MTG Salvation

How sold are you on playing batterskull?

Also 3 dreadbore in the main and full playsets of both inquisition and thoughtseize in the 75 seems excessive

Also I'd suggest trying out a Gemstone Caverns. Idk what your budget looks like but you could stand to add some more Black Fetches too (marsh flats, polluted delta, etc.) 4 blood crypt might be a little bit much. I also think 2 smoldering marsh is kind of a lot, especially with only 4 Fetches.

Might wanna replace that Relic in the SB with a Spellbomb?

Also I'm sure you can find a better slot than the 4th blood moon in the side. I lean towards playing them all in the main or not playing that 4th copy at all

I'd also suggest ditching that inquisition in the SB for something like Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, or Slaughter Games

Idk what your meta looks like, but I also think it's a really good idea to run at least 1 P+K somewhere in the 75. It's good against pretty much everything except combo

Batterskull is an experiment, to diversify the kinds of threats I play a bit.

The discard is my meat and potatoes - I'd never drop below full playsets of both in the 75.

Dreadbore has overperformed for me in my meta.

I'm happy with the manabase; it's been very consistent at 21 lands. Going to 23, the only change I'm willing to make is adding the cliffs.

I may experiment with a spellbomb over relic after testing this configuration. That's definitely one of the most flexible slots in the side.

The 3/1 Moon split is what I've arrived at for my meta - there are decks where I really want all four, and decks where I don't want any. 3/1 balances that nicely for me in game 1.

An extraction effect may be nice, but my meta doesn't currently justify it. If I were to add one, it would be over the relic.

Pia and Kiran is on my list of things to try in the future. Every time I consider it, though, there's something else that's more enticing to try. I don't generally like non-evasive 4 cmc 2/2s, and going wide with tokens isn't what I want to be doing. Add that I can get the shock effect from Hazoret, and P+K just isn't a high priority.

Hello everybody, another lurker here. I have to ask you if it's worth building a BR control deck without the budget for Lilianas, Blood Moon or (as i read recently) Phyrexian Obliterator.
What i have are 3x Fatal Push, 4x Lightning Bolt, 4x Inquisition of Kozilek, 4x Duress, 4x Despise, 2x Terminate, 4x Dismember, 2x Go for the Throat, 2x Blightning and some cheap duals like Foreboding Ruins and Dragonskull Summit.
Is that base enough to start building around it or should i forget the midrange/control kind of deck?

Quote from IlGuale »

Hello everybody, another lurker here. I have to ask you if it's worth building a BR control deck without the budget for Lilianas, Blood Moon or (as i read recently) Phyrexian Obliterator.
What i have are 3x Fatal Push, 4x Lightning Bolt, 4x Inquisition of Kozilek, 4x Duress, 4x Despise, 2x Terminate, 4x Dismember, 2x Go for the Throat, 2x Blightning and some cheap duals like Foreboding Ruins and Dragonskull Summit.
Is that base enough to start building around it or should i forget the midrange/control kind of deck?

I think you can build it without liliana of the veil but blood moon is one of the most important cards that deck and are the cheapest they've been in several years at ~$20.
phyrexian obliterator isn't really needed for the deck.

I second Pokerkingdave's opinion on Blood Moon. I think the deck is doable without Liliana of the Veil, but Blood Moon is just too strong in the current meta to play this deck without it. Besides, without Blood Moon you may as well go either Mono Black or splash green or blue to go into Jund or Grixis respectively (though both of those decks are pretty expensive depending on what you have already).

Thanks for your replies. What i have atm is a mono-B midrange with a Vampire subtheme http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/midrange-no-midnight/. Long story short, black is a colour which suits my playstyle, so i built a mono-B devotion. When someone made me notice that almost all my creatures were vampires i put Vampire Nocturnus in Obliterator's slot (which i don't have) and here we are. I considered going BR vampires (keeping an eye for a while on that primer), but i feel like it lacks some early drop to really be an aggro. And that, kids, is how i met your primer.

How are you folks dealing with Gifts Storm? I'm finding it to be a bit of a pain. I can win a stray round here and there by assiduously removing Electromancer and Baral, and planting a Goblin Rabblemaster for a quick clock, but it's not that consistent. I've considered Slaughter Games for the sideboard, or maybe upping Surgical Extraction to two copies (sideboarded). Any thoughts?

