MTG Salvation

Thanks for the props. I've actually been playing the deck a ton, but mainly in the two man queues, as the dailies aren't usually at the right time for my schedule. So far, from what I've seen, the deck is definitely viable at the competitive level. If people are interested, I could keep a log of matchups with results and a 1 sentence summary, let me know. I didn't build the deck, it is a tweak of something I found. I started playing it about 3 weeks ago, and I'll go ahead and take complete credit for the doubling of the price of second sunrise =). I should probably add a pyrite spellbomb back in, just to deal with canonist/other creatures. defense grids are awesome from the board, especially if you are on the draw. Remember they can be fetched with Reshape.

Xwt, the playing at the end step only works for stuff that says "At the beginning of the next end step". Angel's grace always ends on the turn it is cast.

I don't think you need to worry about having a nontargeting win condition. You are going to need to side in bounce anyway for things like canonist or stony silence, and once you do, you can always recur it once you've gone off to deal with any white leylines.

Answers:

sculptor does sometimes get hit by removal that would otherwise be dead, but it seems to be useful more often then not. PtE gets an extra lands, and if they do remove it, that usually means they are tapping other lands, either increasing the number of turns you have to go off, or letting you go off while they can't respond.

It's hard to quantify how often I can't go off because of the lack of noxious revivals. The spots are mainly taken up by drawing artifacts, as I run 17, I think, so I'll usually hit a second if I am able to go one cycle.

Online I mostly run into White leylines. This is mainly due to the metagame. UR Storm is pretty prevalent, and there aren't a ton of graveyard based decks. White is definitely easier to deal with, as you can just go off right away.

I'm a poor college student, so didn't spring for the rainforests. Since I won some packs, I just bought one and replaced one of the islands with it.

I was the guy playing Eggs in the modern event. A brief report:

Round 1: Playing Martyr of Sands MWC 2-0. This is practically a bye, unless they get a quick serra ascendant+30 life. I went off turns 3 and 4, with the only disruption being a leyline that I bounced.

Round 2: Affinity, 1-2. He hadn't killed me by turn 4 when my Lotus Bloom came in and I was able to go off because he was tapped out. I was a little worried he'd be running fling, since he had Atog and Arcbound Ravager out, but he tapped out and sacrificed his mox opal the prior turn. The next two games didn't go particularly well. Game 2 he dropped a inkmoth+cranial plating for a two turn clock. I had a lotus about to come in, but had to try to go off without and fizzled. Game 3 I pithing needled crainial plating when I probably should have cast it on inkmoth. Needed a land to go off but couldn't find it.

Round 3: Gifts Reanimator, 2-1. His deck was Gifts into unburial rite+Large creature. Game 1 this meant Iona, meaning I couldn't cast white spells. I don't run any bounce MD, so was pretty screwed, with the only out being banefire into second sunrise. Didn't work out. Game 2 I land a defense grid after it gets remanded once, he taps out to cast gifts on his turn, and I go off. Game 3 he thoughtseizes my banefire, then I draw two echoing truths. He plays gifts at the end of my turn. His turn, thoughtseize, but can only grab one echoing truth, so has to name blue with Iona. I go off in response the next turn.

Round 4: UR Storm 2-0. Game 1 he gets 14 goblins turn 2. I topdeck a second sunrise turn 3 to go off before he can swing twice. Game 2 he tries to go off before I'm set up. I cast Silence in response to a gitaxian probe after a couple of rituals. He counters with pact of negation, his combo fizzles and he loses to pact.

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My Deck:



Some thoughts:

The deck plays much differently Game 1 then it does Games 2 or 3. In the later games you are almost always going to face some hate, or at the very least they will have sided out all their creature removal. In game 1, most decks without counters will be unequipped to deal with the combo, and it is thus crucial to win game 1. The Etherium Sculptors help you combo out faster and more consistently, but they are almost always sided out in games 2 and 3. The same is true of Noxious Revival and Pyrite Spellbomb, although I'm leaning toward cutting the spellbomb entirely.

In the sideboard, all of the cards hit multiple decks as you would want.

Angel's grace: This is great against UR Storm. Cast it only when you are about to die. This will always give you another turn, as they don't usually run any instant speed burn. Moreover, they are usually tapped out. The other deck it really decimates is Ad Nauseum, which I've ran into online a couple times. If they take the angel's grace into Ad Nauseum approach, you Angel's grace is a win in response. Phyrexian Unlife is harder to deal with. Angel's grace can also give you an extra turn against other combo decks, like living end.

