MTG Salvation

Thanks for the help guys.



Sideboard (not finished, need more Chalices, cant find any in my area)

Glad to know that my judgement of the match up wasnt completely off.

Anyone considered Trophy Mage to emphasize the o-stone route? Its a body at least, and u get any 3 mana cost artifact

Quote from Pesca97 »

And this?

If you were running Negate in your sideboard, this profiles to be an upgrade.

As for Trophy Mage... it'd require some reshuffling of the artifacts in the deck to get the most out of it. Perhaps some Bottle Gnomes or Filigree Familiars to help hold the ground? Not sure whether that would be worth it against the field, but it'd certainly help out against Burn.

Tournament report from SCG Milwaukee

Ordered cards online for the tourney to play @BloodyRabbit_01 list. Store I ordered from felt the need to take 2 weeks to send me the cards. Anyways, chatted with @topkyle and he recommended Nimble Obstructionists over Snaps if I didnt pick them up.

Here's the list I played:
2 Nimble Obstructionist
1 Treasure Mage
3 Walking Ballista
2 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Condescend
3 Dismember
3 Remand
3 Repeal
4 Supreme Will
2 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Batterskull
3 Expedition Map
1 Mindslaver Buy
2 Oblivion Stone
1 Academy Ruins
2 Field of Ruin
6 Island
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
3 River of Tears
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon



Sideboard
1 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Spatial Contortion
2 Spell Snare
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Field of Ruin


Rd 1 - Jake with Ponza (1-2)
Game 1 - Slave him to kill his Chandra and Kessig. Wurmcoil, Ballista and Nimble Obstructionist carried the team
Game 2 - Land D and destructive revelry wrecked me. BBE and Kessig Wolf run did 20+ points of damage
Game 3 - Tireless tracker, BBE and Pia overwhelmed me. Slammed an o-stone with 7 mana but destructive revelry took care of that promptly
Tough round one. Still feeling good and got the jitters out of the way.

Rd 2 - Will - RUG concoction (1-2)
Game 1 - Vial turn 1 for him. Ups it to 2 and then eventually 3 (WTF because never vials anything in). I draw 7 lands in 30 cards after 2 thirsts and 2 digs with Supreme Will. He soft locks me with e-wit - Cryptic Command lock
Game 2 - Turn 4 Wurmcoil and he decides to mess around with Huntmaster of the Fells shenanigans…. I get a surgical on his e-wit and a 2nd wurmcoil down. He concedes to me being over 50 life
Game 3 - Spellsnare his turn 2 goyf (OMFG what a pickup last second on Fri night. Is my luck changing ????). He then proceeds to wreck me with red removal - bolt, eletrolyze, etc with snaps and e-wits
Super cool deck and super cool high school kids. He ended up just missing day 2 with 3 losses

Rd 3 - Weston - UW Control (2-0)
Slaver lock after a counterwar. GG
Turn 1 Spell Snare on his Isochron Scepter. Nimble Obstructionist attacked for 18 this game
My life isn’t over but still not a big boost in confidence…

Rd 4 - Ian - UBR Hollow One (2-0)
Turn 3 Wurmcoil, turn 4 Wurmcoil. I guess i live in Lala Land some times
Chalice on 1 and wurmcoil on turn 6
He had an odd brew but seemed like a good guy. We had a ton of fun playing together. He was the last part of my day that I felt good about

Rd 5 - Paul - GRB Vengevine (0-2)
Turn 1 Insolent Neonate from him. Proceeds to dump bridge from below and bloodghast. That game ended quickly
Game 3 I kept oboro, tron, tron, 4 spells. He plays turn 3 bloodmoon with 4 bridge triggers off 0 CC walking ballista and 0 CC hangarback walker. Good times……

Rd 6 - Jesse - 5 Color Tron (1-2)
Game 1 this dude plays tron lands, 1 egg and 1 mana conflux. Turn 4 Jace. Condescend. Turn 5 Sorin… I have wurmcoil and ballista online so I take care of it. WTF is this 3 color deck. He proceeds to tell me it’s 5 color tron….
Game 2 - turn 3 wurm, then 0 stone. He proceeds to play planeswalker after planeswalker into Nicol Bolas….. FML
Game 3 - Mull to 5 with 4 lands and batterskull. Game ends with him have 6 planeswalkers on the battlefield, pithing needle on o-stone, and me windmilling o-stone off the top, which can’t be activated.
I’m so pissed and on a rampage I almost flip the table over.

Anyways, talk to my crew and they were 3-3 so we headed out for the night to grab some good food and get ready for tomorrow. They wanted to do legacy and I was cool with side events the next day for more reps with the deck. New day, new record.

