The Mystic Sanctuary Archetype

(this was written during the preerrata Companion era)

One of the main reasons why cards are often misevaluated in terms of powerlevel is their rarity. A recent example is probably Fiend Artisan, that was praised as the new Tarmogoyf. However, although the card is now seeing play in a few Pioneer decks (albeit only because of Lurrus), the card did not come trough yet into Modern and is very far from being significant in Legacy. I think, that if the card had been released as a Rare, the hype would not have been that big.

In recent Magic sets, the powerlevel has been increased pretty drastically. This powercreep is obviously visible in the Rares and Mythics Rares. Of course, Oko, Thief of Crowns, Once upon a Time, Uro, etc. are all busted cards, but there are also Rares like Cubwarden that are not particularly more powerful that say Leonin Warleader. However, most printed Commons and Uncommons are just strictily better these days. Peasant cube owners have probably noticed that they get a huge influx of new and powerful cards each set. Cards like Syr Konrad, the Grim are just ridiculously strong and could easily be Rares. Another example is Excavation Mole which is the first common 3/3 in green (for two generic mana and a green) that has a really great upside. In the previous set, we have seen the first creature of this kind without any (situational) downside (like Invasive Species), namely Hyrax Tower Scout. But one of the most outrageous commons in the recent sets must be Mystic Santuary, a card that has shaped the whole Modern format and is also seeing play in Legacy and Vintage. But why is this card so powerful and why I am going to dedicate a whole article to a whole new deck archetype that becomes available with it in cube?

The first question is easy to answer. Mytic Santuary has one fundamental design mistake: It is an Island. If it was not an Island, it would not be played in any format. Being an Island means that it is fetchable by the standard Fetchlands but also by two of the slow fetches (Bad River and Flood Plain). In addition, there are neat little synergies with cards that require Islands in play, like Checklands (if you play those) or Veldaken Shackles. There are even more convenient and powerful synergies in cards like Daze and Gush which bring Sanctuary back to your hand and create a loop.

But we did not even come close to what Mystic Sanctuary is capable of. One of the most important cards that go with Mystic Sanctuary has to be Cryptic Command. These two cards in conjunction let you counter one spell per turn cycle or let you tap all your opponent’s creatures during each opponent’s turn, thus making you invincible to combat damage. The last busted synergy are Miracles, that can be turned (or recycled) by the Sanctuary by placing them exactly on top of your deck. There are unfortunately only three Miracles that I would consider powerful enough to be played in Cube, namely Bonefire of the Damned, Entreat the Angels and Terminus. Especially latter is a powerful (but slow) board wipe on its own in cube. Generally, I love Miracles, even if there is no support at all (not a lot of scry effects, Brainstorm, etc.). The main objective of my cube is assembling sweet synergies and having swingy gameplay. I love seeing miracles topdecked when there was not hope left. So does my playgroup. But Miracles are even better if they have proper support.

You might wonder now, how we are going to construct and entire archetype out of these cards? One card does not change that much. By now, it seems that we were just good to go, by just playing an Azorious Control deck with Miracles and a Cryptic Command if we get one. A few cards do not build an archetype on their own. We need a little bit more support. We really want to abuse Mystic Sanctuary to its fullest, thus we must be able to have it consistently. Of course, there is already enough tutoring possible for it in the form of fetch lands, but those are getting picked up very early and getting two blue fetchlands is very rare. 

Fortunately for me, I already run Wren and Six in my Cube with an elaborate Land matters theme. I always liked Wren and Six, but most of the time, I was a little bit disappointed with it. Not in the way, you might think; it was always a very powerful card on its own pinning down X/1s and especially rebuying Fetchlands, which is a great card advantage engine in any midrange Rock, Jund or Temur deck. The card really shines with the Horizon Lands and Wasteland (I don’t play Strip mine). Although I have all of these lands in my cube, it still seemed like the maximum potential of the card had not been achieved yet. Therefore, I added the Onslaught Cycling Lands (the ones that cycle for 1 Mana of their respective mana producing colour) and the Amonkhet Cycling Lands (cycle for 2 generic Mana). 

