If we "lock in" those three cards, as well as the staple spells we're used to using (Bolt, Preordain), we end up filling out the rest with draw, burn, and utility.
Currently we're using Arc Trail to decimate aggro, while never being dead, and always being castable.
We're using Treasure Hunt, because it always finds more "gas", and often sets us up for land for the rest of the game. The combo with Halimar Depths (which is pretty okay on it's own) is not to be ignored either.
Shatter turns the caw-blade matchup from auto-lose, to 50-50 or better (need more testing), so that rounds out the utility section, as a 1-2-of.
That leaves one-ish "slot" (2-4 cards) to fill in with something.
Searing Blaze is currently occupying this slot. It is the hardest-to-cast spell, both because you need a land (or a fetchland), and RR open, and a creature on their side, but it does the most damage-per-casting-cost of any spell around. It also does the incidental damage that we need to bring an opponent into one-turn-kill range. However, Searing Blaze certainly hasn't locked this spot up.
There are a couple ways that the PA deck loses games. The most common are:
1) Recurring threats. Bloodghast, Sun Titan, Vengevine.
Solutions: Red Sun's Zenith. Kill them before it matters.
2) Untargettable threats. Thrun, Calcite Snapper, Gaea's Revenge, Sphinx of Jwar Isle.
Solutions: Kill them before it matters.
3) Not drawing Ascension
Solutions: Put in more card draw/filtering. Be self-sufficient without it.
4) Running out of gas even with Ascensions. Drawing more Ascensions, drawing land. Typically the first card draw spell once ascended is game-over, but sometimes all it draws is land.
Solutions: Put in more card draw.
I do like the idea of going 1x Red Sun's Zenith. It's a reasonable finisher, that also plugs some holes in the deck. It won't ever charge PA, but it can go to the head, and drawing it off the top with 7+ lands is going to be pretty deadly.
As far as card draw, to find, and/or give gas after ascending, there are a few main candidates. From cheapest to most expensive:
Gitaxian Probe is the cheapest possible card draw, at a potential 0 mana. After ascending, it would often draw me plenty of cards, and leave me the mana to use them.However, as a straight-up draw-one, this is limited in how effective it can be. The information can be valuable, or useless. It's also hard to know whether you need to spend the life or not, because you don't know whether you can use the mana.
I did like it when I played with it, and costing 0 is a big deal.
See Beyond is an old standby. It is hailed as a "standard" card for this archtype by many. As a two-mana draw-one, I've never been terribly impressed. If you just discarded the card after drawing, it'd be so much better for this deck type (and worse for Shape Anew, etc)In the deck as it sits, shuffling away your 3rd PA, or one of 4 lands off Treasure Hunt seems relatively good. Treasure Hunt does draw you alot of extra cards, and as far as two-mana draw spells, this is the only option outside Treasure Hunt that we're already playing.
See Beyond just combos so poorly with other aspects of the deck though. Lets say you Halimar Depths turn 1, and don't like any of the cards. See Beyond "shuffles" them away for you, to be sure, but only after you draw all three of them! See Beyond shuffles the land you put on the bottom with Preordain back in the deck, and it's not uncommon to Preordain 6-12 cards to the bottom of your deck over the course of a game.
Revealing a draw spell with HD is common. Revealing a See Beyond with HD is pretty terrible. Preordain can scry the two cards away and give you a new one, in a pinch. Treasure Hunt can typically draw them all for you, or be set up to be of use. See Beyond doesn't solve the two-land + draw spell Halimar Depths.
All that said, SB still nets you even overall (like Preordain), and lets you see two cards, for only two mana.
Steady progress is another one-card charge for PA, but it is also another three-mana spell, in a deck that already has 12. It is an instant, which is awesome, but it is still a relatively minor effect. I can't imagine being happy casting this post-ascension, where the other three mana spells are pretty devistating. (Draw 4, Deal 6, Deal 8). Draw 2 just doesn't compete on that scale.
Foresee was a card in the V1 of the deck, and it rarely dissapointed. It was a truly back-breaking card post-ascending, and it was pretty good at finding Ascensions.Getting your pick of the top 6 cards, or top 12 with Ascension active was quite simply game-winning (on the next turn)
Whether Surreal Memoir does the same thing, but from your graveyard instead of your library, is a matter of some concern. Foresee definately finds the Ascensions better (aka at all).
Now, we're definately not putting in 4x Foresee, because that would make things terribly topheavy. I didn't even play 4 in V1, because you just didn't ever need to cast more than two in a entire game. Drawing two early was pretty bad too.
There are some even more expensive options (Blue Sun's Zenith, Jace), but they either don't work with the deck very well, or are too Blue-intensive.
I think Foresee is an excellent 1-2 of in the deck, so I should definately give it a shot. The other spells need more copies of themselves, to work with the engine, but Foresee sees an immense amount of cards, refuels you for a lethal next turn, and plays well with the proliferate-scry-Halimar Depths theme. I can't think of a better card to cast once you're ascended, or to find the Ascension in the first place. It's cost is pretty high, so volume needs to not be maxed out, but we're only looking to fill 2-4 slots anyway, so this is not a true disadvantage for the spell.
While I was writing this, I was thinking "I need to write a post to talk about why I'm putting stupid See Beyond back in as a 2-of". I'm glad I did, because it just seems better to put 2x Foresee in than 2x See Beyond.
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Lastly, a comment on these "1 ofs" in the deck. In V1, since it was so hard to charge the PA, and we were playing a bunch of reactive cards, having a ton of 1-ofs would make no sense. We'd just never ascend, and gradually run out of gas as the game went on.
However, in the new world of easy ascending, we can afford to dedicate one "slot" (4 cards) to random stuff, and it will greatly expand the utility of the deck, without strongly impacting the ability to ascend.
Having the 9th "slot" of the deck as:
1x Red Sun's Zenith
1x Foresee
1x Shatter
1x Into the Roil
could be pretty strong.
Without recursion, without countermagic, and with Caw-Blade being fairly dominant (and spellskite being fairly annoying), this probably needs to be 2x Shatter 0x Into the Roil main, but this sort of card choice could be quite devistating.
Can you imagine going:
1x Mana Leak
1x Spell Pierce
1x Into the Roil
1x Foresee
Your opponent wouldn't have any idea what you might be capable of on any particular turn. You'll likely see half these cards in a won game, so if your opponent presumes you are playing all 4-ofs, they will be extremely confused, and potentially playing around everything in the next game. If this slows them down by even a turn, that could be all the time you need to win the game.
Besides, having an "out" to them just casting some terrible spell, while you hold up (red) instant mana is pretty interesting. Spell Pierce your JTMS is about as good a play as you can make against "those" decks. The more instants you have, the more of a blowout these one-of instants will be.
Taking suggestions for 4-5 "singletons" (24-23 land) to fill out that last "slot" in the deck. It could be almost anything from any of the previous posts. Foresee, RSZ, Mana Leak, Into the Roil, Surreal Memoir, Searing Blaze, and Shatter are the early front-runners.
What do you think is the best combination to add utility, while also finding us the Ascensions/gas we need?
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