MTG Salvation

I meant more the changes to his sideboard. Yes, the three easiest rounds are out of the way, but you underestimate the effects it has:

1. Unintentional draws are less likely. Everyone you play in round 4 at x-0 is a very good magic player either because they're a pro or a solid grinder. This in particular matters with our archetype: people play fast so we have time to think about the hard plays.

2. The metagame with 3 byes is very narrow. You only have tier 1 and similar powerlevel decks, which means no major surprises, or very good players on lower tier archetypes that are either masters of the deck or very good players on a solid, focused brew.

This matters because it means sideboard plans can be narrower and more focused: there is no reason to worry about burn if you can assume every burn player you come up against is closer to patrick sullivan than your local fnm hero--the matchup is slightly unfavorable, but against a good player you need too many sideboard slots for it to be worthwhile. This is not the case in round 1. Ive shadowed the liats and deckchecks team at gp's before. Burn is a much bigger percentage of the field day one than you would think. Same thing with affinity. These are known quantities however, and the more local players at the GP are aware of it and winnow down the bad burn and affinity players in the early rounds. When you come in with byes, you don't have to worry about joker tron players with mainboard goddamned cavern of souls for sundering titan or jund players with multiple thruns. The reality is that those early byes do a ton to reduce variance, even if they are otherwise easy.

Quote from Cipher »

Quote from Sentimental_Engine_Slayer »

Ok wafo we were just kidding. Serum
Visions is #1. And we like your foils. You can use your real account now.

You had me up until the part where wafo invented draw go control. That's when we knew it was you, Guillame.

Somebody get amalek to update this the thread title guys. It's not just modern esper draw go. You WILL do as wafo says or you are NOT in the club.


*sassy finger wave*



Give me a break



I'm with amalek on "mtgo sucks I'm not spending money on that" , and it that makes my opinion invalid, oh well.

So now that we've all learned our opinions are completely irrelevant, and none of our experiences or testing matters (because we all only play 2 round fnm's against players who forgot to put spells in their deck and accidentally showed up with 75 lands) I guess we can all just go home.

It's not like Piotrowiak and Stokpile, pound for pound, put up better "in paper" results with similar lists than wafo did. Nah, screw those guys because they aren't on modo and haven't personally messaged Cipher a copy of their DC number and play history. /Sarcasm

I play in SCG events or grand prixs when I have time, I'm also a musician, Married, and work 60 hours a week doing R&D engineering for Apple. If I think mtgo sucks, and I'm not willing to just drop everything and leave my wife every weekend, but still manage to play 6-7 medium sized events per month, should that make my experiences totally irrelevant?

Where is your modo channel where you put up such amazing results? Who here has ever seen Cipher play a game of magic? I mean jesus christ dude. Nobody knows who you are and you don't even meet YOUR OWN CRITERIA for being allowed to have an opinion.

Donny is a busy guy but still finds time to crunch Caleb D ON STREAM (with a list he tweaked himself, even though he forgot to ask your permission)

That is the most off putting thing I've read in a while. What the hell is the point of even having a forum?


"Test on cockatrice? HA. I only test with a pool of former world champions. I used to do that lowly sort of thing back in the day before I wasn't just some guy *****ing about other people's opinions on the internet"

Of course this may or may not be true, because "I personally never trust anything I read on the internet" , so for all we know.....

I don't know what category of logical fallacy that post falls under, but obviously the whole forum is full of opinions, and nobody ever said opinions are only valid if someone is a hall of famer.

My point was that you guys collectively dumpstered his entire new decklist, called it garbage and used his failure to cash a GP as justification for hating on fundamentally different approach to the archetype. The irony is that analyzing what he decided was a better version of the deck is the most likely thing to result in a Tier 1 or Tier 1.5 deck. But no, people seem to be under the impression that this deck is already where it needs to be, because they read about someone's FNM and win-a-box results.

