MTG Salvation

Aim of the game is simple folks.



Step 1: Drop Keranos.
Step 2: Drop Wildfire.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.

Gameplan & Deck Design

First off, this deck is housed in what you might call a typical U/R control shell. It has an efficient counter/removal package, cheap burn spells and cheap sweepers. In fact as a U/R control general, I feel Keranos may be better than Nin. They both come out around the same turn (you wouldn't normally cast Nin on turn two, Keranos can be ramped into as early as turn 3), and Keranos has more of an impact when he lands. You can safely tap out for him, and he just sticks around and draws you cards or kills ***** without much investment. And he is damn resilient too. And this "extra resilience" factor allows me to sculpt a gameplan around resolving Keranos - namely mass destruction.

The deck list used Nin, the Pain Artist decks as a shell, until I realised you could run cards like Wildfire the turn after resolving Keranos, and pretty much take over the game. I also wanted Keranos out ASAP so my Wildfires would have more impact against ramp & midrange decks such as Maelstrom Wanderer and Marath, Will of the Wild. This new approach would skew my deck's strategy more towards combo rather than the permission-control of yore, and the counters and removal function more to protect my combo and Delay the opponent until I can resolve a game-winning Wildfire or Destructive Flow.

To this effect I run a handful of mana rocks that help me push out Keranos a turn or two faster. Mana rocks also have the added value of surviving Wildfire effects. Except Jokulhaups. Strangely enough Jokulhaups may be the best of the Wildfire lot, as it kills opposing Titans, and opposing mana rocks and equipment. In the current metagame you'd much rather both sides have no artifacts than your side one or two rocks, and the other guy a Birthing Pod or Skullclamp, or a Coalition Relic or Sword of Fire and Ice.

In addition to the mana rocks are some accelerant mana sources that traditionally don't belong in a control shell. I'm talking about Sandstone Needle, Saprazzan Skerry & City of Traitors. These are great for pushing out an early Keranos and Wildfire, and the perceived drawbacks of these lands are irrelevant in our combo gameplan. Keranos and no lands on either side of the table is enough to win. There are others such as Crystal Vein, Dwarven Ruins & Svyelunite Temple, but I like to keep my basic land count high to maximise Skred, Blood Moon & Ruination.

Onwards to the list!

Wildfire Semi-Tap Out Control v5.0 031115


Old lists


Changelog v4.3 290614

In

• Future Sight
  
• Bonfire of the Damned
  
• Ætherling
  
• Ral Zarek
  
• Dack Fayden

Out

• Pyroblast
  
• Pyroclasm
  
• Fire Diamond
  
• Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
  
• Anger of the Gods

Old changelogs

Replays
vs Jester831 - 210414
https://www.mediafire.com/?3apu9d32y2qltqt
These were some very long and back and forth games. I got completely destroyed by a Daze on game 2, trolled hard by another on game 3, and jerked around twice by 4 mana Force Spikes in two consecutive games.

vs gwaker - 240414
https://www.mediafire.com/?m1i55rvgoxf4l10
My first win against Oloro esper control. Game 1 was an easy win off a Blood Moon. Game 2 I wanted to make it more interesting and sandbag the Devastation in my hand so that my opponent wouldn't concede too early. Drawing the Boseiju gave me the edge for the entire game, despite letting my opponent resolve Ad Nauseum and Midnight Bargain. When I finally decided to let loose Devastation...it was glorious.

Matchup History

Teysa 1-1
Jenara 1-1
Sygg, River Cutthroat 0-1
Geist 1-1
Sigarda 2-1
zgana Nin 0-1
Talrand 4-0
Marath 3-1
Jester Animar 0-1
Pillowfort Oloro 1-1
Radha 1-0
Karador 1-0
Kaalia 1-0
Grand Arbiter 0-1-0
Maelstrom Wanderer 3-5
Pharika, God of Affliction 1-1
Athreos, God of Passage 5-1

...and many other games go untallied because of opponent ragequit after 1 or 2 games

Yeah... I have to do an overhaul to my deck because I can't seem to deal you with my Marath... Athreos on the other is still underconstruction so at least it has an excuse.

