MTG Salvation

would ojutai exemplars be an option?

Fun fact: ojutai exemplars take away the emrakul inevitability of tron. Probably not very relevant as they have other ways to beat us (and they have o-stone anyway), but it's something to keeps in mind

What are everyone's thoughts on Lingering Souls in general here? I've seen a lot of lists popping up that run some quantity of Night of Souls' Betrayal and/or Curse of Death's Hold, presumably to fight off opposing Souls and have some some fringe benefits against Splinter Twin and Infect if you survive that long, but is it worth it? Lingering Souls is great against various aggro decks already, and allows us to put a reasonable clock on our opponents when the time comes to finish them. Plus, we already play things like Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique and Timely Reinforcements that don't play well with Night of Souls' Betrayal.

Quote from Tansoric »

What are everyone's thoughts on Lingering Souls in general here? I've seen a lot of lists popping up that run some quantity of Night of Souls' Betrayal and/or Curse of Death's Hold, presumably to fight off opposing Souls and have some some fringe benefits against Splinter Twin and Infect if you survive that long, but is it worth it? Lingering Souls is great against various aggro decks already, and allows us to put a reasonable clock on our opponents when the time comes to finish them. Plus, we already play things like Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique and Timely Reinforcements that don't play well with Night of Souls' Betrayal.

Lingering Souls is better in a more proactive deck. You are better shutting off than fighting it with your own Lingering Souls.

So, after some hemming and haw-ing tonight, I settled on the following list for FNM tonight:

After a lot of thinking and theorycrafting, I arrived at a list that was 72/75 of what I have here (starting from my post on the last page) and from there did about five hours playtesting against my gauntlet (for local competitions) and refined it to this.

Round 1: Abzan Midrange
He gets game one, thoughtseize-->goyf-->loxodon smiter-->siege rhino and I never saw a board wipe. Board out remand, spell snare, logic knot, bring in purges, grave titans, batterskull, baneslayer, Elspeth, wrath. I make my land drops and hit some anticipates and esper charms with a t0 leyline while he does nothing with a triple discard spell + rhino hand. I drop a grave titan on 6, he kills it with pulse and swings anafenza into my tokens, I trade for it, I then untap and drop Elspeth and make tokens, he plays a rhino and passes, and I untap and slam a second grave titan and he scoops. Game three he plays heirarch into smiter, I path smiter, he plays another smiter and another heirarch, I cast anticipate, he slames a siege rhino and swings for 6, I drop to 11 and untap and wrath his board. He plays an anafenza, I play a baneslayer, he plays a batterskull, I play a grave titan, he plays a goyf, and I rev for 5 and he plays a treetop village, and I slam Elspeth and my own batterskull, and he sees the lights. In the third game he had an early choke, but I only ever had two islands in play, as I had a bunch of colonnades so I fetched basics.

Round 2: Dega Midrange: I know this guy plays dega midrange, he's usually on a lingering souls/dark confidant heavy build. I keep anticipate, 5 lands, curse of death's hold. He has inquisition of kozilek x2 into lingering souls, I slam the enchantment on turn 5, and the only threats left in his deck are now monastery mentor. I really lock him down when 2 turns later I resolve a leyline, but the game takes until I have 7 cards left in my library as his deck is nothing but bob, pyromancer, mentor, lingering souls, and removal/discard, so I have to build up a stock of lands and start the manland beatdown with multiple pieces of countermagic, and it takes me until 8 cards to go to draw my 2nd colonnade. Game two, I board basically identically to the abzan guy except I bring in the 2nd leyline over a clique, and I grind him out over the long game, not very eventful at all. These midrange decks were just NOT ready for the FIVE threat package I had to board in against them. Even if they were ready for Elspeth or baneslayer after the weeks I've had them, two grave titans was just a total blindside.

