MTG Salvation

GB, with a scarland thrinax and a stomping ground.

4 Green Sun's Zenith, 1 Dryad Arbor, 1 Birds of Paradise, 1 <2 drop persist creature, can't remember the name>, 1 Scarland Thrinax.

4 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek

Then a full compliment of Meliras, Viscera Seers, Kitchen Finks, and Murderous Redcaps.

And I think 3 Blasting Stations.

It is not that the deck performed particularly poorly. I just felt that the outlook was negative, and that many wins came from my opponents being unfamiliar with the deck. There is no quick recovery because you need 3 combo pieces. If you are digging for one piece and one of the 2 you have already gets removed, suddenly you are looking for 2 again.

That is unfortunate. What kind of decks were you testing against? Honestly, I have not been playing against much that was heavy on spot removal. RDW, and possibly some Jund variants may give me more trouble than Zoo and 12post.

Speaking of which, I got in some 12post matches today. It is looking like a good match up pre-board, winning roughly 70% of games and drawing about half of the games not won outright. Since both decks are basically racing to get there first, paying life for fetch and shock lands does not really hurt the deck. Its not easy to win via beats due to Glimmerpost, so the best route is to aggressively go for the combo. Duress and Thoughtseize are best played turn 1-2... Either drawn mid game should be saved until you are ready to combo.

what about spawning pit as a sac engine?

Spawning Pit is listed in the OP.

I also updated the OP to include a few more cards and updated my deck list.

Juniper Order Ranger also works like Melria, except he grows like crazy.

Juniper Order Ranger also works like Melira, except he comes down at least one turn too late. We're supposed to be a fast deck; Murderous Redcap is already pushing it.

I agree with Lectrys on Juniper.

I played against some Jund during the night and found it to be a tougher match up than 12post and Zoo. Only winning 4 of 6 games probably had something to do with the amount of spot removal they run. Maelstrom Pulse and Putrefy can hit Blasting Station and Aether Vial, which obviously has a strong impact on how the deck plays. Jund is definitely a deck that we will have to prepare for. Withstand Death and Vines of Vastwood are the first thoughts that come to mind. The build I played against ran Rise // Fall as well as Thoughtseize and Duress. It kind of made me want to run the card for Fall myself.

How does wall of roots or devoted druid interact with melira? Do you get the counters or not? I'm in the process of trying out the vial-less versions and was wondering how that worked.

Quote from CF105

How does wall of roots or devoted druid interact with melira? Do you get the counters or not? I'm in the process of trying out the vial-less versions and was wondering how that worked.

Nope. Melira prevents counters from being placed on permanents, so if it is part of a cost, you can't pay it.

So I've been testing my RUG build I posted and I find that I'm just too easily disrupted. I'm concerned that sometimes this deck just doesn't DO anything. It just plays some bad persist guys and then fails. I'm going to try straight G/B with like one Blood Crypt for Scarland Thrinax. I'm hoping it works but it keeps seeming less likely for me

Bad Persist guys? Remember to play Kitchen Finks. Against RDW and Zoo, some of our worse match-ups, it blocks like a pro and gains life. If you manage to get it and Melira out at the same time, the prick won't die. (Besides, other decks play Kitchen Finks to soften their aggro match-ups.)

Weird Harvest seems to be a great option for the deck.

As someone who plays jund primarily, melira decks are just an auto-win for me. It's not just he spot removal, but the hand diaruption and the fact that once fire + grove is online, melira combo just can't win.

Any advice on what we can use against Jund? What has been hurting you the most?

Quote from DOLZero

Any advice on what we can use against Jund? What has been hurting you the most?

Honestly, i have no clue. The only combo a well built jund deck has a hard time with is living end. I just think it's a bad matchup.

If I could somehow get Living End off, I would probably win games with it as well. With the maindeck discard I am running, Surgical Extraction would probably fit the bill. Permanently getting rid of Punishing Fire, or any other removal seems pretty good.

EDIT: Played against some burn style RDW tonight. It looks like a pretty even match up. Creatures with persist, specifically Kitchen Finks, can certainly go the distance with this deck. So long as you arent paying too much life with fetch and shock lands, they typically run out of steam before getting to lethal damage. The sac outlets provide an excellent way to avoid taking damage from Searing Blaze as well. Thoughtseize hurts more than it helps here, so I would probably ditch it for something else after game 1.

Got some matches in against Elves, and found it to be a much tougher match up than I originally thought. I either have to get the nuts draw, or they have to get a bad hand for me to win. I had intended for my build to completely ignore creatures, but Elves just comes down too fast for me to do that. I had planned on running Deathmark or something similar in my board. Even a Pyroclasm would ruin the deck. I dont really think Elves is going to be a huge contender at tournaments, but its still a threat that we should be looking out for. This is the first time I felt desperate to be running the Punishing Fire combo. I had given some thought to making changes to my build for it in the past, and if I did my deck would look something like this:



On a side note: Duress is pretty much a dead draw vs Elves.

EDIT: I plan on continuing testing with my current build before giving Punishing Fire a try. Goblins, Boros, MWC and Doran are on my list of things to test still. I think Living End will probably be close to an auto win, but maybe I should consider testing against that as well.

Why wouldn't you run Inquisition of Kozilek?