MTG Salvation

I would also be interested in a post-Top List for this deck. I was always fascinated by Doomsday Combo, and now that I'm slowly getting into Legacy, it might be a deck worth transitioning into. I'm intrigued by the high skill ceiling

Mortician Beetle really gets my hope up again for Bloodbriar.

Magma Jet is just an awesome card. Mono R decks love it for the card quality it grants, Izzet control likes anything that filters what it draws. This is probably as close as we will get to Electrolyze in Pauper.

Burning-Tree Emissary is crazy to see in Pauper. The last "free" two-drop we had got banned (Cloud of Faeries, although that enabled some much worse combos)

So, a few minutes ago, some of the commons in the soon arriving MM17 were spoiled. They got me pretty excited, so I thought we might start a discussion what to do with the downshifted cards. So far we have:

Magma Jet
That sweet scry 2 can help dodge unnecessary lands in later turns for Burn/Sleigh lists and might also provide some card quality in control lists.

Mortician Beetle
We've seen ppl playing around with Carrion Feeder and Bloodbriar, and this seems like a strong card in some GB sacrifice list.

Burning Tree Emissary Not only is this an incredibly strong and aggressive two-drop, it might also enable some sick combo-oriented plays. Think Unearth, Undying Evil...

They may be physically separated from your actual deck, but as far as the game is concerned, those cards are still in your library.

Quote from Selvaxri »

Updated again, because new guy removed Deus of Calamity with only vote to remove one, not all.

So then I'll do it again, please update the numbers...

Quote from MechanicalTurk »

I think we need to focus on what we're doing with all this card draw. If you're drawing 5 cards per turn, you don't want 6CMC+ fatties, you want burn spells or other cheap instants.

As such, I'm going to add 4x Searing Blaze. It synergizes very well with our card draw and with our Sakura-Tribe Scouts and Skyshroud rangers. I'll also throw in my vote to remove the cycling lands, restore, Elfame Sanctuary, and Deus of Calmity (cut).

While I have to agree that cheaper value-stuff would have probably been better, we are unfortunatley already in the cutting phase, so no more adding non-land cards is allowed.

I updated the decklist to reflect that:

And if everyone could remember do reduce
-Number of cards in this category
-Number of cards total in the deck
-Cost of the total deck
Whenever a card is removed, that would be great.

I've found Chill of Foreboding to be mostly sub-par. Milling 5 for 2U is most of the time rather meh compared to the continuous mill provided by Mesmeric Orb. 7U for Flashback is far too much to ever see use. I do have a not yet finished "mill everyone"-deck, and when I tried out the Chill of Foreboding, I never once reached 8 mana.
Ghoulcaller's Bell seems like a much more promising option in the long run.

Rootwater Diver can recur both of those artifacts if need be.

Should you decide to run a lot of flashback cards, Runic Repetition might be viable as well.

Keep in mind that Elfhame Sanctuary places basic lands in our hand, not on the battlefield. If we don't have Sakura-Tribe Scout/Skyshroud Ranger/Terrain Generator on the field, we can't do much with them. And I'd prefer NOT having to spend a total of 3 mana cheating a land onto the battlefield using the Terrain Generator more than once or twice during the game. That card really screams for instants/flash...

I'd also prefer not to skip our draw step for more basics, as we will draw enough land with just the two cards from Aggressive mining + the one from our draw step. We currently run 40% lands, so on average around 40% out of the three cards we draw a turn should be lands - that's 1,2.
Now, should we decide to go into ramp-mode, it might indeed be viable - we'd want as many lands on our hand as possible to cheat onto the battlefield with the above mentioned cards. Should we however decide to go for a steamroller-approach, in which we win mostly never running out of cards to play thanks to the insane draw from mining, we'd rather draw more steam than more lands. Especially since it can only tutor basics. If it was able to fetch the cycling lands, that would be quite a lot better.

crucible of worlds would only work if we destroyed our own Aggressive Mining first. We don't run enough Nature's Claims to do that reliably.

For the recursion we might go with Life from the Loam. thanks to the reprints in DD and MM it is quite cheap by now, $2.87 from DD.
I do believe it could be a good card in this deck, especially with the now added cycling-lands. Returning the cycling lands from our graveyard at a rate of 1:3, then discarding them again for more steam - and to draw our win condition.

For now I'll add 4 Tranquil Thicket to cycle once Aggressive Mining denies us our land drops.

For this new GMaD, I chose the brand new red draw-engine from M15, Aggressive Mining.
As always we have the official GMaD Rules: click,
We will follow the Legacy banned & restricted list: click,
And our budget should stay below a $75 hard cap, excluding the GMaD card, using the median price from tcgplayers as found on the mtgsalvation and magiccards.info card pages.

I do see the problem of just not having enough ppl on board.
when there's like 4-6 ppl active and there are 3 different routes for the deck to take by cutting cards, then each of the other strategies will probably gain 1-2 downvotes, while nothing is being removed. Unless someone changes their opinion or more ppl join in, this will grind GMaD to a dead stop.

I don't know how to fix this, 3 votes to remove a card are already the bare minimum to prevent a single person to build the deck on their own.

Anyways, it's an interesting deck, and I am happy it's completed.
Don't overdo it on the GMaDs, but I will happily join in on the next one.

