Several days ago, I decided to try out an Enduring Ideal deck. Since I have a lack of Sensei's Divining Tops, I had to rely on pure luck to draw Enduring Ideal – including the use of Honden of Seeing Winds. The deck is a five-colour deck: running at least one of each basic land, 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder, 4 Orochi Leafcaller and 4 Kodama's Reach to pull out the required lands. The deck list is as follows:

11 Forest
7 Plains
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
3 Ghostly Prison
3 Final Judgment
3 Solar Tide
1 Seismic Assault
1 Reverence
1 Meishin, the Mind Cage
2 Honden of Cleansing Fire
2 Honden of Seeing Winds
2 Honden of Night's Reach
2 Honden of Infinite Rage
2 Honden of Life's Web
4 Orochi Leafcaller
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Kodama's Reach
3 Enduring Ideal
1 Sensei's Divining Top

Did this deck run well? Honden of Seeing Winds did dig up some pretty interesting cards and the Top proved to be indispensable. However, the deck itself proved to be quite a problem to run – it was always short on mana to play Hondens whenever I didn't draw an Enduring Ideal. I soon stumbled upon a solution taking a cue from Myojin Flare, I put in 4 Heartbeat of Spring to spruce up whatever little mana I had.

The deck now ran in complete madness – usually meaning I got to play a beautiful Solar Tide or Final Judgment followed by an Enduring Ideal. Sweet. Goldfishing showed that the deck was slow, but it had a stylish way of winning – loads of Shrines and enchantments locking down on your opponents and you finally run through with everything you have (1/1 spirit tokens).

Off to try it out against a real deck: a simple burn deck. Obviously, the matchup was horrendously bad, but it revealed that in actual play, you wouldn't win for way too long. Inconceivably bad for a deck with such synergy. The moral of the story? Play Myojins. And that ends the tale of my Honden deck. The mana base was actually fundamentally the same as Myojin Flare. All I had to do was remove the enchantments, some Solar Tides, put in a few Myojin, some Maga, Traitor to Mortals, Time of Needs and the deck was absolutely complete! As for the playtesting of this deck, let's just say it went pretty well and far more consistently than Enduring Ideal.

Enduring Ideal is still a good idea for casual though.