MTG Salvation

You did mention that revoker underperformed for you and pridemage was great all day. You could potentially drop the revokers for a 2nd library and another Serra avenger?

If I were to drop the revokers, I would have to get a pithing needle in the sideboard I think to deal with planeswalkers. That's one thing revokers do that Pridemage can't. Wasn't relevant this particular tournament though

My Modern testing for GP:Charlotte has largely led to me to conclude that Legacy is still vastly better than Modern. I'm only somewhat happy with all of the decks I'm brewing up and testing in Modern, and I feel like I haven't made significant progress in my last month of testing. I'm really considering opting out of the main event to get the infinite challenge badge. For $100, I would get to play 6 challenges for a total of 24 rounds of Legacy. That is sounding really good to me right now.

Unrelated, the Magic: The Addiction book that @Plague Sliver wrote ended up being really good. For those of you as invested in the competitive grind as I am, I highly recommend it. My full review is on Amazon if you want to see what I had to say.

@medea

I've traveled (far) a couple times with my crew to play Legacy side events. They go play Standard or Modern, and I grind Legacy. It has always been the correct line!

@everyone

I'm going to update the Deck History section that is in the primer for my website. Finn did a great job of writing the initial sections, but his writeup stops in 2013. What notable things have happened since then? So far I have:

2014- Containment Priest in Commander 2014
2014- Council's Judgment in Conspiracy
2015- Vryn Wingmare in Magic Origins

Am I missing anything?

What is your website? I'd be interested in reading this!

@esplanades

I'm still in the final stages of development. I'm currently working on moving it from a friend's private server in his garage to a more stable and long term location. Once I have done that, I'll be sharing the link here and the link to the site will be in my signature. Expect the actual launch to happen in the next month.

Quote from Medea »

@everyone

I'm going to update the Deck History section that is in the primer for my website. Finn did a great job of writing the initial sections, but his writeup stops in 2013. What notable things have happened since then? So far I have:

2014- Containment Priest in Commander 2014
2014- Council's Judgment in Conspiracy
2015- Vryn Wingmare in Magic Origins

Am I missing anything?

Legend rule change seems relevant?

Spirit of the Labyrinth?

Quote from Medea »

...I played Surgical Extraction for about a month prior to the Eldrazi resurgence and I really liked it. I think that it is great against a few specific decks (Tin Fins, Lands, and Reanimator in particular) and has some degree of utility in other combo matchups (e.g ANT) while also potentially being playable elsewhere (Surgical Extraction your Terminus?). This is a card that I really like at the local level, but that I wouldn't bring to an open-sized event. I think that now that Eldrazi is prevalent (~10 of the metagame to just throw out a number), running Containment Priest alongside Flickerwisp for a touch more removal is likely better than the benefits of Surgical that you get elsewhere.

If you feel like you need the Surgicals for the matchups you expect to see, leave the Fiend Hunters at home. If you feel like Eldrazi are coming out in force, I'd trim the Surgicals for the Fiend Hunters. If you aren't sure, perhaps trim one Surgical and play one Fiend Hunter as a halfway point.

One of my favorite applications of Surgical Extraction is against Miracles, but I wouldn't save it only for Terminus. That's a god play, but in my opinion, when your Miracles opponent goes to draw a card (off of Top, usually) in the middle of your combat, you Surgical Extraction anything (a fetchland is an excellent target) to shuffle away whatever is on top of the library. Your opp can of course shuffle and search three cards with Top, but it's very unreliable that he gets gold, and whittling his mana pool down by ones (he used on Top) at that critical moment can often end him.

Quote from Godoftheark »

why not:
-1 canonist, -1 rip, -1 needle
+2 hunter, +1 enlightened tutor?

My opinion is Pithing Needle is especially good right now, and should be a two-of. I even considered running one in the main, but you have to be an expert player for that and be able to reliably recognize your opponent's deck on Turn 1, which I can't always do.
But with Miracles in the ascendant, Needle is especially nice, and it's good against Storm as SwordsToTimeshares says, naming Polluted Delta. Two weak matchups for us that could use a powerful Turn 1 play.

J

It might seem counterintuitive but Containment Priest is actually the most brutal piece of hate you can throw at Dredge and reanimator. It literally stops their decks from functioning, including Show and Tell in the case of Reanimator. It's also really, really good against Elves and Sneak and Show, all combo decks that Ethersworn Canonist don't really hit. You might consider running 2x of those in the future if you want to take those matchups into consideration but don't want to flood the SB with GY hate, especially Grafdigger's Cage which I think is suboptimal. I would still run 3x RIP for the Lands, BUG Delver and Shardless matchups, the card shuts down Goyf and especially DRS which is really nice.

SotL (especially 2-of) and SoFaI are a nonbo really, why are they in the same main decklist? Are people still running a lot of SotL nowadays?

Quote from esplanades »

SotL (especially 2-of) and SoFaI are a nonbo really, why are they in the same main decklist? Are people still running a lot of SotL nowadays?

You shut off one card in your deck. You shut off seven, eight, nine or more in theirs, and they need theirs more. I have stopped running SotL for the moment, because the deck is tight and there are so many good options, especially as I'm increasing flyers. But SotL is not entirely unreasonable.

