the +1/+1 counter... Rinse and repeat twenty or so times.

The problem with this sequence is that Heliod costs three and Walking Ballista costs four. You can't really go three-into-four unless you have some nonsense expectation that you're going to untap with both permanents in play on turn five. I mean, come on. Because Walking Ballista requires even mana and Heliod's lifelink ability requires even mana, you can't really try to pull this off until turn six. It's reeeeeally difficult to pull this off all on one turn. You need like nine mana to do that normally (which, I guess, is cool beans with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx).

But realistically? If you already have Heliod, Sun-Crowned in play and the opponent doesn't have a Bring to Light for Utter End or something, we're talking six.

See how Radiant Fountain fits in?

It's not quite fair to say Radiant Fountain turns this from a two-card combo into a three-card combo, but when it does, it speeds you up by multiple turns.

Turn three: 3 mana, play Heliod, Sun-Crowned

Turn four: Play a 1/1 Walking Ballista. Now play Radiant Fountain...

Radiant Fountain not only creates a life gain trigger for zero mana, it comes into play untapped, giving you mana to immediately give Walking Ballista lifelink. Congrats! You now have an increasingly legit turn four kill.

Aside: There is another turn four kill, but it really only works against Lotus Breach... And even then not all the time (they can literally just cast Thassa's Oracle to block). If you play 1/1 Walking Ballista on turn two, you can follow up with Heliod, and then attack - motherloving attack - with a 1/1 lifelink to get the party started.

Here is what I was planning to sling with:

Mono-White the Hotness | Pioneer | Michael Flores

I thought Seal Away would be better straight up than Silkwrap main deck, because of its combined abilities to interact with Mutavault and hit large creatures. A subtle play if you have Blind Obedience on the battlefield is to cast Seal Away to exile Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath with its goes-to-the-graveyard trigger on the stack. Sweet little defensive combo, right?

The overwhelming number of defensive enchantments and removal buy you time against many beatdown decks. Blind Obedience (and Authority of the Consuls after sideboarding) really deflate a lot of the hasty Red creatures in this format. You don't have to be the fastest combo deck in certain matchups because your Plan B is so frustrating for them. For its part, Blind Obedience may be small, but it's mighty. You can actually attempt to deal 20 points of damage to a Control player with it (giving you something to do with the removal, even); or at least take the pressure off of Castle Ardenvale.

Same deal on Niv to Light. No question they're more powerful than you are. But at the end of the day, they mostly play out guys. They might get your combo with Unmoored Ego or Slaughter Games, but you can overwhelm them with infinite Angels and removal + Blind Obedience grinding.

Control is an uphill battle... But you know how they say necessity is the mother of invention?

How do you think a slow control deck contends with this piece?

Mastery of the Unseen

Besides being ABSOLUTELY BONKERS with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Mastery of the Unseen can make your combo un-counter-able!

Over the course of time you can eventually flip over both sides of your combo. Or even if it's only one side, Heliod might just go live thanks to being surrounded by random Cast Outs, et al. He's hard to handle, fair style.

If you flip Heliod with Mastery of the Unseen, both triggers will fire. You can put a +1/+1 counter on your as-yet-still-secretly-unrevealed Walking Ballista... Which can now flip for the princely sum of zero mana. You have a 0/0 with a +1/+1 counter, which will itself trigger to produce another +1/+1 counter. Got two mana spare?

Gee gee.

Free Leyline of Sanctity prevents opponents from disrupting you with Thoughtseize or Thought Erasure.

Cast Out might not be the fastest one-for-one... But it has the added power of helping to set up your combo.

You have an absolute nightmare of a sideboard for combo... And by "combo" I mean Lotus Breach.

... So that's the problem.

I could figure out to load my sideboard with cards like Deafening Silence for Lotus Breach (this is going to take a while) and Azorius Control (nice Counterspells... Both sides of my combo are literally creature spells)... But how to beat Dimir Inverter?

The obvious choice is Gideon of the Trials. I could heavy up on that. Dimir Inverter is, among other things, notoriously soft to Planeswalkers. But the deck has a ton of dead weight in the Lotus Breach matchup (Seal Away, Shatter the Sky, arguably Leyline of Sanctity) and while you can theoretically bring Gideon in there... He's not really preventing them from winning. If they can do their thing they're going to be able to flash back a bounce spell, right?

As for Dimir Inverter... They don't target you to win. They can literally operate on one spell per turn. Like us, both their combo pieces are actually creatures! You can't even trick them by removing Thassa's Oracle when they have one card in library... Because they can cycle out of it (and you have precious little instant speed removal).

I took a breath. Thought about it. Figured there might be no way to have the right answers for so many different kinds of opposing decks. Thought about it again. Realized that even with all my Warren-like plans... I was setting myself up for Aggro Ideal version Two Point Oh.

In Sultai Delirium, there was even an ascendant Solar Flare to eat my lunch!

So that's the story of the deck I didn't play this week. I still think it's cool! And there's a silver lining. After all these goofball White cards I've bought, at least my local FNM has switched from Standard to Pioneer.

Wish me luck! We both know you know what I'm going to be sleeving up instead ;)

Monastery Swiftspear

LOVE

MIKE

TAGS articles, constructed, analysis, decklist, michael flores, pioneer, 02072020, heliod devotion

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