MTG Salvation

Quote from serenechaos

Absolutely. I almost never have a strong desire to win at an event, I just love making other players happy, and I think the reactions so get are well worth the $40. One guy was so intensely affected that he thanked me several times for "just doing what you're doing, and making the world a better place like you did just now with me".

On a competitive note, however, I can honestly say that as much as it sounds like the tired fallback of noobs and sore losers, I really did lose to bad luck in the games I lost. I've learned that Summoner's Pact is somewhat dangerous against control decks, where you might need to recover later. But other than that, my hands were amazing, the numbers were on my side, I faced down SO MANY Forceless hands and even pushed through a Spell Pierce once. I even went down to 3 Gambles to minimize bricks in testing. I may re-cut the Land Grants for Shield Spheres, Skyshroud Cutter was a champ, but rarely was getting him down a problem (though I'm not sure whether that's because of the Land Grants). Everyone agreed that bricking on double Glimpse is rare enough, doing it 5 times in one event is just brutally terrible fortune.

So, I'm considering cutting Grants and having sideboard options for lowering the Pact count against blue decks (probably 4th Guide, 3rd land, leave one or two Pacts in). I'm also planning to actually build the sideboard I keep telling you guys to build. I am such a slacker.

Aside from those minor tweaks, I think the list I played with could easily make it to the winner's table in a major event. The turn 1 rate, percentage of decks that can't interact, and percentage of games the other decks don't have Force of Will all combine to make it a crap shoot with heavily tilted odds in your favor. Smart play and sideboarding against blue decks gives you even more strength, and surprise factor is still prevalent enough to give you a powerful advantage.

Quote from izzetmage

I'll recommend you NOT to build this deck, because it isn't competitive. Glimpse is banned and the next best thing is Beck/Call. But Beck/Call doesn't really measure up, because of 2 factors:
1) It costs 2 mana instead of 1, so you need more resources (i.e. lands/mana dorks) to get it started. Didn't draw enough of those resources? Had a mana dork killed? Whoops, you brick.
2) It costs 1 blue mana, which means you can't cast it off Heritage Druid alone. You need an untapped Breeding Pool or Deathrite Shaman (side note: Birchlore Rangers is not in Modern).
The above two are bad enough, but when you combine them, it means that Beck/Call cannot be chained. If you've played with Glimpse, you'd know that if you draw a second (or third, or fourth) Glimpse, you can just cast it and start drawing double the cards. Not so for Beck/Call. The second one you draw is completely dead.

From time to time, someone manages to 3-1 or 4-0 a Daily with it. That's luck. I wouldn't advise you to play this deck if your goal is winning.