MTG Salvation

Quote from SurfNSlam88 »

Quote from MarcWizard »

Quote from SurfNSlam88 »

Quote from MarcWizard »

Quote from SurfNSlam88 »

It's definitely worth checking out for sure. I just need to find a spot... hmmm, perhaps I'll swap a Jace out for her. I'll be sure to let you guy know how she does. Have the rest of the weekend off of work, so I'll play a couple leagues today and see how it goes!

EDIT: Actually, I think I will try her out in the spot of the Scarab God. As much as I like him and the synergy he has with the rest of the deck, trying to make him stick in a format with Path to Exile is a little rough. The two Jace's are too valuable to the deck. I'll get on it though!

Its only been 4 days but I'm excited to know if you got to resolve any majesties over the weekend. Did she work out?

Oh man, my apologies.. I completely spaced on replying the thread. She did well. She helped in the grindy matches for sure, giving a consistent threat (the 2/2 zombie), and filling the yard for all of the other graveyard interactions. The issue with her is that the situations in which she excels were situations where I already felt like I already had an advantage. That being said I do feel like she isn't the worst option for the deck. To give a more definitive opinion on her I'll need to play with her a tad more. I'll keep on testing and let you know though!

*Excitement Intensifies*

Now I want to make the deck. *removes delvers and adds manlands/bombs*

So last night my testing group and I got together to jam some games. The deck is actually really solid. We tested the initial version without the Death's Majesty. If there's one thing that was confirmed last night, it's that Scarab God is insane. Even with no cards in hand, being able to reanimate a Snapcaster or Sheoldred to get value out of is absurd, and the fact that any deck not playing Path can't ATUALLY get rid of him is huge. I musty say, the deck was initially built to have something fun with, but its actually got some legs!

I went 5-0 with this Delver list on Saturday night, this will also be posted to the Delver thread but my plan B involves Desolate Lighthouse, Death's Majesty and AVs, so I think Control relevancy is there too.



The decks I beat were: Affinity, Jund, 8rack, UB Faeries, UW Control.

I wasn't taking notes so a full match report would be tough, but here are the highlights:

VS Affinity;
Lost the die roll and scooped on G1 turn 1 against the Affinity Godhand - memnite thopter vault skirge and steel overseer on the board T1. I have no 1 mana removal, am gripping a Delver, Serum and Terminate. Scoop to conceal info.
After boarding in Ceremonious rejections and Engineered Explosives, I proceed to crush games 2 and 3 with my cheap removals and counters. Anything short of a god hand is definitely easy with a full set of Fatal pushes, bolts and snaps. Ceremonious rejection is also strong here letting me counter threats on a cheap 1 mana while I play my own clocks.
MVP: Ceremonious Rejection, Fatal Push, Snapcasters

VS 8rack;
I get lucky in G1, he emptied my hand but drew no racks and my 3/2 flier finishes the game.
G2, I resolve an AV while beating with tasigur. Unable to empty my hand and faced with a clock, 8rack dies.
MVP: AV

VS Jund;
Only 2 particular things stood out; resolving 2 Ancestral Visions, basically drowning the opp in card advantage and Claim // Fame totally making LOTV look weak. The play was: Claim and snap in hand, no instant worth snapcasting in GY (theres a bunch of lands, snap, scour and serum iirc). Opp drops Lily, upticks to 4. I discard snap. Untap, draw land, lay the land. Claim the snap I discarded, snap targets serum visions; aftermath Fame my snap, beat for 4 and kill Lily, flashback the serum visions to put a card back in my hand and scry 2. Cards spent: 1. Mana spent: 4. Got a 2/1 body on the board, killed lily, drew a card and scryed 2. So much value i cannot even
MVP: AV, Claim // Fame

VS UB Faeries
Faeries need something to push them to viability, they really do. Bitterblossom seems troublesome at first but as long as I have a cheap tasigur they need to chump every turn, and I protect him from their Go for the Throats (their fatal pushes cant hit him) with Squalls that make the bitterblossom clock run even faster, I'm gold. Later on, the creeping tarpits threaten to do something but by then the bitterblossom has put him in bolt-snap-bolt range. Even resolving 2 AV in G1 doesn't help the fae. Postboard, my own AV come in and its more of the same.
MVP: Tasigur, countersquall.

