MTG Salvation

Yes its true.

Now don't leave right away, this is a fun deck and it's pretty weird.

Here's the deck list:



Now tell me everyone! What do you think of it? Could it see play? Why? What should I add? What would you change?

Go wild!

i dont feel like the banneret does enough here. otherwise i like the deck. mana base looks surprisingly good.

If there's an elemental you want to be Soulstoking out, it's Liege of the Tangle. Presumably, you'll have 3+ plus lands by the time he swings on turn 4ish, and not a lot of decks can handle that many 9/9 land creatures after a big trample hit like that.

belongs in deck creation, where I believe there's already a primer thread.

Quote from Balefire »

If there's an elemental you want to be Soulstoking out, it's Liege of the Tangle. Presumably, you'll have 3+ plus lands by the time he swings on turn 4ish, and not a lot of decks can handle that many 9/9 land creatures after a big trample hit like that.

This needs developed. Even if it just turns into a janky tier xxx deck, it would still be a ton of fun. Explore and Farseek like cards to ramp your land count, with Flamekin Harbinger tutoring for missing pieces.... sounds like fun to me!

Living Hive isn't terrible if you are just getting it in there, and then finishing with the mass amount of tokens generated, Phytotitan would just keep coming back for more, Regal Force for some card draw if you have some green creatures, and Thunderblust could get in there and then come back to do it again... Ok I went a little deep, but I have a soft spot for jank.

That hard part in this is getting Incandescent Soulstoke to survive long enough to rush out whatever monster you have/tutored up with Flamekin Harbinger. Generator Servant is conveniently enough an elemental, and coupled with Soulstoke, will have your Liege of the Tangle swinging on turn 3, but having Servant, Soulstoke, and Liege all together (even with Harbinger finding what you're missing) seems like it's starting to become magical christmas land.

You could run things like Vines of Vastwood as protection, though that's not the greatest idea. Generator Servant could also serve as a back up plan to ramp out the fat elementals when combined with the land ramp. It most likely wouldn't be anywhere near consistent, but when it worked... that would be enough.

Hall of the Bandit Lord and Smokebraider, or Smokebraider and Inner-Flame Acolyte will also give you a turn 3 Liege of the Tangle off of Soulstoke, and Liege could even get tutored via Summoning Pact. The weak link here is Soulstoke, since it needs to get cast and activate all in the same turn, and you need to do it in as few cards as possible, with the fewest number of otherwise dead cards.

Do you think I should make a primer for this specific deck?

Also, in my opinion there are two real ways this deck can go.

You can take the grixis controlly route, or a Temur Ramp route.

I used to run something like this a while back and it was incredibly fun. Sadly, Soulstoke, from what I learned, is the weakest link in the deck and cut it. I also didn't use the banneret as I felt it never did enough. An updated version would look like the list below and it is surprisingly consistent:



The deck can go in so many different directions depending on the opening hand. You can stall and recur control pieces, potentially go aggro with the mirror entity and/or the Horde of Notions, or use the old Lark combo to bounce all their permanents back to their hand, put all nonlands on top of their library, or kill them with an infinite damage loop. Reason for the basics is for some Blood moon resistance.

Sideboard could include other toolbox elemental creatures.

This deck is basically dead to blood moon if I'm being honest. This means that as long as Eldrazi control modern, we'll have a bad matchup against all Izzet decks.

I don't really think the deck dies to blood moon with the right mana base configuration, though it does make it harder to work. I did it back in Time Spiral/Lorwyn Standard (at the time I was using 4 Primal Beyond, 4 Reflecting Pool, 4 Vesuva, 4 Terramorphic Expanses, and the rest basics). If you are expecting Blood moon, basic lands have to be increased and I'd probably ditch the Ziggurat so that I can have an increased amount of fetches and possibly change the shocks to basics. The Soulstoke I actually had in the Sideboard so that blood moon didn't totally shut everything down as well as Wispmare and Ingot Chewer for other problematic enchantments and artifacts.

Here is a pretty cool Elementals list - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/against-the-odds-elemental-breach-modern

The main plan here is to rush out a hasty Liege of the Tangle with Incandescent Soulstoke or Through the Breach to take over the game quickly with huge lands.
The back plan is ramp into Liege slower with Smokebraider and Generator Servant.

A notable weakness of the deck is inconsistency as it really needs Liege/Soulstoke for it to work and has only Flamekin to ensure that.
Adding Oath of Nissa can help with that (over Remand).

I also think that the deck can function a bit better as a Jund 3-color deck (black is a better 3rd color than blue).
Horde of Notions is fun but not worth going five-color for and can be replaced by Greenwarden of Murasa.

Mulldrifter is fine but I'd rather play Shriekmaw that doubles as removal and is also an evasive beater for games where the Liege combo can't be pulled of.

Dramatic Entrance is not only a good budget alternative for Through the Breach but has the upside of keeping the creature (and is good with Greenwarden).
Both spells are a bit clunky in this deck as it can't ramp into them (with something like Birds of Paradise) outside of Generator Servant and casting them on turn 5 is pretty slow.

Primal Beyond seems almost better than Cavern here as it can be used for activated abilities (like Incandescent Soulstoke, Horde of Notions) and being uncounterable isn't that important most of the time.

Spitebellows seems like a decent removal option in matchups where Shriekmaw is bad and Lightning Bolt isn't enough, being tutorable with Flamekin Harbinger might be enough of a reason to consider it over Terminate (though this might be a stretch).
It can be a cool trick though to put it into play as a blocker during combat with Incandescent Soulstoke to kill an attacker and kill another creature on the way out with its LtB ability.

Here is the Jund build I'd tweak this 5C list into: