MTG Salvation

Hi all, I've been playing tezzeret / thopters for a couple of years now and I finally took it to a PPTQ this weekend and made top 8 in an 80 person event. I put together a more of a thopter/prison build since I find that Tezz, AoB has largely been unnecessary game one, and can be too slow in the unfair matchups to have much of an impact. Here's my list and report.



Matches
Round 1 - 1-0, Hollow One (2-0)
- Game one he did the usual hollow one things, got me down to around 10 before I got a bridge out and locked him out with welding jar backup. The crane did some nice early blocking.
- Game two I kept a mediocre keep that ended up getting better after a turn one burning inquiry he had a turn two fish, but I got the thopter combo online turn 3, landed a bridge, and turn 5 went infinite with time sieve after he tapped out before he could find a hate piece.

Round 2 - 1-1, KCI (0-2)
I was expecting this to be a decent match game one, as if I can land a chalice on 1 and spyglass on EE, I can shut him out of the game. Unfortunately, he killed me turn 3 when he was on the play and I didn't have a chalice in hand.
- Game two I made the mistake of playing out a spyglass on EE turn 2 before running out a revoker on KCI and he did a bunch of comboing that turn. The game went back and forth for a bit, but I couldn't find a chalice and he eventually got the nature's claims and killed me. In retrospect, I think in this matchup I need to mulligan aggressively for a chalice.

Round 3 - 2-1, Humans (2-1)
- Game one he's on the play and lands vial, followed by two champion, a lieutenant, a mantis rider, and an image copying rider. A crane does some early blocking, but he gets me to 3 life before I'm able to whir for a bridge, but I end up stuck with 2 cards in hand still, and he kills me with a two power creature and a one power creature. (I'd thumped with the crane earlier to save damage from a large champion).
- Game two he runs out vial, vial, champion, champion, hierarch, hierarch all on one land. I play an EE on one. On to game 3.
- Game three he gets some early creatures down, including a Thalia, but my crane keeps back his smaller dudes and saves me more than 10 damage over the course of the game. He plays a turn four freebooter, but I whir for torpor orb, which ends up buying me a ton of time. I assemble the combo over the next couple of turns while taking some chip shots from 2 or 3 power creatures, then sac the torpor orb and make a bunch of thopters and bury him with advantage.

Round 4 - 3-1, Hollow One (2-0)
Had an amazingly friendly opponent this round which was a joy to play against and talk with. Anyway:
- Game one he lands two hollow ones and a flamewake phoenix on turn 2 and looks happy with himself. I play a crane and pass. He attacks me, I block the phoenix and take 10. Next turn I land a bridge and that's the game.
- Game two ended up being more interesting. He thought seizes me turn one and sees my hand of (land, glimmer void, EE, whir, thopter foundry, bridge, mix) and takes the foundry instead of the bridge. Seeing my hand, he then runs out an EE on 0. I play land go, he does something, then my turn two I play my EE to blow up his, which frees me up to play a bauble and keep my glimmer void alive! Turn three I play a Sai, master thopterist and make a thopter with a box opal. Sai's thopters were all-stars providing blockers until I can get the combo together and win.

Round 5 - 4-1 Burn (2-1)
- Game one, I was on the draw which is still scary against burn, but I've got a hand with the combo in it, so I keep. I get down to 4 before I've got the combo going, but only have 3 lands - but it's enough to let me come back and win.
- Game two was surprisingly long and drawn out. He got me pretty low and plays a rest in peace, before Sai stabilizes the ground and a chalice on two shuts off a chunk of his deck. We go back and forth for a while, I can't get the combo going because of the RIP, so I eventually feel comfortable to sacrifice my chalice on 2 to my thopter foundry and get the combo going. I gain more life, but he destructive revelry's the foundry and I'm under the gun again. I play another chalice on 2, but he hit lava spike, rift bolt to get me for exactsies. My next card was a whir which would have been for watchband orb to seal the game.
- Game three, he plays lavamancer on his turn one, but my turn 2 I double escalate collective brutality, then land a chalice on 1 and the game is pretty smooth.