I agree that the amount of tutorability in the deck is outstanding.
now, to bring this closer to an end:

vote to remove Fervor x2...it would cost us a whole turn that could be better spent on other stuff. We are not over-dependent on haste, so away with it.
vote to remove Rathi Assassin x1. It is too slow to work as a tutor, so a one-of that can be tutored itself using a Cateran Summons as a means of recurring removal or to simply flood the board with Renegades and Skycaptains might be viable, but I doubt we'd ever want two.

Unsure about the last card to cut.
On a side note, Browbeats only cost $1,11 each if we choose Duel Decks: Tibalt vs Sorin.

vote to axe one Shred Memory (The only things we usually want it to fetch are Pit-Dwellers and Power Conduits. While the effect on cast is not terrible, and can certainly be effective in some matchups [reanimator/dredge, duh], we can afford to run only 3 as an effective 7 of each will be by far enough. We should be able to win without those cards if need be.)
vote to up Graven cairns to 4 (if the budget allows it - which it probably will, after Hammerheim, Urborg and some more cards are gone. Reasons stated above)

Next thing, there's currently three cards in here to punish our opponent for having control of our Skycaptain, Pit-Dweller or Renegade:
Pthisis, Backlash and Delirium.
We should discuss which of those we want to keep, as we probably won't need that effect 12 times.

I myself am quite torn between Delirium and Backlash.
Backlash allows us to tap our creature during our own turn right after it went to our opponent (which is the usual case for the Skycaptain and Renegade, and a likely case for the Pit-Dweller), while also requiring us to tap the creature away BEFORE attackers are declared.

Delirium on the other hand outright prevents the combat damage the creature would deal, allowing us to wait for the last second, and possibly making some better blocks against our opponents own creatures (the ones we didn't donate him).

And then there's Pthisis, which can simply end games - if it actually resolves.
If we do manage to suspend it on turn 2, we should have not too much of a problem to get it to go off - but I do not really see ourselves hardcasting it on T7 or 8.
We have no mana acceleration to speak of, and only little carddraw in form of cycle and Browbeat that could ensure ongoing land drops. We need a third of our lands to hardcast it.

I honestly feel we need to playtest this alot, as Pthisis usually also does double the damage of Backlash or Delirium.
It's just that it's never a surprise - but then again, the impending huge life loss might psychologically affect our opponent to not play huge creatures.
You just don't want to sit on a Darksteel Colossus if your opponent suspended a Pthisis.

Meh, I can't decide. Please post your opinions.

Cutting Phase!

I'll make the last 8 placeholders into 5 swamps and 3 mountains.

Unfortunatley I already threw in all my votes before, so I won't add any votes for now.

Quote from Selvaxri »

Quote from Tamrian »

I am quite busy so I do not have a lot of time to reply. However, you keep stating he needs haste. He does not unless we active the take back card on our turn. If he returns because of his ability, it will happen during their upkeep and we will have controlled him since the beginning of the turn as previously discussed about control effects.

I've been under the impression that the Cap'n will have "summoning sickness" when he returns from a trip abroad. Besides, wouldn't it be nice to have him beginning earning his Wages on his first turn, rather than sitting his in roost getting drunk?
Fervor will benefit everyone, Mark of Fury was more or less added to go along with the Fractured Loyalty stratagem.

Skycaptain of TomorrowMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards

(76/~$54) Creatures (15): 1 Bazaar Trader (~$0,39 each) 1 Bringer of the Red Dawn (~$1, 22 each) [1 @ -1] 4 Rogue Skycaptain (~$0,35 each) 2 Rathi Assassin (~$0,38 each) [1 @ -1] 4 Treacherous Pit-Dweller (~$0,29 each) 3 Sokenzan Renegade (~$0,19 each) [2 @ -1] Sorcery/Instants (20): 4 Cateran Summons (~$0,20 each) 4 Shred Memory (~$0,15 each) [1 @ -1, 1 @ -4] 4 Phthisis (~$0,19 each) 2 Brand (~$0,92 each) 2 Unearth (~$0,73 each) 2 Browbeat ($1.50 each) 2 Backlash ($0.48 each) 2 Delirium ($0.29 each)

Artifacts/Enchantments (17): 4 Power Conduit (~$0,45 each) [2 @ -1] 4 Thran Turbine (~$0,31 each) 2 Helm of Possession (~$3,47 each) [2 @ -1] [2 @ -2] 2 Fractured Loyalty (~$0,16 each) [1 @ -2] 3 Mark of Fury (~$0,16 each) [2 @ -3] 2 Fervor Lands (22): 4 Homeward Path (~$2,50 each) 2 Molten Slagheap (~$,25 each) 2 Graven Cairns [FS ~$6.50 each] 4 Tainted Peak [~$0.94 each] 1 Hammerheim (~$1,42 each) [1 @ -1] 1 Urborg (~$3.07) [1 @ -1] 8 Placeholder

The captain will only need haste if we get him back in our own turn.
His own ability returns him during our opponent's upkeep, and our return-effects are instant speed, so we can return him in response to our opponent going into the combat phase (so we have him to block) or during the end step.
The only time we need to get him some haste would be if we were to return him using a return effect on our own turn. Still, haste could be nice, as it would allow a direct attack with a creature right after we unearth/undie it, or did indeed have to steal them back on our own turn.