MTG Salvation

Adding 4 Azorius Chancery. This functionally generates card advantage for us and provides us with a bit of ramp when we combo it with our Frantic Searches. I'll also agree to cut our Gitaxian Probe. It's nice that it fills pur graveyard and gives us information but we're a combo control deck so we need all of our cards to contribute to our win condition.

So for like 3 days I've been distracted by Commander 2016 spoilers so I hadn't checked this post. Apparently I have nothing to fear since no one else checked it either. Voting to cut 2 Auramancer and I'm adding 1 Monk Idealist. I think 2 is the right number for this effect and giving them different names will make them synergize better with the Gifts Ungiven that we still aren't running. The deck doesn't feel nearly done and we're pretty close to hitting that 75 mark. I think we should attempt to cut some cards. I also believe we should add the Gifts and a wrath package.

I'll add the gifts ungiven. It has been discussed enough that I think it is a reasonable fit with the deck. It's a neat tutor card and it can make games more interesting. If other people don't like it, they can now vote to remove it.

+4 Gifts Ungiven

I'll also vote against 2 Auramancer as I think it is redundant.

I almost want to say that Fumigate would be better for a sweeper just for the life gain

I'm going to last vote gitaxian probe. I think the deck could use the room in a more educated manner. I also think we have plenty of card draw and looking at our opponents hand isn't really going to benefit us. We cannot interact with their hand anyway unless they attempt to cast.

i think the best way to get the card in exile are :
browse
ancestral knowledge

ancestral knowledge might be better since it also smooths out our draws.

If we're playing Gifts, we should do Gifts right.

-1 Day of Judgment
+1 Noxious Revival

Ideally, someone should add Snapcaster Mage.

And maybe alternate wraths like [cars]Supreme Verdict[/card] and Wrath of God.

I'm also voting down one Dig Through Time because even 3 copies is hard to support in a deck with 8 fetchlands, and we only have 4 fetches.

And 3 copies of Propaganda, since we can now Gifts for it and recursive tools, and because multiple Propaganda has anti-synergy with Day of Judgment effects (opponent will only play 1 creature at a time).

I was thinking Scour would be fun. Scour our own Hedron, exile all of them, and get them back with Pull from Eternity. Since there's only one copy of PfE, so eh...

We are overthinking the Hedron Exile conundrum- so, i'm adding 2 Phyrexian Furnace. We get one into our graveyard, then we get it into exile with the net of a draw. sure, there are other ways- but the mana investment is sound.

I was thinking good ol' Jester's Cap would work, or oddball artifacts like Mangara's Tome or Kyren Archives... but the Vault is just too good to consider.

I'm going to vote against a day of judgment. In this deck it's strictly worse than Wrath of God (regeneration) and Supreme Verdict (pitches to Force of Will and can't be countered). I don't see any reason to play day other than to diversify gifts piles. I vote to remove 1.

I'll also vote against multiple copies of Propaganda. I don't think we will always need this card, and we can tutor for it now. I vote to remove 3.

So I'm also going to vote to cut 1 Day of Judgment because we need to diversify our wrath package so we can gifts for wraths. We can also cut the Propaganda down to 1. Someone should probably add a Ghostly prison though, I think 2 is the right number for this effect.

I'm adding 1 Supreme Verdict. We want 3 wraths I think and Verdict is probably our best bet. Pitches to force of will and is uncounterable.

I'll add 1 Ghostly Prison.

We can now gifts for Propaganda + Prison + Auramancer + Monk Idealist and be guaranteed 2 effects if we need it (or swap in 1 Hedron Alignment to be guaranteed 1 Alignment and 1 Propaganda effect). That's a lot of flexibility, a good place for a Gifts deck to be.

We probably want a 3rd Wrath effect (e.g. Wrath of God), or at the very least Snapcaster. Right now our board wipe Gifts pile is:
Supreme Verdict
Day of Judgment
Noxious Revival
Hedron Alignment

Opponent probably gives us Hedron Alignment (keeping it out of GY) and Noxious Revival (making us lose a draw step). So we will end up with 1 Wrath effect, but then have none left in the deck and no other ways to recur the other. Including another wrath effect in the deck and/or Snapcasters opens up more lines of play..

I agree that we need Snapcaster Mage. I'm adding 4. We have 29 instants and sorceries right now. He has so much utility and value it's silly.

Do we need two Phyrexian Furnace? (For that matter, do we even need one Phyrexian Furnace?)

Quote from Quendalon »

Do we need two Phyrexian Furnace? (For that matter, do we even need one Phyrexian Furnace?)

It reminds me of scrabbling claws, and is a neat card. I don't think we need it with all the delve spells though.

I don't think we need Phyrexian Furnace. If we were going to run any effect like this it should be Scrabbling Claws, that said I just don't think we need this effect when we have all these digs and force of wills so I'm voting to cut them both. I'm adding our third wrath effect to round out that gifts package.