Round 6 - 5-1 BridgeVine (2-1)
Another really friendly opponent. I've never played against this deck, but it looks like crazy fun.
- Game one I keep a hand with Sorcerous Spyglass and Damping Sphere, on the back of whir of invention, mox opal, and some land. He's on the play and on turn 2 has 2 vengevines and 2 zombies in play. I play a crane on turn 2 and pass and he hits me back with vengevines and zombies, then makes even MORE zombies (he had two bridges in the yard turn 2). My turn 3 I whir for bridge, but the spyglass and damping sphere in my hand mean that his zombie army kills me. dang.
- Game two he mulligans to 5, and I keep a hand with bridge and grafdigger's cage. He ancient grudge's my cage, and tries to hit my bridge, but a welding jar saves it. From there I make a bunch of thopters and win.
- Game three I get lucky with him hitting lands off his self-milling and am only facing down a vengevine and a couple zombies. A glint-nest crane saves me a bunch of damage the first few turns by blocking zombies as I stall on lands. I hit my third land a few turns late, but land the combo and chump block his guys for a while. I eventually land a bridge and have a backup whir in hand if anything goes wrong and my thopters take the game.

Round 7 5-1-1 (ID) and make my first top 8!

QuarterFinals (loss) G/W Tron.
Everyone here knows how awful a matchup tron has traditionally been for this deck. I'm hoping that my prison version is better, but I'm still scared since this is my first Tron matchup with the new build.

Game one - He mulligans and plays forest go and I'm still trying to figure out what he's on. Next turn he plays a urza land and I get nervous. However, My turn two play is a chalice on 1, so I think I've got a shot. He plays an Oblivion Stone, and I respond with a Sorcerous Spyglass on it, see a hand with a couple one drops, an Ulamog, and a walking ballista. He plays the ballista on two, and I follow up with the combo over the next two turns. I get a damping sphere and he can't find more than 5 lands, so my thopters take him down. (Wooo! Game one win! This is where it gets easier right?)

Game two - I mulligan to 5 trying to find a hand that will do something against Tron (ideally looking for a chalice) but don't see anything good. I settle on a hand with a Phyrexian Revoker, a Damping Sphere, a Whir, an Island, and a Tolaria West. He plays torn land, into tron land, so I feel like I'm forced to run out the damping sphere. He nature's claims it, and plays a non-torn land. I play a Revoker on O.Stone and pass. He plays the final tron land and plays a Wurmcoil Engine. I play a crane, which whiffs for the first time all day (against my worst matchup, of course), and he plays an Ugin and shoots my revoker. I lose from there.

Game three - I mulligan again looking for action and still can't find a hand with a chalice. He plays a non-tron land early and taps out for an expedition map. I decide to Maelstrom Pulse the expedition map to try to buy time to find things, but it turned out he was slow rolling having natural Tron in his hand all along. I land a damping sphere before he can hit tron, but he has the nature's claim and things spiral downward from there.

Anyway, Hope you enjoyed my first tournament report ever - this deck was a blast to play. There's always a million decisions to make and they're all super critical - what do you run out on turn 2? when do you play a chalice on 2? what to whir for? this deck is awesome. Sai, Master Thopterist over-performed like crazy for me out of the board. He came in almost every match - he's great against decks packing artifact/graveyard hate, and he's better than the combo at getting multiple blockers online quickly. I still need to figure out a better plan against tron, chalice in the opener is a huge help, but it can even be too slow if you're on the draw.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions, I check this forum pretty frequently for new ideas

I've started bringing in Extirpate/Surgical in more matchups and am certainly starting to feel a lot better about it. While it does feel worse in some really graveyard heavy matchups like Bridgevine/Dredge/Living End, i'm starting to appreciate the flexibility. As an example, I recently played it against Grixis Control. Rough matchup if they're on 4 snap and 3-4 KCommand + cryptics. However I managed to steal a game 1, and game 2 I brought in the surgical/extirpate. I got my combo online, they KCommanded the foundry as expected. So I ruins'd the foundry back on top and extirpated the kcommand. They actually just scooped on the spot to that. Likewise in another match being able to strip their ancient grudges made the game suddenly feel back to solidly in my control. Especially with the discard spells I'm starting to be a big fan.