But it's really not. I used to play in local Modern and Legacy tournaments; I even top 4'd a Goyf tournament and a PPTQ with this deck. The same month I ran this online and never managed to 5-0 a league. The competition is stiffer than most any smaller (50 or less players) event you're going to find on paper. I take the deck to a GP and hit the same brick wall. I look on this forum and nobody has cracked it, either. I've been infinite in paper FNMs for as long as I can remember, with all of my deck updates coming from other people's prize money. I failed to Day 2 the last GP I was at. There's a glass ceiling above the local tournament level that you're just not seeing.

Then comes Wafo, who warps the maindeck and puts up more 5-0's in a 30-day period than most full-time MODO grinders. Sounds like a potentially Tier 1 deck to me. And...the entire thread rejects the final list completely off-hand.

That's the problem with forums: "...the opinion of the village idiot is given the same weight as the opinion of aristotle".

I had the same experience here with modo. The level of some players in modo is so high compared to small tournies. I constantly 5-0'd week after week in local but online it is difficult. I do 5-0 at times but consistently I have not. I do not know what build of the deck is optimal but I do see and understand many of the things going on in the new wafo list that make a lot of sense with the current environment. Selling my paper collection and buy in on modo has upped my game considerably and has possibly been the best choice I have made in regards to magic.

If modo had the user experience of hearthstone, I'd buy in. However, you don't have to play on modo to get good competition. I test in person with people who are regulars in the money at GP's, and I test online (cockatrice and mws) with a group of insividuals that includes a number of silver pro's and some of your "big names" in the european legacy scene.

I pretty much agree with Cipher in that people shouldn't be as quick to discredit what Wafo is trying just because he didn't 12-x+ the tournament and it was different from what they've been doing. 1 man playing his 1 list is going to be subject to variance on any given day and I doubt that Wafo chose to deviate from his past lists on a mere whim.

In regards to the list itself I think the 1 of Ancestral Vision makes more sense than some people (like Stokpile) think it does at first glance. Amalek has already run Leyline of Sanctity as a 1-2 of main board just because its a hoser versus some archetypes like burn and still gets some value in vs GBx and Grixis. The fact that its dead in an also not insignificant # of matchups (and useless as a topdeck in others where it is relevant in the opening hand) wasn't enough to discourage him from playing it because he felt like it buffed up his win % due to the free wins and expected value vs other decks to make it worth it. Ancestral Vision is sort of similar in that while its probably not going to give you the same sort free wins Leyline can, the value of having it in your opening hand is very real, and it has the benefit of being relevant in a lot more match ups. It's hard to just do the math and say "this is the Expected Value for Leyline in Metagame X and this is the Expected Value for AV in Metagame X" and just say which one is better, but if you can afford to run into a dead Leyline at some point then that probably means you can afford to instead run into a single dead AV. It also at least seems reasonable that AV is the type of card where you get the most EV from the first addition and each subsequent copy gives diminishing returns*.

*disclaimer while I also have a degree in math (lotta math guys in this thread it seems ) and believe this to be correct I have not actually crunched any numbers.

People's (mostly Cipher's) recent posts have caused me to look again at Cipher's ... Er, Wafo's list from the weekend.

I actually don't hate the spells section of Wafo's list... Though 20+% of the deck being draw or filtering does smack of just-too-much. I like the 3 Logic Knots, the singleton Negate, the 4 Wrath/4 Path/4 Cryptic/4 Charm foundation. I think Secure is an overall, though not strict, upgrade to Zenith. And I like the 3 Snapcasters, particularly with more cheap spells, fewer TTs, and Secure being a decent midgame card. I'm thinking I'll shave a Serum for a Blessed Alliance, do SOMETHING with that God awful Leak, and give it a go.

That being said, the manabase actually offends me. I hate the 8 fetch/8 fetchable split. I don't like the 9 potential CIPT lands. And I think this deck really needs to have GQ in it as a catch-all. I do like that he shaved to 25, though.

