MTG Salvation

Ok, so now that I have my RG Lands finished for my major events, I need my off-the-wall-show-you-how-much-you-hate-me list for local events.

I've always had a soft spot for prison builds (Stax, Prison Pox, etc). Which brings me back to my roots in Stax. I played humility Stax for a while and loved it. But I have a new idea.

I want to build GW Stax. For 1 card in particular. Tireless Tracker

It does all the things I want. Card advantage, gets big, beats, etc. And conveniently, when you play a land he generates a clue. That clue can be sacrificed to draw a card, or you can sacrifice it to Smokestack. The great part - when you sacrifice a clue, he gets bigger. Even if you sacrifice it to Smokestack.

So I'm coming to you guys - the others who love to watch people squirm under their own impending doom. let's put together a Tireless Tracker Stax list. It can be WG, mono green... I don't really care.

Feel free to PM and if we want to start a new thread for it, I'm cool.

Shawn

One thing I've noticed in my list is that chalice for 1 after vise is down is actually bad. Cantrips get countered and so they don't refill the hand. They are able to effectively just dump cards into chalice. That being said, when I don't have rack t1, having chalice t1 is really good too. I'm testing a few porphyry nodes out of the board to help control creature based decks like maverick, jund, delver, etc.

I think people view prison as unfun to play against because they feel like they can't do anything. I see it differently. To me, it's a whole lot more fun to play against than combo. I think of prison as "fair combo" - because we really do rely on pieces working together. It's more like a puzzle to solve.

I'm going through my mental list of all the things that prevent people from playing spells. Ethersworn canonist is next on the list for testing. Any other ideas are welcomed.

Shawn

Thanks for the feedback. Everything you have brought up are valid points. Claws of gix are interesting, but I feel unneeded - if needed I can always sac the smokestack to itself if I need to. Zuran orb was a sideboard card in my initial list. I don't think it supports the plan well enough for the main.

Karakas is a must and was omitted incidentally. There will probably be 2 in the final list. On Maze and Tabernacle, I'm not sure I want many non-mana producers. I will probably include tabernacle, but I think initially maze is out. Tower of the magistrate is a great idea. That will go in immediately.

Trading post is already out of the list. I realized it was just too cute in testing. What has been great in testing has been trinisphere. 3sphere + vise is rediculous. Tangle wire is really good too.

I've been really happy in testing so far. It's not tier 1 yet. But if you drop a vise t1 you generally win. There is enough delay and hold to make it run out.

Shawn

Edit: I've been thinking about winter orb for kicks.

Ok, so this is the idea. It's rough around the edges and hasn't been tested much at this point.



I'm not sure if I like the 1-of surgical. My thought was hitting lands I've already nuked like fetches. I like metamorph here because I can copy whatever I need to, including their creatures/artifacts or a vise, etc. and it can be recurred w/ trading post.

Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Shawn

Curby,
I can certainly understand those points. My thought process is that maybe it is something different that needs to be looked at.

1. Chalice is certainly a thing. Can we run Chalice and vise? We could. In games where you don't have the mox or sol land, chalice doesn't come Down until t2 anyway. If you have both mox and sol land, you can land vise and chalice both, which is basically game, or force them to cast into chalice.
2. We don't need early damage, but would we turn this down as a primary wincon? In any kind of prison shell, if you can punish people for having too many cards in hand, wouldn't you want to? Mist that the point of prison, to prevent your opponent from playing?
3. Why wait until late in the game if we don't have to? Vise + trinisphere is wrong. Vise + Armageddon is wrong. Why wait for bigger threats when we don't have to? Any of those combinations with multiple vises is broken. 2 vises t1 via sol land is broken.

Is UW standstill stax a thing? Standstill prevents your opponent from playing things. Vise loves that. You can always break the standstill w/ the vise trigger on the stack and force them to draw 3 cards and take more damage. Just brainstorming.

I just think there is an opportunity to brew here that shouldn't be passed up.

Shawn

I dunno if it goes taxes route. I think it definitely makes Armageddon stax a thing again. Possibly port if we're light in color.

So with Black Vise unbanned, does it see play in stax or cause a resurgence?
T1 vise followed by t2 sol land tangle wire just seems good. You can tap your tangle wire and vise the next turn too.

Overall, I'll be testing. Definitely.

Shawn

I mentioned above that Kira was always good in my meta. He wanted to discuss overall world meta so I showed world meta numbers. I'm not sure why there is a confusion.

Shawn

@tipsygiggle
I understand where you're coming from. That's why I gave the world meta numbers above. Against 5 of the top 10 meta decks worldwide (i missed merfolk in the prior post) relic is just a cantrip.

I understand it's a great card against the others and other tier 2 decks. I'm not debating the usefulness of the card. I'm just saying, in a neutral setting where a card is neither good nor bad, would you rather have a 1cmc artifact that cantrips for 1 or a 2/2 flyer that might protect your guys.

If I'm on-curve and I don't know what I'm playing against. I'm going T1 vial, t2 Silvergill. I'm not playing relic in the 1st 2 turns anyway.

Shawn

Meta data taken from http://modernnexus.com/diverse-metagames-and-gp-copenhagen/
Here is a list of your current Meta.

