MTG Salvation

Luca, you are far from the first people to make that mistake. Don't sweat it.

In light of all these suggestions, lemme ask you guys something. How often have you had RIP on the battlefield and not ended up winning? I mean, when it stick around for a few turns.

Also, I see three common matchups that need help. Elves, 12-Post, and Jund. We should be looking for sideboard or maindeck cards that help out against two of those while keeping with the overall strategy of the deck. All other matchups are in the range of 50% or better for me because our central strategy is potent against them. In these three cases, we need something that stretches the strategy - a new tactic. (On that note, I love what Jungian brings to this discussion - changing tactics while keeping the main strategy is a great thing to discuss. But I am inclined to completely agree with rezombied. This deck does not like to go aggro any more. If I am going aggro without also pinning down the enemy, I am in a tight spot. It means that my primary strategy is not working. Slow beats is just fine with me most of the time).

Aven Mindcensor is pretty good against two of those, and is worth testing against Jund. It also has application against a wide swath of the field. Cataclysm is basically the same, albeit with different side decks it hits. Are there others that are better (cheaper)? That would be spiffy. Otherwise, these are really the guys I want to keep in mind for possible inclusion. Of course, neither of these is really aimed at Jund. So, the trick is to find a card that hits Jund hard and either hits one of these other two or is something we can get away with maindecking even if we don't happen to run into Jund that night. Jotun Grunt is the only one that jumps out at me for this. I'm kinda meh on bringing it back though. And it sucks against Post and Elves.

So, if I could focus our brainpower into solving the pertinent issues, this would be where the funnel points.

@Finn, theorhetically surgical extraction helps the jund matchup and the 12 post matchup (wasteland + surgical extraction should deal with things most effectively in the 12-post matchup). Elves matchup has actually gotten slightly better, due to revoker naming heritage druid being better (they stopped running preist of titania as a 4 of). Elves is winnable if you have 4 revokers in the main and the 2nd jitte (which has more applications than SoLas right now IMO). Also, Linvalla seems pretty good in that elves matchup.

Elves has never been a particularly problematic matchup for me, the few times I encountered it in matches I won all of them. Revoker is awesome and Thalia actually helps a lot. Its even easier now that they run nearly all nonbasics with the printing of DRS, it helps being able to Waste their landbase.

The problem with Jund is that the deck doesnt have any obvious holes to exploit. You either have to dedicate a lot of sideboard space to gain just a small amount of advantage or you just throw the match away, because it's otherwise unwinnable with the mainboard. A good tactic is just to overload their removal, but keep in mind that they run Confidant, DRS, Liliana and other CA engines and we have none, so in the long run that doesnt work either.
I've been thinking about using Jotun Grunt maindeck as a high impact early drop that needs to be killed, and sacrifice RIP in favour of Surgical Extraction in the sideboard (as RIP doesnt really work with Grunt). But with that the deck runs into the problem of being worse at dealing with DRS.

Maybe ignorance is bliss, but I'm not super-concerned about the 12-Post matchup or the Elves matchup. But Aven Mindcensor would indeed be good against both decks.

Why would Mindcensor be good against Jund? Becuase it messes with fetchlands?

So I think I'm back to playing three equipments in the main. That leaves my sideboard with these cards to definitely include:

3 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Pithing Needle
3 Rest in Peace

And these card options to fill out the remainder:

Lodestone Golem
Aven Mindcensor
Sword of Fire and Ice
Dryad Militant
Mirran Crusader

I haven't liked Cataclysm or Judge's Familiar enough to continue with them in the board.

So if the matchups that are my biggest concern are Jund, BUG decks and Storm, I've got to be thinking about protection from Abrupt Decay. Lodestone Golem and Mirran Crusader give that. Lodestone Golem serves our deck's core strategy. Mirran Crusader really doesn't.

If Punishing Fire/Burnwillows is a big concern, Dryad Militant stops that from happening. It also stops Life from the Loam and Ancient Grudge from being abused. Rest in Peace is better, but I will play that too, and redundancy is not a bad thing. Militant also stops Past in Flames and Cabal Therapy flashing back.

Sword of Fire and Ice is a way to protect against Punishing Fire, but that's a slow form of protection against an instant.

Ethersworn Canonist is really a great card against the matchups I'm most concerned with. Storm simply has to deal with it before it can win. It stops Cascade and it prevents Punishing Fire from dealing more than 2 damage per turn. Maybe my solution should include finding room for 4x Canonist in the SB.

So maybe this:

Trust us, you Elves is still very tough and still deserves to be included in our top 5 problem matchups. You matchup against an expert pilot and game 1 becomes a wash most of the time. They still run the basic Forest to fetch, and if they elect to get that, then the matchup becomes harder.

