MTG Salvation

Mortify, Utter End, Oblivion Ring, and Celestial Purge would have some value at the cost of varying degrees of looseness, vulnerability and tempo. Guess it depends on what exactly you need that SB slot to do.

I board two disenchants standard for Entangling Bridge. Tidehollow Sculler is also a good answer to that card, but that requires a more expansive board.

Absent these, I would board in more Duress or discard.

Esper charm, though, now that might be a good one to think about. Run one white/blue land (I can't remember the name, Hallowed Fountain?) and board in Esper Charm in the second or third game as a flexible response card. Everything on it is relevant: destroy enchantment, draw 2, force opponent to discard 2.

Abzan Charm might also be an effective answer. Again, everything is relevant. Dromoka's Command might also be another. Recoil. Crosis's Charm or Grixis Charm

Quote from michaelvogler »

I board two disenchants standard for Entangling Bridge. Tidehollow Sculler is also a good answer to that card, but that requires a more expansive board.

Absent these, I would board in more Duress or discard.

Esper charm, though, now that might be a good one to think about. Run one white/blue land (I can't remember the name, Hallowed something) and board in Esper Charm in the second or third game as a flexible response card. Everything on it is relevant: destroy enchantment, draw 2, force opponent to discard 2.

Ensnaring Bridge
Hallowed Fountain

I'm up to 3 Bitterblossom online and have been really loving it. It makes for some far less clunky hands. Enabling the deck to play a solid game off of two lands enables you to keep some riskier hands. It enables a lot more nut draws it seems.

Hey guys. About to take my deck to it's second Modern event. Really enjoying the deck so far, but would like some imput on what cards I should cut/run

I would run Disenchant over sundering growth, while you get a token, the double white can kill you in the Blood Moon matchup.

I would also put in Torpor Orb or Batwing Brume over Rootborn for the Splinter Twin matchup. Otherwise your list is pretty close to what I have run with success.

Sundering Growth is fine, just fetch properly and you won't have that problem. Speaking of which, I'd run a 3rd plains so that you can reliably cast Spectral in the face of a Blood Moon.

Further to what michaelvogler said, Torpor Orb or Suppression Field are good against Twin that can be used in other matchups as well.

I would cut two Isolated Chapel for two extra Plains.

Running five basics in my own list and you can't just hope that you draw your fetches against Blood Moon decks. With multiple Fetid Heath, Isolated Chapel, Godless Shrine, Vault of the Archangel, etc., fetches and basics are only half of what you play. I distinctly remember a game testing with Sundering Growth, having a Plains, a Swamp, and a bunch of lands staring down a Blood Moon from Twin. You can never be sure what Twin lists run Blood Moon, but I couldn't cast my Sundering Growth to get out from under it and eventually he comboed out against me. I was bottlenecked on mana for a while and it just made holding up answers and presenting threats impossible. I had to choose between holding up both Path and Murderous Cut or casting the Souls that would represent lethal next turn after he cast Anger. He tapped down the Swamp with Deceiver and got me the following turn. Sundering Growth is cute, but greedy against what we need it for: Blood Moon. It is decent against Tron, it is overkill against Affinity, and sometimes you see a Plague or Ghostly Prison, but enchantment removal is for Blood Moon.

6 fetches and 3 plains - never had that problem. *shrug* the way I see it, why not have the potential upside if you can cast it? And you can.

So, after some testing, Tron, specifically GR Tron, seems almost unwinnable. I have not beaten it since Ugin came out. I am sideboarding in Stony Silence x2, Nevermore x2, Sundering Growth x3 and still cannot seem to get enough damage on the table before things just fall apart. I have been considering throwing in the towel on the Tron matchup and shore up other matchups instead. Before I do that though, what are people sideboarding in that have beaten Tron in the last say, 5 months?

I've been jamming basically those same cards in the matchup, minus Nevermore, but have been testing two Ghost Quarter the last few months... RG Tron, U Tron, and Bloom Titan I feel are unwinnable. I am also bringing in Duress over some of my more durdle-y elements like Bitterblossom or Elspeth Tirel. I might try Fulminator when MM2 comes out, but otherwise maybe Hero's Downfall for Ugin and Karn with Path for Wurmcoil... Rest in Peace helps against U's Mindslaver lock, but to them I usually lose by Cyclonic Rift into something ridiculous. Ghost Quarter actually allowed me to win some games against Bloom Titan, but only against their slowest draws and never a second time in order to actually win a match.

When I last asked this, people suggested Pithing Needle for the respective planeswalkers, but if you cast it and name the wrong one the other one will nail the Needle in play. Torpor Orb against Primeval Titan might be worth considering, which I know you're not asking about but is a similar deck in operating on an axis that it is hard for us to interact with.

Quote from Frossty »

6 fetches and 3 plains - never had that problem. *shrug* the way I see it, why not have the potential upside if you can cast it? And you can.