Round 3: Infect: I know this guy is on infect. He plays the fastest RDW build in standard, he plays infect in modern, he plays infect in legacy, and he plays infect in Commander and tiny leaders. Game one, I'm on the play and I keep snapcaster, path, curse of death's hold, 4 lands. he plays a turn one glistener elf, I main phase a snapcaster mage, he burns a pump spell to kill snappy and passes, I play a land and pass, he swings and I path it and force him to tap low and only take 1 infect. I draw a leyline, and with nothing in hand but leyline, lands, and curse, I slam the leyline and pass. He only has 8 damage tapping out for it, so I get to untap and slam curse of death's hold, basically winning the game. He tries to play on with spellskite, but I path the first one and show him a path for the 2nd, so he concedes game one. Game two, he keeps a 6 card hand with double glistener elf, probe, and no lands. He fails to hit a land drop for two turns, so I get to establish a mana base first, and he never really has a chance. Grave titan on about turn 10 seals the deal as he is forced to go all in and can't beat dispel + snapcaster dispel with his available mana.

3-0 for the evening, all in all not bad, 6-1 in games. This is the first time in a long time I've had TWO midrange decks in the same event locally, and man did it show. Esper is a midrange eating machine. Curse of Death's Hold was an absolute MVP in every game I cast it. Most of the time, it was insta-win. To support the curse mainboard, the increased reliance on white and black postboard, I added fetid heath over the sunken ruins, and didn't really notice a problem hitting cryptic, but it sure came up big for fixing to cast grave titan. Grave titan was unstoppable against the fair decks. The best rate an opponent got against the titan was a 2 for 1, every other time it came down it just ended the game in two turns or less.

I didn't play burn tonight, which is probably good as my MU against it I feel is weaker than it was a week or two ago; although I have the spell snares and the extra leyline, burn now has atarka's command and that matchup is just gonna be ugly.

From a theory perspective, I decided to move back to an almost 100% flash deck, with just leyline, curse of death's hold, and the wraths as sorcery speed spells. I was never sad to tap out for any of them. Also on the theory side, I like 4x anticipate, but I really am attached to the shadow of doubt--that card has been key in beating the scapeshift that is at times very popular locally, and randomly hosing other plays is nice; That being said, both times I saw it tonight it just cycled and I never had a chance to get value out of it. I think I would have to play at least 2 if not 3 or 4 copies to make it worthwhile in a larger metagame; certainly outside of locals here, no scapeshift player is going to be expecting leylines + extractions to come in against them out of esper, so there is that.

Anticipate performed well in this build tonight. Every time I cast it, I found something relevant and useful; once it was curse of death's hold, once it was a timely wrath, and it grabbed me surgical against infect for his glistener elves. Of the three times I cast it, only in one of those cases would think twice or telling time have been that good, the other two times anticipate almost indisputably was better. This brings my total for anticipate in testing to be 18-3-4, with my categories being strictly better than--equal to--worse than think twice/telling time. In particular I noted that going deep against the midrange decks was better than drawing more cards, as it enabled me to actually hit my haymakers and slam them in close enough succession that they couldn't come close to keeping up. Card selection is back in modern, and boy is it sweet. Three times it came up worse than think twice or telling time was in testing against affinity, and it was a function of "found a wrath, but couldn't keep the second wrath there" type of deals. The last time it came up worse was against 8 rack, and that was a function of "I just need cards in hand so I can play lands to beat him down with". Even there, it still dug me closer to finding leyline, so I'm not even sure that was strictly worse, as the 8-rack matchup for me is all about staying alive until I can hit leyline, then bury them in manlands.

Thanks for the report amelek, and congrats on the finish. Out of curiosity, what was your sideboard plan against infect?

Did you miss WSZ at all?

edit: i also see that you went back to 26 lands but without zenith. Did you realize in testing that 26 lands was still necessary?

I only almost missed WSZ in the game against the Dega midrange player, where I came close to decking myself because I couldn't find a colonnade in forever. I essentially run a 24 land manabase with two utility lands; I kept 26 because I like the ghost quarters.

Against infect, I boarded in baneslayer, batterskull, titans, Elspeth, Dispel, surgical extractions, wrath of god, cutting spell snares, 2 cryptics, revs, and leyline. My reasoning was that I wanted everything that could block or blow up an infect creature, and I wanted to extract any infector, but in particular the inkmoth nexi, since their deck only has 12 threats. I only won the second game because he bricked on a greedy keep for a few turns; This matchup is not and likely never will be strongly in our favor since we'll never have a good game 1 matchup. I would probably play something like smother or victim of night if I wanted an improved matchup against them; regardless, surgical extraction is huge against them since it lets you strip their threat base severely.

against twin, I bring in leyline, wrath, purges, batterskull, and a dispel. I cut cryptics, shadow of doubt, and one spell snare. The game plan there is to fight on the stack as little as possible and try to lean on blowing up their dudes with wraths and eventually slamming a curse of death's hold. Leyline stops the bolts and the clique disruption; purges hit blood moon and keranos, as well as random lavamancers or other sideboard/mainboard cards.