I really like what you've done with Keranos. Granted, I'm curious on what you opinion would be on a few cards
-Trade Routes/Seismic Assault: Depending on the stage of the game either of these could prove to be a powerful inclusion allowing you to burn through your deck quickly, especially with Keranos increased draw power.
-Sunder: It's kinda like Blue's mass land destruction, but it does have good synergy with the two prior cards. In addition, it's also a instant which can prove to be rather relevant with such cards. If cast at the end of an opponent's turn it will often force them to discard a large portion of cards to keep enough mana to cast even basic spells.
-Impending Disaster: It might be worth a look even with the delayed trigger due to its incredibly cheap cost allowing you to play slightly around it.

-I'll give Trade Routes & Impending Disaster a go. Impending looks to be great against UW control since it's cheap to resolve.

-Seismic Assault I'm not sure about, since when Wildfire clears I tend to look for blue lands, so it might be difficult to cast. And I'd probably want to hold up mana for removal and counters in the early game rather than drop a Seismic Assault, which is very colour-intensive as well.

-Sunder is nice, but I would like a sweeper tacked on as well. It's the sort of card I could see in monoblue aggro such as Talrand or Thassa, where you have an imposing board state to break the symmetry of having no lands on both sides. Think how scary Armageddon is in white weenies. I usually win with Keranos post-Wildfire when my opponent stalls on lands and fails to hit land drops every turn to rebuild their board, while I can reliably churn out land drops with Keranos. Sure, it's nice forcing them to discard on their endstep after Sunder, but ultimately they can pick what to discard, and will most likely play lands on each turn. Sunder doesn't break the symmetry nearly as much as Wildfire does, because I don't run any creatures.
On that note I may end up cutting Boom // Bust as well, for the same reason that I don't dig Sunder. The Boom part is cute, and even when it does work with Darksteel Citadel or a fetchland it's low impact.

Thanks for the ideas though!

what are your thoughts on ruination? i feel it must be better than some of the more expensive cards? have you tested it yet? awesome list by the way. this looks like a blast to play.

Ruination is a very very very very annoying card!!!!!

How's your matchup with UW? Heisenb3rg has a problem with them.

Oh yah ruination is definitely in there, must have overlooked it when typing up the list. Also forgot to put in Mana Leak derp. I'll edit it to put it in. I'm also gonna test out Treachery and Karn Liberated, to help my UW matchups and Maelstrom Wanderer matchups.

Tested against Oloro esper control, and the matchup feels completely unwinnable. My gameplan has no effect on them, since post-Wildfire they usually have more mana on board than I do, and a Phyrexian Arena of some sort on the field. Oloro's life buffer only lets them effectively take 1 damage a turn, so in the late game they have the upperhand. I don't expect Oloro reanimator or Oloro Doomsday to be as tough though.Also played against Grand Arbiter yesterday, and I did much better than I expected, with Gilded Drake and Order of Succession really pulling their weight.

My Marath matchup is surprisingly good, and this is one aspect of the deck that I feel the Wildfire strategy gives me the edge over say Nin. But the most important factor is that Nin is vulnerable to Marath's ping, and Keranos isn't.

@Gaviro: What are your thoughts on running the full package of mana rocks? I'm only running the good ones at the moment, since I don't want awkward draws of mana rocks or to get flooded with them when I'd rather have counters/removal. Is having more access to fast mana worth it? And thanks for the list, some cool cards like Future Sight and Karn I'd overlooked.

That and with Wildfire tech, most of Marath's creatures are kaput. If Teeg is out, Keranos can kill him for the time being.

The only thing that I beat Keranos is something big... like turn 2 Gyre Sage and turn 3 Marath... then I kept building him up. And early Titan prove useless to Keranos as I just pop up the lands unless you decided to pop Jokulhaups.

Karn Liberated has been all around great, will have to add Counterflux for my Maelstorm Wanderer and control matchups, it seems an obvious inclusion in hindsight...
Gush is super tech when you cast Wildfire/Burning with 4 lands or less. Destructive Flow is functionally the same as Wildfire in my deck, but I've found that being one mana more expensive makes it simply too hard to cast. I'd rather have Wildfire for one less mana or Devastation for one more mana.