And, as for the SB, I think with the velocity of this deck, we can run fewer 3-ofs and touch up some of the MUs the deck is weak against, relying on seeing more SB cards than a typical deck would. I've never been a fan of cutting Stonies because, like Dredge in Legacy, once you stop showing Affinity respect, it will make you pay. There's probably room for GY hate and I honestly don't think Gideon is where we want to be unless you're expecting a very slow meta and just need to prevent a draw.

Overall, not a dumpster fire, as I first thought. More like a decent car running on bald tires.

I think one of the biggest things I'm starting to realize is how the fundamental assumption that you can snowball with the deck is becoming questionable. I'm not sure most people ever saw it that way, but I remember when Revelation + Colonnade felt busted. Now with Pod and Splinter Twin out of the picture the only relic of the Midrange era left is Jund, where both payoff cards are still insane. Junk Company turned into Bant Eldrazi and is twice as fast. Infect is a Tier 1 version of Boggles. Dredge is a new version of combo that couldn't care less about your counterspells or late game. Even UWR became a combo knock-off, with a turn 4 auto-win.

There's nothing left in the format for Cryptic to grind out; I even started trimming them against Nahiri. I went down to 3 copies maindeck, and I'm starting to question whether the Revelation payoff might not be better as something a bit faster. Wafo seems to me to be playing a game where he loops either his 10 counterspells or 8 removal spells ad nauseam, without focusing on a lock-out. I think swapping the Spell Snares and flex slots for Serum Visions and a third Snapcaster lets you Wrath repeatedly, more reliably. My question is whether there isn't a way to accelerate the late game of the deck by swapping Revelation for a planeswalker or something. I'd hate to become a graveyard deck with Dredge in Tier 1, so I think Gifts is out.

This is all theory, but I'll be damned if Wafo's testing for this GP wasn't some of the most valuable testing we've seen since Runed Halo. I'm sure he's done till the next Modern GP in Europe, but the direction he was heading gives some insights.

To some extent, I agree with the idea that presumpton of snowballing over time may be losing relevance.

I eventually shifted to leylines in my otherwise haymaker-light lists because I found I stabilized against red decks frequently, and still got chip-shotted out. With the way the metagame looks now (swiftspear + become immense + temur battle rage), we can't stabilize in the way we used to anymore. Additionally, the metagame has shifted away from the midrange that is our bread and butter, and so many of the creatures in the format are now x-5's that make colonnade less useful. The three changes the wafo list has me considering are as follows:
1. 4th verdict main.
2. 3 colonnades. They just aren't the powerhouse they used to be, and so unlike UWR we don't need them as part of a clock strategy.
3. The switch to some number of shambling vents--it does something against x-2 aggressive creatures.

So i am currently 1-2 in a league, i am playing wafos list less 3 ee for budget reasons, I must say the list does play smooth my loss to burn and grixis delver after a mull to 5 g1 and a misplay to lose me my window in g2 after some sick draw steps from opponent allowed him to overcome gideon into baneslayer I must say the list is solid and I can see where the power of visions is to just power thru the deck and the 1 off visions has been decent tho its a total flex slot as of now.

I found myself with 3 unused slots in the sideboard (decklist below) that I'd like to put to work in really hating out a difficult matchup - help to beat burn would be preferred.

But what's the ideal hate card for burn? Assuming that burn has a standard list with 6 skullcrack effects main, and a sideboard with 4 path to exile and 4 destructive revelry, here are my thoughts:

- Leyline of Sanctity stands out as the card that would most likely be able to win the game if it stayed in play, since I have enough cheap ways to deal with their creatures. However, I noticed that a lot of my burn opponents blindly bring in destructive revelry against me game 2 (and would bring it for sure game 3 or if they had scouting info).

- Kor Firewalker is in a similar spectrum. It's not as powerful as Leyline and still suffers from opponents bringing sideboard cards (Path). While getting Firewalker pathed is a lot less devasting then a Leyline being hit by destructive revelry, if the end result is that I still can't win this mathcup without my hate card in play, this differece won't even matter. Am I wrong in thinking so?

