In the heyday of fatestitcher dredge, I'd often get a board state of triple stitcher and about 30 zombies into a flamekin zealot off of bazaar + lion's eye diamond opener, while my opp just stared at his opening 7 and frowned.

I think any time there's a turn 1 tinker into citadel, there's a ridiculous board state compared to the opponent sitting with a hand of 7 just waiting to die.

@botvinik Then use this:

Archon of Valor's Reach 4GW
Creature — Archon (5/6)
Flying, vigilance, trample

As Archon of Valor's Reach enters the battlefield, choose artifact, enchantment, instant, sorcery, or planeswalker.

Players can't cast spells of the chosen type.

It's immune to karakas, castable, bigger body if you get a turn 2 oath trigger, has evasion, and locks them out of casting any other spell for the rest of the game. They'll soon have 5+ cards in hand to get around bridge when all their spheres, moxen, etc are stuck in their hand. The only challenge would be if they land a 6+ power Stonecoil before you oath...but that should be answerable by the Force of Vigors you should be packing.

Archon has the added bonus of being good in multiple matchups, like naming instant vs Xerox or PO (which consequently protects Archon from bounce/removal as well)

@botvinik Because the card is pretty bad. It becomes a board wipe sometimes, but is usually a 5/5 bear at best when you get an early oath trigger. It can also be shot for 2 with ballista before it gets any counters when its "blow up the board" effect goes on the stack. Also, it kills your own oath, stopping future triggers if they answer BoP. It'd be much more effective to simply run your own spyglasses to stop Karakas' ability, strip/wastes, or a superior non-legendary creature like Blightsteel colossus, Inkwell Leviathan, Blazing Archon, or one of a bajillion other threats.

@naixin Nah, it can be bolted/plowed. It just means everyone needs to play this or UWR Mentor Xerox. Or if they play shops or dredge, they don't care about this at all. If they play hollowvine, they should have 2 bazaar activations and 12+ power on the board before you ever hit 3 mana anyway.

I can see this being amazing vs PO, but that's pretty much it.

@twaun007 I had a tidespout tyrant oath deck that ran 4x cunning wish to grab brainfreeze out of the sb after mox juggling (or sometimes a rebuild). The wishes also got echoing truth, trickbind vs storm, a counterspell or any "answer spell" in a pinch to allow me to go off. Cunning wish was the bomb.

@lienielsen If you have the mana available to go off with a chain of rituals, then I might cast the first ritual, duress, then ritual #2 and go off. But in that instance, ponder/preordain isn't even necessary. I think the main question boiled down to "I have only an underground sea and have to pick the blue or black mode on my opener." My answer, whether "going off" or not, is always to go black first, for either duress or ritual/duress.

I think 99% of the time you want to duress. Misstep is a 1-of, so more often than not, they are going to FoW it and give you a 2-1 if they have something in hand they want to save.

I assume you are on the play and this is your opener and you can't play both (with say a single underground sea as your only mana).

Maybe they have daze and an island to protect something next turn - and you want to stop the plan before daze gets online. This is vintage, and the plays your opponent can make can be devastating. Even if they are on control, there are plays worth stopping far greater than your resolved ponder.

The biggest worry would be them doing something degenerate like turn 1 tinker for citadel/BSC. Maybe they simply have ancestral, and pulling that is essentially a 3-for-1 in your favor if you duress it. Maybe they have great spells, but kept a greedy 1-land+lotus hand and you could mana cripple them immediately. Bottom line, if they kept their hand, it likely has at least one degenerate play or a line of "set up" spells like 1 land and their own ponder. Duressing that line could put you far ahead in the game.

And then there is always the fact that you gain the knowledge you need for how to set up your own cantrip and your best lines moving forward. It's almost never wrong to duress first. The ONE time I can see pondering first is if you are a mana source (ritual, lotus, vault, etc) away from going off and winning that turn. But even then, you have to hope you hit that mana source in the top 3 cards AND that your opponent doesn't have FoW, which a duress could stop anyway. That scenario seems like a trap, though - so I am saying duress first 99%...maybe 100% of the time.

@protoaddict Wheel and timetwister are 1-ofs and only in PO or Breach decks (sometimes). Dack is in just about every xerox build which is a huge part of the meta. I can see where Hullbreacher vs Dack will happen 20x for every once you get to snipe a wheel effect.

That said, this is pretty nice vs bazaar too, as they only get their one draw on their turn and that's it. Narset also only shuts off the second draw in ANY turn, whereas this shuts off all draws except the first in their turn. Having people be able to ancestral or opt or library on your EoT to skirt the Narset drawback was annoying. You can't even do that vs this guy.