Quote from GumgodMTG »

Quote from Quendalon »

Do we need two Phyrexian Furnace? (For that matter, do we even need one Phyrexian Furnace?)

It reminds me of scrabbling claws, and is a neat card. I don't think we need it with all the delve spells though.

Quote from Vault756 »

I don't think we need Phyrexian Furnace. If we were going to run any effect like this it should be Scrabbling Claws, that said I just don't think we need this effect when we have all these digs and force of wills so I'm voting to cut them both. I'm adding our third wrath effect to round out that gifts package.

Scrabbling Claws IS A RENAMED Phyrexian Furnace. Is there a reason to argue over different versions of the same card? granted the Furnace specifically calls for precision removal, the claws don't

I'm going to step on more toes and add 1 Vengeful Dreams while also voting out Day of Judgment. Vengeful Dreams has the two-fold effect of exiling only the creatures we want, while also getting Alignment and other stuffs into our graveyard for future manipulation. It's modularly better than Wrath of God/Day of Judgment, especially when we need the instant speed deterrent.

I just realized that I had marked down a vote to cut 1 Dig Through Time in a previous post that I did not mean to. I am correcting that mistake Dig Through Time is now at 1@-1 where it should be.

Also Scrabbling Claws and Phyrexian Furnace are not the same. Furnaces tap ability specifically exiles the bottom card of someone's graveyard while Claws let's the person pick which card. This matters for two reasons. First it adds unnecessary complexity to the game because the card cares about graveyard order. If you are playing this you have to keep your graveyard in order and make sure your opponents all do the same. It's just a hassle. Second and more importantly is that if we wanted to use this cars on ourselves to get rid of an alignment in our graveyard we would have to use the second ability unless Hedron Alignment happened to be the bottom card in our graveyard. There could be corner cases where we are playing against graveyard centric decks where we would need to keep the claws available to stop our opponent. In these cases we don't want to be forced into using the second ability just to get an alignment into the graveyard. Scrabbling Claws is just strictly better on this deck.

Not sure how I feel about Vengeful Dreams but we are short on discard spells and answers to creatures so I'm willing to give it a chance.

I'm voting to cut Deep Analysis. There is nothing wrong with this card, I just think we need space and the fact that this costs us life is a downside. I'm adding 2 Sphinx's Revelation to finish of the deck and put us into card cutting mode. This card both gains us life and draws us cards. The deck has plenty of card draw but so far no life gain so I can see this being very useful to stabilize.

Quote from Vault756 » »

Also Scrabbling Claws and Phyrexian Furnace are not the same. Furnaces tap ability specifically exiles the bottom card of someone's graveyard while Claws let's the person pick which card. This matters for two reasons. First it adds unnecessary complexity to the game because the card cares about graveyard order. If you are playing this you have to keep your graveyard in order and make sure your opponents all do the same. It's just a hassle. Second and more importantly is that if we wanted to use this cars on ourselves to get rid of an alignment in our graveyard we would have to use the second ability unless Hedron Alignment happened to be the bottom card in our graveyard. There could be corner cases where we are playing against graveyard centric decks where we would need to keep the claws available to stop our opponent. In these cases we don't want to be forced into using the second ability just to get an alignment into the graveyard. Scrabbling Claws is just strictly better on this deck.

Honestly, we don't need to even bother the first ability, as it's primary objective is to get Alignment into Exile. we don't need to keep either around after that point. 1, sac, exile, draw. done and done. don't bother with graveyard manipulation.
If we really want to mess with our opponent's graveyard- then yes, the Claws are better. Though, giving them a choice is not as great as the conditional/situational exile.

It's too late to add Phantatog or Psychatog...

Quote from Selvaxri »

It's too late to add Phantatog or Psychatog...

That's ok, the OP said

So I want to make a deck around this card where the only conceivable way for the deck to win is with Hedron Alignment.

Psychatog would clearly be an alternate win condition.


I think that Dig through time is all we need to exile Hedron Alignment. That card is bonkers. With that said, I'm going to vote to remove all Phyrexian Furnace. I do wish we would have gotten at least one treasure cruise in too though.

I'm also going to vote against deep analysis. It's a fine card, but we need to trim, and I think it's weaker than the other dig/draw that we have.

I'm going to vote against all 4 wall of omens. We can't blink it, so it basically just cantrips. I say if we're going all in on this, we really do need to go all in.

Ahh the cutting stage.... every emo kids dream...... sorry that just popped in my head.

I'm going to last vote Deep Analysis. We have better card draw and I would avoid the life loss for flashback like the plague if I was piloting this deck. I think life is really going to be at a premium trying to get this combo off so I'm not gonna give up life if I don't have to.

Quote from Vault756 »

I just realized that I had marked down a vote to cut 1 Dig Through Time in a previous post that I did not mean to. I am correcting that mistake Dig Through Time is now at 1@-1 where it should be.