Quote from MyDoppelganger »

How are you folks dealing with Gifts Storm? I'm finding it to be a bit of a pain. I can win a stray round here and there by assiduously removing Electromancer and Baral, and planting a Goblin Rabblemaster for a quick clock, but it's not that consistent. I've considered Slaughter Games for the sideboard, or maybe upping Surgical Extraction to two copies (sideboarded). Any thoughts?

Gifts Storm is definitely a pain. They have many options, but fortunately, so do we. One of the best ways I've been able to beat the deck is to save Rakdos Charm to exile their graveyard at instant speed, before they can truly "storm off." Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize early are quite helpful also, since they buy you time. Surgical Extraction is fine against them, but the deck can still go off without a piece, making it an obnoxious combo deck. Also, Nihil Spellbomb is not bad against them. They are technically a graveyard-based deck in many games, and against our discard package, they are definitely a graveyard deck.

Decks like this are why I still play 3x Rakdos Charm and only 1x Surgical Extraction in my sideboard, and that has been true for many months. I also have a 1x Boil in my sideboard right now, to take away their mana base (hopefully) after making them heavily discard.

I usually board out the Anger of the Gods and Blood Moon copies and maybe a Terminate or two, leaving Fatal Push to kill Goblin Electromancer and Baral, Chief of Compliance. If you hit a Collective Brutality on one of their creatures, your win rate % skyrockets as well. Kolaghan's Command is another discard spell that also happens to hit their creatures, but if you play 4x, it's not a bad thing to play one or two less copies of this. Any creatures in my sideboard come in as well, so Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is automatic. Taking them off of their game plan doesn't mean letting them re-stabilize. Sometimes you need to just kill them.

With my deck above, my sideboard plan would be:

-3 Anger of the Gods
-4 Blood Moon
-2 Terminate
-1 Liliana, the Last Hope

+2 Collective Brutality
+1 Boil
+3 Rakdos Charm
+1 Surgical Extraction
+1 Thoughtseize
+2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet

Just went 5/4 at Dallas SCG Regionals. While overall I am still quite happy with the deck, I felt like several of the losses there wasn't much I could do. Leyline of Sanctity feels so ubiquitous these days that I am debating going with another Blood Moon deck, like Blue Moon.

Maybe it was just the matchups that I had, but especially when a combo deck, like Ad Naus (or Storm), dropped a Leyline of Sanc turn 0, I felt like playing it out was a mere formality.

I guess the main question I have at this point is if Leyline of Sanctity continues to be just as big, what do we offer in Rakdos colors that isn't essentially done better in say Izzet colors, with the recent top 8 finish of U/R Breach at the Washington SCG Classic. Against the current field, I find that 80% of the time Anger of the Gods is good enough as a sweeper and Damnation only comes in for certain matchups, but Blue Moon can still run Anger. So basically we would be swapping the discard package for the counter package, which is not effected by Leyline of Sanc. However, I do recognize that counters suffer from other weaknesses and are generally not as versatile as discard spells in Modern.

What are your opinions on this? Am I just freaking out too much because of random chance?

edit: That being said, Blue Moon is quite expensive since I don't have the land base or any of the staples. So I would prefer to just tweak Rakdos Moon if possible, as I prefer it thematically as well. Does it sound like it's finally worth splashing for Wear // Tear in the sideboard (for my meta at least)?

There's always Dash Hopes, I suppose...

In all seriousness, it could be worth sidboarding some prison-ish artifacts like Chalice of the Void and Thorn of Amethyst for the combo matchups... Then again, maybe BR just isn't cut out for a meta with lots of Leyline of Sanctity protected combo - I'll admit I haven't seen the card in my meta, so it's a bit beyond my experience.

Quote from Keiichi »

There's always Dash Hopes, I suppose...

In all seriousness, it could be worth sidboarding some prison-ish artifacts like Chalice of the Void and Thorn of Amethyst for the combo matchups... Then again, maybe BR just isn't cut out for a meta with lots of Leyline of Sanctity protected combo - I'll admit I haven't seen the card in my meta, so it's a bit beyond my experience.

I absolutely love the Thorn of Amethyst idea for combo, definitely worth testing. I'm on the Boil plan right now as we are actually one of the most well-matched decks against a lot of combo, since we play both Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize. Since most combo decks target us as players, Leyline of Sanctity is worth thinking about as well. Chalice of the Void is fine, but it's expensive and can hurt us as well. Other than Storm and Ad Nauseum, are we worried about any other combo decks that our sideboard cards don't already hit?