- Timely Reinforcement is beat by Skullcrack effects, which they have more copies then Path or Revelry. Burn is not really pressured to tap out the turn before I have 3 mana, so it's hard to naturally set up a succesful Timely Reinforcements, but I assume that some % I could force out their hand with Esper Charm, or protect it with a counterspell. How often does that happen though? An advantage of Timely Reinforcements is that you get to punish a bit people that blindly bring in Paths and Revelries. I have been running 0 sb hate for burn and the games I did win were on the back of them blanking out on their sideboard cards, so the effect is noticeable.

- Rest for the Weary have the same general pros and cons as Timely Reinforcements, being easier to sneak through a Skullcrack but with a lower payoff. Blessed Alliance is a worse Rest for the Weary if all I care about is beating burn, since I already have enough removal and would get little added utility from the card's flexibility and Escalate.

Of those options, Rest for the Weary is clearly the safest, while the others have higher risks and higher payoffs.

I am leaning towards Leyline for now because the matchups seems so bad that I need to take a risk here. It could also be a mix of Leyline and Kor Firewalker to at least keep them guessing.

Alternatively, if neither hate card is doing enough for me, I could just accept defeat and use my slots to hate out a different matchup. Is beating Burn a fight worth fighting? I don't have an illusion that I can become favorable with just 3 slots, but if the match win% raised about 30 points, it would be worth it in my opinion. Is that doable?

Thoughts?

If all you want to do is hate out burn, I personally like spell snare + dispel + timely reinforcements. I don't really like timely anywhere else but vs burn, but if you want to beat burn, turn 4 timely with counterspell backup, turn six snap timely with counterspell backup is pretty good. Of course, spell snare is also just the stone nuts vs burn. If you don't run spell snare, I don't think it's worth trying to beat burn--better off spending your slots shoring up infect and suicide zoo/small zoo/bant eldrazi.

So ended up 4-1 in a league today with the new Wafo list and I must say after being paired 4 times vs suicide zoo(restore balance combo was my r1) the visions allow you to dig for continue answers and it seems like I might have dismissed the new list somewhat as it certainly has merit.

I won't disagree, that if you expect to play against suicide zoo and bant eldrazi every round until the end of time, the new wafo list could be a lot worse, but it just feels woefully unprepared against so many other decks.

A few things:

As far as toxic flames, I was about 6 Jack and Cokes into my birthday evening, and that post came across as both elitist and accusatory / belittling to the entirety of everyone who posts here. Now, I'm not the political correctness police by any means, I just thought it was stupid, and I still do. But far be it from me to hold a grudge against someone because I didn't like their "tone"

So putting that aside, I actually can get behind a lot of what Cipher has said post-LileGate.

I think it would be hard to argue AGAINST Cipher's point of "cryptic command doesn't have that many decks where cryptic is a trump card that grinds them out" because "those decks have dissapeared and now we have things like zoo, infect, and even nahiri where you would feasibly trim cryptics"

Yes, yes, and yes. I'm not actually going to comment on wafo's list, seeing as it has 4 cryptic, but I will say Serum visions seems fine and I would also be interested in building a more "low to the ground" version that isn't looking for cryptics to be some big gamebreaking payoff.

And before anyone tries explaining versatility, I get it. I'm one of the biggest Cryptic Command fans that there could ever possibly be. It just that Cipher and the people who agree with him (I think Amalek chimed in), I feel are on to something as far as cryptic and it's interactions in the metagame are concerned.

Brew accordingly.

Yeah, my post was pretty toxic as well. I'm prone to flying off the lid as well; keeps life interesting...

@Burn Sideboard: Ive been looking for some dork that can stonewall all of the 1-drops these aggro decks are all running. Kor Firewalker seems like the best against Burn, but is it useful enough against Zoo? What about Death's Shadow decks? Something that can block those decks and not die to a bolt would be great. Is Wall of Essence or Perimeter Captain ridiculous? Essentially block 2 guys, since the lifegain from one Jackal Pup offsets the damage from the other. Here's some other notables:

2 CMC

• Kor Firewalker
  
• Nyx-Fleece Ram
  

3 CMC

• Kitchen Finks
  
• Oracle of Nectars
  
• Descendant of Kiyomaro
  

@Revelation's Too Slow: I don't know if this was Wafo's actual direction, but his deck seemed to be running much lower to the ground, and he definitely seems to be wanting to loop Verdicts or counters. Took me a while to realize why the third Snapcaster was there, but then I played against the Bant Spirits deck and needed to cast Wrath about 4 times.