As for lands, I'm also getting behind cutting inventor's fair more and more. Taking Nobody's list without ruins or fair, I put ruins back in, but I am very much not missing fair. I find I rarely activated fair anyway. Ruins on the other hand I don't think should be cut. I think it's well worth the colourless source. It's cheaper to activate and while I don't do it a ton, the matchups where I do activate it, it feels busted. Like cracking a spellbomb and then putting it back on top. Or tossing the foundry/bridge back on top after they kill it (but can't kill you), really feels great.

@Systrill - The discard certainly compliments the surgicals, for sure. I forgot to mention that, but it is a big part of why I run them. Having the line of stripping a kommand, or a grudge, or a KCI, or a grapeshot, and then immediately extracting it really can tilt sideboard games in your favor.

@ezey - Nice write up. It's nice to hear from the chalice builds. One question I had about the burn matchup, was did you leave up mana to sac your foundry to itself in response to the revelry? Because doing so blanks the damage of revelry, and it's usually a blowout of tempo/card advantage.

@tugatog: Field of Ruins sounds great but it comes at a real cost when you want to hit UUU on turn 3 with high frequency.

I find, especially with tron being monogreen, things like field of ruin just aren't enough. Killing their lands really only helps if you are able to put them under a lot of pressure. We typically can't in my experience, so I find it's really just not worth it. Especially when being able to whir for time sieve or damping sphere is so much more important vs tron.

I'm fairly of the opinion that the Tron match is a writeoff anyway. We have to skew our deck so hard to really have game against tron that it comes at a heavy cost of hurting all our other good matchups, and it still doesn't even really make tron a good matchup. I'd rather just focus on stuff that is good elsewhere that just happens to be good vs tron. Like damping sphere, or discard+surgical etc

Has anyone here tried a sideboard plan of Ensoul Artifact against tron? Since they're probably boarding in nature's claims against us, it's probably not the best plan, but I'm still curious.

@the nobodys - Yeah, I did sac the foundry to itself, but I was out of gas at that point and needed to draw into some action to restabilize.

@ezey
This list looks great, and is actually like 3 cards off of what I'm running lol. I haven't played it yet in any events since I just put mine together a couple of days ago and I'm still in the "test every matchup 100x over like a madman" phase, but it looks like I'm on the right track w/ my decklist choices. I've had 3 flex spots I've been trying to figure out the past day or so, and I'm so mad I never even thought of glint-nest crane. It's so obvious. lol.

My sb plan for tron is a 2nd wetball (damp sphere) in the sb, 4th spyglass, chalice, padeem, sai, and skite. The idea is to find wetball/chalice asap, then stack needles on O-stone and karn (protecting them w/ jar, padeem, and skite) until you can close out the game with the combo/sai. Not that it's easy to do, and it is asking for quite a few things to go right, but wetball does give us a decent amount of time to find a pithing needle. Decay/pulse could be good in this MU as well, though figuring out what to drop will be pretty tough. I think the cuts post board are EE, cage/nihil spellbomb (I run spellbomb), bridge (I run 4, so I'd probably cut 1, maybe 2?), and perhaps tezzeret?

Anyways congrats, I'll be playing something very very close to that list this week at FNM.

@ezey When my meta was flooded with Tron players (small 15-20-ish person weekly Modern Monday event at LGS), I knew I'd probably face it at least 1-2 times which was miserable. When this is the case, I just don't think you should be playing the deck, but I wanted to try out a sideboard of Blood Moon (I was on a Jeskai build) plus 3x Ensoul Artifact and 2x Vendillion clique (wanted a gameplan against combo decks, this was before Damping Sphere) in an attempt to develop a heavier beatdown plan vs Tron (which is your best chance games 2-3 when Natures claims come in - I do not advocate trying to assemble the ThopterSword + Time Sieve/KCI combo postboard) and opposing combo decks. I was able to beat it but it didn't feel like a consistent gameplan (natures claim would have undone an ensoul artifact) and certainly wasn't worth the number of slots it was occupying in the sideboard.

Seriously though, I can't stress this enough (as other players have done recently as well) - know how you plan to attack a deck like Tron, but don't over dedicate your deck towards beating it. I have years of experience against Tron decks while playing various Grixis/Esper/Jeskai/Sultai/UW/UR (Blue Moon) control decks, as well as this archetype. My roommate used to play Tron and I've tested thousands of games/sideboard plans over the years to see what works/doesn't work. If you can't pair your mana disruption (whether it's a permanent like Damping Sphere/Blood Moon, or land destruction like GQ/Field of Ruin (+ Crucible)/Spreading Seas/Fulminator Mage) with a fast clock (typically a single card, not setting something up like ThopterSword + Sieve/KCI), you're still facing an uphill battle because they're still favored to win the race to hit 5 lands for O-Stone activation/Thragtusk, 6 for Wurmcoil, 7 for Karn, 8 for Ugin, etc. The beatdown plan is probably your best hope (something like Damping Sphere/Pithing Needle into Tez beatdowns), but you're still unfavored. It's not worth losing equity/wasting sideboard slots against your close matchups that will get tougher postboard.

It's perfectly fine to have a terrible matchup or two in modern. The meta is too diverse and it's unreasonable to hope to have no bad matchups (which is part of what makes this game so great - there is no "Right Answer").

I like both cards since I've been trying to make looting work. I felt like bomat seemed better but a 2/3 flier that scries has some serious value as well. Search went from 1 to 2 to 0 for me. All of those numbers are probably reasonable deprending on what else you are focused on. I'm heavy Opal and Rebuke so anything that isn't an artifact needs to have a ton of immediate value.

@coredumped I love Search for Azcanta in this type of deck. Being a 2-mana pseudo walker (permanent that gains incremental advantage each turn it remains on the field) is just what this deck wants. However, I tried playing 2 in place of Serum Visions before and didn't care for it (we already have too many turn 2 plays and maybe too few optimal turn 1 plays), and now that there are so many aggressive creature strategies, I begrudgingly felt like it was my 76th card in my list since it wasn't something I'm super happy to be doing against those decks. It shines in the grindy matchups like UWx control and GBx midrange, but we're already favored against UW control (plus you typically just want to attempt to slam a combo piece under counter magic/brutality to pave the way on turn 2) and Jund is much less popular than it was after the BBE unbanning. I also have Bottled Cloister which costs more mana, but plays a similar card advantage role with the added benefits of being a combo with Bridge (which is good against the aggressive decks) and can also be tutored with Whir.

I'd read into this as both a personal preference and a meta call.

I'm not the biggest fan of artificer's assistant, but that's just me. I personally want my deck to have the most impactful top decks as possible (which is why I cut the talismans/prisms). In that we're a prison deck, I want to cut off percentages of my opponent's deck. Forcing them to have 0 targets for their maindeck removal spells means they're A) pseudo time walks when they draw into them because they literally do nothing, and B) incentivized to cut all removal for post board games, making Padeem/Herald much better if that's what you like in the board.

If you REALLY want a permanent that fixes your draws, I'd still play Search over the bird, despite costing 2 mana vs 1.

The advantage of the bird is that it is (almost) guaranteed to replace itself AND it buys time until you can get your prison pieces in place. A 1/3 body is suprisingly relevant against beatdown decks and can prevent easily prevent 10 damage over the course of a couple turns by both blocking and discouraging attacks.

