MTG Salvation

I tried to discuss this last week.

First, I want to acknowledge that Voice definitely does work even if he isn't part of the combo. It discourages off-turn responses from my opponent, it gives me a token that is rarely less than a 3/3 when it dies, and because of that it acts as a bolt/path magnet. Voice is very often my PREFERRED T2 play, even when I have finks and 3 mana available because of his bolt-magnet status. Even going from 3 to 2 was noticable for my most recent tournament as I got notably less T2 voices as a result.

That said, I have been open to replacing Voice and nobody has provided a meaningful "better" card. What 2 cards would you play MB over voice in the list I took to the IQ last night?

Quote from jermstuddog »

I tried to discuss this last week.

First, I want to acknowledge that Voice definitely does work even if he isn't part of the combo. It discourages off-turn responses from my opponent, it gives me a token that is rarely less than a 3/3 when it dies, and because of that it acts as a bolt/path magnet. Voice is very often my PREFERRED T2 play, even when I have finks and 3 mana available because of his bolt-magnet status. Even going from 3 to 2 was noticable for my most recent tournament as I got notably less T2 voices as a result.

That said, I have been open to replacing Voice and nobody has provided a meaningful "better" card. What 2 cards would you play MB over voice in the list I took to the IQ last night?

i also used to run 2 voice in the main, but i opted to just run the playset of them in the side and i replaced the voices in the main with the third spellskite and main deck linvala. the changes have been working really well honestly. if you don't want to play linvala in the main, i can see adding a third hierarch or a fourth ewitness.

I play a main deck linvala and 3 spellskites

I think Linvala is just as fringe as Voice if not more-so since she is basically dead vs burn and Voice is very much alive. Not to mention the CoCo and Chord interactions. Voice wins that comparison hands down. The biggest point Linvala has going for her is of course stopping things like Lavamancer and Scooze, acting as a MD trump card for the mirror match, and preventing Twin from going off without dealing with her first.

I don't think she is a better MD card than Voice overall and figured I needed a bit more help vs burn than I needed against twin. I can't see playing a 3rd spellskite in the MD, I just don't want it and don't need it. I don't even run one in my SB. I tried the more combo-oriented build with 4 EW, 4 Chord and 0 instant interaction and I still don't think I'm a fan. While Wall of Roots definitely had some merit, and helped me go off faster in at least one game, I still think I prefer the value plan.

I like having 4 Finks, 3 Voice, and some number of EW to act as the core of the deck and building out from there. It gives you a solid core to actually apply pressure with instead of sitting back waiting for the combo to assemble itself. 12 combo pieces, 4 CoCo and 3 Chord seems like plenty of redundancy and I go off early enough often enough that I don't want to invest any more into comboing, especially at the cost of value. I think it makes the deck more well-rounded and makes your opponent's choices worse overall. Sure, you might combo slower in a vacuum, but I think I prefer the well-rounded plan. Once opponent's start interacting, I rarely hit a combo before turn 5 or 6 anyway. At least this way, they are on the back foot instead of looking for holes in the combo.

Might try something like this:


The sideboard plan just looks so much more robust when you stop putting redundant walls in the MD and shoving all your value into the SB.

Linvala helps you combo off...she shuts down things that prevent that.
Also, our twin matchup isnt fantastic, so having some extra help there is awesome

Voice again...does nothing to help any of the above. I could careless how big the token is that you get. It is irrelevant to the primary gameplan of this deck.

This is first and foremost a combo deck. Playing a bunch of crappy 2/2s is not a value deck. Post SB ill bring voices if people are playing blue. Even still, i hate that card. It sucks.

My average turn kill has got to be something like 3.5. That is absurd. You can't accomplish that with voice of resurgence in your deck more than 66% of the time. I would rather win quickly than fumble around and try to "value" someone out. Its not a beauty contest. Get'em dead and get'em dead asap.

If you are getting turn 3.5 combos on average, your meta must be extremely non-interactive.

