dknight27

Here's my line of reasoning, for what that's worth.

Blue's only weakness is not being able to control the field once things actually resolve. There's no good blue removal, blockers, or nukes (within reason). You can get around this by hybridizing color, of course, but there are some bad color matchups for these purposes. Green has no consistent removal, for example.

HE goes a hell of a long way to solving this problem while still retaining all the best things blue does. It's basically a sorcery/instant combo, as you get the blocker up front and draw at instant speed later. It's a 0/3, so it survives as a blocker against all the annoying weenies. It preserves both tempo and material, protects you if you need protecting (under like 80% of circumstances), is almost never a dead draw, ups the sorcery count (delirium and goyf), and works as a deck thinner.

Plus, the more I stick with magic, the more I see speed eclipsing anything else in the game, and dropping a 0/3 turn 1 to shut down those annoying little 1-drops that would otherwise eat me alive or cost me a material and tempo that I can turn into a material bonus in a few more turns is just too good to pass up, at least to me.

Maybe I'm off base, my experience in practicality is close to a decade removed from competitive play.

Run me through Overwhelmed Apprentice again.

I've been tinkering with that myself, its a fantastic idea. That and Reforge the Soul/burn stuff

Ideally, at least from my standpoint, the variables a deck should communicate are as follows:
1- format
2- level of competition
3- budget (if that's not already communicated via number 2)
4- theme (if it's not obvious from the title)

I don't see this happen very often.

Urza's Saga seems like a natural consideration right?

Abundant Growth comes to mind.

Is there a reason you want to play this in legacy when it's modern legal?

No Mox Opal?

This build confuses me. Half ponza half burn, no acceleration, high curve, and equipment thrown in.

Mystic Forge feels like a must in here.

That's wildly surprising to me, but then again, I'm hardly a pro these days. I haven't seen a card that I thought was more D&T than Sentinel since Stoneforge hit.

No Esper Sentinel?

You're missing some classic 1-drop zombie options. Gravecrawler, Stitcher's Supplier, Dread Wanderer, Carrion Feeder.

I didn't expect to like Archon as much as I do after thinking about him (guaranteed equivalent material after ETB). But maybe cut 1 copy to change the chances of Emrakul from 25% to 33%?

Dwarven Mine also seems a touch questionable, as it sucks if you don't have 3 mountains, there are only 5 total mountains in the deck, no fetches, and they don't produce blue or white.

I like the potential Days Undoing shenanigans in here. Makes me want to experiment with the idea in modern.

I've been trying to build a deck like this for a while, it's a fantastic idea in my opinion, especially with On Thin Ice available as delicious affordable removal that ups the enchantment count. I'm not sure black is really doing enough in the build as is to justify its spot. Switching black for red gives you lots of wonderful options, such as Klothys, Blood Moon, and Cindevines.

Here's my take on the build, for what that's worth.

https://www.mtgvault.com/dknight27/decks/modern-budgetarcades-defender/

I'd give some consideration to dropping black altogether here and focusing on white, blue, and green. Four colors is quite a lot to run in what I assume is a budget deck, aka with no expensive fetch lands. A focus on white over black will also allow you to run very useful cards like wall of omens. I know you want to run black for the search and skulk, but both effects can be achieved within blue/white/green, which you're stuck with as you're going for arcades over doran.

You also obviously need to fix the lands, but that shouldn't be too tough. You'll need at least 21 I'd think, with more colors, even with the unbridled growth.

Not sure how well 2 Vantresses fit, as they're basically useless till you've got 5 lands, they're redundant, they're mono blue, and they enter conditionally untapped.

4 counterspells mainboarded in a rainbow deck that has 25 white mana symbols seems like it could be problematic from a color standpoint, even with abundant growth.

Witherbloom command seems like such a natural fit for decks like this.