Perhaps you could explain to me what your most reliable mechanisms are for getting around your own defensive enchantments when your opponent plays them against you. You say that it is possible to get around them, but I don't immediately see how. Obviously, if your opponent uses Faith's Fetters against you, you just attack with a different creature, but that is like saying that they're perfect cards for this deck because they're imperfect solutions. In fact, if you could generally go into greater detail regarding how you selected 2 Peace of Mind, 3 Faith's fetters, 1 Nightmare Void, and 2 Ghostly Prison, I may be able to offer more advice regarding the tuning of this part of the deck.
The entire thinking about the white in the decks is "don't die in the early game". As a route to winning the game, the addition of white is the most efficient on a consistant basis (accepting the that mana base is updated). When you get into the late game and you opponent plays fetters on a creature, fine, you have other creatures. The deck is not geared up for a huge assault, just getting the 20 or so damage in at some stage. At a certain point the win just becomes inevitable, however slowly it comes about. With Haakon in play it's up to your opponent to get rid of him as his recursion effect isn't dependent on him being able to attack. You just keep pumping those knights out. All other creatures (excepting the Drifts) in the deck will find their way into play, into the 'yard and back into play at some point so the fetters is not an issue if played back against you.
Similiarly the Peace of Mind is a way to get some key cards from your hand to the graveyard via 3 lifegain. Most decks don't have "put that card into your hand" effects so the draw replacement of SF means that their potential lifegain is finite. The Ghostly Prison is another case where time will win out. Even the two in play at the same time means that you just have to go more slowly kill your opponent but you'll get there at some point.
The card numbers has a lot to do with my deckbuilding style. I start with 4 of everything and trim as I go, tinkering where I feel necessary. 4 Faiths fetters can give a lot of life gain to your opponent but you still want a better than average chance of seeing it during your first 4 turns. (Temporal Isolation would be a much better replacement depsite the missing lifegain. The lack of life loss in the intervening 2 turns of casting cost more than makes up for this so that's a potential change) Similiarly with the Prison & the Peace of Mind, 2 was the number I ended up at. You can discard through Compulsive Research so adding only 2 more discard effects feels right. You want to see or find a Prison often enough but not have multiples in your opening hand or across the table from you. The Nightmare Void is something I'd like more of but one of the cards I felt couldn't justify putting in the place of something else. The dredge aspect is great though. I'm divided on this.
I like how Drift of Phantasms fetches so many different cards from your deck. I was going to recommend that you exchange Skulking Knight for Stromgald Crusader or Order of the Ebon Hand, but then I saw that you could transmute Drift of Phantasms to fetch Skulking Knight, if you really wanted to. With that in mind, it might be effective to replace one copy of Faith's Fetters with Arrest or Shackles or some other 3-casting-cost answer.
The Drift was put in for that reason only and frankly it's a real pain if it ends up on the other side of the table as you need to attack with a 3 power dude, have him block and play 2 darkblasts to clear it away. This is the main reason I have so few in the deck. THe Arrest/Shackles idea is sound seeing as I'm ready to replace Fetters with Temporal Isolation anyway.
You have mentioned yourself that you should have a third copy of Haakon in the deck. I mention it only to express agreement.
Noted
In your experience, do your opponents seldom enough play both white and blue that they're unable to get a creature out of Court Hussar? I could see this deck being effective with the bones of a more typical dredge deck. You would have to cut some of your disruption tools, but Magus of The Bazaar and Stinkweed Imp could be of great use in getting your critical cards into the graveyard. They may go a long way toward helping you to cut white from the deck, if that is a direction you think you'd like to take.
No, but it's not really the issue. Generally the deck is so slow that opponents will get a few draws at my deck to find the right land to play it anyway. And if they don't get the white to have the Hussar stick around, they may still be tempted to run the risk of finding a solution in the top 3 cards of their own deck anyway. The likelyhood of your opponent play blue sources is quite high.
True. And if I had a Stinkweed Imp, I'd not have to worry about the opponent finding Drifts as the Deathtouch ability would clear the way so I could effectively run more Drifts and cut down on other cards.
Cutting white is simply a question of making the deck more streamlined. If it needs to keep white, then by all means we'll do that.
On the Magus of the Bazaar, you know that your opponent finding one means they have a card that says "if you have no cards in hand, draw two cards." It's a means both for them to find solutions to the questions your posing but also to deny you resources. That said, it's a 0/1. Is he a knight? Ah well!
When I built a Shared Fate deck, I used Snow Lands with Scrying Sheets. You can deny your opponent mana off your own deck, hopefully stranding your spells in their "hand". I never did find a good recursive threat, though, so I just ran like 32 counterspells.
The issue I have with this approach is that it doesn't work if they are playing the same colours. You denying them mana isn't a problem when they are drawing spells in colour costing 2 & 3 mana. By the time you get SF to stick, they should have 5-6 mana to play with your toys.
I didn't like the counters based version mostly because at some point you let something through and paid the price. THat said, I wasn't necessarily building the best version back then
I think the smartest/safest win condition I've seen in a Shared Fate deck was Phage. Just run a ton of Dark Rits and Phage. So you can randomly win by hardcasting Phage and swinging for the immediate win... but when you share fate, even if they draw into enough rits and mana, and 'draw' phage - if they attempt to cast it they loose because they do not 'Play her from thier hand'
It's an option certainly. For the exteded version of the deck it's not a runner but why not for Legacy.
Ok, great ideas. Please keep them coming!