VS UW Control
This was probably the stickiest match up. My mana came under attack at many stages of the game, and it was not uncommon to have only 1 red mana to work with, or momentarily be out a color. AVs were definitely useful in this MU for either card advantage or force the opponent to tap out. The UW list wasn't running AV but Search for Azcanta instead; my observation was that Search did a lot of work but too late. For instance, my resolved Death's Majesty was going to win me the game but Azcanta helped find him a Detention Sphere - BUT I already had a snap and 2 zombie tokens on the board. The sideboard Dispels of course came in and did good work, replacing the terminates and 1 push which had few targets (I kept 3 pushes for celestial colonnades). In the end, the card advantage provided by Death's Majesty and AV carried the match in G2 and G3. Without these grinders, I lost G1 to Gideon Trials + emblem backed up by Jace Architect and a slew of Supreme Verdicts. Vendilion Clique pulled some weight in one of the games as well, bottoming a Gids and forcing a verdict (he couldn't find a path to exile!).
MVP: Death's Majesty, Dispel, AV

I didn't get to -3 DM that day. There were snaps I could have brought back, but the circumstances called for a token army to beat around wall of omens, so I wanted to get to ultimate loyalty.

I'm not sure I want to play without Delvers now, at most time I felt like my early threats were really important for closing, and I don't want manlands in a format where I have to practically use every single mana every turn just to stay in the game. Its cool to become a control deck after boarding, though.

I tryed Ryan's "Delverless grixis delver" list, and it felt really weird to me. I guess it may be the meta, I was playing in the friendly league, the 4 snares sounded good only in a few matchups (affinity), and snares/vendilion got sided out a lot. I missed the delvers, and sometimes the overloading on removal didn't save me, while an early threat would have. I felt like it tried to get to a grindy stage, but with only snaps/kcommand as card advantage. Could be good in some metas, probably is very good against DS (didn't play against it), infect (heh), etc.

Quote from ThiefSlayer »

I tryed Ryan's "Delverless grixis delver" list, and it felt really weird to me. I guess it may be the meta, I was playing in the friendly league, the 4 snares sounded good only in a few matchups (affinity), and snares/vendilion got sided out a lot. I missed the delvers, and sometimes the overloading on removal didn't save me, while an early threat would have. I felt like it tried to get to a grindy stage, but with only snaps/kcommand as card advantage. Could be good in some metas, probably is very good against DS (didn't play against it), infect (heh), etc.

Nah, Delver is MVP in GDS so I'm skeptical about whether the delverless 20 land list is better against it. A 3/2 flier beating down while you keep shadows off the board with 4 pushes 4 snaps and 3 terminates is a steady route to victory. I enjoy playing the control game as much as the delver mode, but the current meta demands that we clock a little more consistently. I usually want to use my turn 1 playing a threat.

Here is the video of Corey's last Grixis control take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcMz09L0NJg
He also beat burn 2-0 on camera at GP Oklahoma!
He was also interviewed by Rich Hagan, where he repeated his long standing argument, Grixis control is a deck that you need to CONSTANTLY be aware of what you are doing and what the metagame looks like. Always know new brews and be prepared for everything.

He said he's playing a different list than the one in that video.

Quote from tlhunter07 »

He said he's playing a different list than the one in that video.

Yeah there are a number of cards we haven't seen yet like Hero's downfall.

Corey went 12-3 into the top 16. Almost made it to top8 (again). Great performance and showing for the deck

decklist here:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpokc/9-32-decklists-2017-12-10

maindeck damnation is interesting, as is 2x creeping tar pit, seeing as he said he wasn't a big fan of it on the CFB video

Watched Corey Burkhart’s stream last night as he did some prep for next Gp. He has since removed both damnations from the list. Sideboard he added another fulminator mage, I couldn’t tell what the maindeck card was.