Against jund: prevents dark confidant from attacking
Against mardu: prevents lingering souls, elementals, and young pyromancer from attacking
Against humans: prevents early beats from small creatures then chumps a big one.
Against elves: prevents the early beats from elves
Against hollow one: blocks bloodghast profitably, blocks flamewake phoenix
Against Bridgevine: blocks bloodghast, zombies, 1/1's.

I think search is better against control where the game drags out, but if the game drags out against any non-combo deck, you're likely winning.

@ezrude The bird @coredumped was referring to was Artificer's Assistant. The Crane is certainly better, but I'm still not really in the market for either. I think the Crane would be a sub-in for Serum visions, and while the 1/3 body isn't completely irrelevant, I'd rather fill more 1-drop slots than muddle up more 2-drop slots on the curve. It's also why I think playing 1 mana removal spells like Push/Battle are better for curve considerations if you're afraid of early creatures.

I think mapping out what types of lines you'll consistently deploy is important to keep in mind when building this deck, as I'm in the camp of prioritizing getting hellbent for plan A (Ensnaring Bridge) while also maintaining a high density of topdecks that matter since I'll be hellbent quickly. Then if my hand looks a bit to slow for plan A immediately, I'd rather bridge the gap towards getting hellbent by having access to cheap removal that uses up otherwise wasted mana on my odd turns instead of a blocker. Examples of this include Push EOT to kill an impactful (non-Thalia) 2-drop on the draw, removal plus board development (2-drop like Founrdy, Sword, etc.) turn 3, Whir/Bridge plus Removal Turn 4 etc. If you're average curves have too many 2-drops, you run the risk of wasting 1-3 mana on the early turns more often than not, which could slow your overall progression and start to lose overall edge in your gameplan. I suppose this is why some people continue to like playing the 2-cmc mana rocks like talisman/prism, but they're such awful top decks mid-late that I've been finding more success since I've cut them.

It's a tough puzzle to solve that's for sure, which is why you can advocate for all sorts of things in the flex slots (and yet another reason why this deck is so awesome). Everyone likes to play this deck slightly differently than the next, you just gotta figure out what you personally like and go from there.

Ah, my mistake - thanks for clarifying. I'm not big on Artificer's Assistant - it's an awful late game draw, and best case scenario early game scries 2 before getting killed by virtually every kill spell / creature out there.

I'm having that issue a lot as well.

Thoughts on the lack of bans this past Monday? 99% of our area was expecting to see something done about KCI.

I'm surprised nothing happened but not shocked. The deck is fairly beatable with interaction, especially counterspells and surgical extraction. I think forcing people to go into these strategies or just be faster is unhealthy for modern though. I think something will happen to these green based colorless cards matters deck within the next year though.

Oh also Hi everyone I guess I've posted three times now and am starting to build this deck. I'm going on the heavy discard package in order to hedge against my mostly combo and midrange based paper meta. Do you guys have any tips and tricks that I should think about when playing this deck?

*edit a link to my decklist is in my Decks spoiler under the modern tab.

Anyone else catch this list? Doesn't run the thopter combo but I like it.



https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1282930#paper

Man, that list has some spicy stuff in there. Storage Matrix? I'd love to know how that performed.

I'm skeptical about running 5 colorless lands out of 21 and being able to get uuu reliably.

Smid, I'm in the same boat with the sideboard. Only i want to make room for 2x Surgical Extraction and don't know what to get rid of.

Last event i went to, i didn't bring in Torpor orb or the demon once so i might try that. Otherwise I'm not sure. See anything i don't need between the main and sidebaord that would allow for 2 extractions?

I see a lot of list main deck 1 pithing needle does it feel like enough? I'm never unhappy drawing it or having one in my opening hand

I agree with getting rid of Flaying Tendrils but almost always use my Abrupt Decay's after sideboard it's just more versatile.