MTG Salvation

Since the other thread was necro'd and I was trying to find a place for discussion about this deck, I figured I would start one. This thread will be for the all in combo version of Seismic Swans, not for discussion of the control list or the Skred list.

Once we have enough testing and time to share and try different lists, we can use our info to start a primer. Thanks in advance for clean and fun discussions about this deck.

So without further ado, here is Gracen Atkinson's list that won Idaho TCG States:



Wow, what a list! I'd just like to say thank you to Gracen for putting this deck into the spotlight by winning a tournament who's reults were posted online. This has been such a fun deck to play on MTGO.

So for those of you who are looking at the list and saying..."uh, how can this deck win with 42 lands?", lets get down to how the deck works.

42 Lands Swans is an all in combo deck. The deck runs by abusing the interaction between Swans of Bryn Argoll and Seismic Assault. You get Seismic Assault on the battlefield and cast a Swans of Bryn Argoll, next you discard a land card to Seismic Assault and deal 2 damage to your Swans of Bryn Argoll. Because of Swans ability you get to draw 2 cards and because of the deck having 42 lands, your chance of drawing atleast 1 land card is excellent and the chance of drawing 2 lands is good. So you keep pitching lands to assault the Swans and draw cards until you have enough lands to use Seismic Assault to deal lethal to the opponent.

The rest of the cards in the deck are there to facilitate the main game plan.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/budget-magic-77-46-tix-42-land-swan-hunt-modern

This is the link to Saffron Olive explaining the deck with a deck tech and playing the deck

So obviously there's a lot of concessions to budget here. Izzet Guildgate for example does not belong in any sort of non-budget version of this deck.

The most obvious change in my mind, before messing with the spells is to stick in a bunch of utility lands.

Reliquary Tower is not as useful in this deck as in other Treasure Hunt variants, but it's worth considering for some scenarios.

Nephalia Academy Gives us a measure of protection against the dreaded Turn 1 Discard Spell

Halimar Depths lets us find the oftentimes buried spells we need. Should be a 4-of IMO.

Boseiju, Who Shelters All might be worth considering for the protection it offers against control decks.

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea is also helpful for digging,another option in the same vein is Geier Reach Sanitarium since we'll almost always have an unneeded random land to discard whereas the opponent may have to ditch their worst spell.

Tolaria West lets us tutor up any utility land we might want. Lets us run some more narrow options as one ofs and then reliably tutor them.

Oboro, Palace in the Clouds doesn't strike me as super useful, but it's basically "free" as a one-of.

For man lands we get Wandering Fumarole, Faerie Conclave, Mutavault and Ghitu Encampment. The last clearly being the worst, some of these may be worth running.

Ghost Quarter gives us a decent plan against Tron, which is a deck we're pretty weak to ATM.

This list could be expanded a bit if we played a third color, but in U/R these seem like our best options.

The deck has potential, but it will need some work before it's as competitive as it can get.

These are some fair points that I didn't fully think about, but we need to remember still that he's using a budget build

Quote from daviusminimus »

Just thought i'd jump in here...
First off - i read a very long reddit post by the decks pilot who went through some of the card discussions that you're now going through.

What he said was simple - you need triple red on Turn 3, and double blue on Turn 4... Therefore, you can't run any colourless lands, and very few U-only lands (they should come in untapped so that you can play swans on 4). So, that rules out most lands we listed, though Oboro seems great as a 1-of, since it can be returned to hand to shock something/someone.
Fetchlands shouldnt be in the deck, as you actively DONT want to filter.

The 1 card I think could be great here (probably in the sideboard) is blood moon. With very little reliance on blue, and every land going to the head anyway, it seems blood moon could win games that otherwise were tough (like tron).

I've not got much else to say, but if you want to understand the list a bit better, find & read the reddit post. The guy has actually done a lot of testing, so there's very little value in theory-crafting a manabase when he's done a lot of work for us already. 100% his list isn't finished, but there's reasons behind his choices.

These are some fair points that I didn't fully consider before. But I don't think I agree with you completely for a couple of reasons.

1. His list, while definitely solid, is clearly a budget build of the deck. A non-budget version at the very least ought to have included shock lands over gain lands.

2. In a deck where we expect to have 4-5 lands in our opening hand, and likely around 2 more by turn 4 meeting the mana requirements specified is not as much of a challenge as you imply it to be. I'm not claiming that we should include every land I listed, or that the ones we do include should be 4-of, and I agree that we should be very wary of colorless lands. But to claim that we don't have room AT ALL for any utility in a 42 card mana-base just seems outright silly. So I guess my post above should have said "a few" rather than "a bunch".