Against ad nauseum I bring in duress, surgical extraction, leyline, dispel. I cut curse, 4 paths, 2 cryptics. I don't cut verdict because of the potential for alternate kills like with the enchantment that lets them pitch cards for zombie tokens, or potential empty the warrens kills. In those cases, you just counter their haste enabler and then you have a turn to wipe the board. Important in the ad-naus matchup is finding a way to beat boseiju. Esper charm basically means they can't depend on phyrexian unlife, remand is good for buying time, and leyline of sanctity can really mess with their ability to stop you. Surgical targets include Ad Nauseum if available, but also pact and lightning storm itself.


With all combo decks, my preference is generally to try and ride a clique or snapcaster to victory after they damage themselves down with fetches and shocks.

Seems like a respectable list, I really dislike Narset though. Narset really only feels good when tapping out on turn 4 with her which in modern is realllllyyyyy bad

You are looking for Gerard Fabianos Sultai control deck.

Which is being discussed here http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/developing-competitive-modern/597811-sultai-control

Quote from YellowMimic »

Im talking about an Esper control splashing green, Fabiano´s deck doesn´t have white. Im asking about how the deck works splashing green, cause i dont see any post talking about a deck like this and i want know if you think that it will work properly.

I've thought about doing that, and the conclusion I cam to is that adding green doesn't really give you much. Sure you get Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom Pulse, but the trade off is that Blood Moon would absolutely destroy you, not to mention you take a hit when it comes to consistency.

Personally, if I wanted to go a four color control route, I'd go with red instead of green so we can take advantage of burn spells and the Lightning Bolt game plan. Not to mention that we would also gain access to some really cool sideboard cards like Keranos, God of Storms and Slaughter Games. Those are cards/strategies I wouldn't mind adding an additional Blood Moon weakness for.

TL;DR: Splashing green into Esper doesn't offer enough to justify the trade-off, while red does.

My first Esper Control build and I have to say its very solid.
Please feedback is appreciated.

mana leak? 24 lands? only 3 colonnades? I wouldn't call it solid, but it's a start. I'm not sure lingering souls is better than the third wrath + additional removal or countermagic. I goldfished about 7 or 8 hands and played it out to turn 5 against BGx, and it felt much more like a midrange deck than a control deck.

RE: Blood Baron of Vizkopa: It dies to liliana against BGx pretty readily, which doesn't necessarily remove it from the equation. However, the following DO matter:
1. it can't tangle with an average sized tarmogoyf.
2. it can't attack and block. BBV is an 8 point life swing, batterskull is effectively at least 12 with the attack + block.

If we needed a card that was a split between *just* being a burn card and being good against BGx, I'd take it. Having tested it extensively in the past, I found that it was better to go hard for the decks than split the hate--leylines for burn, grave titans/baneslayers/planeswalkers against BGx. Baneslayer can beat a rhino or a tasigur in a fight, and can race any goyf. It's also a better clock against burn than either BBV OR batterskull. Grave titans are just impossible for BGx to beat--at the least it's a 2 for 1, most of the time if it swings once you just win the game.

Creeping Tarpit helps earlier/mid game its adds more versatility to the deck. Colonnades is great but is 4 really necessary, I think 3-1 is fine I wouldn't go lower than that. Also 24 lands is not bad I have alot draw cards so i dnt miss my land drops.

I mean, it can work. It sounds more like a Esper Mentor splashing Green. I would look at an average Esper Mentor decklist and maybe cut some blade splicers or something like that, try to make it more midrangey. I feel like it could work however it would be a much more proactive gameplan than what most people are working on in this thread.

I run 4-1 in my list and really like tarpit however tarpit dies to bolt which make me hesitant to run it over a fourth collonade.