Silence & Defense Grid: Silence and Defense Grid fill similar roles in protecting against counters. Turn 2 defense grid means that your turn 4 will be pretty much unfettered. When you are ready to go off, casting silence demands a counter, and can often tap them out. Silence is also good against storm, living end, ad naseum, and lotus blooms.

Echoing Truth: You need to have bounce for games 2 and 3, to deal with leylines etc. Depending on the opponent, you should side in a different number. For MWC, for instance, where you just need it to get past leyline, I'll only run 1.

Pithing needle: Nihil spellbomb etc. need an answer.

A note on Banefire: I've become a huge fan of Banefire, especially in KCI builds. I've won multiple games against control by just dropping artifacts for a while, landing a KCI and casting Banefire for lethal. The uncounterability lets you do things that would be reckless otherwise, and you don't need as much mana as if you are trying to deck them.

The single plains: I added the sole plains because it can be fetched with ghost quarter when you need to sneek an extra W in order to go off.

I'm playing this on MTGO. It cost about 40 bucks, the bulk of that being Lotus Blooms (3.5 each) and Second Sunrise (3ish each). I'm not a good deck builder, but can pilot pretty flawlessly. Thus, I just copied the list here: http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=409848
The only substitutions I've made are banefire for zenith because of concerns about timing out + uncounterability being helpful, and a plains for the fetchland. I've played in about 6 2-man queues since buying yesterday and gone 3-3. Also, found my lotus blooms from dragonstorm, the last time I played IRL, so might try to put it together for a PTQ. Anyone try thirst for knowledge?

Question: What constitutes a valid "step" in a loop? Am I allowed to put conditionals in my step. It seems that a loop could look like:

for x from 1 to 10000000:
if state:
do X
else:
do Y

This basically would change the exact number restriction to a weaker condition that the game state needs to be reached within a finite number of states.

Note that this still excludes end states that are not certain to occur within any finite number of steps. This excludes the "mill until the 2 Emarakuls" are at the bottom of the deck.

I think the finiteness condition is the proper one, as it lines up with other loop requirements about not being able to say infinite life.

This would allow bubble sort, as you can bound it, as someone mentioned.

A related question. Suppose I have access to an ability with 0:flip a coin, if you win, deal 1 damage to target player. What are the Slow Play policies? isn't it slow playing to actually flip the coin until they are dead? However, you can't guarantee that you will kill them in any finite number of steps.

No, it only played in 4 matches, so it wasn't included. Its pretty much vanished from the metagame, which is great for people who play the deck like me. It lost 3 times to merfolk and faeries, and 1 against what I designate "Bad Deck".

Since I just finished my summer job and I have yet to return to school I decided to do a little analysis of the 4-round standard premier events on Magic Online. So far I have only inputed the data for 3 tournaments, but that adds up to 102 players and 158 matches. Here are the results for all decks with at least 5 matchups:
Deck ..............Win Percentage ..Total Matches .... CountOfDeck
UW Control ............64% ............28............................... 8
Faeries ............................62% ....................32............................... 9
GW Aggro ........................62% ............8................................. 2
Aggro Cascade (4 or 5 C)59% ...........22............................... 6
Jund Aggro ......................56% ...........48................................ 15
Merfolk .................52% ..........25................................. 7
Treefolk........................... 50% ..................8................................... 3
RDW ...................48% ...........25 ................................ 9
Time Sieve .............46% .................15................................... 4
5CC.................................. 42% ..........54.................................. 17
RG Aggro ..............25% ...........8 ................................... 3
Kithkin ................20% ...........5.................................... 2

CountOfDeck is the number of different players who played the given deck, while Matches is the number of matches played by each deck.

As far as Deck designations, I made the following arbitrary distinctions:
UW Control: I didn't distinguish between variations based on inclusion of reviellark or not. Basically, if it was UW and wanted to counter/kill everything, it went here.
Jund Aggro/Aggro Cascade/Control Cascade: Decks that were solely BRG were Jund, Decks that played an additional color or two, whether for Cryptic or Wooly were aggro cascade, while Control Cascade decks typically played Hallowed Burial and Enlisted Wurm, and many played primal command. There isn't really a clear distinction between the last two, but I did my best.
If you have any questions, feel free to post them.
P.S. I don't have enough matches yet for meaningful matchup comparisons, but 5CC has 4 decks it has played at least 4 times, and Jund v. Merfolk has also played 6 times.
5CC/Faeries: 2/7 (5CC won 2, Faeries won 7)
5CC/Jund Aggro: 4/4
5CC/UW Control: 1/5
5CC/RDW: 4/2

