MTG Salvation

Let me first start out by saying I got this idea from the mtg.com forums. The decklist is not exact, but its the same basic concept. I wanted to see if I could further develop it here..or just be told that its crappy and move on. lol



Basic idea is to get out a guy that you can grow with proliferate. Proliferating Planeswalkers is always good too I hear. In the thread I got this from, the OP had Quest for the Gemblades in his list. Im not too sure about that.

Im not sure what other allies to put in here. Turntimber Ranger is probably worth mentioning, but allies generally arent that great so Id like for this to not turn into all-in-allies.

I tried something like this a few weeks back.. The problem I found was that the Thrumming Bird .. Steady Progress bit didn't really make it do any better than just playing more Allies. I also played UW though.. Since White has the best cheap Allies in it. So I didn't have access to Garruk and overrun effects. I was thinking perhaps it could work like Legacy Fish. But it fell pretty short.

The Contagion Clasp worked well for me though.. the deck just wasn't fast enough to deal with anything. Garruk could change that I suppose. Stuff like Basilisk Collar looks good for lifegain, pushing damage through but it is more things leading to not drawing more Allies which is almost always what you end up wanting in the deck.

Protean Hydra is cool though. That could definitely be fun.

Yea, maybe I should cut 2 Jace for 2 more Garruk and just work on trying to overrun asap?

ive been trying to get grow back into the game for a while!!! here is what i came up with... still thinking about throwing in the white tech for condemn... but we still need a winter orb of sorts



16 Sideboard Cards

I see a couple things wrong with your deck. With only 3 green sources, how big can you really even get Omnath. I also dont like 4-of a legendary creature.

would you be happy with
-1 omnath
-1 island
+2 forrest
... and with the garruk you get to double up on your forests

Leyline of sanctity is good with the hydra against red.

Quote from AMIODARONE

would you be happy with
-1 omnath
-1 island
+2 forrest
... and with the garruk you get to double up on your forests

Yea that would look a little better.

Leyline is meh. The Hydra is already pretty solid against red in general.

Just mulling over some possible openings:

Turn 2: Oran-Rief Survivalist
Turn 3: Umara Raptor, swing 3
Turn 4: Garruk, untap, Clasp, swing 5, or protect Garruk
Turn 5: Proliferate, Overrun with Garruk, swing for 13, leaves Garruk at 1

Not bad at all. This deck is still in the back of my head. Anyone else have any ideas for this deck?

Can you fit a couple Oren Rief, the Vastwood? With proliferate and Garruk, seems like it could get crazy.

Thats a pretty good idea, thanks!

2 should be fine.

This just hit me..play Lighthouse Chronologist in here. Tons of ways to proliferate this guy. Thoughts?

No love for Chronologist?

I think it can be pretty awesome with proliferating.

I would definitely play Birds of Paradise in here ... and Explore. This way you can keep a blue open [for Spell Pierce, nominally] while accelerating t2 into a t3 Garruk, and from there you can just control the board against some decks.
I kind of like the thrummingbird tech. It's odd ... but cool. Are Allies the only creatures with +1/+1 counters in Standard? It king of feels like the deck is trying to do too much with the allies: to proliferate you pretty much always need to tap a bunch of mana, which runs somewhat counter to the idea of a UG controllish deck making a single big creature. [The other problem: there will always be someone bigger.
That said ... I'll start testing this in MODO, see if I can think of anything. :).
Here's my deck btw:

After two [eh] games, here's what seems to work and what doesn't:
-Land count
Too many lands. Explore is a bad idea. You are t3h right. ... 24 would probably be better.
-Drawing
We need more cards. ... The two ingenuity weren't there initially that was a change to try and fix that problem.
-Necropede
Necropede is AMAZING AGAINST AGGRO ZOMG. And against control it eventually gets there. It's been surprisingly awesome. For serious.
-Accelerating to the turn 3 4-drop
Without JTMS [which I don't own], seems a bit subpar. A good idea overall though. I kind of wonder how it is +3 JTMS, if you have them I'd test it. For now I'm going to drop that [I hesitate to bring up budget, but I simply don't have the money and I didn't want to ignore the option ...].
So this is my current deck:

Yeeeah. ... working on it.

*edit* Necropede is great but pulls you too far in the direction of poison, methinks. ... I'll keep tinkering. Apparently there are two ways to go, though. Maybe Necropede in the board as a blocker?

Explore needs a land heavy deck for full potential. Birds might be an option though.

Allies work nicely, but I also have Protean Hydra. There is Scute Mob, but once again, needs heavy lands.

Post any results or ideas here. Thanks a lot.

@Sam

Necropede is great, but I dont think it belongs here.

You dont like Protean Hydra?

What are your thoughts on Lighthouse Chronologist?

I don't like Protean Hydra - it just seems like a worse Oran-Rief Survivalist. It gets more counters randomly, I guess, but that seems like a pretty limited application [except if you ran Leyline, but that probably wouldn't be a good idea either ...].
Lighthouse Chronologist is pretty awesome here: I'd be very worried about protecting it before it gets to 7, though, and in UG you'll have a lot of problems getting enough U to both fuel it and counter the removal. [And in the meantime ... it doesn't do much.] So ... I dunno. I guess I'd thumbs-down it, in the end.

Necropede is amazing against aggro - it weakens someone to get killed by Thrummingbird later as a bare minimum, and usually takes out two guys [or takes out one guy and weakens another] for the price of 2. It's basically a quicker-acting Contagion Clasp without the lategame applications.

Random other thoughts:
Snake Umbra: use it. RFG removal is sparse, drawing cards is awesome, we run enough counters that it's hard to get 2-for-1'd with it.
Turntimber Ranger is great [seriously, he's awesome], but he's 5 mana. At that point ... and there aren't really any other good green or blue allies, which brings up this problem: there are a couple ways you can go with this. You can run just straight allies, but then white-based would be better. OR, you can be more controlling, but then the whole proliferating thing seems like it'd be better suited for an Infect backbone [at least IMHO], since with +1/+1 counters you're not fast enough to kill control/ramp before it gets its' finishers online OR strong enough to push damage through afterwards ... or, seemingly, fast enough to survive aggro's current ridiculousness [kuldotha!!! steppe lynx!!! turn 4 wins that you can stop with ... contagion clasp!].

Now that I have a little extra free time, Im going to start trying to test this again.

I dont like Necropede here because I dont want the deck going in 2 different directions: Poision and regular damage.

Snake Umbra is okay, but the opponent can still respond to it by removing the target resulting in a 2 for 1.

Clasp is actually pretty good against decks that play early guys.

Mike, I dropped in to say I am considering this deck for a segment on my blog Deck Tricks. Looks like a really fun deck to play!

Cool, let me know if you do and Ill check it out.

Also, if you happen to play the deck at all, be sure to post results here.

Still have this deck in the back of my mind. Heres a new list:



I think I should go all in with 4 Chronologist. I can get them up to 7 counters pretty quickly.


What do you think?

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/blog.php?b=4364

Welcome to Deck Tricks!

Thanks for featuring it man. Were you able to play with it at all?

Quote from SuperSaiyanXMike

Thanks for featuring it man. Were you able to play with it at all?

You are welcome. I need to really check into it. I really think it could pan out to be a nice deck in standard.

Any thoughts on the newest list above?

Lighthouse Chronologist really is a beast. Its ability actually does very well, especially against Emrakul.