Day 2 - Side events
Rd 1 - Adam - UBW Mill (0-2)
Game 1 - Turn 1 and turn 2 hedron crab. Mills me before turn 6, extra my Urza’s mines, and was nice enough to throw down an Ensnaring bridge to prevent me from attacking with my wurmcoil.
Game 2 - He starts with a leyline of sanctity. Turn 1 hedron crab, i dismember it and drop turn 2 chalice on 1. I fight hard and get a few things cooking. But the 3rd glimpse the unthinkable in 3 turns took it’s toll on my library. Lost with an o-stone online, a ballista at 4 and chalice on 1, facing down 3 lingering souls tokens
At this point I may cry….

Rd 2 - Ian - Jund (1-2)
Game 1 - Turn 1 - 4 inquisitions and turn 5 thoughtseize. Turn 6 Ugin from me takes care of his 2nd lily and active bob. Then a slaver off the top brings it home.
Game 2 - Smoked by 2 tarmos and a well timed fulminator mage
Game 3 - this is for all the marbles before i blow a ghasket. Thoughtseize, tarmo, tarmo, bob, maelstrom pulse on my batterskull.

W-O-W. I know Mono U Tron is skill intensive but com’on.

I’ll definitely keep playing this for sure but didnt think I’d get so whooped as I did. I didnt write this for sympathy but more so to show how I handled the deck and feedback from the group. Thanks in advance on that.

Was also at SCG Milwaukee and it was great meeting another U Tron player (Mister_Lamp) to share some bad beats stories. The other U Tron player from my LGS was also there.

I played the Classic today with the UB variant of Colorless Eldrazi and after 15 paper matches I'm too tired to write a full report buuuuuuut...

Topkyle @ SCG Milwaukee Open w/ Bloody_Rabbit01 (exact list):
Round 1- Ironworks Combo (W 2-0) 1-0 overall
Round 2- Bring to Light Scapeshift (L 1-2) 1-1 overall
Round 3- Bring to Light Scapeshift (L 1-2) 1-2 overall
Round 4- Titanshift (W 2-1) 2-2 overall
Round 5- WG Vizier Company (W 2-1) 3-2 overall
Round 6- Naya Zoo (W 2-0) 4-2 overall
Round 7- Humans (L 1-2) 4-3 overall -- DROP

My takeaway is that U Tron is powerful, but it's just not a good deck for a super-wide meta. This list performed amazingly in the matchups it was prepped for. Vizier CoCo and Naya Zoo were super easy. I would not have expected that with the normal lists. I did not expect to hit Scapeshift decks three rounds in a row and it had a tilting effect when my post-sideboard games were neutered. The BTL lists especially were chaining Negates and Dispels against me and I have way too many slots dedicated to removal. This list felt more competitive versus Humans, but this matchup can't be made positive. I was constantly scrambling for answers as he applied pressure and kept me off O. Stone. I almost wish I had 4x Engineered Explosives but that's not realistic.

After seeing the top 32 I would absolutely bring something close to this list to the next Open or GP if I was to go and chalk my losses up to a strange run of matchups or some questionable play decisions. 100% Walking Ballista was my best card on the day btw and I am with Bloody_Rabbit that it needs to be played in multiples. Chalice was the worst card on the day and just rotted as a 4-of in my SB for almost every matchup.

Has Damping Sphere been discussed here already? I would like to hear about its impact on our deck.

Yes, it's a good sb card, maybe 2-of.

My land situation seemed fine and I didn't notice the lack of a 4th map, but there is only so much you can infer from 7 rounds of play. It's the first card I look at siding out in a lot of matchups so starting at 3 was kind of a non-issue for me although I like 4 to start since it keeps the artifact count up.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Supreme Will, but I don't know about 4x at the expense of TfK. My first instinct is to try out a 3/3 split and see where that takes me.

2x Snapcaster seemed fine. I guess you look at what it's taking the place of. Compared to lists I usually run let's say that is Trinket Mage. This list is not running mainboard Chalice and just naturally finds Ballista since that is at 3x so Snapcaster is just better. I kind of wish 1 of the Snaps was an Obstructionist though. The flying is sometimes relevant.

3x Dismember was critical in my wins. Maybe 3x is too many, but I dunno...felt fine. The 4 life doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things when that Hierarch or Devoted Druid needs to die immediately. I was happy with them. My gripe was not having things in the sideboard to replace them with in dead matchups. Dispel and Negate seem narrow when I think of a broad meta, but I sure wish I had them in the board on Saturday. 7 targeted removal in the 75 just nullified CoCO + Zoo but was useless against Scapeshift. I guess that's just a U Tron problem. It's hard to plan for everything. 4x Chalice in the board was a similar problem. When you want them you REALLY want them and when you don't you wish they were anything else. I'm really down on them atm.

