MTG Salvation

Stabil0, you're back! Welcome back - glad to have you back on the thread. Couldn't come at a better time with the recent finishes - I just got back on the deck a few weeks ago myself and have been doing enjoying running this through 30 or so Friendly Leagues and going infinite (barely).

I'm still not liking my records vs Merfolk/D&T/Humans/fast aggro that's not burn that I'm going to go back to the RW variant for a spin. I think Anger of the Gods + Tocatli Honor Guard can really change the match-up a LOT. I'm in my first League right now with this deck below at 3-0, but will wait until I've done a few more to report back on my findings. Let's get this discussion more active again like the old days!

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/eldrazi-staxes-rw/?cb=1528033450

CatMix,
Like the new build...Aethersphere Harvester was the main takeaway I got from Trophy Mage testing. Overall, I didn't like how heavy-loaded D&T became on the 3-Drops when running Trophy Mage and the results weren't impressive playing the Friendly Leagues).

I've ran through with your updated build (running 1 Smuggler's Copter, 1 Aethersphere Harvester instead and 3 Concealed Courtyard + 1 Aether Hub since I don't own 4, kept the Arbiters - Arbiter 4 Life, and snuck in a Kytheon & Reality Smasher as singletons), but mostly identical. I like how it runs so far. 3-2 in my first league (Affinity still sucks and strangely lost to Mono-Red Burn), going to keep running through a few more times and post my thoughts. Love the whole D&T community for constantly innovating and testing and keeping this thread so active.

@cloud030

A minimum of 12 flyers is what I would recommend. In my list that's gone 4-1 twice and a 3-2 finish in the League's (all of the losses were to eldrazi or the new uw control builds sprouting up), I run 12 flyers (4 Flickerwisp, 2 Serra Avengers, 1 Aven Mindcensor, 3 Lingering Souls, 2 Blinkmoth). The great thing is that Magus of the moat buys you so much time that you can actually just draw topdeck into it. But 12 is bare minimum as there were definitely times we just sat in a stalemate waiting for me to draw my flyers. I'm sure with cat mixes build of 16 flyers should be much less frequent.

DeathandCatmix, I gotta say Magus of the Moat is an absolute house from the SB. Love that tech. I'm running 3 in the SB and roflstomping merfolk, allies, kiki chord/Creature toolbox variants. Helped me win a lot of matches I had zero business winning in the modern leagues. Gone 4-1 a few times now hoping to get a 5-0 finish soon.

Thanks guys! Appreciate the encouragement. Just frustrating when I feel like I have a pretty good list, decent plays, and match ups against an extremely wide field of decks but then pretty much auto lose to the deck that conveniently has become an obscenely huge part of the meta. I remember so many of us saying how well positioned we were after the twin bans only for eldrazi to ruin the fun!

Here is the list from my 5-0 2 days ago in the MTGO League against a diverse set of decks but once again was my first League where I did not encounter Eldrazi deck...

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/modern-constructed-league-2016-02-16

Anyone else getting saltier and saltier playing and losing against any version of the Eldrazi decks these days? Seriously, would love any D&T-er here to tell me how they are possibly winning against that deck? There is no magic dart in our SB and our deck that gives us an even a remote chance of winning against them.

@Deathandcatmix - Thank you, very helpful information! Hopefully SoI we will see some banhammer action. I think the BW Build is a fantastic way to go for D&T and is a great match-up for the rest of the format as I saw in my 3 league entries. The Eldrazi deck is near hopeless in my testing responsible for 3 of my 4 losses across the 15 matches. Tidehollow helps (I run 3x), but every card they draw is the beats. Their topdeck is better than ours in most cases even when you have a stalled board. Even after my 5-0 with a BW build, I am thinking of switching to a RW build that runs 3x Magus of the Moon, 1x Phyrexian Metamorph, 2x Wall of Resurgence (credit to @Deathandcatmix of course) and 2x Crumble to Dusts in the SB tho I'm not even sure how effective that is if they get a solid opener...

