Playing the Mono-White Humility deck. When I look back at the two decks. I think the mono-white won is stronger. Sorry for the double post, but I think this belongs separate.
Enlightenment or Ideal?
I would go with Idyllic Tutors over Enlightened, especially for a deck that doesn't really have a draw engin. To see why lets consider a late-game example where you have no cards in hand. If you draw E-Tutor, you can search for your most important enchantment and play it next turn. If you draw Idyllic tutor it costs more mana. So you either play it next turn (because you had to tap out 3 this turn) or you play it this turn (because you have alot of mana). The big differance is that in the E-tutor example 'next turn' you draw your card. With Idyllic tutor you draw a fresh card.
Understanding Humility:
So Humility is one of those rule headache cards. Here are some quick bullet points for understanding layers and Humility -
-- Creatures with +1/+1 counters ALWAYS count the counters. This will be relevant in your affinity match. If your opponent plays an Arcbound Worker with humility in play, he ends up with a 2/2. That creature won't have modular while ~in~ play though. The counter still makes him a 2/2 (1/1 base from humility with +1/+1 counter), but if that 2/2 dies Modular won't trigger so the counter goes away forever.
-- Abilities thay also say "becomes" still work so long as they are used AFTER Humility enters play. So you have a watchtower in play and humility (the order in which those cards were played is irrelevant). Your unactivated lands are still lands so they tap and activate as normal. Let's say you choose to activate watchtowers "Becomes a 1/5" ability. You will now have two abilites that are being applied at the "becomes" layer. One says "becomes a 1/1" the other says "becomes a 1/5" Which do we apply? the answer is which ever one happened 2nd according to the timestamp. So Humility was in play before you activate this abiliy, therefor the ability is 2nd and your land is a 1/5! The same goes for Genju of the Fields, however "life link" is an ability that Humility will take away.
-- Creatures under humility still have all thier normal traits including color, casting cost, name, super types, types and subtypes. This could be relevent for cards like disenchant and tariff.
Understanding Genju:
: Enchanted Plains becomes a 2/5 white Spirit creature with lifelink until end of turn. It's still a land.
When enchanted Plains is put into a graveyard, you may return Genju of the Fields from your graveyard to your hand.
As we just discussed when Humility is in play, you have 2/5 beater without lifelink. Another interesting thing is that the 2nd ability is uneffected by Humility because it's an ability of an enchantment. So if your2/5 dies somehow, you still get to return Genju to your hand.
If Humility is not in play, you still have a great trick up your sleave with Genju. If you activate Genju multilple times, you end up with a 2/5 with multiple instances of Lifelink that all stack. So if you pay
or
mana you end up hitting for 2 but gaing 4 life or 6 life respectively.
Understanding Tariff:
I had to reread tariff and realized its not as amazing as I thought it was for a token deck. It reads:
Each player sacrifices the creature he or she controls with the highest
converted mana cost unless he or she pays that creature's
mana cost. If two creatures a player controls are tied for highest cost, that player chooses one.1
So real quick, every card, every permanent, every copy of a card, basically EVERYTHING has a
Converted mana cost. So Lands, non-copy tokens, and Morphs all have a converted mana cost of 0 (or CMC=0). However all 3 do NOT have a mana cost. Sometimes this is denoted by []. [] means -no- casting cost. According to the rules [] is defined as un-payable. This is sad news for your tokens and manlands. If you only had CMC=0 creatures, be they lands turned into men or soldier tokens. When tarrif resolve you will have to sacrifice one because they are found by the CMC=0, but you are unable to pay []. Fortunately you get to choose the lamb to send to slaughter.
Also note that Abilites like Affinity for Artifact do not count towards Tariff. So if they have a Myr Enforcer on the table, they still have to pay the full
mana to save him.