I'm running the miser's shadow of doubt mainboard because while scapeshift isn't super common anymore at my shop, there are 11 distinct players who own the deck (out of about 25 players total) and 7 of them have top 8'd or won elite IQ's/super IQ's with the deck, so I'm keeping it over the 4th anticipate for the moment because at any given modern event locally I could get stuck with someone who is a pretty highly skilled scapeshift player. Even if they aren't playing it, it's very fair game to be just handed to someone who showed up and didn't have a deck, so overall it's a reasonable metagame choice. Were I to go home for a big tournament over break or something, I would certainly cut it for the 4th anticipate.

I think that anything less than 4 esper charms is incorrect. We're playing black for TWO mainboard cards--creeping tar pit and Esper charm. One of those is incidental, and the other is the reason for the splash. Everything else black (discard, bombs, extractions, night of soul's betrayal/curse of death's hold) is a sideboard card or a flex slot being allocated based on the current metagame.

Think Twice: This card was excellent, and still is excellent, at doing what it does. Namely, it provides incremental card advantage that helps us smoothly transition to the late game and continue to hit land drops, particularly against discard heavy opponents. However, I believe that the current metagame does not require the same dedication to continuous land drops that earlier builds did. Since the pod banning, the number of matches that we have to grind out against disruptive threats has significantly lessened. While we still have to contend with heavy discard and powerful creatures, we don't have to deal with the likes of reveillark, entomber exarch, sin collector, tidehollow sculler, and Eternal Witness. The Wafo-tapa build originally was designed to contend with a metagame in which the top deck in the format was a pile of 2 for 1's attached to a value engine and some mana dorks, with the potential for a combo finish. This necessitated the likes of think twice and esper charm in full quantities alongside other cantrips (multiple shadow of doubt, arguably a straight 2 for 1 at the time anyway, and remands). In the current metagame, the only 2 for 1's that we truly have to contend with are liliana somehow edicting away a creature, remand, and cryptic command. Because the format is a lot more focused on advantageous 1 for 1 trades, via discard, removal, and liliana of the veil, we actually don't need as much raw card advantage anymore. I hypothesize (and it has played out well in testing) that our best route to victory against those attrition based midrange decks is to use card selection (anticipate, random cantrips) and 1 for 1's to survive until we can cast a large sphinx's revelation, or several esper charms/snapbacked esper charms to pull insurmountably ahead. Back this up with wraths and curse of death's hold to cripple their ability to net 2 for 1's via lingering souls + threats or casting both halves of lingering souls. I've certainly found via testing that postboard, we really just want to slow them down enough that we can slam something bigger than what they can reasonably deal with or race. Baneslayer angel demands removal or she puts you too far ahead to lose in just 1 or 2 turns, and I have never lost a game against BGx in which I've cast a grave titan. The ability to dig hard for those threats with anticipate (probably while operating on fewer lands than in the past because of the lack of think twice drawing extra cards) seems better to me because we don't need to assemble 10 lands to make 7 kitties. we need six to slam a titan or a planeswalker that they can't beat, and it's as simple as that. Furthermore, I want to point out that this plan works because I've moved away from using WSZ as a finisher in the mainboard, which I feel is more significant than cutting think twice, although the two are linked. By giving away WSZ, we commit to actually ending the game; at the same time, it's one less "air" card in the mainboard, and against most fair decks game one we can afford to dig until we stabilize and then win with manlands while they topdeck, and against unfair decks we already have clique and snapcasters to clock with, and the addition of anticipate over think twice makes it easier to actually dig to a critical mass of disruption to stall them into topdecking mode, at which point we should win almost by default. I would also like to point out that between leyline of sanctity and curse of death's hold, I have inevitability against most of the format via lock-out, and many opponents will concede to those cards mainboard if they can't deal with them rather than trying to play out game one to a draw or decking. In that sense, the leyline and the curse function like a haymaker WSZ in some matchups.

