Does the White leyline make RDW unplayable or am I missing something?

Quote :

Leyline of Sanctity
2WW
Enchantment - Rare
If Leyline of Sanctity is in your opening hand, you may begin the game with it on the battlefield.

You can't be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.

Seems like if I just ran a typical U/W control type deck (or anything with White) and ran 3-4 of these in the sideboard, it would just auto-win against RDW much of the time. Think about how many dead cards they'd have with this on board. This + like 8 removal spells + Planeswalkers + Sphinx of Jwar Isle or something as a finisher and I can't see them winning more than maybe 5% of the time if I aggressively mulligan into the leyline with one or two removal spells.

As far as I can remember, Red has no enchantment removal either.

Edit: another point to note is that this leyline stops burn on planeswalkers as well (since the dmg is redirected through the player to the walker), even better!

Looks like you've got a good grasp of the situation.

What I'm chocked about is that the green leyline is the very worst. Every other one is playable, but not this one!

Leyline of Vitality 2GG
Creatures you control get +0/+1
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under you control, gain a life.

The white leyline doesn't do much against RDW. It renders Searing Blaze a dead card and makes burn spells less versatile, but after sideboarding that doesn't matter much.

I'd switch 4 blazes for 4 red leylines and 4 burn spells for 4 earthquakes. Then, depending on my sideboard, I'd bring in either ruinblaster or manabarbs rendering Leyline of Sanctity a dead card. A U/W based deck would be far better served against RDW with more counter magic and removal.

The white leyline is better against black decks than red decks. It protects against discard and sacrifice effects. It also protects against many planeswalker abilities.

Well Earthquake is one I figured might gain some additional popularity since it does get around it, but that's not being reprinted so it's only in until Scars (unless they reprint it there)

Basically though it takes away the straight up "burn their face" option though Searing Blaze/Bolt/Burst Lightning/Staggershock, etc.

Combined with the fact that U/W decks will probably be maindecking Mana Leak and continue running spot removal (Condemn) and sweepers I think it'll be hard for RDW to put up much of a fight with the Leyline in play.

Plus I think if you're bringing in 4 red leylines, and 4 earthquakes it has the potential to really lower your threat density as well; even worse if you plan to bring in 3-4 Combust to deal with possible Baneslayers and Colonnades/Walls. Sure the red leyline stops the lifegain but a first striking 5/5 that takes at least 2 spells to kill can still be a problem.

I dunno, I guess I had high hopes for RDW during 90% of the spoilers and after seeing the white leyline, can't really imagine it being overly competitive. It did get some nice cards and a few answers but overall I think most of the other colors got more. Guess we'll see after the release.