[OGW] Hedron Alignment

[mmcgeach]

Hedron Alignment, 2U
Enchantment
Hexproof

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may reveal your hand.  If you do, you win the game if you own a card named Hedron Alignment in exile, in your hand, in your graveyard, and on the battlefield.

1U: Scry 1.
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Am I the only one that thinks this might work out?  It seems easy to exile one by pitching to force/misd, it seems easy to get one in the yard with baby jace / dack fayden / thirst / gifts, and it only costs 3 to cast.  Finding all 4 of them might be hard unless Intuition helps.  But it seems like it's worth considering.

Possibly too slow for a real combo deck; possibly too fragile for a control deck wincon.  But pretty cool.

[bactgudz]

Hedron Alignment, 2U
Enchantment
Hexproof

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may reveal your hand.  If you do, you win the game if you own a card named Hedron Alignment in exile, in your hand, in your graveyard, and on the battlefield.

1U: Scry 1.
-------------

Am I the only one that thinks this might work out?  It seems easy to exile one by pitching to force/misd, it seems easy to get one in the yard with baby jace / dack fayden / thirst / gifts, and it only costs 3 to cast.  Finding all 4 of them might be hard unless Intuition helps.  But it seems like it's worth considering.

Possibly too slow for a real combo deck; possibly too fragile for a control deck wincon.  But pretty cool.

It does in fact work with copy enchantment as well, for the copy in play at least so a little lax on the 4 if you can sac or exile the original.

[nedleeds]

So I'm starting my Vintage deck construction at 56 cards. Including 4 blue Bone Flutes? That's pretty tough. This is assuming you believe 2U - Enchantment: 1U: Scry 1 is completely unplayable as most of us probably do as we have Thassa, Monastary Siege and Stank Tank. Resolving intuition and getting one of these and 2 in your yard (or maybe you have in hand or whatever) still requires you to resolve another 3 mana spell and be fortunate to pitch one to Force or Miss-Dee (maybe defending your Gifts) or create a contraption with Relic or a Delve spell to get one in exile. Finally you have to pass the turn again and not have it get removed, etc.. All of this is an entertaining thought exercise but it's quite a few hoops to jump through in a world of vault key and tinker.

Some ... 'benefits'

Immune to Null Rod effects
Bypasses any White Leyline type effects and generally ignores the board state (e.g. can't be Revoked)
Is blue ?
Will likely humiliate your opponent ?

edit: i am a mule it has hexproof.

[TheWhiteDragon]

Doesn't bypass leyline of the void! No graveyard = no combo.

[Tobi]

Finally you have to pass the turn again and not have it get Decayed, etc..

Cannot be decayed, has hexproof.

Bypasses any Leyline type effects and generally ignores the board state (e.g. can't be Revoked)

Can be Revoked  

[MaximumCDawg]

Oath of Druids can deploy a winning enchantment on turn 1.
Storm can go off turn 2 if you don't have a way to disrupt it.
Dredge will go off turn 1 and then keep trying to go off even through hate.
Hatebears will attack your ability to dig into your library.
Shops will make cards cost more than their initial cost; a few spheres makes a 3cc enchantment into 5, and each card you use to dig up said enchantment will add another layer of taxing.
Delver is looking to tempo you out in the first few turns and then get control of your game.

Against what deck is your plan to durdle long enough to dig FOUR copies of a do-nothing out of your deck and then meticulously put them in FOUR different zones?  And, assuming you do want to play Durdle.dec, why in Urza's name would you want to use this as your wincon instead of, I dunno, Tinker?  Vault/Key?  Singleton J:TMS?

[keys]

Resolving Gifts and getting 2 of these and 2 in your yard

Doesn't work.

There's just no reliable way to find all 4 copies without a ton of tutors, and then you might as well be playing a better combo.

[evouga]

Forget about the win con as it is obviously just flavor text (though if the opponent gets paranoid and expends resources to stop a suspected Alignment win, all the better).

This card's main effect is *reusable* scry 1 for 1U. This means that you dig 1-3 cards during each of the opponent's EOT. This is nuts with Sensei's Top and a strong effect in general. Is it worth the price of a 2U enchantment? Probably not, especially in decks that could run Dack instead, but it's not an effect I will quickly dismiss. Note that Thassa and Monastery Siege are nowhere comparable because they only scry once per turn.

[MaximumCDawg]

Huh.  Whaddya know, this is actually the first time we have a permanent with a Scry ability that can be used multiple times each turn.  Neat.  Noted.  Still think this card is poop.

[evouga]

There is Compulsion, which is not-quite-scry and doesn't have hexproof, but is one mana cheaper, and a better card.

[BlackLotusIsPurple]

Seems like an interesting 1-of... 

