MTG Salvation

Quote from rothgar13 »

I've still been doing well on Magic Online (and by "well" I mean a 60% or so win rate across ~200 matches), and that meta's even faster than paper. I wouldn't give up on Merfolk just yet.

It's not really a matter of giving up on the deck. I'd never do something that rash. Hell, our deck functions very well in a post-banlist announcement hysteria. It also wouldn't surprise me if we somehow manage to take down another GP over the next 6 months. It's basically tradition at this point!

I'm forever hopeful for the day we get Silvergill Adept 5-8 (not named Phantasmal Image).

I don't like it. What does Remand catch in this metagame? It's basically just Dredge things.

The problem I have with a card like Remand is that I feel obligated to play it the first opportunity I get as a mini Time Walk. I really don't want to hold up 2 mana for multiple turns while I could be playing Lords. So let's say I Remand something T2 or T3, what has that really gained me in this meta? My opponent and I are both set back 1 turn from establishing an early board state. Chances are decent they are gaining ground with an extra land drop that we may not have and we're really only on parity or maybe slightly ahead if we had that T1 Vial that now has time to tick up to 2.

Remand isn't the hard answer I want against combo, dredge or a lot of other things. It can maybe buy us the turn we need late game to put somebody away, but Unified Will does the same thing.

This is going to sound dumb... but I think I'd rather just play Gitaxian Probe if all I'm looking to do is cantrip and smooth out the deck. I'd rather play with perfect information.

The more likely answer is that I maindeck 1-2 Relics instead. Viable against Dredge, control, jund, grixis and a whole bunch of other decks. At worst it's a cantrip. That's pretty good stuff.

I like the design of it, but as a creature it isn't doing much, damage wise. As a "spell" it can be sacrificed, but they might not have those cards.
Probably more suited for combo decks ala Xantid Swarm.

I've been playing at a local modern tournament, and turnout has been pretty good (usually 25-35 players a week), and I'm doing quite well...I went 3-1 last night, beating the mirror, 8-rack and naya zoo...only losing to a tron-like eldrazi deck because I couldn't draw spreading seas...overall I think the deck is still strong...it's fast, it's flexible and we have a ton of tricks up our fishy sleeves...the only drawback is, being a tempo deck, is that if we don't establish tempo quickly, other decks stabilize, and we can get run over, or worse, over commit and see the board get wrathed. That all comes down to sideboard I think. After playing around, I STILL think chalice of the void should be a two of sideboard...setting it on one damages SO many tier one decks.

Hope of Ghirapur is decent, but I don't think it fixes any of our current needs. We're pretty strong against almost all of the spell-based decks, and the fact that it has to survive, attack, deal damage, and be sacrificed in order for us to cash in is one too many hoops to jump through in my opinion.

Quote from CoBTyrannon »

More than the body of Clique i value the information we get from it.

Is it time to play with Peek?

Why not Gitaxian Probe? Since "apparently" free spells are the thing to do in modern

I really see the need for MB Chalice, just like in Legacy, now more than ever.
Gives us a chance against Affinity and Lantern, helps burn and infect and also is decent against grixis/UR aggro.
Needs to be done IMO. MOW needs to be a two of at best, and you still need PI to help the Eldrazi matchup.

Nicely done with regards to your results. You're beating the decks you're supposed to beat (plus winning the coin-flip matchup in Infect), and learning from the tough ones. As for the sheet... I have some data that might fit there, but it's mostly unsorted. I might contribute to it once it's in manageable shape. I will say that my data may not be entirely representative, as some of the sample sizes for the matchups are small and thus easily skewed by variance.

Anyone else excited about Metallic Mimic?

Truth be told, the card from this set I'm most interested in is Take into Custody. That can potentially take out an Infect creature for 2 combat phases, and it stops a resolved Through the Breach cold.

Wait... Mimic is c*ap but Take into Custody is Modern playable for us? What?!
Is there a hidden camera?

Quote from rothgar13 »

Truth be told, the card from this set I'm most interested in is Take into Custody. That can potentially take out an Infect creature for 2 combat phases, and it stops a resolved Through the Breach cold.

Why is this better than Snag? Verse Infect it's the same 2 turns but they have to recast on T2. Against Through the Breach it's putting the creature into their hand instead of their GY. And of course it also has the versatility to save our own creature or get through Worship. What am I missing here?

And in my experience we should be slightly ahead of GBx. Probably struggle with Junk a lil more than Jund because Path eats up MoW, but regardless if you have a decent sideboard and know how to play you should have relatively decent odds. There are a lot of other matchups I'd much rather avoid.

We're definitely favored against BGX, though I will point out Snag is not always great there. I'm not sure why players are struggling with the matchup. The games take forever, but we win most of them (or at least, that's been my experience combined with the large-scale data that we've seen on the subject). I usually don't bother with protection creatures like Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, because I find it to be clunky and stymying to my aggro plan. Instead, I just side out Vials, stuff the deck full of bodies, and run at them.

As for Take into Custody... I'll freely admit that the card may not be good enough to crack our rotation. I just thought it'd be an interesting card to look at for matchups where Snag isn't good and Dismember life loss is painful (or the creature is bigger than a 5/5). It might be worth experimenting with as a sideboard card.

I am getting ready to play in a team modern event and one of my partners is running skred. My question regards tormods crypt vs relic of progenitus. Is tormods a suitable replacement for relic? The rules of unified modern prohibit two players using the same card and skred runs three MB relics. Is there a better option than tormods? I don't want to be short sighted on this.

I'd say your best non-Relic graveyard hate options are probably Grafdigger's Cage or Ravenous Trap if you're mainly worried about Dredge. Tormod's Crypt is cheap, but it doesn't have the "gotcha" factor the Trap has (because it comes from your hand at instant speed), nor does it have the definitiveness of Cage.