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed to know. So I will either run 2 Spell Snare (instead of 2 Condenm) and then 3 Timely Reinforcements on the sb, or keep 2 Condemn main and use the sideboard slots for Thoughtseize + Negate or 3 Rest in Peace.

Thoughts on bodies:
Thing in the ice isn't the worst thing you could be playing.
Loxodon peacekeeper has some hilarious potential
Nyxfleece ram is alright.
PLumeveil is relevant in other matchups.
Spellskite is playable, but it can't block and eat bolts on the same turn without dying.
Finks, as well as wall of omens work well with resto, but I think thats a different deck.
A shame we can't run martyr of sands effectively.
The original wafo-list ran oust, and it still has potential, especially with more snapcaster mages.
Harm's way can semi-counter a burn spell and kill a dude.
Awe strike is some sick zooicide tec.
Prism ring is a 1-drop that gains life, but doesn't block.
Note that riot control doesn't specify combat damage.
Spirit linking their own eidolon is a play.
Sunspring expedition is a 1-drop rest for the weary, but I would only play this if you have a full set of spell snares.

If you want something for burn, zoo and death's shadow, I feel that timely is your best bet.
Rest for the weary/pulse of the fields are quite good against burn, but a bit lacking against death's shadow.

Hi guys

I just got back from GP Indianapolis where I did ok with a similar esper list going 11-4 missing top 64 on tie breaks and getting paired against tron in round 15.
The matchups I played where as follows:
Round 1: Bye
Round 2: Jund (2-0)
Round 3: Affinity (2-0)
Round 4: Blue Red Delver (0-2)
Round 5: Abzan(2-0)
Round 6: Naya Burn (1-2)
Round 7: Jeskai Geist(1-2)Punted horribly to lose this match.
Round 8: Jeskai Nahiri (2-0)
Round 9: Jeskai Kiki Twin (2-0)
Round 10: Elves (2-0)
Round 11: G/W Hatebears (2-1)
Round 12: R/G Valakut (2-1)(Against Ari Lax who lost game three forgetting to pay for his pact lol.)
Round 13: Infect (2-1)
Round 14: Affinity (2-0)
Round 15: G/R Tron (1-2)

I feel like I got a fair balance of match ups which gives me faith in the deck moving forward. I've been wanting to fix the manabase to the deck as it is the only thing I've had problems with. My initial thought is remove 1 ghost quarter for a fourth delta but that could be wrong. Also the sideboard could maybe use work. Any comments and help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Your list is definitely very close to what most of us play.

Few questions:
1. How did the shambling vents perform? At first blush, it seems your mana base could be a tad clunky, for sure. I would have to run the numbers on it.

2. What was the rationale for 1 of mana leak and 1 of deprive? I tried deprive as a singleton for a while, and it just always felt absolutely terrible. Mana leak makes sense from a theoretical standpoint as the 4th 2 mana counterspell, but why deprive as number three?

3. How did detention sphere perform over the event for you? I've never found the permanent based exile effects to be relevant, as they just get blown out by the decks you want that kind of flexible removal against.

4. Your matchups appeared to be pretty different from the overall metagame at the event--for sure you had the favorable matchups break your way--of your matchup results, only the loss against UR delver feels unexpected; RG tron, Jeskai geist, and Burn are all unfavorable matchups, and affinity/control/BGx/midrange creature decks are all favorable matchups for our archetype in general. Did you feel that any of the matchups you won were significantly unfavorable matchups to start with? Do you think your build had any losses that were to favorable matchups?