Having been on the other side, playing Skred, I'm terrified of being mooned out. A single extra token to me isn't worth the risk :|

Quote from TrappedUnderIce »

I'm up to 3 Bitterblossom online and have been really loving it. It makes for some far less clunky hands. Enabling the deck to play a solid game off of two lands enables you to keep some riskier hands. It enables a lot more nut draws it seems.

Can you post you list?

Quote from srdecny »

I will be playing in a tournament this week. I expect a lot of zoo deck, but have no idea what cards to side against them. They're just too quick and kill me before I can get some anthems and tokens online, and even if I manage to stabilize, I still get burned to death. Only card I know about is Timely Reinforcements, although I feel it's still too slow and a playset won't save me. The local players have only few T1 decks, so I will only pack some Stony Silence and Rest in Peace, which leaves me with 8 SB slots, 4 of which will probably be Reinforcements. Any ideas on the last slots?

Wall of Omens is great against Zoo/other ground-based aggro decks. Replaces itself, blocks Nacatl all day long, and eats burn that would otherwise go to your face. Along the same lines, Spellskite is useful in a lot of matchups to dampen burn, eat an attack and protect your anthems. They will slow your deck down obviously, but you aren't racing aggro anyway.

Without knowing your list, I think 3 Timely Reinforcements is a good start. Auriok Champion can do a lot just by blocking Goblin Guide and making all of your token generators hard counters to their Bolts. If you're running Bitterblossom, I would just switch them over to Raise the Alarm or adding Raise just to lower your curve. Sorin, Solemn Visitor goes along way towards pulling you back into games after their initial push. If it's that bad you could even run Ghostly Prison to lock them out of the game.

As for my current list:

But apparently, I should cut the Ghost Quarters...

@daviusminimus: so I need to board into Disenchants, discard, and a Mirran Crusader or two to lock up the Amulet matchup? I'm intrigued. I don't know if one discard is a sure lock, but I'm glad to at least have a game plan against them.

Played in that tournament yesterday. It ended up a three rounder instead of a four rounder only because the last two guys didn't show up until after we started round one. My list was the same as the one I posted earlier, but instead of the Sundering Growths, I ran Disenchant. The fear of getting Blood Moon'd is strong in me.

Round 1: Vs U/R Storm
This was pretty easy. Got game 1 because he mulliganed down to 4 to my 7. Game 2 he managed to go off quicker than I could beat him to death. And Game 3 I won because I got a Rest in Peace to stick.

Round 2: Vs Affinity
And then things went south. Round 1 was going ok until he decided to Ult Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. Round 2 he just beat me to death with his army of robots. Managed to see none of my artifact hate from my sideboard. Feel like this is a hard match up.

Round 3: Vs W/R Burn
Pretty much a repeat of Round 2. His deck went off faster than mine could produce tokens to beat him to death. And once again, no sight of my sideboard stuff.


Definitely a learning experience for me. That or just a bad night of cards. I went ahead and chucked two Isolated Chapels for two more basic plains. Also been thinking about replacing the Rests for something like Relic of Progenitus to keep my Lingering Souls from getting exiled. Any advice on how certain match ups would be dandy and appreciated.

Tezzeret there is some bad beats. Affinity is usually a cake walk, barring Etched Champion shenanigans. All of their dudes are 1/1s and our deck just vomits 1/1s. So long as you have removal for Master of Etherium, Steel Overseer, or the creature that receives all of Ravager's counters then you are good to go. I don't think I would even need artifact hate in my board, except it is relevant in other matchups and it does make post-board games more even if they are bringing in Whipflare, which needs to be sniped with discard.

Burn can be a tough matchup, but often how it plays out is that I will stabilize at less than five life before I begin swinging with lifelinked tokens from Sorin. One or two attacks will usually put the game away. Grim Lavamancer and Eidolon of the Great Revel are huge hassles and should be the focus of our removal. Post-board I bring in Timely Reinforcements and Kor Firewalker to lock it up.

I feel like you got lucky with Storm. That can be a tough matchup, but RiP is really good so long as you can snipe their Echoing Truth with discard. The problem with Relic of Progenitus in my book is that you always have to keep the mana open. I prefer being able to cast RiP and forget it.

Wrath of God...

If you have Bitterblossom or Raise the Alarm, cast those first and hang out through a turn into Wrath on Turn 4. Just run 4 Main.

Likewise, you can and maybe also should run 3-4 Batwing Brume main.

Stony Silence can lock out Tezzeret, but the best card for that matchup is Hero of Bladehold. If you can prevent Tezzeret from taking the field and get in some attacks with Hero, they can't respond.

What does Stony Silence do against Tezzeret? Best card against Affinity is Hero? I would easily put Lingering Souls and Spectral Procession over it. Hell, even Intangible Virtue in conjunction with them. Or Zealous Persecution. Hero of Bladehold is pretty slow to race a Vault Skirge and to Inkmoth Nexus probably too.

And what would you want Wrath of God against? Or Batwing Brume?