MTG Salvation

Is this the right acronymn for Aether Revolt?

Yahenni's Expertise is good with anything Brain in a Jar ( beck // call ) and goblin dark-dwellers is good with (ancestral vision and boom // bust). Fits in grixis. Also good with green creatures that survive the -3/-3 into a lilliana in jund/rock/abzan.

Heart of Kiran seems sweet. Big for it's mana, particularly if you find a deck with planewalkers. With Nahiri, The Harbinger you can +2 rummage, attack for 4, and still defend her. Sweet. Does not mess up your sweepers.

Trophy Mage can find a Sword, Loxodon Warhammer or, if you want to be competetive and all, Ensnaring Bridge.

And I thought that Trophy Mage grabbing Damping Matrix, Filigree Familiar, Etched Champion (in a Tezzerator build, maybe?), Crucible of Worlds, Oblivion Stone, Vedalken Shackles, and other maindeck- and sideboard-worthy cards was fun...(watch this guy grab Shardless Agent in Legacy...)

I'm trying Yahenni's Expertise in Boring Grixis Midrange-Control With Ancestral Vision right now, and I'm rarely pairing it with AV. I'm pressured to sweep early against Bant Eldrazi, and Jund and Junk rip my hand apart too fast to put together Yahenni's Expertise with anything great. I cheat-cast a Snapcaster Mage the most often (because I'm keeping my counterspells in hand), and that's when I tap out for YE.

Yahenni's Expertise does feel like the New And Improved Brain in a Jar for those cheatyface split/Fuse cards with a 2-cmc side, though. It actually does something good (for combo-X decks, at least), it fits in the same spot on the curve, and it isn't vulnerable to well-timed permanent removal.

Ancestral vision is such a bad card to draw lategame. Being in the same deck as Expertise will help with that.

Hello Disallow, you Voidslime with Cancel cost you!

So far, the spoilers for this set seem pretty crazy. If this continues, I suspect the set will have a huge long term impact, and likely provoke some bans, either in the form of cards it helps break, or in cards from it getting banned.

Despite this, I'm liking some of the shifts in card design and balance overall to trying to get more effects to be constructed playable that usually weren't before with lower or easier mana costs or tagging on useful extras.

Pia's Revolution in KCI anyone? Seems like it could give the deck a faster, more consistent wincon that makes the first Faith's Reward/Open the Vaults effectively end the game. It also gets brought back from the yard with Open the Vaults which might be nice.

Pia's Revolution also might be decent as a sideboard card. It turns artifact board wipes (e.g. Shatterstorm) into Hurkyl's Recall(-like cards) unless it gets blown up first or your opponent has Leyline of Sanctity out.

...Well, at least in Affinity it turns artifact board wipes into Hurkyl's Recall and eventually gives Arcbound Ravager infinite pump with Mox Opal (oh, and you get infinite mana).

In Lantern Control, it gets opponents just out of Glint-Nest Crane + Collective Brutality range with the first artifact board wipe. The second artifact board wipe turns into Hurkyl's Recall, though.

Quote from AvalonAurora »

Hello Disallow, you Voidslime with Cancel cost you!

So far, the spoilers for this set seem pretty crazy. If this continues, I suspect the set will have a huge long term impact, and likely provoke some bans, either in the form of cards it helps break, or in cards from it getting banned.

Despite this, I'm liking some of the shifts in card design and balance overall to trying to get more effects to be constructed playable that usually weren't before with lower or easier mana costs or tagging on useful extras.

Disallow with Geist seems great. You can use disallow on the Angel to keep it

So far the cards are pretty interesting, but I don't think the power level for Modern is there yet.

Disallow is strictly better Voidslime, but 3 mana counters have been unplayable in Modern so far, no matter what bells and whistles they put on it (Dissipate, Dissolve, Scatter to the Winds, Void Shatter, Broken Concentration etc). Countering activated abilities is usually merely a temporary advantage since the permanent behind the abilities (PWs, manlands, Hierarch?) is still on the field. The one exception is activating a fetchland, which turns Disallow into a Stone Rain.

Is a split Cancel/Stone Rain good enough? Maybe. Killing lands extends the useful life of Mana Leak.

Trophy Mage gets all the obnoxious lock pieces like Ensnaring Bridge, Vedalken Shackles (long time since we heard of that), or Filigree Familiar to grind value. The problem with playing too many 3CMC spells in your deck is that your curve will suck, and all the 3 mana lock pieces die to Abrupt Decay anyway.

Yahenni's Expertise has a lot of combo applications. In Restore Balance, it increases the number of ways to wipe the board AND all/most lands, provided you add Boom // Bust to the deck. 12 3-mana cascade spells, 4 Expertise, 4 RB, 4 Boom // Bust, 4 Gargadon, 4 SSG seems like a good start.

Scrap Trawler may have combo applications. It's like Myr Retriever, except that it can't return itself, and neither Krark-Clan Ironworks nor Heartless Summoning pay for it fully. Also, unlike Retriever, Heartless Summoning doesn't kill it. Without combos, Matter Reshaper seems better.