Game 2 after bringing Aven Mindcensor and possibly extra removal the match becomes winnable. Ethersworn shuts off the Elfball, but she is hardly enough to stop Natural Order, so it is less effective than in days past. On and off I also run a singleton Grafdigger's Cage in the side. With that out, Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order are negated, and it stops the Reanimator decks, with some limited use against Dredge as well. Obviously, I still have the playset of RiP.

Regarding brainstorming on BGx decks, Wilt-Leaf Liege does seem like the most unstoppable card we have access to. 1WWW is a hard cost to swallow, but it is true that if you draw it there is a reasonable chance it gets discarded, netting a ridiculous resource advantage. Because it shuts off so many of their spells and abilities, it technically even qualifies as a tax in addition to being a beatstick.

Okay, one more sideboard idea for the Jund matchup, though I hesitate to suggest anything new since there's already more questionable card ideas out there than anyone could reasonably hope to playtest...
[CARD]
Leonin Abunas[/CARD]

...maybe include two in the sideboard for Jund, or another Abrupt Decay matchup? It's out of Decay range, it will protect a Vial, a Revoker, a Canonist, or an equipment from Decay (if it's in play before the Decay is cast), and it's also out of Lightning Bolt and Punishing Fire range. It's also tough enough to block a medium-sized 'Goyf and survive.

Though maybe by the time we get four mana, or a Vial on four, the threat to (or utility of) our Vials has peaked already. It's really just protection from late-game top-decked Decays I suppose, and it's not a beater.

Quote from LucaGrease

If we want to hose Jund without having to dig up obscure tech with dubious broader utility, than leyline of sanctity might very well be our best bet.

True Believer? It can be Vialed in as a response to Hymn, Thoughtseize, Liliana's 2nd/3rd ability going on the stack, etc.

Quote from grimskies

I found anti-discard card which wasn't mentioned in this thread: Spiritual Focus. Sadly, it doesn't tax and it doesn't kill...

But it is card advantage, which is excellent

Here's some good news, finally: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=4639

And it occurred to me a day or two ago that this was exactly what we need, a good result in a competitive tournament, and I think this counts. I think D&T is still well-placed, and we needed someone to prove it.

Interesting list. No Serra Avengers. +4 Mirran Crusader. -1 Flickerwisp and -1 Mangara, +2 Aven Mindcenso.

His sideboard is a bit of a headscratcher. No Tutor, but lots of 1s and 2s. But he is a very good, very smart player, so I guess he can pull this off.

Three combo decks (including one Storm deck) in the Top 8. No sign of Jund, meaning either that it was under-represented, or all the Combo kept it out of the Top 8.

I have no idea how Thomas Enevoldsen managed to win with that many 3 drops in his deck. Though if he is as amazing a player as you claim, I guess that can make up for the horrible mana curve that would give him.

Quote from DalkonCledwin

I have no idea how Thomas Enevoldsen managed to win with that many 3 drops in his deck. Though if he is as amazing a player as you claim, I guess that can make up for the horrible mana curve that would give him.

It's four 2-drops taken out and four 3-drops in place of them. So yeah, it slows down the deck, though the 2-drops taken out aren't just basic 2-drops, they're Serra Avengers, which of course cannot be cast during turns one, two or three.

Enevoldsen was 12th in the Ghent Legacy GP last year, and came to the U.S. for another GP and dropped in on a SCG Legacy Open and was Top 4. His games on camera show he is good.

Hey guys! I finished the deck. Could I post pictures of it?

Quote from berksowl

Here's some good news, finally: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=4639

That is awesome! Does he post here? I have seen him over at the source.

Thomas, congratulations on a magnificent result with what appears to be a highly tactical build.

If you are on this board can you please write up an analysis of your deck, play notes and any other insights?

Again, round of applause!

Congrats Enevoldsen!

I really want a metagame like that. So few Deathrite Shamans ;_;

Cut Horizon Canopy in favor of a way to get more cards? Well, uh...no

Judge's Familiar does not have a huge effect past the early game, but it is a 1-drop. You can not just replace a turn 1 play with a stronger turn 2 play and call it a day. Go ahead and view all the available turn 1 plays. Search away.

The problem is not that our cards aren't pulling their weight. I am not even convinced that there is a problem. We want to sculpt the deck to suit the metagame, good.

What are you going to cut for these idea? It is not as if there are any obvious choices?

BTW, since D+T has been getting powerful additions over the past three years after a long stretch of lameness, I am setting out my wish for 2013.

Summoner of Coolness
W
creature-cleric

Kicker: discard a creature card
If Summoner of Coolness was kicked, search your library for a white creature card and put it into your hand.
1/1

That would about do it. You can play 1-ofs to your heart's content.