Vs Jund/Junk, the first 2-3 creatures you play are almost always dead or exiled out-of-the-gate. Vs any Twin and/or delver variants, you aren't getting away with having nothing get countered/bolted in the first 3 turns of the game. Even most Zoo lists are running 6-10 copies of Bolt/Helix/Path. Burn is always looking for ways to interact with a deck like ours as well.

3.5 sounds reasonable when goldfishing, but magic isn't goldfish. If you're getting away with T3/T4 combos more often than not, I want your meta.

I dont know about how well Voice functions in the SB, but I agree that in a linear meta it is useless MB. Slows down your combo which can mean the difference between infinite life or 0 life.

2 Spellskite is a sweet spot imo as it protects your combo and life. This is after running full combo, 4 Witness, 2 Decay, 1 Pridemage, and 1 Rally, so space is somewhat optimized.

In regards to path vs decay, I believe Decay to have more relevant targets than Path when going for the combo-win. The only card Path hits that Decay doesnt is Linvala, and she isnt exactly a common MB choice.

Personally, I prefer 2 Decay 1 Qasali Pridemage MB and 2 Decay 2 Path 1 Fiend Hunter SB.

I deal with dispel by going for value mostly.

I will go as low as 1 Chord and 2-3 CoCo depending on the MU and your build of the deck. Dispel is, unfortunately, always good against us since we tend to rely on instants to do most of the important stuff in our deck. But when you're facing decks that are likely to be running 2-3 dispels in G2 and 3, just try to sideboard with value in mind so that even if one of your instants gets countered, you still have other stuff going on.

Sin collector/Thoughtseize/Evolutionary Leap to beat Dispel.

I'm currently running a very combo oriented list of this deck in the MTGO Modern league because I haven't seen a fair deck in quite some time. My last few matches were 2 Living End, 2 Storm, Amulet, Bogles, Infect.

From my litle experience with the deck; I can say that the decks bringing dispel from the sb are the ones who won't let you achieve critical mass of creatures to make chords strong enough, so I usually leave only 1 in, and board out the others. I like keeping at least 3 CoCo in though, because 2 for 1ing control/midrange decks is usually worth the risk. From the Sb a couple of chokes+evo leaps, and an additional gavony are the MVPs against any kind of strategy with control elements.

Against non-blue control like Jund/Junk, I used to board out the combo and try to out-value them.

More recently though, I've found that if you combo, you win, so it's worth it to leave the combo as intact as possible. I also don't have to take as much "good stuff" out since I don't have to fight counter magic etc. Anyway, I tend to leave at least 2 Chords in. It's so nice to be able to CoCo up 2 combo pieces and when they move to kill one, you chord for the 3rd and combo in response. They actually have a hard time dealing with that.

Quote from jermstuddog »

Against non-blue control like Jund/Junk, I used to board out the combo and try to out-value them.

More recently though, I've found that if you combo, you win, so it's worth it to leave the combo as intact as possible. I also don't have to take as much "good stuff" out since I don't have to fight counter magic etc. Anyway, I tend to leave at least 2 Chords in. It's so nice to be able to CoCo up 2 combo pieces and when they move to kill one, you chord for the 3rd and combo in response. They actually have a hard time dealing with that.

Out of curiosity, how would you go about cutting Chord, CoCo, and/or Wall of Roots if running a 4 Chord 4 Company 2 Wall split MB and need more value/interaction G2? My gut tells me to at least drop 2 Wall and 1 Chord, but Im unsure if cutting more would be better.

The more interactive the deck, the worst wall gets, and dorks in general IMO. I would likely cut down to 4-5 mana dorks total. Walls would come out first, then nobles. I would run 4 bird 1 noble or 4 bird 0 noble depending on your SB options.