@bmchu168
Are you the beatdown or not? That seems to me to be the question. I will say, I assume you did not have a turn 1 option to play one of these, because IMO turn 1 Chalice is always the correct choice Game 1.

Any game where you don't know the answer, aka Game 1 against an unknown opponent, IMO it is always right to assume you want to be disruptive. From there it depends on your mana, what cards you have in hand, and your third land. Therefore, Thalia, Chalice or Arbiter will almost always come down before Copter.

Games 2 and 3:
- if you are the beatdown, Copter on Turn 2 unless you absolutely think you need Chalice. That way Copter attacks turn 3, no matter what you do.
- if you are the control deck, Copter comes down when you have exhausted the control options you began with.

That's how I think of it, and then of course variations based on your hand (Temple, Temple, TKS is almost always the right turn 2 play, regardless of Thalia, Arbiter, etc.)

Hey all!

@redtwister: I'm mostly just stopping by. I really enjoy Dominaria limited atm and don't play a ton of Modern. I also sold all of my Canopies so I can't play the deck in this current iteration.

@2imu: sweet report! and good job on the finish. As redtwister mentioned there has been quite some discussion on splashing, strategy vs. go wide decks, strategy vs. midrange decks and other topics that might interest you.

@all: Interesting that conventional Tron has become a worse MU. It used to be quite good. I think of all the SB options you mentioned for this MU SpiderSpace, I am the most intrigued by Dampening Sphere. It is good against both Tron and Hollow One and some others like Storm. Mindcensor seems a bit worse than it used to, since Valakut and Chord decks are not played very often nowadays. Though Hollow One seems quite good already, so we probably don't even want additional cards for this MU to no overboard.

As for the removal I'm not that high on dec in stone since it is always a two for one against you. Now obviously we don't have many options, as discussed many times before. Seal Away is a newer addition that might be worth a consideration but is probably just worse than other cards including dec. Settle the Wreckage also seems quite good but WW is tough.

@redtwister

Sometimes I'm flooded and sometimes I'm starved, but I think I'm happy with this mana base. I think 4 thalias is very important. If I were to make a cut, it'd probably be the reshaper as that's my flex slot and I'm uncertain what it should be (aven mindcensor and bladesplicer chief among other candidates). For a reference point, I think colorless eldrazi should have a similar land count to us, but they're on 23 lands as of this last GP.

I have since updated the SB to be the following;
1 worship
2 tocatli honor guard
1 celestial purge
2 stony silence
2 ratchet bomb
2 rest in peace
2 kitchen finks
1 gideon, ally of zendikar
1 elspeth, knight-errant
1 cast out

It seems to me that 2 stony 2 ratchet (and the worhsip and cast out?) should be enough against affinity and I'm already fine vs eggs, lantern, tron, and ad naus so I think the -1 stony shouldn't hurt me too bad while the ratchet should help me in trouble spots vs aggroswarms/tokens or even vs blood moon.

kitchen finks is the card I'm least sure about in the board, but I need a value slot to help vs stuff like GBx. While mirran crusader should be better, I'm not keen on him being bolted. Plus the life might be nice as I'm anticipating burn.My main concern is that it might be difficult to cast.

tocatli honor guard is preferable to hushwing gryff because I need it ASAP vs something like humans (which I think is still fine atm). I like it more than the orb because it attacks and I can see myself bringing it in vs something like control with snapcaster mage, vendilion clique. Otherwise it's just a versatile card that I can bring in vs a range of decks including D&T and bantcompany to primetime.
Of those decks, most can remove him (humans often has no way and if they do it's like 1 dismember and company has been occasionally pathless lately), but they only have so much removal to use with many cards they'd like to kill. Plus it works with worship ;P.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is slightly better at grinding imo even if he doesn't let my dudes fly over to dome them. I like him a little more on an empty board. I think it's a toss up between the 2 and I found 6 mana elspeth often uncastable.