The Mirran Crusader for Serra Avenger swap seems better if there's a third equip in the main.

Enevoldsen got by with just eight total one-drop permanents he could put into play Turn 1: Moms and Vials. And he had a steeper mana curve with Crusaders in place of Avengers (though this doesn't throw the curve off as much as it first seems). Do we really think we need more than eight one-drops?

Judge's Familiar hasn't seemed relevant much of the time when I've tested it. But maybe it is just annoying enough to those holding a Brainstorm that it is worth it. And it flies.

Dryad Militant is one I like. I think it's worth testing in the main as well. Lots of decks will tend to get hosed by it. Lots of Stoneblade, Combo, Jund, BUG.

Devoted Caretaker... Nice idea. I wish it could be Vialed in with instant utility.

Some other one-drops from bygone days (which granted may have been, as Finn says, before the deck was getting love from the game developers):

Isamaru, Hound of Konda
Student of Warfare
Figure of Destiny
Weathered Wayfarer

Weathered Wayfarer could be good. It's decent in general. Plus getting more cards in hand is good when facing Hymns. It also gels nicely with Dust Bowl+Flagstones. Use Dust Bowl to sac Flagstones, with Flagstones trigger on the stack, use Wayfarer, get a land in hand, Flagstones resolves and put a tapped Plains in play, then destroy target non-basic.

Actually, it just might be time to test out Weathered Wayfarer. It's really good with Wasteland actually. In the past it worked against the deck to occupy itself this way early. I'm not so sure that is the case right now.

Weathered wayfarer seems too slow. All I want to do is draw him late game (If I ran him, which I won't becuase he is pretty terrible). He doesn't have many desirable tutor targets, an I'd hate plaguing the deck with singletons (which is largely a bad idea in a deck that requires our cards to be consistently drawn).

Tldr: weathered wayfarer is bad because it dilutes the deck for cards that aren't powerful enough to want to tutor up.

On Thomas' deck, I think this illustrates what I was saying about tactical vs strategic. The mana curve may be skewed a turn later but the damage curve (if there is such a thing) is possibly steeper making the opponent split on where to focus their defenses.

This is what I meant by the balance of Death vs Taxes. How much control is enough?

Devoted Caretaker is a really bad idea because she needs colored mana to activate. The deck can't afford to leave white open.

One of the old knocks against this deck is that it lacks the card draw capabilities as Brainstorm decks, or Dark Confidant decks. More to the point, it could use more card advantage. Well SFM is card advantage, and so is Horizon Canopy, or a working SoLaS or SoFaI, but we could obviously use more. Weathered Wayfarer could work, but I agree that conditionally tutoring up lands is not a silver bullet. If we need, or could otherwise benefit from, another one-drop to ease our mana curve, then it could be worth it.

But another idea, and I half-expect to get laughed out of town, is Squadron Hawk. We're feeling concerned with Jund packing Hymns and Liliana's, right? Well here's something we can use to dilute a Hymn, or ensure we have creature choices to put into play, to feed Liliana's 2nd ability when we have no choice.

The problem of course is that it's a 1/1 flier for two mana. It gets you more cards. But that's all it does. And you sort of have to play the full playset to get the most of it.

Also, I realize that as has been stated, there may be no problem with D&T currently. There's one or two tough matchups, which one might expect to become less of an issue as those decks gets hated out. But the conversation around this deck has opened up quite a bit. Some of you with a ton of experience with this deck may be rolling your eyes at some of the suggestions (though it seems to the contrary people have been engaging with the new ideas and judging the new or old card suggestions on their merit, which is cool) -- just that for those of us with only moderate experience with the deck (I've got about six months playing it), all of this conversation is valuable and instructive.

That's exactly the problem with this deck. Historically DnT didn't have any really bad matchup except Belcher, and had means to win against nearly any deck the opponent played. But now a large piece of the metagame are bad matchups, since DRS and Decay are more and more popular in the format, and that erodes DnT's natural prey (blue, basically), since those DRS decks also have good matchups against anything blue.

Forgot to mention, tested out a sideboard yesterday with 2 wilt-lea liege and 2 surgical extraction, here are my thoughts on each:

Wilt-leaf liege I want 3 of. Even though his cost is 4, I want him in an opening hand vs jund.

Surgical extraction was sub-par. Would prefer to just bring in rest in peace to neuter goyf.

Sword of ligh and shadow: I like Sofai. Plain and simple. Plus, creating unkillable mirran crusaders is VERY relevant. Either that or I want a 2nd jitte to stop blood-braid elf into jitte.

That was great, thanks for posting.