Yeah, I can't think of any others off the top of my head. Grishoalbrand seems a bit too inconsistent and I don't see it often these days.

After thinking about it, I was just frustrated because I knew I could have played better. Some of it was luck, but some of my losses I could have done better in. That being said, I also thought about blue's weaknesses and I don't think we're -that- bad off. Also, despite hearing about and seeing creature decks to my left and right constantly, I only faced one Kiki Chord (in which I pulled 1 board wipe between both rounds, so I lost) and 0 CoCo Combo decks, so my 3 Anger of the Gods came out every round 2. Needless to say, it made me a bit salty, hence my post, heh.

I like Boil as well, but I may drop it for Shatterstorm if I keep on seeing Lantern Control as often as I have been Granted, I still have to find it, but 3 Rakdos Charm and 2 Kolaghan's Command were not enough when the charms got extracted and both Kommands got milled, heh. That being said, that is not the only deck that runs Ensnaring Bridge. At least 8-Rack comes to mind, and I think there's one or two other rare decks that at least run it in the sideboard.

That being said, G2 against him I had Chandra, Torch of Defiance out and had him on a clock that was just a few turns short of his milling, so I lost. Is there another creatureless clock we can run in our colors beyond ToD? I was playing with the idea of Chandra, Pyromaster now that we can have both out at the same time in place of Liliana, the Last Hope. The first ability is functionally similar to Last Hope while dealing 1 to the face, the main difference is Last Hope has a pretty good ult in most match ups (when it goes off at least) whereas Pyromaster's is mediocre at best for us. The choice of the ping or the card advantage is nice, however, depending on the matchup and the board state. Basically I rarely find myself using Last Hope's -2, so I may just do the testing and see how it goes. One thing though - I realized she cannot target her +1 with Leyline of Sanctity out, so...any other ideas?

edit: Been doing some of my own searching through gatherer, and Mogis, God of Slaughter seems fun in the sideboard for certain match-ups, and I was also looking at Palace Siege and Gray Merchant of Asphodel as a 1 or 2 of in the grindier match-ups. It's probably just me, but in my local meta I have not had one time where Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet ended up doing me any good, so I figured the immediate value of Gary would help out over the grindier Kalitas. The reason why I was looking at these three cards specifically is because they are all untargeted. Yes, these wouldn't help against Leyline of Sanc Combo decks, but against more fair decks with Leyline of Sanc out, I think they could be useful, potentially.

Mogis is interesting. Only really ever attacking if there's a Demigod on the field...

How has it been for you?

The only problem with faithless looting is that it leaves you down a card and it's an awful topdeck.

I'm not on Demigod so I have no reason to play it. I do play a single Night's Whisper, and I've found that to be enough.

Current list
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/28-09-17-gJA-br-control/

I'm on 24 lands because a had a few weeks in a row of missing land drops when I was at 23, but I think 23 is fine, especially with looting.

I have Kalitas main board because he's an absolute house in my local meta. Hazoret has been a great wincon and I'm almost always happy to see her.

I'm a little surprised to see no Anger in your 75? Your meta is probably different than mine, but it's one of the best cards in the deck for me right now

Wow zorry I see them now lol, I can't read.

The fact that I'm not playing looting is exactly why I don't need more than one Whisper. Almost every card in the deck is pretty impactful. Also I don't want my hand size to be too big since Hazoret is one of my main win cons

Is Hazoret really worth it as a finisher over Stormbreath Dragon/Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker ?
Another decent option which is more narrow can be Olivia Voldaren (against creatures) or maybe even Abyssal Persecutor (against less interactive decks).

Yes absolutely. Free blocks, turns bad topdecks and lands into face damage (that bypasses leyline), doesn't die to our own Damnation which is huge, and its lower CMC than either of the others. Sarkhan needs to be protected. Stormbreath does get a point in that it doesn't die to Path, but it does get terminated and dies to sweepers, and you don't get to block Reality Smashers, TKS, DS, Goyf, etc for free
Plus she's a faster clock than either of the others

Have had success with my list, but there's one kink in the armor.

RG Tron has been my bane in my meta. What options do we have for the sideboard against them?

Feels like my only real option is to mulligan to Blood Moon and hope I draw several Dreadbore - and even then I feel like I'm struggling to keep up...

