MTG Salvation

I want to test RDW against its worst matchups and see how I do. What are the worst matchups for RDW? Mono-blue, I've heard. GR Monsters? RW Burn? How about hexproof? Anything else? Thanks.

Let's say you're running 28 creatures in a mono-black aggro deck (no 4-drops). How many Thoughtseize/Duress would you want post-board? Obviously 4 Thoughtseize, but then how many Duress?

Complicating this is how many Hero's Downfalls you'd like to run. In my scenario, 1 or 2?

To make this harder, let's assume you've already got 28 creatures, 4 Mutavaults, 4 Thoughtseize, 1 Hero's Downfall, 1 Duress, and 1 Liliana of the Dark Realms (I really like her in this matchup; she can even kill a Fiendslayer Paladin). For each Duress or Hero's Downfall you add after the first one of each, you have to cut a creature.

What would you do? How many Thoughtseize/Duress (and Hero's Downfall) is just right? Do you even want to add a Duress? What would the ideal numbers be? Thanks in advance!

When I played my own list before the new list became popular, the deck I least wanted to play was BW Midrange. RW devotion was also very close at the time.

What it obviously has over Bob is that if you're concerned about your life total, you don't have to untap him. AND, 2 toughness. Which means you can do something like this:

Turn two: Play Pain Seer.
Opponent turn two: Play Frostburn Weird.
Turn three: Swing with Pain Seer. Blocked? Okay. Pass turn.

And so on. 2 toughness is better than 1, yo.

Quote from Fluxuate

I have literally no clue what this means.

On topic: be on the lookout for Ad Nauseam, or Hermit Druid. Either of those spells will end the game once resolved (in the appropriately built deck).

It would help more if you told us what deck you're playing.

Thanks, I'm playing a Zur deck.

Quote from TheSnark

When you start seeing Coiling Oracles pile up on the other side of the table you can correctly assume you are about to lose.

Dirty, dirty snakes.

Quote from Dracilic

Since you're using the regular ban list, it means a lot of fast mana is legal. I'd be more worried about that.

Yeah what are the main ones to worry about there? Sol Ring, Ancient Tomb, Mana Vault ... ?

I posted a question a question about 1vs1 combos in the main Commander forum. If anyone can help, thanks!

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10960237#post10960237

Hey guys, I'm in a 1v1 commander tournament this weekend that uses the regular WotC banlist (not the French banlist). I'm wondering what sort of combo cards I should be on the lookout for when I play Duress, counterspells, etc. I don't know a whole lot about combo play and old combos.

I know that one of our combo players likes to play Bant colors, but he might be playing something else for this new format.

Thanks very much in advance!

Quote from Archy

We'll get there... eventually. I hope White Weenie is probably the best bet for it right now with all the WW costs (Precinct Captain).

Unlike other colors white really doesn't have a solid reason to focus on devotion. Aside from the gods, Blue has Master of Waves, Red Fanatic of Mogis, Black Gray Merchant of Asphodel - all of which have solid effects if you build devotion. Green has their god whom you really want to turn on as green loves a 6/6, indestructible fattie that can pump and makes your other fatties trample.

White, meanwhile, has..... Evangel of Heliod . If you're that late in the game and wanting 1/1 tokens, just play Elspeth.

Hopefully Born of the Gods/Journey Into Nyx gives a good enough reason for Monowhite Devotion decks. I would love to see high-level events being dominated by monocolor devotion decks for a change - nothing against multicolor, but it'd be something different.

Heliod himself is brutal in a land war in a white creature deck. White aggro plus Heliod plus Spear plus Brave is pretty good. Kind of matchup dependent, though.

I expect to see 'American' midrange ascend with the rise of mono-blue. Verdict and Anger, plus Shock/Magma Jet/Warleaders Helix/Celestial Flare to deal with mutavaults. You know what else would be pretty nice (in a different deck)? Gruul Charm vs the fliers.

The TCGPlayer States in Miss had a finals match of Mono-Blue devotion vs Blue-Splash-Black devotion.

Quote from Cindertide

Don't forgot about cyclonic rift! Bouncing the wincon the stealing/exiling it is always a good plan.

Good call. I actually did forget that Cyclonic Rift was still in standard.

Quote from Tzefick

Reap Intellect become drastically worse as the game progress as it demands cards to discard. In a control-matchup it sounds like it's got plenty of targets but having to keep mana up for a counter spell makes the value from it really bad.

The deck I'm looking at has a lot of ways to see the opponent's hand (Duress, Thoughtseize, Lifebane Zombie), so holding the mana up for a counterspell will often be unnecessary (i.e. when you know they aren't holding one).

It seems that if against control, if they don't have many cards in hand I'm probably winning anyway. If they do have a lot of cards in hand, it would be nice to have a way to make them dump their hand in B/U--or at least their best cards.

I've never played Reap Intellect, though. It just seems like it would be a good fit. I'll have to test it. It may be that more Ashiok is all the doctor ordered.

I thought very seriously about splashing red instead for Dreadbore/Slaughter Games/Rakdos's Return, but I like blue better as the splash because of 4x Far / Away, 4x Temple of Deceit, Ashiok, and Negate. Blue seems to give me more fun stuff to play with in the sideboard too.

All good points. I will say that in testing this deck with Liliana of the Dark Realms in it that I frequently end up with a lot of land on the board and I'm seeing that Reap Intellect would be devastating if resolved.

The deck is already packing 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Duress (2 in SB), and at least 2x Negate (MB), fwiw.