I will now start adding notable replays, and collating my match results.

I'm curious about your deck's weaknesses. That way we can see how your deck can improve.

At the moment it seems to be just Wanderer, aggro-control (Jenara, Sygg, Geist), and pillowfort Oloro which I'm hoping never becomes a thing because of Marath. Everything else is manageable.
Bobah's Teysa list gave me quite a run for my money with Bloodghast it's a shame I can't find the replay anymore to upload, those were awesome games. I think the woogerworks server must have cleared its cache or something.

It's a weekly thing, so you have to save your games before the weekend.

And yes, I saw that Bloodghast game which I add it in my Athreos.

I still don't get how Bloodghast works in Athreos (assuming Athreos is out). The opponent will always choose not to pay 3 life and let you return it to your hand.

You're right

Unless you have some discard fodder.

Blood Moon but no Magus? I know you don't have many targets for their removal but it seems like it could still have a huge impact up until the Wildfire hits.

Either way, it's a beautiful list and I look forward to seeing how it performs. Well done and good luck!

I know that in Nin, often times magus doesnt perform the way we want it to, its super fragile, and dies to just about anything on board. Bloodmoon however creates a threat which needs very specific answers.

On the other hand, Magus is a backup. After a boardwipe, opponents tend to grind its way for land... any land drop will be used for casting something. Most of the time, it'll be nonbasic. Since Keranos can drop land a tad quicker than they do, he can drop Magus if Blood Moon is not available.

In what way does this list "balance?"

What's this deck's awesome history in a competitive meta?

Errr I'm more interested in actual field test than paper theory (so far).


@OP: after watching your games with a couple of control mu like Azami and few Oloros, I've noticed that it's not a bad idea on getting uncounterable lands Cavern and Boseiju and having those lands being by Expedition Map. In my MW deck esp when I first started, adding those lands actually boost my win rate against control decks since it's more noncreature-based deck than most other MW builds.

Can't remember if you added them ready since theist time I've watched your games.

Oh, add a Pithinb Needle or two if space permits.

yeah I've been tossing up cavern and boseiju, boseiju is more important than cavern but the lifeloss and colorless mana is a huge drawback for me. i will cut 1 island and 1 mountain for boseiju/cavern for now. if i run e. map and pithing needle, do you suggest trinket mage?

@dukxek dack fayden is INSANE. shame he doesn't protect himself, but being able to yank a sword of fire and ice permanently and still survive is so darn coool, he reminds me of liliana of the veil in some ways because of the costs of his loyalty abilities. his first ability seems perfect for some of the flashback heavy nin lists that run quiet speculation. can't wait to personal tutor for a bomb and play it on the same turn because of dack. also lets me discard my sweepers and spot removal in control matchups.

EDIT:
-1 snow island
-1 snow mountain
-1 dream tides

+cavern of souls
+boseiju, who shelters all
+expedition map

It can be added since it can search two artifact lands and Darksteel Citadel.

oh yeah and in response to your list, there are some choices i find fault with, such as vexing devil and valakut, the molten pinnacle. vexing is super-weak in this format. valakut is ineffective because you only run 9 mountains.
i do like cerebral vortex as instant speed divination, might give that a go. dictate of the twin gods is also actually pretty cool; it can kill titans with keranos on board and speed up your clock too. clearly it works better in tandem with your spellshock, sulfuric vortex etc. package though. my big gripe is that my keranos can't switch gears to being an aggro deck, so i feel there would be many instances where i'd rather have removal/counter than one of those enchantments. the only one that MIGHT merit an inclusion is sulfuric vortex, because of oloro.

i reckon if you're going to go that path, maximise your sweepers, trim some counters and also run furnace of rath, thassa, god of the sea and more permanents in the top end like consecrated sphinx, inferno titan, frost titan.

Huh... I thought you run Vortx already. Maybe it's from other Keranos deck that I've watch lately.

turns out Oloro control isn't unwinnable. Just gotta let Blood Moon or Ruination resolve. Having access to Boseiju and Cavern now makes the matchup considerably easier, thanks ikaoru