MTG Salvation

I'm really interested to see your list Motley. How many Dreadhorde invasion are you running?

On the question of dimir only: I would love that. Except that TBR is an auto win so often that it is worth the small sacrifice. I echo the above comments, splashing for red is a small price. You don't need to run bolt or anything. In fact, I pretty much run straight Blue-Black except for TBR. Plus, the red mana helps with Engineered Explosives and K-Command out of the board.

One of the things that makes it so that we do need the red is that we don't have access to Force of Will or other similar cards. I'm not an expert, but one of the things that enables Dimir Shadow in legacy is that you can tap out for some of your cards and hold up Force to stop them from preventing damage. In modern, I feel like I have to be a bit more proactive. This may change with Modern Horizons, however.

I agree. You can fill your deck with land destruction (ghost quarter, tec edge, field of ruin) and make this a winning deck against tron. The problem is that you lose so much to your good match ups it isn't worth it unless your field is tron.

None of the cards you suggest will improve any of the matchups that are problems now. Tron is pretty much an autoloss. You can win, but the odds have to be heavily in your favor.

Rest in peace hoses all of the strategies that Surgical does and will do it better and more consistently. You don't need a graveyard. Those strategies do.

The value of BW tokens is the manabase. Splashing for Assassin's Trophy is counterproductive.

IMO format diversity is my favorite part of Modern. You make a deck and try to use whatever resources you packed to win. It requires a lot of thought in and around the game. It encourages you to focus outside of the game building said deck, and then in matches and games determining how to best use those resources.

I think there is definitely a meta argument for main deck Surgical. I played at a store a couple of months ago and, in five rounds, I encountered Phoenix twice. Surgical main deck would have won me one of those matches probably.

Interesting Star City Games article by Ben Friedman. I wonder about Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. If anyone has experience, I would be interested. I'm not excited about running additional cantrips so I would like to have more answers. I'm not sold on Rise//Fall. I've run it off and an. I think it was better as an answer in Grixis Delver where you didn't expect a random discard spell. On the other hand, it seems like Rise is a good answer to Phoenix decks.

I was playing around with trying to come up with a way to compare card expected values between different decks. What I came up with was using the number of times that a card appears in the deck divided by the number of cards in the deck (60) as a simple probability (I understand that this changes, but I just want a simple means of comparison) and multiplying that by the amount of damage that the card deals in one turn. So, for example, if I have 4 Gurmag Anglers and they deal 5 damage, then this would be (1/15)*5= 0.33. The expected value of a Gurmag Angler in one turn is 0.33 damage.

But, not all decks work on the basis of attacking life totals. And it occurs to me that Death's Shadow gains value from dealing itself damager whereas other decks don't. Aside from sheer estimation (it's turn 5 and boy I could really use removal this turn), has anyone looked at how to have a clear cut way of determining the EV for various cards in a 60 card deck?

And, for a reference, when there were creatures with variable damage or life loss from spells, I took the average damage or created my own estimation. Crude, but I'm not looking for anything too complicated (unless it's already out there).

Modern is the best its ever been (my vote).

I like playing with my cards. I like playing with all of my cards. I like having to think about and learn about more cards and potential interactions. Modern is a format that rewards knowing about difference archetypes and strategies. Net decks and brews can currently be successful at many tournaments. You want to grind your Grand Prix? Fine, there are many options to choose from. You want to play at your local store, there are even more to choose from. The point at which BG Rock becomes a pillar deck again is the point at which I think we have a decent midrange balance.

Honestly, it's refreshing to be able to go to a tournament and see some variance in deck performance against a broad array of strategies. Could tweaks be made? Sure. But overall it's nice to have a game be intellectually challenging on so many different levels.

What I really don't want is straight to modern printings. But, I will deal with it. It's a format that is mentally challenging but also rewards you for knowing your deck and the format.

This just enables Magic: the Shuffling. Imagine where you were encouraged to mull to 4 (shuffle 3 times), then play, while shuffling each time you fetch. Good luck control players (opponent: I'm not slow playing, I just need to shuffle a lot: those darned sideboard answers are buried).

Also, good/bad mulligans in decks is just part of magic. If you have a deck that mulligans poorly or needs certain cards to win a match, that's on you. Originally, there were no mulligans and then no-mana mulligans and all mana mulligans became a thing. Deck variance is a part of the game. If I wanted a game where the resources were all pre-available, I would play chess.

I mean, it probably won't be busted or anything. On the other hand, it's going to be really stupid when we have to sit there for 5-10 minutes in each game waiting on mulligan decisions and shuffling.

I would run

Unless you get really lucky, almost all builds will lose to Tron pre and post board. I won one match against Tron with a "normal" or stock build after my opponent mulled to 5 in game 3. I only won game 1 because I ran outside cards like Castigate and Memoricide. Sideboard Surgical Extraction and Memoricide would really help you out. In general, it's one of those matches that you just let it go and board for all of your other matches.

If Tron is big in your meta, you cut spectral procession and run 5 copies of Ghost Quarter and/or Tectonic Edge/Field of Ruin. Tidehollow Sculler is also a good card in addition to all of your other discard effects. Aven Mindcensor also deserves a nod. Basically, you delay tron and then you strip their hand of anything they could do once they have the mana. The problem with this strategy is you give up so many points against the rest of the field that the benefits of Tokens are negated.

Rock/Jund/and Abzan are pretty much auto wins. If you lose the match then it is entirely on your playing the deck wrong. MVPS include RiP, Zealous Persecution, and Auriok Champion.

Burn is a favored match up for us. Again, running Auriok Champion, Sorin, Solemn Visitor are necessary. Collective Brutality just means "oops, I win."

I'm not surprised to see these decks doing well. Tokens preys on all of the winning strategies that we are currently seeing. Izzet Phoenix would be another "oops I win" match.

A note on Rest in Peace, if you struggle with a match up, RiP is almost always a strong consideration for inclusion. It always hurts your opponent more than you (losing flashback on Lingering Souls isn't that big of a deal when opp has an 0/1 Tarmogoyf or Snapcaster Mage becomes two mana 2/1 pit viper for no value).

Zealous Persecution provides the same role for our deck as Temur Battlerage does for Shadow. It has the added advantage of versatility in creature matchups because it can be a board wipe and/or alter the combat maths so you can effectively kill their creatures for only slight card disadvantage (you might lose 1/2 of the front side of Lingering Souls+Persecution to kill an opposing Tarmogoyf).

If you were running a bunch of threats, you might be able to get Jace to stick. Our deck has too many kill on site creatures though...

When this deck was more Grixis Delver, the thought was to include Jace as a 5th Snapcaster mage. They called it Blue Jund because you were attempting to grind out your opponent and more efficiently use your resources.

I mostly play Shadow now and I think that, even with battle rage, the matchup would favor tokens. Pyromancer seems to be about 50-50, but that's only because there are clear targets for the removal. Tokens could be anything and that makes it tougher to judge. Discard hits Grixis decks VERY hard. They rely on card advantage and Shadow takes advantage of the painful mana base and the fact that lots of small spells can steamroll into a lot of damage later. If you take away their ability to interact, limited threat base, and/or countermagic the deck just folds. RiP is okay in that matchup, at least against me, because I will tend to board out Anglers when I suspect graveyard hate in favor of some stickier threats. That isn't true of all players. Also, if you can keep a continuous set of tokens available, chump blocking will eventually put you in a position to pull ahead. Tokens will almost always be better in the long run.

Thanks for the info.