Honestly, I’m not too sure. My friend alerted me he was streaming on twitch and I watched it. I wasn’t following him before this and I don’t watch many streams. I certainly will be in the future though.

That list is based off of this list that did well at the MTGO PTQ the week before. I'm frankly quite surprised at its performance since this would've been when Scapeshift and Tron decks were prevalent right after their great performance at the GP the week before.

Quote from Laskend »

What are the general thoughts about the ratio of Bolt//Fatal Push in our deck ?

I think the "norm" right now is a 4/2 split favouring bolt. Bolt doubles as a win condition for the deck so it's very important, moreso than push. We have so much removal and countermagic (and sweepers in the side) that I usually don't find the playset of push to be necessary

Has anyone tried to incorporate notion thief and geier reach sanitarium into a list? I play in an ancestral visions and cantrip heavy meta locally and I've been considering trying to incorporate that lock since 1/2 of the lock can be recurred with Kommand.

I feel there has to be a better way to punish those decks than a 4-drop that dies to bolt and a colorless land (which is usually awful in blue decks with terminate as their premium removal). The deck is already tailored to beat those to begin with, so I'd just stick with a solid sideboard finisher (Jace AoT, Scarab God, Keranos, etc)

So, Angrath, the Flame-Chained. Three relevant abilities attacking the hand, the board and a probably game-ending ultimate by the time you've upticked enough for that ultimate.

I'd compare him to Death's Majesty in the same spot on the curve. I'm thinking DM is slightly stronger, but I do like how Angrath can steal a creature, beat with it and then probably kill it.

Quote from MarcWizard »

So, Angrath, the Flame-Chained. Three relevant abilities attacking the hand, the board and a probably game-ending ultimate by the time you've upticked enough for that ultimate.

I'd compare him to Death's Majesty in the same spot on the curve. I'm thinking DM is slightly stronger, but I do like how Angrath can steal a creature, beat with it and then probably kill it.

I would expect way more out of a 5 mana planeswalker than "probably" killing a creature as one of his abilities. Just way too expensive for what he does and we have better options.

Also agreed with delta 100% regarding the sanitarium plan, nothing else to add there.

Looking for feedback on sideboard guide. Some decisions are from experience and some are speculative. Guide is below decklist on tappedout here.

I run a pretty conventional list:

Shoota Yasooka (yaya3) just 5-0'd a MTGO league with this list. It's quite an interesting configuration, but Shoota's lists are always interesting to say the least.

List looks sweet. Would love to see 3 Vision, but otherwise, nice to see Planeswalker.

Quote from MarcWizard »

So, Angrath, the Flame-Chained. Three relevant abilities attacking the hand, the board and a probably game-ending ultimate by the time you've upticked enough for that ultimate.

I'd compare him to Death's Majesty in the same spot on the curve. I'm thinking DM is slightly stronger, but I do like how Angrath can steal a creature, beat with it and then probably kill it.

I like it. But just don't think 5 mana planeswalkers is where modern is at right now

Quote from PyroDelver »

Has anyone tried to incorporate notion thief and geier reach sanitarium into a list? I play in an ancestral visions and cantrip heavy meta locally and I've been considering trying to incorporate that lock since 1/2 of the lock can be recurred with Kommand.

Notion Thief is a bit too narrow. Traditionally you want Dispel for those matchups.

Giephr Reach Sanitarium is more for decks like Tron where their topdecks are so much better than your top deck. I would just play desolate lighthouse.

Quote from TheAlexGnan »

i think you're stretching your sideboard way too thin. if you need surgical extractiob post board, you usually REALLY need it, same goes for Fulminator Mage. incidentally, these work great together to make tron an even matchup (sounds crazy but my post board percentage against tron is ridiculously high). i run 3 each.

Negate can easily be another countersquall as your mana base runs a lot of black.

Dispel is your best sideboard card in control mirrors, by far. i'd like 2. jeskai lists run 3 in the side these days.

cheers

Beside Dredge and Goryo's Vengence, when do you need surgical? (I'm asking cuse I don;t play enough these days)