Jund/Merfolk: 5/1

There, divided all spiffily

First, the Decklist:
I've had a fair amount of success with this deck and, if you're a fan of control, its fun to play. The basic idea is to stay alive until you can charge up a planeswalker or get the obelisk. You do this by tapping permanents down permanents with the scepter and Ajani and abusing the rings of Brightheart. Often you can play a mana denial strategy by destroying nonbasics and tapping down the other lands. This means that gassy, low land high threat draws don't have as bad an effect on you. Additionally, Ajani and the Scepter allow you to make the most of your mass removal, seldom getting anything less than a 3 for 1 with Wraths.

I've been playing this primarily in the 2-man queues on MTGO, and have been doing a little better than 50%. I would appreciate any input people would have on the deck, and would answer any questions. I especially need help with the sideboard; The Scepters of Fugue were put in for 5C Control, but I haven't seen it as much now. the same is true for Volcanic and faeries. I'm thinking that I might add Double Negatives to the deck in order to counter bloodbraid elf. Hope You enjoy, and if you ever want to play on MTGO, I'm on the same name.

yep, mulldrifter is much better than folio, however I haven't had any problems with the manabase. It is extrodinarily rare that I only have islands at any point, and I rarely take much pain from my manabase. magus of the moon can be a pain if I don't get two plains for wrath, but I already own that matchup so I don't want to change too much.
macabre is strictly better than stonecloaker, as it doesn't cost mana and, more importantly, can't be countered.
I've started buying mutavaults as I win, but they are 20 apiece online.
One question that I'd love to hear input on is whether I should run unmake or condemn. I won't have a problem casting unmake, as I only have 3 islands and mystic gates help.
On a final note, yes, the faerie matchup is pretty bad, and I droop whenever I see a glen, but there is so much monoR, especially in the later parts of tournaments that it is worth it. I just reviewed my recent tourny results, and there were 3 elves and 5 RDW in 8 matches. It is definately a metagame deck, but also rather good and a blast to play.
Oh ya, I'm hesitant to play any enchantments maindeck, because that way they sometimes have no answers to halo and moat

Quote from LikeThemApples

i cant argue with the success you have been having with this deck..so congrats on that...but i got a few questions for ya....seems like you are splashing blue strictly for a Mulldrifter MD and a Moat SB..Couldn't you just drop blue altogether to even further streamline the deck...has the Lark sub theme with the mono white control that is just great like you said against those 2 decks..Life gain is always killer on DDW/RDw....and elves have a slightly easier time against life gain but cant stabilize after a *** combined with life gain...If someone hit up your GY with a Macab i think youd be a hurting like any other lark deck

id also reccommend dropping the Imperial Mask altogether for Runed Halo..as its easier to cast and is just working wonders in this meta

Akroma might as well be in this deck as its mono white control...as well as a Oversoul of Dusk if your really looking for hard tog et rid of answers for your opponent...so some things to consider if you wanna take this deck to the next lvl without being a Lark Deck

Hmmm...
I really like 'drifter and I haven't really had that many problems with the manabase. you can evoke 'drifter and lark just kills it. As far as Macab, I haven't had too many problems with it, as they have to first kill 'lark, then macab. I might add runed halo instead of imperial mask. Thanks for the feedback.

Here is the deck I've been using with great success on MTGO. I have raised my rating over 200 points with it. It is based off of the midlife crisis deck but I added Magus of the Disk and Mulldrifter. It has wonderful matchups against Demigod and Elves, along with other random aggro. The control and fae matchups aren't great, so if you are in a meta with a lot of that, don't play this. on MTGO there is a lot of elves and demigod, and the matchup is really like 80/20. Sideboard should be obvious, moats for elves (make them scoop), macabre for 'lark, other graveyard stuff, masks for storm and condemn for bothersome creatures.

Sure I can give an explanation:
You play your mana and draw cards out (rites, mine, fertile ground, wall of roots, planeswalkers). At some point (when opponent is tapped out or likely to kill you or you think you can win) you cast savor or walk or time stretch and begin taking extra turns. You will be drawing extra cards, so you will draw more extra turn cards. Garruk can untap lands after savor, and fertile ground works well with him. Wall of Roots also gets around savor.
to win, you either make a bunch of garruk tokens and then overrun, or same thing with aeon chronicler or deck them with jace.

Play this deck. It sounds like you don't have much control in your meta and it's really fun to play (for you at least, not for your opponent who has to watch you take 10 turns).