MTG Salvation

Opinions about new scryland coming dominaria?

Our deck doesn't run Ghost Quarter because of how hard it is to hit UUU for Whir. 0% chance of it seeing play in the Whir lists, and the land doesn't do enough to warrant it seeing any play in the BG decks.

Quote from Skitzafreak »

Quote from sk00gle »

Greetings, one and all! I'm having some difficulty understanding why the conventional wisdom is to run only 2 Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard. If we follow the math from the Mox Opal debate above, it seems to me like we need to be running at least 3 in order to have a reasonable chance of having it in our opening hand. Obviously, there's something I'm missing here; otherwise, I wouldn't be asking this question! Any insights and explanations this community can offer would be greatly appreciated.

You don't need Leyline on Turn 1. Yes in a lot of match ups it definitely helps to have it, but in some instances you want it to act as extra Witchbane Orbs later on. Add to that the fact that you can't sideboard too heavily with this deck since you don't want to be diluting it, and you have why there are only 2 Leylines in the sideboard.

I'm not sure I see how that can possibly be true. Take the Burn matchup, for instance. It seems to me that that's a matchup in which we need to give ourselves Hexproof as quickly as possible; without the turn 0 Leyline of Sanctity, there's a very good chance that we're just dead before we can stabilize.

Quote from sk00gle »

I'm not sure I see how that can possibly be true. Take the Burn matchup, for instance. It seems to me that that's a matchup in which we need to give ourselves Hexproof as quickly as possible; without the turn 0 Leyline of Sanctity, there's a very good chance that we're just dead before we can stabilize.

Burn is an odd match up. You can put in extra Leylines, get your turn 0 Hexproof, and your opponent just draws a creature heavy draw and you lose if you don't find a Bridge. Or you find a Bridge, don't get Hexproof, and your opponent gets a spell heavy hand.

Hi everyone!

I also have a question on sideboards. My list is currently as follows.

1 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid
1 Graffdigger's Cage
2 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Mindshrieker
1 Nature's claim
1 Pithing Needle/Spyglass
1 Pyroclasm
1 Tezzeret, Agent
1 Tomord's Crypt
1 Wear/Tear
2 Welding Jar

Two cards that I am interested in trying out are Padeem, Consul of Innovation and Zur's Weirding. I know people have tried Padeem but I was wondering if anyone has tried Zur's Weirding? I am short a Darkslick Shores so am running a second Inventor's Fair anyway. I feel like I might make the lock nigh impossible to beat.

Damping Sphere seems nice. That will be in my Sideboard for sure.

Damping Sphere will be amazing in Lantern. The question obviously is what to cut for it. Because I firmly believe it isn't a sidebaord card, but a mainboard one.

Quote from Skitzafreak »

Quote from sk00gle »

I'm not sure I see how that can possibly be true. Take the Burn matchup, for instance. It seems to me that that's a matchup in which we need to give ourselves Hexproof as quickly as possible; without the turn 0 Leyline of Sanctity, there's a very good chance that we're just dead before we can stabilize.

Burn is an odd match up. You can put in extra Leylines, get your turn 0 Hexproof, and your opponent just draws a creature heavy draw and you lose if you don't find a Bridge. Or you find a Bridge, don't get Hexproof, and your opponent gets a spell heavy hand.

Sure, those are possible outcomes. But I don't see how it logically follows that we don't maximize our chances of getting our turn 0 Hexproof while still having a good chance of finding Bridge in time. That sounds an awful lot like an Appeal to Possibility fallacy.

As for the Burn matchup, I'm still an avid proponent of maindeck Collective Brutality. I mean, the data doesn't lie. It covers the creatures for when we don't have Bridge and covers the spells when we don't have Leyline/Orb, and it's rarely a dead card in any matchup.

As for the Sphere, I'm going to be testing it in place of Grafdigger's Cage.

Would artificer's assistant be any good as one or two of in the whir build?

http://mythicspoiler.com/dom/cards/artificersassistant.html

I think you're better off leaving their removal as dead draws G1. And being able to whir for 0-2 CMC silver bullets is power.

Hi guys.
So I've started playing Modern again and dusted off my Lantern deck. It's a pretty standard list (3-4 Shredders, 1-2 Pyxis, 2-3 Bell, 3 Bridge, 4 IoK, 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Collective Brutality, 4 Ancient Stirring, 4 Whir, etc. etc.)
My Sideobard: 3 Abrupt Decay, 1 Padeem, 1 Jester's Cap, 2 Collective Brutality, 2 Welding Jar, 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Seal of Primordium, 2 Lelyline of Sanctity, 2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and I think that's it.

I have had a combination of poor luck and sequencing, but some great matches. The enviro is super, super hostile to Lantern around here. Every second match is either Jund with 1-2 maindeck Kolaghan's, or Elves with Creeping Corrosoion or just Tron. I do fairly well in games 1 and 2 then get a little behind in the last post-sideboard game, especially with decision trees.