All things considered I would probably still run Tarrif as a compliment to other removal in the deck. It gets around a slew of abilites like Pro-White, Shroud, and Indestructable... all of which could be nasty for you. It's also good because it kills the "Biggest" thing they have. They can't just chump an arcbound worker to save thier meaty Myr Enforcer. On your end up trade out a 1/1 token or a recurrable Genju, ususally killing something much much stronger in the process.
Understanding Worship:
Given the Meta you described, Worship seems like a great choice for the deck. You may decide to play more than one, but with enchantment tutors you could probably get away with running only one. Worship is like 2-4 bucks which is probably a shade higher than story circle, but I think its a much stronger effect.
Worhip prevents damage IF a condition is met. Keep that idea mind, however it's not technically a "prevention" effect. It does not help against life loss, nor does it stop you from losing the game. Basically it says " ok you are at 5 life, and you are about to take 6 damage, and you've got a creature... so I'm going to make it so you only take 4 damage instead." The same is true if you are at 1, it just changes all damage you would be delt to 0. Cards like Tendrils of Agony, or Desicple of the vault will still kill you though, as Desciple and its kin cause "life lose" - not "damage."
In a deck with lifegain, the effect of worship can sometimes be preferable to that of Platinum Angel. The reason being is Worship holds your life at 1, where Angel lets you keep playing even if your life is zero or negative! So if you are at 1 and take 10 damage, with worship in play you stay at 1, and with Plats in play you go to -9. If next turn you attack with Genju of the Fields - with worship you would go to 3, and with Plats you go to... -7. So you can see that if Worship is removed you still keep playing, but if Plats is removed you lose immediately.
Based on the decks you described, Goblins and Affinity will have a hard time finding an answer to Worship + a few tokens who arn't attacking. You can even use your manlands to dance around with worship. For example, lets say you worship a small army of 1/1 solders and a watchtower in play (as a land) and you are at 1 life. Your affinity opponent cleaverly casts Engineered explosives with X=0, and pops it... sending your 1/1 army shuffling off this mortal coil. Then affitity swings with full force! All you have to do is active your watchtower after attackers are declaired (you don't even block) and let them crash on you like waves on the shore. You will stay at 1 life because Worship will see the living watchtower giving the tumbs up, and worship will prevent the all the damage from the assualt. when the turn ends the watchtower goes back into land-mode but you are stablized at 1 life. Worship is deactivated for the time being - but you are never more than
{W} away from throwing waking the tower and throwing up your worship shield. And obviously, Genjus would work the same way.
* Note, Worship is a replacement effect of damage - not actual by the rules "prevention." So it actually -still- works against cards that say "this damage cannot be prevented." But in my little speach Its hard not to use the word "prevent" ... and 99% of the time it functions the same anyhow.
=====================================================================
Playing the Deck:
You've got everything you need to make a good deck (casually). You've got cards so that are useful against rush decks in the early turns: Swords, Tariff, Orims. Solid Mid-game staying power: Oblivion Ring, Genju, Watchtower, Tutors to get you to your main goal. And a main goal: Get down Humility and/or Worship, protect it with Greater Auramancy, and win the 1/1 war through Decree, Martial Coup, or Mobilize. You also can cheat "bigger" guys through humility via Watchtower and Genju.
Fine-Tuning the Deck:
I wouldn't bother with Eternal Dragon. You run enough lands to not need the plainscycling, and By the time he's playble you either A) astablished your humility/worship lock in which case you're paying tons of mana for a 1/1; or B) you've already lost and a 5/5 ain't really gunna get there. Personally I would think about running More Worships and More Martial Coups (ideally 2-3 worship and 4 martial coup).
Infact I'm not sure you need the Secluded Steppes. They are nice as alternate land drops but You might consider running something like Mask of Memory, Or another artifact like Bottle Cloister, to give you more draw. In either case you're looking at spending a few bucks here. Cloister wouldn't be that bad as most of your deck is sorcery speed, but you'd probably drop the Orim's Chants and maybe the Austeer Commands as you wouldn't be able to cast them as instants if you had Cloister down.
