MTG Salvation

Has anyone been playing around with these lists? For reference here is a decklist that has managed to 3-1 or 4-0 a couple of dailies. I threw it together last night, and was very happy with it. You rock black because you have better threats and answers, while against naya you actually have twice as many answers as the monoblack list, and dissolve is very good against the planeswalkers. I haven't been impressed with the Ashiok, but it has served its purpose of a 5 or 6 turn fog, with threat of dragons. Master of waves is just a house against any of the ramp decks, and if you get an active bident the game snowballs out of control incredibly quickly. I only went 2-2 in last night's daily, but lost both matches due to my own, quite obvious in hindsight play mistakes.

This is very similar to the UB deck that a bunch of people tried early in the format (example here), it didn't work then and I can't see it working now. The deck lacks any ability to close out games in a reasonable manner, it plays a bunch of 1 for 1 answers in the early turns and then does... nothing. Master of waves and bident are interesting innovations but I can't see them solving the deck's fundamental problems. In particular, playing a bunch of 2/1s or a do nothing enchantment doesn't seem a winning plan when you're going to get killed in 2 combat steps from poly/arbor colossus/stormbreath.

Also, people may misplay against ashiok and let it fog for you, but smart players won't. they'll just use occasional burn to keep its counters down if it ever threatens to play something relevant, and ignore it the rest of the time.

come back post-BNG with nullify and guild and we might be talking though!

Have you considered using Temple of Malice instead of mystery?

Then you can use Steam augury as card draw.

the major problem is it makes getting double blue turn three much harder.

The creature base is a lot different in this version. Master gives the ability to close games out in a one or two turn window, and the linked version doesn't have the sphinx either. I am definitely not a fan of ashiok either, but it does make them do something about it, costs 3 (enough to come out before shields up to counter monsters) and can't effectively be killed by magma jet. One of the problems with naya is that they have 4 4x threats. Half of them are token making planes walkers, the other is a hasty flier, and the last is a four drop monster. Gild and nullify will help, but it will be rough. Tweaking this will probably keep me busy until the set releases though. Now where did my stymied hopes go....

anyone a fan of adding vortex elemental in this?

I updated the title to reflect this as a different UBx than the version floating around using Elspeth as a wincon.

AriBigBehn_ (3-1)
THS Block Constructed Daily #6865531 on 03/14/2014

Now we have journey has anyone tried font of fortunes?

e.g