3. If our goal is to go completely all-in on the combo plan then we shouldn't be playing Swans of Bryn Argoll at all. We should just play 2 Seismic Assault, 4 Treasure Hunt, 52 lands and calling it a day. We would find our pieces much more consistently, and when we get the nuts the deck would be a turn faster to boot. The fact that the swans build fizzles less, and has a toolbox of cards that make it more resilient in some matchups is what makes it the superior deck. It's okay to sacrifice a little bit of speed for the sake of resilience.

I did list a lot of cards that should never be included, that was because I was racking my brain for anything and everything I could find, but I don't think the mana-base should be treated as untouchable.

Edit: Just read a bunch of the reddit thread, and I see where you're coming from, but I think we should still at least experiment with some of these things rather than just taking the guy's word for it.

A copy or two of Dakmor Salvage seems like a decent idea as well as you can always dredge it back to continue going off.

What's that 3 cmc instant draw three then pitch two or a land card,

That may work.

When this deck was in Standard, it definitely ran the filter lands like Cascade Bluffs. I'm very interested in putting this deck together.

Filter lands are an excellent choice for making the mana more stable. Should be 4 of, maybe replacing Shivan Reef?

I am so glad to see people who care about this deck as much as I do. I love my 5 color cascade swans deck that I have played since it was in standard. I took it to all the modern tourneys at my lgs and won regularly until bloodbraid elf was banned. I just play it at home with friends now, but am looking forward to taking it out again with treasure keeper instead of BBE now. I play the cascade version and have made very few updates since it rotated out of standard. I updated the lands alot though. I know this thread is mostly for the new 2 color version, but mine is also an all in combo version so I decided to post here. I have lots of experiance with this deck (with BBE instead of treasure keeper) and have played hundreds of games with it in tournament and casual environments.

SPELLS: 4 swans, 4 seismic assault, 4 treasure keeper (not as good as BBE but it seems to work), 2 captured sunlight, 2 primal command, 2 bring to light, 1 bituminous blast, 1 emrakul.

LANDS: 4 jungle Shrine, 2 savage lands, 2 Frontier bivouac, 4 vivid crag, 2 vivid Grove, 4 ghitu encampment, 2 treetop village, 4 reflecting pool, 4 forbidden orchard, 4 Rugged Prairie, 3 City of Brass, 1 Dakmor Salvage, and 1 basic of each Swamp, Plains, Island, Forest.

So I'm running 40 land and 20 spells, slightly different from the new build but it combos just the same. The emrakul and bring to lights were awsome additions that were not avalible when this deck was in standard. I run ghitu encampments and treetop villages to get more damage through early or to protect myself while I'm trying to find my combo peices. I ran 4 Mutavault for a while, but colorless sources just seemed to screw up my turn three Seismic Assault, or if I played them later after turn 3 they were no longer useful. Reliquary Tower would mess up my discard Emrakul to shuffle in my graveyard and kill them at there upkeep plan. I do not recommend colorless sources unless you don't care to wait untill turn four to play the Seismic assault, however a Desolate Lighthouse on turn four or five would be fine but ones you play early are not good ideas IMO. I run one Dakmor Salvage and I highly recommend it. I don't use it often but when you need it, it will keep you from fizzling and will win you the game.

My side board is restricted by having to cost 4 or more to not affect my cascading, but by far the most important cards are 4 leyline of sanctity, 4 supreme verdict. The things that kill this deck most often are Hyper fast Aggro that is too fast for your Seismic Assault or you found your SA to late, counter spells, blood moon, or decks that can't be held at bay by Seismic assault killing there creatures to buy you more time. It usually recovers from one discard spell pretty easily, but two or discard mixed with counter spells are really hard. Creature removal is useless against this because you can respond at Instant speed and just keep comboing.

I hope this was interesting or informative about some other possible builds on this combo. I am going to continue playing my build but I really like the updates to the deck and am building the version that won the state TCG tournament and am looking forward to trying it out.

After playing several games with the new tournament winning list I really like the Molten vortex and treasure hunt. But I dont like days undoing, I like Emrakul better. I also don't like the Serum Visions or Lightning bolt as one or two ofs, I turned those into 3 main deck Anger of the Gods which have been awsome since fast Aggro is something this deck can have problems with.
Moving forward I still like my 5 color version better because cascade always finds your Seismic Assault, and bring to light or primal command can get your swans for you so I find my combo pieces faster and more consistantly but I have less board control. I am now going to try removing my 4 treasure keeper and just replacing it with Molten Vortex for early board control. I'll get to see how that does pretty soon. With cascade I'm not sure I want to use Anger of the Gods or treasure hunt though.

In a 40x land deck it would probably whiff a high percentage of the time and activating it means you're probably going off and winning the game already.