That said, I have an extensive sideboard for control MU:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/abzan-company4/

If I am up against something like Grixis control, I am going to bring in:
1 Athreos, God of Passage
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Choke
2 Evolutionary Leap
2 Path to Exile
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sin Collector

To make room for all of that, I will have to take out:
1 Wall
1 Noble
1 CoCo
3 Chord
2 Melira
1 Anafenza
1 Viscera Seer
1 Pridemage

I acknowledge that my stuff is going to die and I am unlikely to ever get the combo. I want an early Choke or Evo Leap, preferably both. I want to draw instant interaction as needed and grind them into the ground by forcing them to fight their way through my dudes multiple times and gaining as much value as possible with every draw.

This isn't to say that the MU is easy, but hitting a turn 2 Choke into a turn 3 Evo Leap is almost impossible to lose. What you have in your starting hand and what you draw early on really determines how the game is going to play out and we can hit a wide variety of styles that they have to deal with, from mana denial to hand disruption to pure value-grind.

Here's the list I played to a 4-1 finish in my most recent Modern League on Mtgo. Some background info: the leagues on mtgo are infested with combo. In my experience, over sixty percent of decks in the leagues are combo decks that try to kill in the first four turns of the game. I built this deck to beat other combo decks.



I beat Merfolk, Storm, Bogles, and Living End, and lost to a nut draw from Kiki Chord despite comboing on turn 4 through his Path.

Some thoughts:
Eidolon of Rhetoric was included because I've played against 4 Storm and 3 Living End decks in my last 15 League matches. If Bogles continues to be popular, Fleshbag Marauder may earn a slot, but likely not necessary since we can combo them and have Spellskite.

I forgot about Grand Abolisher and Voice of Resurgence. It's likely one of the two, if not both, deserve some slots in the 75.

2-0 in the new league, beat Abzan 2-0 two matches in a row. The change I made was -1 Eternal Witness, +1 Grand Abolisher. I haven't drawn the Abolisher yet, but it would be good in the Abzan matchup and any deck with instant speed removal. However, Eternal Witness is probably not the correct cut, as that card is absolutely fantastic. Maybe going down to 1 Rally is right, but the combo kills with Blood Artist and/or Zulaport Cutthroat are very real.

Zulaport Cutthroat looks like a better Blood Artist. Same cost, so if you want the Blood Artist effect (see earlier discussions), then Zulaport with the 1 attack seems to make Blood Artist obsolete? Does this make enough of a difference to include? Hmmmm

That has been discussed a million times and mostly, the fact that Blood Artist counts "creatures" while Zulaport counts "creatures you control" makes Blood Artist the better card in general. Neither one is going to attack often if ever so the 1 attack damage is almost inconsequential.

They're better in different situations. I like running 1 of each. Blood Artist is such a bad card by itself, while Zulaport Cutthroat is at least a 1/1 that can trade with something once in a while. Neither one is good if you're not running an all-in combo version of the deck.

Why would they be better in different situations? Wouldn't Zulaport always be better as he is a 1/1 and Blood Artist a 0/1, yet they both have the same effect for the same casting cost? Why would you want to pay the same for a 0/1? Which situation makes that better than a 1/1? Am I missing something in the reading? Plus against something like Leyline of Sanctity, Zulaport would get around it as you aren't targeting? If you like have 2 Zulaports and no Blood Artists?

Quote from jermstuddog »

That has been discussed a million times and mostly, the fact that Blood Artist counts "creatures" while Zulaport counts "creatures you control" makes Blood Artist the better card in general. Neither one is going to attack often if ever so the 1 attack damage is almost inconsequential.

Oops. I guess I didn't see the million times. Lol. I've opened exactly 1 pack of Battle. Don't play standard.

Indeed, the "creatures you control" makes a difference. However, in our deck, most of that pain is coming from our creatures chump blocking or being sacked. When I've used Blood Artist I don't know that it was their creatures doing most of the dying. Cards like Fiend Hunter, Path, etc don't trigger Blood Artist anyway.

Isn't one of the things we do is bolster and pump up weenies? 1/1 gains you a ping anyway.