Joking aside though, If you have one of these exiled face down (via clone shell for example), do you still win if the other 3 criteria are achieved? In other words, can I reveal my hand and then show the face down exiled card? I would guess yes?

[vaughnbros]

Cast 1, Dack 1, Force Pitch 1, hold 1... GG?  Doesn't seem a very likely scenario.

I'd imagine you'd want 4 Intuition, Sun Titan, Trinket Mage->Relic of Progenitus to make this work.  It seems like a lot of set up, but all cards with Win the Game on them are fun to play around with.

[tito del monte]

Cast 1, Dack 1, Force Pitch 1, hold 1... GG?  Doesn't seem a very likely scenario.

Although the card is near useless by itself, I think given the ubiquity of Dack, as well as the Delve spells these days (which help you find more copie of this of course), it should require minimal contortions for a blue deck to run four of these and achieve alignment. Forcing, Dacking, Digging/Cruising... these are things you want to do anyway. And it's often cards which reward players for "playing Magic" that have worked out in the past. Of course, tends to help when they do something by themselves...

[MaximumCDawg]

Wot?

No, you can't just cram this into a blue deck to win while you're doing something else.  This requires you to run a playset.  What four cards are you going to cut to add Scryface McBiomancer here that won't make your deck drastically worse? 

[tito del monte]

Wot?

No, you can't just cram this into a blue deck to win while you're doing something else.  This requires you to run a playset.  What four cards are you going to cut to add Scryface McBiomancer here that won't make your deck drastically worse? 

Not saying it's amazing, just that there are blue decks that exist, already running plenty of ways to find, discard and exile this card, that have four slots for win conditions. I don't think that's really controversial.

[evouga]

Seems like an interesting 1-of... 

Joking aside though, If you have one of these exiled face down (via clone shell for example), do you still win if the other 3 criteria are achieved? In other words, can I reveal my hand and then show the face down exiled card? I would guess yes?

No, The face-down exiled copy has no characteristics and so doesn't count as a card named Hedron Alignment.

[brianpk80]

That card is unplayable but it's a much more intriguing design than the insipid overcosted junk we've been seeing in Battle for Zendikar and the Greek tragedy of the entire Theros era.  The reasons it's not playable include lack of independent utility (contrast with Pyrite Spellbomb, Voltaic Key, Forbidden Orchard or Painter's Servant), expense, requiring the turn to be passed, and the fact that it requires about 10,000,000 things to go right without dying first or being disrupted, which is a luxury we don't have in Vintage.  

[Pizzatog]

Is there some way to make this work with Doomsday?

It already RFG's Hedron Alignment and puts one in your hand, so you'd just have to play and discard one for the win. LED or predict, maybe?
 
Probably not feasible, but it does sound fun.

[Khahan]

Is there some way to make this work with Doomsday?

It already RFG's Hedron Alignment and puts one in your hand, so you'd just have to play and discard one for the win. LED or predict, maybe?
 
Probably not feasible, but it does sound fun.

It could work with doomsday. But why cast doomsday then wait a turn when you could cast doomsday and combo out with storm without giving  your opponent another turn?

[MaximumCDawg]

People are all buzzing about the Doomsday applications, and I'm busy trying to figure out why.  Currently, Doomsday wins with 4 cards or less in Vintage or Legacy.  Heck, Menedian's Legacy brew only uses Lab Maniac and Unearth as TWO win condition cards; everything else is mana, dig, or protection.  Using this as the kill increases the slots you need to dedicate to the win, forces you to run questionable cards like Predict, and otherwise seems more clunky.  It's not even safer; sure, the in-play copy is Hexproof, but you are now vulnerable to graveyard hate AND you have to pass the turn.

No thanks.

[Beralt]

Intuition, and pitching to FoW and Misdirection make this interesting. But it would probably need to include things like Manipulate Fate.

[TheBrassMan]

You need access to all 4 of the Hedrons you're running to win (play, hand, graveyard, exile). That means by playing Inuition, you've already lost access to one. You would need Intuition + Force to Pitch + a Regrowth effect to get back the one you binned. This means you're relying on a 3 card combo that costs you four specific cards, 3UG, and a turn. I'm sure anyone who is creative enough to build a deck around Hedron Alignment can find a way to win with 3UG and less than FOUR specific cards, without waiting a turn (as a starting point, vault/key costs 4 mana and two specific cards, and loses to far less hate)

Seriously, if you've spent more than 10 minutes thinking about Hedron Alignment, there HAS to be something more intersting and broken and resiliant out there that you can figure out, even avoiding already-popular decks

[desolutionist]

Ancestral Knowledge seems like a pretty good way to exile Hedron Alignment while also doing some work on setting up a game-ending top deck sequence