Beating Tron is much more dependent on their draws than ours. You need the right combination of disruption and a fast clock. Thoughtseize and Liliana are good. Blood moon is good too. Its good to bring in dreadbore, but if they resolve Karn/Ugin you probably lose anyways. If it's really that prevalent you can try Fulminator/surgical jank or crumble to dust.

I only have to deal with Blue Tron which is much easier

Quote from Keiichi »

Have had success with my list, but there's one kink in the armor.

RG Tron has been my bane in my meta. What options do we have for the sideboard against them?

Feels like my only real option is to mulligan to Blood Moon and hope I draw several Dreadbore - and even then I feel like I'm struggling to keep up...

I hate playing against tron (of any form) in my LGS so I usually pack in molten rain from the side board and plenty of discard that can target their key cards post game 1

Quote from Keiichi »

Have had success with my list, but there's one kink in the armor.

RG Tron has been my bane in my meta. What options do we have for the sideboard against them?

Feels like my only real option is to mulligan to Blood Moon and hope I draw several Dreadbore - and even then I feel like I'm struggling to keep up...

If it feels like you're struggling to keep up, that's because you are.

RG Tron is not a good matchup, despite the fact that we play Blood Moon. The only times I've ever had success against RG or BG Tron have been when I played Goblin Rabblemaster, because at least it can close the game out very quickly and not let my opponent have the time to get their mana. The problem with the "Blood Moon beats Tron Lands" theory is that most hands in our decks won't outright end the game, even with a Demigod of Revenge as the win condition. That's still a spell being played on turn 5, and requiring 4 attacks to get to 20 damage. Meanwhile, the opponent can still cast a Wurmcoil Engine, Karn Liberated, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and even an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger through Blood Moon because those spells are for Generic mana. I personally wish that Karn Liberated and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon were errata'd into having some form of necessity for colorless mana, forcing the Tron lands to play Wastes and be a little bit less greedy. Tron is, quite plainly, a stupid deck that makes you believe that 1+1+1=7, and goes against years of inherent Magic design. Dreadbore doesn't really stop you from losing the game to a single Karn or Ugin activation. It's just a bad, incredibly variant matchup where you need to hope to screw over your opponent with Thoughtseize(s) into Blood Moon into killing them before they slam their spells anyway.

I suppose the reality is that they're the rock to our scissors, until we get a better tool against them.

Which is a shame, for me - there's like five Tron decks which show up in my meta semi-regularly.

I appreciate your candid, though sobering response.

Quote from Keiichi »

I suppose the reality is that they're the rock to our scissors, until we get a better tool against them.

Which is a shame, for me - there's like five Tron decks which show up in my meta semi-regularly.

I appreciate your candid, though sobering response.

If you're truly against Tron frequently (say, once per event minimum), then there are ways around the deck. I play against it every now and again, but not enough to shape my sideboard for the matchup. Crumble to Dust is still an option, and I also recommend discard outlets like Blackmail and Wrench Mind with additional copies of Surgical Extraction. Molten Rain is also an option. If you really need to beat Tron at all times, it requires an entire package of cards.

Hi folks.

I am still having a lot of fun and success with the Pack Rat/Rabblemaster iteration of this deck. I was previously running one Chandra and 3 Pack Rat, but have decided to remove the Chandra in favour of another Pack Rat. I want as much consistency as possible and I also want an environment that will increase the likelihood of my being able to hit with Hazoret as soon as I plant her. Hazoret has won me many games -- she is a monster.

I will be trying to find a place for Chandra in the sideboard, but I'm not really sure what to remove. I'm thinking I may remove Pithing Needle for now, as I can't remember the last time I used it successfully.

Also, I'm weighing up Anger of the Gods versus Kozilek's Return. Kozilek seems to have the benefits of being single red and instant, but the extra damage and exile function of Anger is desirable. Anyone here have any thoughts?

Here's my list for reference.

Corey Burkhart just posted a new list on Channel Fireball. It's pretty sweet. I was just beaten by it in a mirror match on XMage. Bedlam Reveler is extremely strong.
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/rat-moon/

Quote from MyDoppelganger »

Also, I'm weighing up Anger of the Gods versus Kozilek's Return. Kozilek seems to have the benefits of being single red and instant, but the extra damage and exile function of Anger is desirable. Anyone here have any thoughts?

Anger is better if you're up against a lot of Dredge or GW decks that rely on Kitchen Finks and Voice of Resurgence. Kozilek's Return is way better against Affinity. If neither of those decks matter, it really comes down to if the one extra damage matters. Really meta dependent.