Nice catch. I just propagated the error without realizing no one else voted against DTT.

Quote from Selvaxri »

Scrabbling Claws IS A RENAMED Phyrexian Furnace. Is there a reason to argue over different versions of the same card? granted the Furnace specifically calls for precision removal, the claws don't

Yes. Scrabbling Claws can do everything that Phyrexian Furnace can do, but it can ALSO do other things. It does more things.

The existence of Furnace in the list would mean both players are forced to keep their graveyards in order for the whole game. It's just a pain.

Honestly, we don't need to even bother the first ability, as it's primary objective is to get Alignment into Exile. we don't need to keep either around after that point. 1, sac, exile, draw. done and done. don't bother with graveyard manipulation.

With Scrabbling Claws, the first ability can exile Alignment for a total investment of 1 mana. With Furnace, we usually have to use the second ability, which is a total investment of 2 mana (1 to cast, 1 to activate). It takes an additional mana to get the job done! Claws gives you a choice.

Who cares about 1 measly mana? It could be the difference between going off this turn or next turn, or being able to hold up counter mana or Gifts mana. There's no reason to waste an extra mana when we don't need to. I don't understand why people are arguing about whether or not the deck will mind using a worse card when a better option is available. It's not hard to use the better one. What's the reason to defend the worse one? Sentimental attachment to the suggestion?

Anyway, I will vote against Phyrexian Furnace. It's worse than Claws. We cannot Gifts for it easily, since it is an artifact. It forces players to track and maintain graveyard order. Dig Through Time and Force of Will are enough to exile 1 Alignment.

I'm going to step on more toes and add 1 Vengeful Dreams while also voting out Day of Judgment. Vengeful Dreams has the two-fold effect of exiling only the creatures we want, while also getting Alignment and other stuffs into our graveyard for future manipulation. It's modularly better than Wrath of God/Day of Judgment, especially when we need the instant speed deterrent.

But do we even want to discard cards? It's card disadvantage. What "stuffs" do we want in the GY? Literally the only thing is Alignment. We can easily tutor that to the GY using Gifts for 2 cards (e.g. Alignment + Island). Easy. We also have Frantic Search.

Even if we use Dreams as a discard outlet to dump 1 Alignment, that only exiles 1 attacker (bad Swords to Plowshares). To kill more than 1 creature, we have to discard other useful stuff we'd rather have in hand. I really don't see what the benefit is.

Also, don't we just want to kill all creatures? We barely have any of our own, and they are all played for the ETB effects. The bodies are just chump blockers. We don't gain that much by using selective removal to keep them alive. And by being selective we risk that we can't kill everything nasty of the opponent's. Most of the time, we'd rather kill all the nasty stuff than worry about whether we are keeping our guys.

I'm voting against Dreams. If instant speed matters, something like Rout or Cyclonic Rift may have been the way to go.

I also vote against 8 Seat of the Synod so that we aren't cheating. Those should probably be Islands or some kind of UW dual. We want at least 1 Plains or Hallowed Fountain, otherwise Flooded Strand really sucks!

I will vote to cut 1 Gifts. Gifts is amazing. It's the engine to the deck. On the other hand, we don't have that many possible Gifts piles to make. We have 1 enchantment recursion package and 1 spell recursion package. The first Gifts cast has a lot of options, and the second still has some. But by the 3rd, we've already used up most of the singletons and recursion. The third Gifts is probably only good for tutoring Alignment directly to graveyard (Gifts for Alignment + Island). Gifts is a card we want to see often but not too often. In the rare cases where we need to cast Gifts many times in a game, we have 4 Snapcaster Mage. And if we need to see Gifts early, the deck has a ton of cheap card filtering to find it. For that reason, I think 3 copies is the right number.

Quote from FTW1987 »

I also vote against 8 Seat of the Synod so that we aren't cheating. Those should probably be Islands or some kind of UW dual. We want at least 1 Plains or Hallowed Fountain, otherwise Flooded Strand really sucks!

Seat is only there as a placeholder for the land base.... it's not meant to be a serious addition.....

I'll add the 4 Hallowed Fountain so that our land base doesn't suck.

I'll also vote against the Vengeful Dreams. I really like that cycle from Torment (Devastating Dreams is my favorite), but I don't think we need it in this deck. As was already pointed out a simple wrath is better. We have multiple wraths, tutors, and snapcasters. Clearing the entire board shouldn't be an issue.

Cutting from this point will be difficult in my estimation. I am going to add a second vote for removing all Wall of Omens as I believe we have enough card draw and our combination of sweepers and counterspells should keep us relatively safe

I am also going to downvote frantic search by two cards. Its ability to give us a free draw and dump a hedron in our graveyard is nice but we don't need more than one in the yard and we wont want to be dumping our counterspells etc. However we still need to find it so 2 is good I guess? Gifts should get a hedron in our yard anyway