I must say, that I am really impressed with these lands. The Onslaught ones are great in control and midrange decks and I love that the Amonkhet Cycling lands have basic lands types which makes them fetchable and also make the necessary fixing in a deck with Sanctuary possible. Together with Life from the Loam, Ramunap Excavator and Crucible of Worlds, we have enough payoffs for a Land matters deck. But I thought that the deck needed even more support. I included cards like Expedition Map, Crop Rotation and Sylvan Scrying to increase the consistency of the Land Matters deck to search for important pieces like a Horizon Land. With more land tutors, I also included more unique and powerful lands, like Karakas, Shelldock Isle and Maze of Ith (I would also love to own a Gaes Cradle). The influence of these lands on the average decks in my cube seemed really healthy; the land tutors were not only played in the lands deck. For example, a Bant Blink deck picked up an Expedition Map to tutor for Karakas to bounce their Venser or Vendillion Clique all over again. There are not many Legendary creatures in cube with a powerful ETB ability so I was pretty amazed to see Karakas seeing play not only as a disruptive card. Another sweet deck was a Gruul Wildfire deck that played Fires of Invention and huge beaters like Inferno Titan, Glory Bringer, etc. It played Sylvan Scrying to tutor up Blast Zone and Raging Ravine, which are both really good with Fires of Invention.

Back to the present. With those additional land tutors, there are even more ways to get to Mystic Sanctuary and one does not have to solely rely on Fetch lands. The main plan of the Mystic Sanctuary deck is to recycle a powerful Instant and Sorcery or enable a Miracle. The base color for it is obviously Blue, which is the main downside of Sanctuary: It is meant to be played in a Mono Blue deck. Luckily we can work around that in cube. We have Duallands, Shocklands and also the Amonkhet Cycling Lands that easily support a two color Mystic Sanctuary deck, that is base Blue and can splash for another color, while providing enough Islands. What are these colors? I think that the two main secondary colors are Green and White/Red. Green provides the Land tutors like previously mentioned (Farseek is another great one). In addition, we get all the broken Simic cards that were released in the last few sets like Icefang Coatl, Growth Spiral, Uro, etc. that go really well with the Control strategy of the deck (I should mention that all the basics in my cube are snow basics). Once upon a time is also great in the deck, even if not cast for zero and it even digs for Mystic Sanctuary. A pure Simic Sanctuary deck would play out like a UG control deck. Generally, I could never really make a balanced Simic Flash deck work as there are not enough green cards that I wanted in the deck. As a result, the Simic Flash decks drafted in my cube were always very light on green anyway and are thus very similar to what I describe here. What are the Instant and Sorceries that work well in these decks? Of course, we want Counterspells, preferably the most powerful and versatile ones: Mystic Confluence, Archmage’s Charm and of course Cryptic Command. These cards are all busted in Control decks but all require being heavy blue. How convenient, we want to play a lot of Islands anyway. The basics of cube like Preordain and its friends are of course also great in the deck. One card that really stood out is Wilderness Reclamation, a card that I always had in my cube but never really saw any play. It is perfect in this deck. Another deck that popped up ones while testing was a Simic taking-turns-deck. It was not that powerful as I only include two extra turn spells in my cube (Time Warp and Nexus of Fate) but rebuying a Time Warp once is really powerful, especially if one has multiple planeswalker on the battlefield. The drafter also managed to do the typical Reclamation plus Nexus of Fate “combo” (I should not that Nexus is a nombo with Mystic Santuary itself though).

The second option is a UW control deck that includes Miracles. Having the option to tutor consistently for Mystic Sanctuary and rebuying or enabling a Entreat the Angles or Terminus (again) is gamewinning because Miracles are busted. The deck becomes much more consistent with the  simple inclusion of one Expedition Map and Sanctuary. Cards like Brainstorm are viable as one has a lot of shuffling effects and of course it works great with the Miracles themselves. If one really wants to increase the powerlevel, one can play Mystical Tutor which can obviously enable your Miracles by itself, but it can also search up a Cryptic Command, Confluence, etc. I could also see a Bant control deck being viable where one splashes green for the land tutors and Wilderness Reclamation and plays white for the Miracle cards. I have not tested this yet, but maybe the mana works fine.

