MTG Salvation

As a bad magic player here, I have had ballista win me games I had absolutely no right winning.

All hail ballista.

Trinket mage fetching walking ballista gives you game against matchups you shouldnt win. Its excellent against merfolk, infect, affinity, and burn. Above posts mentioned you play it on 4 ping two x/1s and then it dies, yeah that's where you get the academy ruins and start looping it. Trinket mage itself is great because it can chump and fetch the ballista,ee,map/or chalice depending on what you need in the situation. It relevant in almost every matchup. If the game goes late blue tron has a hard time losing so you just need to get there and trinket mage + ballista get you there.

i cant get behind trinket. its fine, but idk.... fabricate as i said i like more. ballista is great in a lot of matches. d&t and affinity have 1 butt creatures...it can be recurred as well. kills mana dorks sometimes... and just wins others. i cant imagine not using 1 of anymore.

my list:

Anyone have tips for facing lantern control?

I'm not very well versed in this deck but I recently picked it up and have one question that doesn't seem to be answered. Why no serum visions? Ran some test games and the deck was much more smooth after it. I think about this deck just like mono blue control with an eventual jump in the available mana (suddenly going from 4 to 9 mana, for example) and serum goes with that plan perfectly. It's probably wrong because no one plays that card here but I'm interested in knowing why it's that way.

Oh, and ballista overperformed. There were games where I could go "mono ballista control", holding counters + ballista activations, eventually throwing all counters to the face and then academy ruins it back. Explosives were nice too, and synergistic with the trinket/tolaria plan, but my version struggled to produce more than two colors (I had UW and UB talisman, gemstone cavern and river of tears). I thought about adding gemstone mine or spire of industry, but they don't go too well with the overall plan and are awkward at times. I would like to be able to play explosives for three without major struggles.

What's the alternative to Trinket Mage into Ballista on 2 or 4? Treasure into Wurmcoil? Doesn't do much against unblockable Merfolk and it's still a ground creature against Affinity fliers. It's marginally better against Burn assuming they don't have one of the 4 Skullcracks. And this is assuming you even have Tron which is much more likely to happen with 2+ Trinket Mage in the deck to snag needed maps.

If you want to really talk about beating those decks with some consistency you need to get serious about Gemstone Caverns. Condescend, Remand, and chalice need to all be live on T1 (and dismember on T0). A 1x Gemstone Caverns has 11.6% chance of showing up in our opening 7 and a 2x has a 22.1% chance. Assuming slightly more aggressive mulligans (7+6 cards seen) you can increase that to 39%.

Quote from RPD »

I'm not very well versed in this deck but I recently picked it up and have one question that doesn't seem to be answered. Why no serum visions

Quote from Themis »

Another thing about Serum Visions is that 1) It's a 1 Drop which nonbos with chalice (we can at least pitch maps to Thrist profitably) and 2) It's a sorcery in a deck with 8+ counter spells that often has to operate on 1 blue source. When considering both points I think Serum Visions loses a lot of value for us. Those slots would be much better served as Anticipates or Thirsts (or Opt if it were legal?). That said, regarding the original post, Thirst For Knowledge is definitely the best draw spell available to us, much more powerful than Visions for us.

Quote from pierakor »

Tapping your only blue source sorcery speed for a Serum Vision is the worst.

I used to say Anticipate is our instant speed Serum Vision. With this deck you really don't want to tap your blue sorc speed and then have your opponent resolve something you could've Remanded/Condescended. Anticipate/Supreme Will/Thirst allows you to keep a counter open and then draw EOT if possible.

Has anyone considered using a Trophy Mage package? It seems like there's a lot of great searchables with it such as trinisphere, ensnaring bridge, oblivion stone, crucible of worlds, bottle gnomes, filigree familiar, coalition relic (works well with EE), or crystal shard.

I haven't personally tried it but I think some sort of toolbox like this could be potentially powerful.

Any thoughts?

Fabricate is definitely better than Trophy Mage

Hi Folks,
I am looking to get into Modern for the first time (in paper) and am really liking U-Tron as a solid option. While the deck is already affordable compared to many modern decks, my budget is still shy of being able to complete a fully stocked list. Therefore I am wondering if the deck would be functional at an FNM level without the most expensive cards, namely Chalice, snapcaster, EE. and potentially Ugin. I know it will be much weaker, but do you yall think it would have enough legs that I do not just fold to many match-ups?
Does anyone have experience playing with this kind of budget list?

Thanks Inglorious! That is the kind of list I was looking for. Is there any particular reason you aren't main decking any spatial contortion? Have you found that 4 treasure mages is too many?

I won 2-1 against Dredge (I had a very powerful side-board against aggro)

May I ask what your sideboard looks like? It seems to me many people's anti-aggro plan revolves around chalice.

Welcome, I'm new here aswell

Thanks , right back atcha.

WIth Opt being legal in Modern would we play it? instant speed scry one draw one. Looks like the one drop we've been looking for because its instant speed or do we just completely ignore it. I know we dont' like serum visions becuase its sorcery. I'll probably test it as a 1-3 of but i'm not sure how good it'll be.

The one thing to be wary of is that it doesn't play the best with chalice. It certainly warrants testing though.

I agree. I do play 2 chalices and I would most likely side out the opts for other cards when the chalices come in

That is a great point mtgnorin, I might test with that. cut my Walking ballista package and do 2 snaps with 3 opts or something like. I don't like the idea of cutting a thirst for knowledge. its such a powerful card in our deck.

If you weren't playing a playset of Anticipate before you shouldn't be playing a playset of Opt now. For U Tron their powerlevel is comparable, since we have excess colorless mana and are constrained on blue. I think I will keep playing Anticipate over Opt.

ah, i see the Opt talk got started....
interesting and kinda good card!

pros:
-instant speed cantrip
-1 mana
issues:
-1 mana (not a real issue)
-what do you cut for it? chalice? 1 flex spell? ... i can see 3 copies max really...
-heres the real one: where does it fill a void? ... its good on T1, but apart from t1 because its 1 mana, anticipate is a card that digs deeper, as pierakor said. and t1 we often play a tron land and hopefully a map.


pass.

Opt is great. As I said before, my experience with this deck is limited but the early turns were sketchy (mostly T1, sometimes T2) and I would often be stuck on lands/useful spells. I understand the arguments against serum visions, but opt is just perfect. About chalice, having only one maindeck copy and then searching it with fabricate/trinket mage is useful against a really narrow slice of the metagame. For chalice, the earlier the best and a T4 chalice on one isn't that scary. Thus, I think that 4 opt main and 3-4 chalice sideboard (to swap them when needed) is's crazy.
Thirst for knowledge is an amazing card and I would continue to play 4. Opt is there to smooth the early turns, thirst is to refuel in the latter turns, both are needed.
I agree that snapcaster looks better now with opt, but two blue mana is still a lot for this deck and playing only one is probably still correct.

I don't like anticipate and I don't think it should be in this deck but as RPD was saying and some others, we don't always go: land map go on turn one, opt gives us a second option becuase (from experience) i'm never lucky enough to get that every game. I often don't even get to a winning point of the game with tron mana. I tend to play control first, tron stuff second. I think i'll move to 2 opt with cutting one repeal and 1 treasure mage in my list, not changing my over all build a whole lot but giving me 1drops 5 and 6 to see how that affects the deck.

IT DEFinitely warrants testing. suRe. I'll try it too. I would just rather play more high impact cards I think.

But who knows.