Overall, I like the shell and definitely appreciate it being shared with us. I think my favorite aspect is the multiple Ballista and River of Tears. Everything I would try and change is just tweaking numbers to see how it feels. I'll start with 3/3 Supreme/Thirst split, dropping a land to 24 (and 60 cards overall), going back to 4x Map and dropping either 1x Remand or Dismember. Probably toy around with 1x Nimble Obstructionist in the main.

I would have a couple of questions for those who participated in the tournament using the BloodyRabbit_01 list:
-How did you find 3 maps instead of 4?
-4 Supreme Will are too many?
-The 2 Snapcaster?
-The 3 dismember were partly cause of your defeats?

I was also thinking about trying a 2x of Anticipate on this list, to "remedy" the lack of a map and other tutors, and to increase the efficiency of the snapcasters.

Note: for now I prefer the 3x wurm 1x o-stone configuration, instead of 2 and 2

I'm still playing 4 expedition map maindeck, because I prefer to have the more frequent option to go T1 map T2 crack into tron land when I don't know what I'm playing against. A fast resolved threat like Ugin or wurmcoil can, sometimes, end these games quickly. It doesn't stop me from boarding them out against really fast aggro decks, or when I know they'll bring in stony silence.
After testing a bit, I prefer to go up to 2 supreme will, thirst for knowledge is still very good. I increased my 2CCM counterspells ratio by playing the full playset of remand and some mana leak. I still feel that we really want to be able to counter for 2 mana(against fulminator mage or lili when on the play, for instance).
I like the second snapcaster mage, it chumpblocked a lot. I could still play torrential gearhulk at that place, but I'm not sure.
3 dismember feels great, and also greatly contributed to my wins. 1CCM spot removal that kills almost anything at instant speed. It's great, the life loss is almost never relevant. I'm not playing less of them anytime soon.
I like anticipate but I'm not playing it anymore. It's not doing enough. I'd rather have a 2CCM counterspell.

As for the wurmcoil engine/oblivion stone ratio, I'm currently playing 2 wurms/2 o-stone MD, and another wurm SB.
It's the good number for me. Never underestimate the power of O-stone: It punishes opponents that overextends, and you can force your opponent to play around it and slow them down by doing so (imposing your pace on the game) with your tempo tools (counterspells and bounce/spot removal). I'm sold on the 2/2 ratio.
Oh, and I LOVE the walking ballista sisters in the maindeck. Really powerfull to have multiple in the main right know.

Am I crazy or is this good? Navigator's Compass

Cheap artifact (easy discard to TfK)
Colour fixer (makes an island a swamp for dismember, makes a A Ruin/Field of Ruin an island)
Easy life gain (anti-bolt)

Yes, it could be a good way to access more colors for engineered explosives, the lifegain is sweet, it's cheap, but in my current build, I don't like it. The maindeck slots are too hard to change for something with such a low impact. I mean, we don't play chromatic star nor chromatic sphere and it cantrips, so I wouldn't play this either.
Seeing this card as something that sticks to the battlefield, maybe if I was to rethink the manabase deeply, I could play them... Right now, I don't think it's worth it.

But I could be wrong.

What would you replace it for? Or would you change the deck drastically?


EDIT : it's basically a mana cylix with some life gain... It's kind of akward to me...

Honestly, I am not sure.

I run a talisman of dominance, so I think that is a slot it could swap into; it loses the ramp but gains life (instead of losing) colour fixes and comes down early.

But ya, im not sure if its good enough to completely redo the deck or make significant changes for but I thought it was at least an interesting new card that does somethings that are needed in our deck (life gain, colour fixing).

But maybe it just isnt good enough to make the 75.

Navigator's Compass also protects a land from "nonbasic" type land destruction, making it a little more useful than life gain and color fixing.

But it also doesn't ramp or replace itself. I personally would not play it over talisman, and even talisman I'm always on the fence with

Quote from Funslaver »

Navigator's Compass also protects a land from "nonbasic" type land destruction

This is misinformation.

Adding basic land types doesn't make your land nonbasic. Navigator's Compass does not protect us from Field of Ruin or Tectonic Edge. I still have some cursory interest in the card, as it is a cheap artifact that fixes our mana and gives us a bit of a life buffer against aggro, but I'm not entirely sure where it fits in.

It doesn't. The card is unplayable, come on.

It very well may be unplayable. I'm still in the speculation stage with it, and it's unlikely to leave that spot.

I stand corrected

I could maaaaaybe see it in the SB aggainst aggro? It would also help activate engineered explosives to help wipe the board. But I'll admit this is a long stretch and you might blow it up in the process.