J

I hope I wasn't too accusatory, I'm still learning the deck and trying to tweak it. I was just curious because a lot of people have been dropping SotL, and I was trying to figure out if it was the SoFaI that was the reason or if it was meta-dependent. I don't see how stopping card draw would ever be bad. Maybe I'll try a 1-of (diminishing returns on #2, don't want to see it in a hand really).

Thanks for the details! I love this thread and the community.

@Medea

It may also be worth adding the following to the list, as some have previously mentioned :

Legend rule change
Converted mana cost change on flip cards. In other words, the nerfing of Ratchet Bomb.
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Brimaz
Warping Wail
Color splashing in general is more prevalent now than 2013

You guys are the best! I'll be sure to add all of those.

Updating the sideboarding guide again. General suggestions/corrections are welcome, but I also have specific questions highlighted in Yellow:

http://files.curby.net/dtside3.pdf

I'm currently on 3 Avengers/4 Revokers. If I were to switch to 4/3, what additional card should I take out in the five cases where I currently take out 4 Revokers (highlighted Red)?

Thanks!

Went to the classic this weekend!
Ended up Going 5-2-1 with Imperial Taxes and placing 22nd.

I'm not sure how I did it.

Game 1 was vs Charlbelcher and I somehow won (kept hands with sudden demise/ratchet bomb games 2 and 3 and he tried to goblin me).
Match 2 was storm. He won the dice roll and he turn twoed me both games on the play.
Match 3 was vs BUG Delver. Game 3 we drew with me having lethal on board. :'( Couldn't kill him fast enough due to a really long grindy game (he had null rod in play).
Match 4 was vs Painter. Lost in two.
Match 5 was bye. Opponent didn't show up.
Match 6 was vs sultai. With blood moons... easy matchup.
Match 7 was vs mana-less dredge. Beat him in two.
Match 8 was vs infect. Drew Thalia all three games. Game 1 was very close. But I had a thalia + vial at 3 and two flickerwhisps in hand. So I could stop him from beating me. Game 2 I almost won but he had an inkmoth I couldn't deal with. I had a magus and flickerwhisp in hand, but never saw 3 mana. Game 3 he keeps a 1 creature hand + noble and I just run him over with an early sword of fire and ice.
[deck]

@makguffin
Great report, welcome aboard!

One question: how aggressively did you mulligan? Because of the nature of the deck, I find many people, especially early on, do not mulligan enough, especially against combo decks where you really want 2-3 specific cards in your opening hand.

Great question; I hope we get some good discussion on mulling. I actually think I used to mulligan too much. I see all these televised feature matches where people keep shaky hands and it all works out in the end, whereas sometimes I mull a 1-lander into a 5-lander and feel dumb. I get that you want to mull into relevant hate postboard against fast combo, but I've been trying to keep slightly suboptimal hands and just let the deck do its thing.

Is there any matchup where you'd mull aggressively (say to 4-5 cards) just to find a specific piece of hate (i.e. you'd toss otherwise viable hands)?

Quote from esplanades »

I hope I wasn't too accusatory, I'm still learning the deck and trying to tweak it. I was just curious because a lot of people have been dropping SotL, and I was trying to figure out if it was the SoFaI that was the reason or if it was meta-dependent. I don't see how stopping card draw would ever be bad. Maybe I'll try a 1-of (diminishing returns on #2, don't want to see it in a hand really).

Thanks for the details! I love this thread and the community.

No problem. SotL's main drawback is her one toughness. Another drawback however is accidentally drawing off of SoFI, or Horizon Canopy. I have come SO close to taking an extra draw and potentially a game loss, but I don't think I've ever done it -- I catch myself at the last moment. I think one opponent permitted me to take back a Horizon Canopy once.

As for mulligans, it really is an art form for this deck, but probably not moreso than for most Legacy decks. I routinely keep a single non-White land if I have Aether Vial, for example -- it's not even a question if I have two Aether Vials. As for post-sideboard matchups, I routinely toss away a "perfectly good hand" if it contains no hate for the current game. Most typically, you pull seven aggro cards, which will do nothing against Storm, etc., etc.

J

If I did run Horizon Canopy, I wouldn't run SotL. One card having a negative interaction is enough to make me question it, three is just too much. I guess it becomes an estimate of her value in the game versus the possible drawback of not being able to get card advantage when you need it.

Quote from esplanades »

If I did run Horizon Canopy, I wouldn't run SotL. One card having a negative interaction is enough to make me question it, three is just too much. I guess it becomes an estimate of her value in the game versus the possible drawback of not being able to get card advantage when you need it.

There's no need to shy away from Horizon Canopy when running Spirit of the Labyrinth. Just remember to sacrifice the land during your opponent's turn. I used to run them alongside each other, and just had to be mindful in how I used it.

Good point. I guess I also have thought about using it on my turn if I'm out of gas and looking for something to play on that turn (i.e. an answer)

Forgot to post the deck list I went 5-2-1 with at the Classic in Indi!

Quote from Medea »

Unrelated, the Magic: The Addiction book that @Plague Sliver wrote ended up being really good. For those of you as invested in the competitive grind as I am, I highly recommend it. My full review is on Amazon if you want to see what I had to say.

Thank you for the great review, I'm glad that you identified with some of the themes in there.

And 24 rounds of Legacy sounds about 24x better than Modern