I understand, that the emphasis on Mystic Sanctuary seems kinda odd as this just sounds like a Ux control deck. But the possibility of having access to any Instant or Sorcery in your graveyard at any time seemed really powerful during testing. I love me some Abzan toolbox decks with Chord of Calling, Green Sun’s Zenith, etc. These Ux Sanctuary decks play like "control toolbox" decks. They felt different. I have a silverbullet for any situation. This is the current state of my cube, however we are not even finished yet as I want to explain how I want to support these Sanctuary strategies even more.

The one-time activation of Mystic Sanctuary is powerful, but it becomes really broken if we are able to use it multiple times. Of course, Cryptic Command does that. Other cards that do that and are fine cube cards on their own are Meloku the Clouded Mirror and general Bounce Lands, that I will probably test. Another way to recycle Mystic Sanctuary over and over again is to recur it from the graveyard. This requires a sac engine for lands. On possibility is Zuran Orb which is not really a card that seems powerful enough. However, I will probably test it, as it seems kinda sweet (but very risky) with Heliod, Spike Feeder and Archangel of Thune, that I added for the Persist combo recently. It also enables going nuts with Mayhem Devil. One sac engine that is actually good is Elvish Reclaimer. 2 Mana to put Sanctuary in my graveyard to replay it via Excavator or Crucible of Worlds and getting whatever land I like from my deck? Yes please. Not even mentioning that the Reclaimer can fetch up Sanctuary as well. The deck will probably be Simic, but I can see splashing red for Wren and Six to be worth it. What would be really benefical for this deck is the Temur Tricycle land (am I allowed to say tricycle land?) as it is an island.

Further ideas:

As always with a new cube idea, I go crazy after a few hours of looking into new possible cards and I went a little bit crazy with this one: If we also include a whole land package, we can also play Dark Depths, I card that I love and want to play. I do not care how good it is. There are mainly four ways to enable Dark Depths: Thespian Stage, Vampire Hexmage, Solemnity and Mirage Mirror. I consider two of those good, namely Thespian Stage and Solemnity. The first is fetchable with all the land tutors and being able to copy a Maze of Ith is sweet. Solemnity is interesting for the persist combo deck, that will get pushed even more with the almighty Mothra. Vampire Hexmage is probably fine in a heavy black deck as it can deal with planeswalkers. Mirage mirror is a card that I can’t really evaluate. These are the four ways to enable Dark Depths, or are they? There is another one that slipped under my radar for Ikoria, namely Crystalline Resonance. This card requires a cycling theme, which we are not far from. We have the Onslaugh Cycling lands, the Amonkhet and Ikoria ones. Tossing a few more cycling cards in the cube will not be hard, especially because they make gameplay better anyway. Obviously, we need a dedicated Enchantment matters theme now. Abundant Growth and Unbridled Growth provide cheap enchantments that even make Dark Depths tap for mana (combo). Most cycling payoffs are enchantments anyway and the two best ones are probably Astral Drift (which is playable on its own, without a cycling theme) and Astral Slide. These enchantments are good at blinking and the blink archetype is generally one, that gets more support with every set. Yorion would be a house in such a deck, blinking a lot of enchantments and then drawing from multiple triggers of enchantresses. Of course, this is not functional. It is just an example on how I think through these things. I do not think, that Crystalline Resonance will be included in my cube soon. However, I like the idea of having more interesting lands in my cube, like Dark Depths. I already like the land enchantments in my cube. Especially ones like Wild Growth, Fertile grounds, etc. One could also then include Lotus field, to enable Lotus Storm with untap effect like Frantic Search, Kiora’s Follower and Vizier of Tumbling Sands (that is a cycling card, so maybe I am onto something with Crystalline Resonance? Copy Lotus Field?). Even ‘’just’’ ramping with it seems decent for turn 4 Ugins, Karns, etc. It would also go well with the bouncelands, which as previously mentioned, go very well with the Sanctuary plan. With the newly announced boltlands from Zendikar Rising, there is another incentive to consider bouncelands.