I'm going to run Wg tonight again, hopefully get some pre-event grinding in too. Wg is actually quite good against several of the bad match-ups because Gaddock Teeg stops Chord and CoCo and Wrath and EE, while Dromoka's Command allows us to do combat tricks that are very hard to cope with and counter burn (including Anger of the Gods!), Pridemage is a solid addition in many deck, and Ramunap Excavator should be even better against Scapeshift and Tron.

However, I do miss Anger of the Gods and a 1-of Eldrazi Obligator and WR is just a little more consistent.

By loose, I meant that the format is quite wide open with a large number of competitive decks from week to week and no deck has managed to dominate, even DS and CoCo decks.

I did some playtesting last night and you are correct on the vials, they don't work very well in the deck. I wasn't playing Gemstone cavern in the deck originally but that has changed, my question now, could you possibly build this deck like a sun and moon variant by adding leyline of sanctity? I know we don't have the moon, but basically controlling their land and playing chalice and leyline, it could be interesting. just a thought

@spicymemeball the lingering taxes deck in my tag below.

Side rant: with everything said and done. I kind of hate Wizards right now. Like here have a Stoneforge Mystic promo? Ban twin, unlock ridiculous colorless card value and open no options for the rest of the format. Like... Wtf. I played and observed a meta today that was 80%+ Aggro because people want a chance to beat eldrazi and tron. Lmfao what are wizards thinking? I don't care about my finished results today but this format does not feel healthy at all. Really hoping eye is banned and they reconsider some ban list options.

The reason I have stayed away from the red splash is because lack of control (on my part) and the splash becomes more of a boros Land destruction deck. The more I think the more I add and the more red sources I add until I end up with something like this.


Edit: I have actually been play testing this deck on tapped out and it may be better than i have thought so far.

You are playing too many kikis and not enough flickerwisp. You are never going to be able to cast him at 5 mana and if you tic a vial up you wont get to use it for any other creature. Play 1 kiki and if you draw him its sweet, if you don't the deck still functions.
also you are probably playing too much burn. Playing aether vial turn 1 only to draw a bunch of paths, bolts and helixed sucks. You could try switching vial to SSG and take out flickerwisp completly if you want to go that route.

My suggestion is take a standard white list, throw in 2-3 magus and 1 kiki, then put your bolts, rending vollies and grim lavamancer in the sideboard.

Also I know people here really like the white layeline but its definitely overkill, I'd suggest putting something like Elspeth in, a card that is great to topdeck vs jund type decks but not a blank vs something like zoo.

Quote from bmchu168 »

How does your deck perform against the field? You've got more lower cost drops with good synergy and less threats/bombs on the high end so I'm inclined to think your matchups may be slightly different than mine. Looks like you've got a mono blue aggro strategy with good disruption and less closers on the high end. How are you liking it?

It plays pretty decent across the field, three Myr Superion act as the Gyofs of the deck and I get them out pretty consistently with either Aether Vial, Chief Engineer, Grand Architect or even two Blinkmoth Nexus.

So the deck can get:
-Turn 2: Myr Superion (t1 blue drops, t2 Chief Engineer)
-Turn 3: Wurmcoil Engine (t1&t2 blue drops, into t3 Grand Architect)
-Turn 3: Lodestone Golem + Myr Superion (t1&t2 blue drops, into t3 Grand Architect)
-Turn 3: Batterskull (t1&t2 blue drops, into t3 Grand Architect), (t1 blue drop, t2 Chief Engineer, t3 Land)
-Turn 3: Hangarback Walker (3 counters) (t1&t2 blue drops, into t3 Grand Architect)

The 1-drop blue creatures are critical.
Aether Vial helps alot in just ensuring they get into play and with timing.
While the Urza lands are cool, I think they are made to cast Eldrazi.
I do have high hopes that this new Oath set will bring some new powerful artifacts we can cast with Architect.