Postboard, the addition of anticipate over think twice means we can play slightly less narrow hate, but be more likely to find a critical mass of it early on. I have five bomb-tastic cards to slam against midrange decks, some of which can come in against unfair decks as a "they went for it, I stalled them out and have a window to slam a clock and win" cards, and then I have some moderately broad but still powerful hate in the form of discard, cheap countermagic, and celestial purges to shore up unfair matchups. I would probably try to fit a 2nd dispel or a disenchant, or maybe stony silence into the board at a GP, probably cutting something like a grave titan or maybe the wrath of god. that being said, a playset of spell snares is pretty good against affinity and they make it not unreasonable to hit 5 lands and slam a bomb they can't beat, so that's questionable.

Made few minor adjustments from my post yesterday..
I cut my one Mana Leak for another Remand.
In my post yesterday i only had 59 cards lol. I noticed I was missing one more Anticipate.

Comments?



Edit: I dnt like the matchup v Tron so im thinking of adding 2 Aven Mindcensor to the SB.

Hey guys I'm jamming Tasigur and Thought Scour into this deck and testing it out today. After playing a few Im not sure Tasigur makes the deck better, but I am enjoying it a lot.

Quote from amalek0 »

Think Twice: This card was excellent, and still is excellent, at doing what it does. Namely, it provides incremental card advantage that helps us smoothly transition to the late game and continue to hit land drops, particularly against discard heavy opponents. However, I believe that the current metagame does not require the same dedication to continuous land drops that earlier builds did. Since the pod banning, the number of matches that we have to grind out against disruptive threats has significantly lessened.

I hypothesize (and it has played out well in testing) that our best route to victory against those attrition based midrange decks is to use card selection (anticipate, random cantrips) and 1 for 1's to survive until we can cast a large sphinx's revelation, or several esper charms/snapbacked esper charms to pull insurmountably ahead.

The ability to dig hard for those threats with anticipate (probably while operating on fewer lands than in the past because of the lack of think twice drawing extra cards) seems better to me because we don't need to assemble 10 lands to make 7 kitties.

Just repeating myself, but thought I'd add my perspective:

@Think Twice: Think Twice is a mana sink that lets you put excess mana into card drawing. It both enables and benefits from the increased number of lands these decks generate. The card has nothing to do with grinding out a Birthing Pod deck; you outscale that strategy by far more than a 1-card margin.

@Hypothesis: The idea that you just trade 1 for 1 until you can drop a bomb is the Midrange philosophy, and what differentiates it from Control, where you lock your opponent out with an engine that scales indefinitely. The hybrid between the two is all that's available in Standard, and essentially what people refer to when they say "control", but the two strategies are fundamentally different. Midrange decks take take the ramp spells and cheap creatures that you see in aggro or ramp, and instead run cheap disruption on the bottom half of their curve. They get called control because they're on defense for the first few turns against the more creature heavy decks. Control decks (pure draw-go, at least) spend the first few turns ignoring their opponent if possible, and drawing cards. That's where the turn 4 Verdict comes in, clearing up the lost positional advantage, which is even more important than the raw card advantage that people attribute to sweepers. I can see the argument that sweepers are just bad in Modern, and I totally agree. In UWR I don't run any, but this deck makes up for non-creature deficiencies by being a monster against combo/control.

@WSZ: 10 lands? WSZ is good because when you draw it in your opening hand, it becomes a 4 or 5 mana play if need be. It's a Restoration Angel early and Entreat the Angels late.


You should try and watch some of Cuneo's old stuff, if it's still on his twitch stream. I used to yell at my monitor watching him ignore things that were "obviously" going to be what lost him the game. If he could draw a card, he would just go for it. You guys worry about having early game bullets, but Cuneo could seriously have 2 Think Twice and a Mana Leak in hand, and let Geist of Saint Traft resolve. Heart of the Cards...Heart of the Cards. He also used to always rant about how Forbidden Alchemy was a grossly unplayable magic card, because it cost 3 mana to replace itself. See, Cuneo designed draw-go decks in a way where he was mentally focused on the endgame from turn 1, almost like a combo deck. These aren't good stuff decks, but instead have a lot of weaknesses and breakpoints while pursuing their strategy. Shifting towards midrange/control or aggro/control hyrbrids is what contorl players have been doing since Modern was created and Teachings was "debunked", and in those types of decks you can run a bunch of sweet creatures/planeswalkers with blue/black/red disruption on the bottom of the curve.