MTG Salvation

Quote from Depian »

Cathartic Reunion is not a bad card but in my experience is way worse than Goblin Lore in this deck for these reasons:
1-You have to discard before drawing so if you don't have anything you'd really like in the graveyard, it's not going to shine too much
2-You can't cast it unless you have another 2 cards in hand (and you must discard them no matter what), this is the main reason why I don't think it's good in the deck, you sometimes have a land and draw Goblin Lore, you can cast it and in the worst case scenario you are with something bad as two lands but you might be able to put a Faithless Looting, Vengevine or Flamewake Phoenix in the graveyard while doing so which makes the next turns better overall. If you have a land and draw Cathartic Reunion you mast pass the turn and you will face problem 1 next turn
3-You can get Cathartic Reunion countered by something like Remand and if that happens it's probably GG

Quote from Dubarrini »

Quote from Moonbreaker1072 »

Another tuesday night another sweet result for ponza. I went 3-1. Lost to Affinity 2-1 in the first round, beat Eldrazi tron, Ad Nauseam and infect. All 2-0

How did you beat And Nauseam?
I played a friendly match yesterday, he won G1 with moon out, 3 red lands, bloom, sac bloom for 3 black, 1 black and 1 red for prism, 1 white for grace and the rest for As Nauseam... G2 went well, I have 3 Slaugther Games in sideboard (with 1 Overgrown Tomb between manabase), turn 3 on Ad Naudeam.
G3 started similar, but he was on the play, I put T2 Trinisphere but he casted Ad Nauseam with Slaugther Games on the stack. Very hard matchup.

Quote from tdewald »

So I was a Ponza player before the deck really took off and became a well-known archetype. Despite my love of the deck, I eventually put it down due to how inconsistent it felt to play.

It had a lot of bad starting hands, requiring aggressive mulliganing. Often times you would keep drawing into the wrong half of the deck (either ramp without payoff, or payoff without ramp, etc.). When everything went according to plan, playing Ponza made me feel unstoppable, but more often the deck just lost to itself.

Looking at the current list on MTGGoldfish, I see it is now running a playset of Tireless Tracker and a couple copies of Chandra, Torch of Defiance. Do these additions improve consistency in a meaningful way? I would love to give it another go… Few things in MTG feel better than turn 2 Acid Moss into turn 3 Inferno Titan, imo.

Quote from anosmianAcrimony »

Quote from Moonbreaker1072 »

1. It makes me wish blood moon cantriped
2. It's bad and not worth playing in our deck, it's too narrow.
3. It turns Karoo lands into Sol lands. So maybe it will see some sneaky play in amulet decks.

2) Do you think it might have a place in the SB? It can strand fetchlands in peoples' hands as effectively than Blood Moon can, and makes them even more worthless since it doesn't give them t: Add R to your mana pool., and draws you a card. So in fetchland-heavy matchups, it can be pretty good; against Valakut, it's clearly very good; elsewhere it's not great but might see some accidental value. The fact that it cantrips is big - it's never ever going to be a 3-mana do nothing.

3) Amulet player here. I highly doubt it. The bounce part of Karoo lands is highly exploitable in those decks - playing the same Simic Growth Chamber 2-3 times in a turn and making lots of mana that way is hard to pass up. Also, if your first combo enabler is coming down on t3, you're in trouble - ideally you want to go t1-2 get an Amulet, t3 ramp (e.g. Azusa), t4 Titan, smash your face in. Planning out a combo that goes off on t5 or later is somewhat defeatist.

Quote from Eddieclayton »

I don't have too much to add to the thread, but wanted to share a win that made me laugh. I added sword of war and peaceas a pet card because I had it lying around. I was up against Zoo. Turn 1 he fetched to 17, turn 2 to 14. I played:

T1: bird
T2: sword
T3: equip sword, swing for 8
T4: swing for 7, win.

He had no idea what I was playing so he didn't sideboard. Game 2 I played bloodmoon on turn 2, catching him on an awkward hand. Played anger of the gods into a wurmcoil engine -> scoop.

Doubt the sword will be a recurring thing, but still wanted to share. It also won me a game against burn and against eldrazi taxes. Went 3-1 overall, losing only to abzan because I kept a bad hand game 1 and misplayed game 2 (pinged his spirits with inferno titan instead of putting his lili down to 1 so he just killed it next turn. Very sloppy.) Tireless tracker was an allstar in every game.