This deck locks up against Jukai Runeforge combo decks. Unfortunately on MTGA both players have to sit through nonsense until someone concedes.
I don’t consider this type of subverted meta-time-wasting combat against a deck like enchantments appropriate if intentional, but it’s a fun deck and unfortunately the game is 1000% slower than a household calculator. I think having a better handle on power level of the cards and banning if necessary is appropriate if the game can’t process this simple math.
The problems with how MTGA handles the deck: It doesn’t process the Scute Swarm Inkeeper triggers quickly, or keep the tokens visible and organized correctly on the board, it doesn’t end in a draw like the game flashes onscreen constantly, and it doesn’t retain the “resolve all” command, nor does it move more quickly when you actually manage to activate auto-pass.
I made this deck in response to someone asking about the two card combo, and I said:
“Here, I made it. It destroys, but presents a lock-up with standard enchantments which is a problem because MTGA can’t handle this deck in terms of processing triggers at all. Both players will have 200+ life and the enchantment player just needs to stop playing Runes to not deck and you just keep retrieving Storm the Festivals by sacrificing token copies of Rootcoil Creeper and playing lands. Theoretically this deck will win the match but it forces the players to sit through an obscene amount of triggers for a few turns. It challenges the enchantment player to concede and it’s an awesome deck but since MTGA fails, it’s not a good way to combat that deck unless players in the format understand and respect that the enchantment player will need to concede unless they run sweepers, and the Scute player will need to realize they are about to be subject to the participation and understanding of the enchantment player.
The Boseiju and Otawara lands could could offer a way to combat a few creatures and put some of those Auras in the grave, but moreso early on because they are also perfectly and precisely ineffective and present stalling once the game gets to a locked state. Boseiju destroys Jukai, but this recurs Kami of Transience and the only way to get rid of Runeforge is with Otawara which means it will recover Runes from the graveyard.
To defeat this, in terms of sweepers that are possible Consuming Tide and Doomskar are both annoying contenders. Tide will win, but Skar is pretty effective and the deck draws it way more consistently. Tide doesn’t bounce a nice chunk of your creatures cause they’re lands, and the opponent will be forced to draw cards when redeploying Auras. Doomskar destroys their creatures but leaving Hallowed Haunting intact is pretty deadly even if Rootcoil Storm the Festival is resilient and quick to redeploy, not to mention their Jukai hitting the grave will bring back Kami of Transcience.
Sweepers are a rough answer because the nature of the decks getting to this point will string out an attempt to draw one. Tide is probably more effective but the deck is slow to draw.
Once you’re both at 200 life it’s pretty much a problem.”
