Every workday ahead of the set's paper release, Insight takes a quick look at a deck featuring cards from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Here's a new combo strategy for Standard that you absolutely need to be aware of, otherwise you may find yourself literally unable to win!
You activate to turn it into an Angel. You then activate so that your Angel land gains, "You can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game." (The enlightened counter is just cosmetics; doesn't prevent the meaningful part.) At end of turn, Faceless Haven stops being a creature, but it keeps the ability and sticks around as the ultimate safe haven.
If all of this goes according to plan and if your opponent doesn't have some means to deal with a land, the game is now effectively over. You cannot lose for lack of life or library, and neither nor can give the win to your opponent. (That's the deeper meaning behind the second half of that sentence.)
There are a ton of different ways how to incorporate this two-card combo into a functional deck. Everyone has their own version, and so do I. More accurately, I borrowed some pieces here and stole others there. First the basics: mana. The combination requires you to spend six mana in one turn, three of them white and three of them from a snow source, the latter of which can include the mana from Faceless Haven itself. The addition of green acceleration may look tempting, until you realize that even doesn't speed things up to any point earlier than turn five, whereas can actually cost a turn! I went with just three , a small hedge for going-second games.
Next: finding the pieces. Apparently, both snow land as well as the legendary artifact count as glory, so is a no-brainer. It even comes with 3 life tacked on, which is great when Book is already in play and when you search and cast it afterward. Most people also use . I went further and included too. The Book's Angel token production rarely does more than buy time, but that it does. The main reason for the Potion, however, is , which can turn not only a into a Book.
Protection. You can't combo against a hand full of instant-speed creature removal, and it's a fool's errand to try. The only concession to removal I made is because this only costs zero to one mana, depending on whether you cast it on the combo turn itself or before. Waiting until you have eight mana and available will rather increase the odds that your opponent disrupts the combo.
In fact, you're not beating a proper control deck focused on answers anyway. I abandoned such ambitions and decided to secure the beatable matchups. Meaning and found spots in my list as well.
Rarely was there so much sky to shatter
So you can't win 'em all, but I found the following to offer the best rate, especially with regard to time. Most opponents concede in the face of an enlightened Faceless Haven. Only when they have reason to believe they can still win do some games go into the thousands. (See above.)
"You Can't Lose the Game"
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