Rank Deck Metagame %
1 Jund 9.2%
2 Affinity 8.5%
3 Burn 8.3%
7 Grixis Control 5.5%
4 Grixis Twin 5.5%
6 UR Twin 5.3%
5 RG Tron 5%
8 Amulet Bloom 3.7%
9 Abzan 3.6%
10 Merfolk 3.5%
NOTE: Metagame % is calculated from the unweighted average of all MTGO dailies, paper T8s/T16s, and GP/PT/Open day 2s in the date range. Data is tracked in the Top Decks page, which you can browse for more details.

I see pros and cons to both sides of the discussion. All I can say, especially in my local meta, I've never been unhappy to draw Kira, ever. Yes, I agree that relic is very good against snapcaster decks. And it's good against grixis and other delve variants. But looking at affinity and burn, it's bad against those 2 - 2 of the top 3 archetypes. In fact of the top 10 archetypes, it is literally only a cantrip against 4 of them (bloom and Tron with the other 2 above).

In every matchup, Kira is a 2/2 flyer. It can beat, it can block. Other than vs. amulet bloom, it is more than that in every other matchup. All the other matchups have some form of removal. It's less useful against Tron, but it still stops a Karn Exile.

I'm not going to change your mind. I'm not trying to. I'm merely saying that there are pros and cons to every card we play. Particularly in my meta, Kira has always been good. To discount someone's choice because it isn't yours doesn't make it strictly worse.

Shawn

Tipsygiggle
While I agree with that last statement about MB vs SB cards, I don't necessarily agree w/ your interpretation of it related to Kira and other choices currently seeing play.

One obvious deck that Kira helps against is burn/RDW. That adds another 10% that it's truly a blowout against. It affects most decks in the format in one way or another. The only ones that I think it really doesn't affect much are Living End, elves and Storm. Every other deck plays removal in some way.

One card that sees a lot of play right now is Relic. Yes it cantrips and it helps w/ snapcaster, goyf, ooze, living end, etc. But following the parameters above, it offers no clock and apart from cantriping, is probably only "useful" in 30-40% of matchups.

I've been running 1 Kira main and one board and it's absolutely the right number in my mind. If you draw it, it's no worse than a 2/2 flyer for 3. It blocks delver, inkmoth, vault skirge, flies over ground forces to hit lili.

Shawn

Ok, so I have a question - and this might be blasphemous, but every list I've seen runs exactly 20 lands. I've been testing for a while and I cut 1 island and I'm running 19 and haven't had any trouble. Usually I have 2 in the opener and see another in the first few draws. I rarely have flood issues.

Right now I'm running:
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Lord of Atlantis
3 Merrow Reejery
3 Master of Waves
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Cursecatcher
2 Tidebinder Mage
3 Harbinger
1 Kira
4 Vial
4 Spreading Seas
3 vapor snag
2 Dismember
2 Cavern
3 Wanderwine
4 Mutavault
10 Island

Am I just crazy? I usually end the game on turn 6 or so w/ 4 lands. 13 blue seems scary when I think about it, but I haven't had any issues in testing over the last 2-3 weeks. Occasionally I will mulligan, but no more than any other aggressive land-light decks like burn.

Thoughts/feedback?
Thanks,
Shawn
Edit: Forgot Kira in the list

Has anyone been testing the Collected company matchup? I found I had a hard time w/ the constant 2-for-1's and recursion via witness. I'm actually thinking about going back to sweepers in the main (wrath/Damnation/ee). Leaning towards EE for the affinity/merfolk/coco elves/twin matchup.

Thoughts?
Shawn

I've been playing G/B Rock and Junk for quite some time and I'd like to interject a couple things into the conversation.

It might be blasphemous, but I think Liliana is really bad right now. There are very few matches where I want her in, so she has been relegated to the board (or left out all together). Boggles she is an all-star. She's not bad in infect, but again that relies on them not having inkmoth early and/or you not having path). I'm as big a Liliana fan as anyone (I play legacy pox, after all), but she just seems "meh" whenever I cast her.

I've been experimenting with Monastery Mentor and it seems pretty strong. Most of our issues seem to come when we can't 1-for-1 our opponents. I've found that this helps keep up on board when I'm busy abrupt decaying or pathing creatures. It also gives me a decent fighting chance against burn (although I feel that match is much more reliant on siege rhino). If nothing else, it forces the burn to hit the creature instead of my face.

I played about 10 games yesterday against the Junk Collected Company (new pod) deck and the constant 2-for1's ran me out of the game. That is a hard matchup, to the point that I almost feel like cage has to go back in the board. I've also been experimenting w/ Teeg in the board against Tron (I currently don't have fulminator Mages). They at least keep Karn and Ugin at bay, then my big worries are wurmcoil, which I can hold path for. It turns out if you make collected company play fair, they just lose.

Thoughts?
Shawn

One thought in that M1G1 - I would have kept pressure on the opponent's life total, using the trigger from the sword to redirect that 2 damage to Jace, so he wasn't getting higher and you're still drawing cards. That is only 1 damage less to Jace and 3 damage more to the opponent.

Shawn