Here is the list I'm fishing with at the moment. There's not too many notable changes, but we're playing Countryside Crusher as an alternative win con, as relying just on Swans isn't realistic. We are also playing Simian Spirit Guide. This isn't really to get Seismic Assault out faster (but if your hand is just lands and treasure hunts, by all means it might work) but more for being able to play Treasure Hunt mid combo. Often times, by virtue of how this deck runs, we aren't going to get to live the dream of turn 3, Assault into turn 4 swans win the game. It's not realistic, and often times seems to fizzle more often. So playing the assault turn 3/4, and then playing the Swans turn 5, getting that chance to have our turn 5 draw be another land, and starting the combo with the option to play a 5th land has seemed to lead to less fizzling. (so turn 5, draw, play swans, do not play our land, start the combo) we will often draw into a treasure hunt and a simian spirit guide, get to play our 5th land, exile guide and draw more lands to fuel the combo (most goldfish tests, this line has netted me anywhere from 3-7 extra lands, very rarely less) essentially guaranteeing us not to fizzle. Another play that has happened has been turn two, play a Speculation with Treasure hunt in hand, fix the top (if we don't have our combo pieces, put the lands above the combo piece) and either treasure hunt into some lands and a piece, or hunting into 3 lands, etc. And turn 2, treasure hunt, exile guide into Molten Vortex has also been a play that has popped up x amount of times. And that brings us to Mystic Speculation. I'm choosing this over Serum Visions as this deck wants to do one of two things with its searching - find our combo non-land pieces, or find just lands. Getting to see the top 3 and get rid of all of the non lands while we are the middle of the combo can be the difference between fizzling and not fizzling. Instead of drawing a potential non land, and scrying two other cards, this way we can guarantee that we will be in control of either drawing gas or not.

Moving forward, this deck doesn't seem any worse than any other of the cannon style decks that exist right now. Our Assaults still do stuff without swans (Swans is really just to guarantee we can kill in one turn anyway), our swans are still effective without the Assaults, and sideboard Blood Moon just beats a lot of decks. We are not like Puresteel Storm that essentially dies if we can't play our creatures, and I feel like we are slightly (maybe a lot) worse than storm. But in a format that deals a lot of damage to itself via lands/potential value (deaths shadow), I feel this deck isn't completely as awful as it seems. It's definitely cheap enough to mess with, even with improved variants. Also curious if we should just be playing x amount of pact of negations in the side for counter heavy match ups.

So the deck is really weak to discard (41 lands, and all of our nonlands being important) and it's also really bad against Leyline of Sanctity. So with some help of a good friend, he suggested running rainbow lands (producers of all colors) so we can cast some white sideboard cards, and it takes some of the pressure off of needing triple red and double blue by turn 4. So here's the general idea we came to.


http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/what-the-hell-am-i-doing-41-land-swans/ a more in depth look can be found here.

SOMEONE PLAY THIS DECK?

Has anything been going on with this deck? It does seem super fun but i haven't heard anything on it in quite a while. Probably not SUPER competitive but seems really fun.

Yeah this deck is not competitive by modern standards but it sure is fun. At my best during local fnms, i've taken the deck with an X-0 or X-1 finish. My current version of the deck uses 2 main deck Echoing Truthsin the event of going against some sort of lock deck. I'm a bit curious on how everyone feels about the one ofs in the main deck like the one lightning boltor one Serum Visions. Would it be better to have multiple copies for consistency, and which one would you prioritize over?

Hey Guys,

I'm new to this so excuse any formatting errors.

I bought this deck as soon as it broke since it was super cheap and I love it. This is my current list and would love to get your opinion on it.

s]]

I have top 8'd a PPTQ with 36 people there going 4-2 and won my fair number of FNM's and other tourneys.

That is great to hear. This deck is powerful and has had some scattered wins over the years in different forms. I hope you keep doing well with it and keep having fun. I won several fnms with my build for a while. It requires some luck, but this is a good deck.

Quote from roxembak »

With the probable unbanned of Bloodbraid Elf, would you change to the Cascade Swan version? What deck would you play?

Well it got unbanned and it is already back in my deck. I play the cascade 5 color version I listed in post #13 on page 1. I'm excited to take it out again. I don't know how well it will do after all these years, but I look forward to trying it again.

I have never played this deck but I'd love to see a updated list to try out with the BBE added to the list.

I know this thread is really for the R/U version, but I play the same combo in a different build so I'm posting here too.

There was an old standard seismic swans list which ran nothing but:
4 swan
4 seismic assault
Lots of burn and counter spells
About 28 land

This deck was not very good at the time, it was fun. Then the cascade mechanic was printed and cascade swans was born.

The old standard cascade swans lists were:
4 swan
4 seismic assault
4 bloodbraid elf
4 bituminous blast
2 captured sunlight
2 primal command

Then it had lots of man lands too, (treetop village and ghitu encampment) but that was the deck. It ran about 40 land. There were other versions with 2 or 3 large creatures for beat downs too.

My slightly updated list is:
All the same spells -3 bit blast.
+1 emrakul
+2 bring to light