Here's an example. I was playing my last round tonight against Titanshift/Through the BReach and so on. He has Tireless Tracker with about 8 clues as well. So I am capping him non-stop but I know he has Through the Breach in hand and he can breach Emmy to re-shuffle his only Nature's Claim (I have Witchbane Orb, 2 Bridge, 2 Lantern, 2 Shredder, 1 Pyxis, 1 Bell) and...I totally forget that you can cap on the trigger to exile Emrakul and so on. So that went poorly. I got rolled by Green Tron (man, I think I hate that deck as a matchup more than I despise the Boston Bruins, if you'll allow a sports take...) where I simply could not deal with turn 3 Karn Liberated. Meh.

Overall I think Lantern is pretty fair at the moment. I would have liked a reprint of Hanna's Custody in Dominaria, but meh. ;-)
Lastly, I've enjoyed playing this deck has it really forces me to be aware of hand/library/grave at all times. I have the first two down but I definitely need to pay more attention to graveyards...

I feel this is the list I am closest to at the moment. I'm not running EE because of affordability, replacing it with Collective Brutality.
https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=18564&d=315603&f=MO
Looking forward to adding Damping Sphere before the weekend is over, among other things.

Here lately I've started running one Leonin Abunas to supplement Padeem, Consul of Innovation. I like being able to have both out at the same time, rather than drawing the 2nd one and having to either kill my first to empty my hand or wait for the first to get answered (in which case we may just die).

I'll definitely look into Abunas as an extra option. Getting to four mana for Padeem against Tron felt like a near-impossible proposition though, but having two out(s!) seems quite nice, thanks.

So tested a bunch last night and tonight against Gx Tron, KCI, Jund, Hollow One, Amulet Titan, and RG Eldrazi. Damping Sphere is absolutely awesome. I'm currently running one main, one in the side. It's best against Gx Tron, of course. We only played two games there, both preboard. Naturally drew Sphere, won easily, second game Whir'd for Sphere the turn before my friend could cast Karn (his turn four). Was also great against KCI, but they do have Engineered Explosives to deal with it. However, a Needle on Explosives and a Sphere probably just means we win preboard. Jund was tough, but that's how it goes, and he drew *really* well. Amulet Titan was fine, Sphere is great here again. I did drop a game though, but it happens. RG Eldrazi is also fine, but lost to it. Was very close, and I think I could have played tighter (just haven't ever played against it and was unfamiliar with what to name with Needle, etc.).

I'm currently in the process of revising my list, but I'm going to be away for about a week or so. Will hopefully have more testing results when I get back.

Looking at the metagame it seems like damping sphere main over grafdiggers is easy life it helps even against dredge early since they really like casting multiple spells and don't like playing all their lands to hold onto for conflagration.

And since this is such a strong card in multiple matchups is it possible to be able to tune the mb better against burn and jund? A mb cb and weldingjar? Whir for jar to protect main lock pieces and cb to crush burn.

Quote from thnkr »

So tested a bunch last night and tonight against Gx Tron, KCI, Jund, Hollow One, Amulet Titan, and RG Eldrazi. Damping Sphere is absolutely awesome. I'm currently running one main, one in the side. It's best against Gx Tron, of course. We only played two games there, both preboard. Naturally drew Sphere, won easily, second game Whir'd for Sphere the turn before my friend could cast Karn (his turn four).

How was your strategy to win the game? did you milled the lands or threats?
Even though the sphere slow his game one moment he will have 10 lands to cast Ulamog.

Quote from ivorcosta »

Quote from thnkr »

So tested a bunch last night and tonight against Gx Tron, KCI, Jund, Hollow One, Amulet Titan, and RG Eldrazi. Damping Sphere is absolutely awesome. I'm currently running one main, one in the side. It's best against Gx Tron, of course. We only played two games there, both preboard. Naturally drew Sphere, won easily, second game Whir'd for Sphere the turn before my friend could cast Karn (his turn four).

How was your strategy to win the game? did you milled the lands or threats?
Even though the sphere slow his game one moment he will have 10 lands to cast Ulamog.

By the time they get to 10 lands we should be able to mill any ulamogs off the top or thoughtseize them out of their hand. With Pithing Needle to cover Karn/Ugin. The real issue is World Breaker being recurred.

Quote from genini2 »

By the time they get to 10 lands we should be able to mill any ulamogs off the top or thoughtseize them out of their hand. With Pithing Needle to cover Karn/Ugin. The real issue is World Breaker being recurred.

It's a lot of threats to mill/discard/needle, and if he manage to get one chromatic sphere he can get ulamog without giving us a way to respond.
Tron has 12 cards that "goes" to ulamog:
1 sanctum ugin
4 sylvan scrying
4 expedition map
3 ulamog

Does anyone have a SB guide from recent times? I'm going to the front page to analyze it, but tonight is going to be the first time I try Whir Lantern. (only played BG twice)