Quote from spartzm0980 »

Hi guys

I just got back from GP Indianapolis where I did ok with a similar esper list going 11-4 missing top 64 on tie breaks and getting paired against tron in round 15.
The matchups I played where as follows:
Round 1: Bye
Round 2: Jund (2-0)
Round 3: Affinity (2-0)
Round 4: Blue Red Delver (0-2)
Round 5: Abzan(2-0)
Round 6: Naya Burn (1-2)
Round 7: Jeskai Geist(1-2)Punted horribly to lose this match.
Round 8: Jeskai Nahiri (2-0)
Round 9: Jeskai Kiki Twin (2-0)
Round 10: Elves (2-0)
Round 11: G/W Hatebears (2-1)
Round 12: R/G Valakut (2-1)(Against Ari Lax who lost game three forgetting to pay for his pact lol.)
Round 13: Infect (2-1)
Round 14: Affinity (2-0)
Round 15: G/R Tron (1-2)

I feel like I got a fair balance of match ups which gives me faith in the deck moving forward. I've been wanting to fix the manabase to the deck as it is the only thing I've had problems with. My initial thought is remove 1 ghost quarter for a fourth delta but that could be wrong. Also the sideboard could maybe use work. Any comments and help would be appreciated. Thanks!

TheAnnihilator0798's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
4 Esper charm 2 Think Twice 2 Sphinx's Revelation 2 Snapcaster Mage 1 White Sun's Zenith 1 Elspeth Sun's Champion 4 Path to Exile 2 Runed Halo 2 Detention Sphere 3 Supreme Verdict 1 Wrath of God 2 Spell Snare 1 Mana Leak 1 Deprive 2 Logic Knot 4 Cryptic Command 3 Celestial Collonade 2 Shambling vents 4 Flooded Strand 3 Polluted Delta 2 Hallowed Fountain 1 Watery Grave 1 Godless Shrine 1 Glacial Fortress 1 Drowned Catacombs 1 Mystic Gate 2 Ghost Quarter 3 Island 1 Plains 1 Reflecting Pool		2 Condemn 1 Runed Halo 1 Hallowed Burial 2 Thoughtseize 2 Negate 1 Tefferi, Mage of zhalfir 1 Baneslayer Angel 1 Timely Reinforcements 2 Kor Firewalker 1 Detention Sphere 1 Pithing Needle

I like a lot of the things about this list, but I have to ask... Why 3x Detention Sphere in the 75? How were Kor Firewalker and Teferi for you? Gratz on the finish, super pumped to see a more traditional list being successful -- ZENITH 4 LYFE.

Edit: I just realized that Runed Halo is pretty good against Dredge -- name Amalgam, Bloodghast, or Conflagrate = profit

Shambling vent has been great for me. I didn't like how revelation was the only main deck lifegain and a few hits for two can get you out of range of anything or just buy you extra turns to find what you need. Definitely worth shaving a colonnade for and I'd rather cut ghost quarters to work on the mana over one of these.

Deprive gives the deck another hard counter in the late game but is horrible in the early game. Mana leak is the exact opposite. That was the reasoning by the 1-1 split. 2 mana leaks may just be better.

Detention sphere is a necessary evil for a deck like this. Yes it can get blown up. However we need a way to deal with a resolved Planeswalker or troublesome permanent other than cryptic bounce. Liliana nahiri blood moon cranial plating to name a few as well as being able to take out creatures and two for one you opponent.
The card can have down points but I would recommend trying them to anyone who doubts it.

As far as the meta went I didn't play against eldrazi or deaths shadow at all and both were matchups i was fine playing against, especially eldrazi. Outside of that I feel like the matchups i got were similar to the meta there. Tons of gbx and nahiri. I don't feel like jeskai gesit was a bad matchup but it took some hard punts for me to lose. Without main deck runed halo I have to imagine the valakut matchup is awful. Overall the only matchup I was afraid of going into the tournament were tron and burn.

Firewalker was a last minute switch hoping to shore up the burn matchup. Teferri was only cast once all day but it won me a game against infect that no other card in my deck would have.