Mana abilities cant be countered, but being able to hit planeswalker abilities especially in gpretty good.

I meant Hierarch's exalted trigger. It's not something that you'd want to blow 3 mana on though.

I'd say most PW +s aren't worth countering, but the -s are (especially if your opponent kills his PW to do it).

Quote from AvalonAurora »

So far, the spoilers for this set seem pretty crazy. If this continues, I suspect the set will have a huge long term impact, and likely provoke some bans, either in the form of cards it helps break, or in cards from it getting banned.

None of the cards spoiler so far looks particularly impactful though.

Yahenni's Expertise seems to be the best of the bunch thanks to the interaction with Beck//Call that is likely worth exploring in combination with Brain in a Jar, providing the namesake deck with more consistency. However, I don't think that the card slots in Grixis or Restore Balance because the baseline -3/-3 effect is way below par if you want to play fair or, in case of Balance, is simply redundant.

Trophy Mage needs a shell, Lantern doesn't really want that card. Scrap Trawler lacks the second combo piece. Voidslime sees zero play, so I doubt that Disallow will see any. Pia's Revolution is basically Athreos, God of Passage for artifacts - a punisher effect that always performs worse than you'd like it to. The rest is straight up unplayable.

Heart of Kiran is probably the best card for modern right now imho. It has great synergy with: Jace VP, Both Lilianas, incredible synergy with Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Nahiri, the harbinger, etc. It's has serra angel stats for 2 mana. Like OP is saying, you can attack with the HoK then have it sit and protect literally any planeswalker with their own loyalty.

Quote from AvalonAurora »

Voidslime sees zero play, so I doubt that Disallow will see any.

With the manabase available in this format, it is understandable that you don't think G-->C makes a difference. However I think this time it does. UG is as a colour combination of slow and grindy control decks is not enjoying success. However, WUB or UBR is. I am definitely trying it out, along with Yahenni's Expertise in UBR control.

If you remember the grixis midrange deck that played koligan's command over cryptic command, and who tryed to rush anglers/tasigur/delver of secret/ with snapcasters and some time young pyromancers? It played more like 'grixis jund'. Instead of the grixis controll deck like we saw in the finale of GP dallas. Well the midrange version will get a nice boost in Dark Intimations.(Should this be 'imitation' instead of intimation, after Cruel Ultimatum?) Compare it to Koligan's Command and it like choosing 3 modes and drawing a card on topp. Now if only Pyromancer's Goggles was modern playable.

Pia's Revolution is going to be a nightmare as a top of the curve card in afinaty. Here there be Arcbound Ravager.

Quote from VidarThor »

If you remember the grixis midrange deck that played koligan's command over cryptic command, and who tryed to rush anglers/tasigur/delver of secret/ with snapcasters and some time young pyromancers? It played more like 'grixis jund'. Instead of the grixis controll deck like we saw in the finale of GP dallas. Well the midrange version will get a nice boost in Dark Intimations.(Should this be 'imitation' instead of intimation, after Cruel Ultimatum?) Compare it to Koligan's Command and it like choosing 3 modes and drawing a card on topp. Now if only Pyromancer's Goggles was modern playable.

As a grixis player dark intimations seems pretty good because it rewards me for playing Jace Vp and Last hope which I like. Probably a sideboard card tbh.

Pia's revolution is an amazing card, yes we have athreos for cretures and hasn't really caught the players attencion but artifact has more diverse effects, at least for now anyway.

I don't really know if it will fit right into affinity or branch out of it, but i'm sure it can make an impact in modern. I'll be brewing with it for sure.

Intimations is what you side into in grixis control/delver for the jund/junk matchups.

Quote from Cody_X »

Mana abilities cant be countered, but being able to hit planeswalker abilities especially in gpretty good.

I don't know if you're referring to the post above you, but just to be clear if you are, sacrificing a fetchland isn't a mana ability. Since the sac is part of the cost, the land will be destroyed but the fetch ability countered.

It was in regards to noble hierarch.
You can hit the exalted trigger though.

Assuming you have Pia's Revolution out, your opponent is at 3 life or less and has no ways to gain life, and your opponent can't stop Pia's Revolution (graveyard hate, Leyline of Sanctity, enchantment removal, etc.), turns out that not only does Mox Opal + Arcbound Ravager give you an infinitely large Ravager, it also pumps all your other robots to infinite power and toughness, simply by continuously saccing Ravager to itself (to trigger Modular) and then paying 2 (after generating infinite mana by constantly effectively bouncing Mox Opal) to replay Ravager.

...You can do that every turn. They can't string that many board wipes in a row.

If you also have Hangarback Walker, you also have infinite Infinity/Infinity Thopters every turn!

If Trophy Mage put it on the battlefield, then it'd be great. But tutoring ONLY a 3cmc card feels mostly irrelevant outside of Commander. Why run this over Fabricate?

How do those Fuse cards work with Yahenni's ? I can cast both halves through Yahenni's trigger?