MTG Salvation

Has anyone tried Abrade in the sideboard. I'm new to this deck but it seems like it would be good. It kills everything bolt would and it doubles as artifact kill for hate cards/affinity. It also lets you have more slots in your sideboard for other stuff since it can replace your bolts and artifact hate, it costing 2 doesn't seem like it would matter since if your casting it for 2 its probably not the turn your going off and if your going off your likely casting it for R because of your reducers.

@MedallionBear It's bad. Like really bad. It doesn't kill chalice on two so I consider it unplayable as artifact hate goes right now. It's the same reason I think that Wear/Tear is unplayable right now. If we lose on the spot to chalice on two our already bad matchup against E Tron gets a billion times worse.

As creature removal it is also quite bad. It's too expensive to kill Thalia without falling incredibly behind on tempo, doesn't kill Eidolon of Rhetoric at all and is really expensive against Eidolon of the Great Revel.

Over all it's just a bad card in Storm. It's just a bit too expensive, too slow and chalice is everywhere. It's really really clunky in the most efficient deck in modern. It's much much better in legacy storm than modern storm.

@lordoftheshadows Thank you that makes sense. It seems the main way this deck loses is from either enchantment or artifact hate but I see most sideboards are running only 1 echoing truth and 1-2 shattering spree. Am I wrong in that is what beats us? If not why don't we run more of those cards. Also can anyone suggest a sideboard for an unknown field.

More 1 mana cantrips does seem like we can cut even more lands, because we can keep 1 land hands with less risk involved.

Now I will have to decide if Remand is still worth inclusion, and if fetchlands are even necessary anymore. With so many cantrips that scry things to the bottom it may be better to go the fetch-less route after all.

Overall this is an exciting time to be alive and I can't wait to see how Opt changes the face of storm.

Quote from Man_of_Pong »

So, I played a couple of Matches without Fetches and I've been liking it. With only 16 Lands seems also more reasonable to play 16 lands that can produce mana rather than 12 + 4.
The main doubt I'm facing with the Fetchless version is to keep or not Blood Moon in the Sideboard. We can't play many basics, so might be risky to bring it in without being able to search for basic Islands. Also, if I remember well, Caleb isn't playing Blood Moon in the Sideboard.
Any thoughts about that?

Never play Moon in the board without fetches. Since you cannot guarantee that you'll be able to get your basics, never play Moon in the fetchless version. You'll mana screw yourself and it'll cost you the game.

16 lands seems kind of sketchy at first. Have you been testing with Opt and 16 lands? Curious to know how making land drops has been.

This is what Caleb won this week's Modern Challenge with this week. From his comments on Twitter, his plan is to take this list, -3 Strategic Planning, -1 PiF, +4 Opt. So 15 1cc draw spells.

Played the PTQ on Modo yesterday, finished 5-4 after starting 4-1. I beat Etron, Ad Naus, Junk, Counters Company, Junk. I lost to the Mirror (fetchless), Living End, Human's Company and Titanshift (lol). Not gonna do a full report but had some thoughts afterwards:

-This deck is so friggin taxing. Nine rounds of storm hurts your head, I can't even imagine what a GP would be like having to track stuff in paper. Granted, on one front I'm not concerned about misclicking but on the other I have to manually track stuff. If you're going to play a long event with the deck I would certainly recommend you be practiced in whatever tracking system you use because winning through hate is most times doable but takes a lot of brain power.

[The Wins]
-If you look at my wins and losses it's somewhat surprising. Ad Naus is a bye, but the rest do not seem completely intuitive.

--Etron: Both games I won, he had chalice on 1 and it did very little, but we already know this. Game 2 I lost, despite turn 2 moon because he had mindstone and 3 removal spells for my guys.

--Ad Naus: I did lose game 1 but won both postboard games. I'm not actually sure calling it a bye is fair since Blood Moon was a big part of why I won both postboard games. However, normally you're faster than my game 1 and you just kill them first anyway. I'm slow and almost timed out though as it took me forever to find a way through leyline.

--Junk: I managed to 2-0 both of my junk opponents, which was quite a surprise to me. Blood Moon did some work, Goblins were very good and noxious revival was an all-star, topping a discard moon for me and also allowing the gifts package of PiF Grapeshot Noxious Manamorphose to win me the game through a scooze with an activation up. Only because my opponent was silly and gave me the Noxious though

--Counters Company: I was very fast both games and he didn't have enough interaction, not much to say here.

[The Losses]
More interesting than my wins were my losses.

--Mirror: He had no fetches, which to me feels better in the mirrow. Being able to find your business with your scrys makes you more consistent and game 1 is simply a race. I kept a 1 lander on the draw with multiple cantrips and whiffed for about 8 cards on lands, he comboed me. Game 2 I stupidly threw away a ritual I needed in a draw out game where I was not finding business and he was stuck on lands. I gave him two counters off a gifts and got him tapped out with removal when he tried to combo me. Had I not thrown away a ritual he would never counter trying to bait something, I'd have won this game 2 but I still did not feel favored vs the fetchless version.

--Living end: I dunno about everyone else but I feel like this is straight up the decks worst match up. I have yet to win a single game in paper or on modo. This feels insane to me since I have remands but it hasnt mattered. Between Faerie Macabre exile my key pieces without me being able to interact, fulminators killing my already few lands, living end being able to take my guys off the board I just have not been able to beat it. I literally lost in 10 minutes. Good thing it's barely a deck lol.

--Human Company: I was 4-2 and live to prize still, playing against Hoogland on Human Company. I'm killing him game one and consume all my red mana to my PiF with an island up because of how Modo works. This was beyond tilting. Game two he had a good draw and a cannonist. I can't really comment much on the match up but getting ruined by Modo feels really bad.

-Titanshift: Should have been a bye but I drew horrid in all three games. Game 1 I have some fancy remands, noxiousing remand back on top and instant speed digging to remand to survive until I could finally win. Games two and three he had a bad draw with leylines to lead off the game and despite the game going for ages I couldnt find my moons or truths to kill him. Was pretty frustrating to lose to this deck but at this point it no longer mattered anyway.

This was a bit longer than I intended but I do want to share my thoughts on a few topics going around in the thread:

-Fetchless version feels way more consistent in the heads up mirror and any time you're looking to race. I was playing the fetchless version on modo prior to this event and the fetch version in paper. However, Blood Moon is way too important in your bad match ups I feel. I wouldn't want to lose it. i also think we're the best Blood Moon deck and the card is well positioned in the format.

-I am also unsure why sideboards don't include more anti hate. I lost to leyline and ethersworn cannonist. The games that were hard were hard because of chalice, leyline, spellbomb and relic. Wipe away is a bit expensive but it might be correct give that it doesn't allow for an activation of spellbomb or relic and most times people hold those up until you try to go off.

-Against junk I took out all my guys. It felt pretty decent here but I was very confident I could win with Goblins. In paper vs shadow I had been doing this too but after talking to shadow pilots who know about this and are cutting some removal in addition to bringing in red sweepers (making Gobbos unreliable even under moon) I'm not sure it's correct.

A little more long winded than I intended, feel free to skip over it

Admittedly, 100 hours is still a heckuva lot more than a lot of folks have w/the deck. I've spent a lot of time w/the deck at home, but I don't use MTGO and my schedule has been weird for being able to get out for Modern play for awhile now, so I don't have a lot of time logged actually playing the deck, sideboarding, etc. I have the mechanics of the deck down fine and know the cards to grab in different situations, but I'm not comfortable enough w/everything to be running it this weekend here at the Louisville Open. So I don't think the quote marks are really needed on the word primer.

Quote from AppleRobot »

Played at a PPTQ yesterday and missed top 8 on a missplay where I had blood moon out and the op used 4 red to cast a TKS and only realized later what had happened. I called a judge over it but he said that since he had already attacked twice so there was nothing he could do. Earlier the same day another guy tried to convince me that I had to target myself with my own storm copies since his rattlechains died after the first one and he had leyline out. Reminds me why I switched to online from paper.

I'm pretty sure your second opponent was correct on this one. The copies are already on the stack and they have to have a legal target which in this case is yourself.

This happened to my friend at GP SA and that is how the judge ruled it.

You do all targets before any resolve, so if rattlechains died from a grapeshots copy that is wrong, but if he (the player) was the only legal target when the storm trigger resolved then yes he would have to target himself.

I'm going to be testing the following list:



Notes:

I don't like basic mountain in the fetch-less version. I want to be able to keep one-land hands with multiple cantrips, and mountain cannot be that one land.

I still prefer the critical mass of 8 reducers, because it ups our chance of going off turn 3.

Peer through Depths is fantastic. The best "cantrip" if I already have a reducer out.

No more remand. I understand its uses, but the card can trick me into playing re-actively when instead I should be aggressively cantripping. I know that's not a good excuse, but it's relevant for me.

Dismember could be included in the SB, but I found I need 4 bolts vs burn which is the worst matchup, and I don't want Dismember in this matchup for obvious reasons. Echoing Truth is the preferred method of choice for removing larger threats. Still, Dismember may come back eventually if I decide Swan Song isn't cutting it.

I'm something like 95% sure that 16 lands is not enough. When we had probe we played 16 lands with 16 1 mana cantrips. You're on 12 although opt is admittedly better than thought scour but you're playing less cantrips and you need more mana. I don't think you can safely go below 17 lands.

My main deck is 2 cards off of yours. I'm +1 mountain -1 opt. I really really like peer but it is more mana intensive. Mountain is there because of ghost quarter and path. I think it's still very much worthwhile because those are still pretty common sideboard cards.

As for the sideboard it's pretty much up in the air except for 2 Shattering Spree and 3 Empty the Warrens. Yours is a good base although I wouldn't play 3 echoing truth.

nuh uh. running 12 cantrips doesn't let you play 16 lands. Probes didn't cost mana when it was part of the 12 and even then we weren't running that few. you're going to have an uncomfortably high mulligan rate and lots of 1 landers that fail to find 2nd lands even with the scry. Opt isn't really letting you dig that far, its a scry 1 and if that isn't a land then you're praying.

I remember playing UR Cruise Delver with 16 lands and only 12 cantrips, (4 serum, 4 probe, 4 scour). Admittedly I also had Treasure Cruise, but it doesn't function in the same way as the others in helping to dig for the 2nd land.

Regardless, it will soon become apparent if the list I posted gives me too many mulligans and another land and/or cantrip is required. Thus far I've done a couple of goldfishes and have consistently draws enough lands although such a small sample size is not very telling. I am probably getting a false impression from this which would not be true over the long run.

EDIT: on second thought maybe I did play 18 lands in that delver deck after all. I will have to dig up the ole list and see

Wow just checked the list and I did indeed run 16 lands. I also excluded Serum Visions for some reason. My curve was super low though with Gut Shot and Mutagenic Growth supplementing the Probes as "0" drops. Looking back the list is certainly messy and I'd have a hard time convincing my current self to play this again.

I've been getting a lot of flack about running 3 grapeshot main and 3 Empty the Warrens in the board, because it makes us too vulnerable to Meddling Mage and Surgical Extraction effects. I argue that 3 grapeshot is more consistent game 1, and if I'm bringing in EtW it's because I'm cutting grapeshots, but normally I find myself wanting to or 3/1 or even 2/2 splits post-board. Is this still right?

12 cantrips according to the turbo xerox rule should put you at 18 lands. I could see going to 17 but then casting gifts or past without a reducer in play would be tough.

Storm isn't a turbo xerox deck though. Storm decks sort of follow their own rules. We can afford to miss land drops more than turbo xerox and we don't use cantrips in the same way that turbo xerox does.

I'd have to do some math but I'm pretty sure that 17 lands is the correct number. 18 in a control heavy meta where you're playing lots of copies of peer might be reasonable.

@Charm_Master3125 That's mostly correct except most of the time you want empty you want all 3. Don't be afraid to be more aggressive in sideboarding. Meddling Mage, wow. I haven't played against that out of a real deck in years. As for surgical know how to play around it is important. Noxious Revival helps a lot but so does just know how to kill without gifts. Peer makes this much easier since it sees 5 deep.

I'll probably shave a Peer and go to 17 lands (throwing the 1 basic mountain back in there)

But yeah we play mana-producing spells in addition to lands so that may throw typical turbo-xerox logic off slightly

Quote from lordoftheshadows »

@Charm_Master3125 That's mostly correct except most of the time you want empty you want all 3. Don't be afraid to be more aggressive in sideboarding. Meddling Mage, wow. I haven't played against that out of a real deck in years. As for surgical know how to play around it is important. Noxious Revival helps a lot but so does just know how to kill without gifts. Peer makes this much easier since it sees 5 deep.

Usually the 3/1 split is 3 empty 1 grapeshot. There's a local mono-white stax deck that focuses on the Phyrexian Unlife/Solemnity lock, and mainboards 4 Leyline of Sanctity along with 4 Nervermore. There's also a rogue deck that killed me with prowl Earwig Squad exiling my wincons.

Quote from Man_of_Pong »

I also tried the "Caleb strategy" (I don't know how to call it), taking out all 7 reducers to avoid all removal spells. I'm still not sure about it, seems weird. It works, but... yeah, weird.

Kinda funny you say that, as I've taken to referring to the fetchless version of the Gifts Storm deck as 'Caleb Storm', the way the PA version of Storm was referred to as 'Finkel Storm'.