MTG Salvation

I think Burning Earth is a huge incentive to stick with two colors. There have been many games where my opponent has cast Burning Earth against me when I was playing UB and I was able to play the game without taking huge amounts of damage because the deck runs enough basics to get by.

I do agree that the Jund matchup is horrid though. I'm currently experimenting with some Mutilates and possibly Severs to recoup lost advantage instead of just staying behind the rest of the game.

Desecration Demon also seems like a pretty good card in the Jund matchup just because its size blocks everything and isn't dead to most removal.

I have been running this with a very high degree of success on MTGO the past few days. It isn't as focused on the Guildmage/Blood combo, but I don't think the combo is strong enough on its own to build a deck around while still having it be very competitive because of all of the setup it requires. The trick is to make each combo piece good on its own, so the combo has an "oops I win" approach.



Sorin should be somewhere in here for the control matches, but I'm keeping this as budget friendly as possible at the moment.

I really like this deck. I definitely think that Demonic Rising is something to look into over Seclusion. Rising has incredible synergy and lets you increase your board presence without actually committing any additional resources to the board.

If the format becomes more aggressive, then maybe Seclusion would be okay, but I think Demonic Rising is a much better win condition here.

EDIT: I also wouldn't go through hoops to include Revelation just yet, since Skullcrack and Frontline Medic have not hit the format yet, and Revelation becomes significantly worse with them around I suspect.

That makes sense. Thank you both for the help.

I'm brewing for new Standard and wanted to make sure I understood an interaction. If I have both Obzedat, Ghost Council and Demonic Rising, both trigger at the same time during the beginning of my end step. So if I have Ghost Council out, I can stack triggers to resolve Demonic Rising first, which will see Obzedat and make a Demon token, and then Obzedat will exile himself. Then on the following turn if I have a Demon token, Obzedat, and Rising, I can stack it so Obzedat exiles himself first, Rising sees the Demon token, and makes another Demon token, right?

Thanks.

I also think this deck needs a way to interact with Lingering Souls in the main board. Discard cannot effectively answer it, so it leaves them with a clock that we can neither ineract with nor race most of the time.

Quote from Cpt_Lucifer

Why run Geth's Verdict when you have Go for the Throat? Its easier to cast and achieves the same objective? The minimal life loss doesnt really affect your opponents when you are hitting with infect either.

I have been thinking of including Damnations as well - probably as a 2 of in SB replacing 2 Infest. A better sweeper for 1 more mana.

Barter in Blood doesnt seem good when we are only running 8 creatures MB - you will end up sacrificing your beater/s and they only loose a maximum of 2 dudes. I would rather run Damnation instead at the same cost.

Because Go for the Throat doesn't hit hexproof guys, which is extremely relevant in the GW Aura matchup and incidentally relevant against GoST. Without any way to remove a Slippery Bogle or the Elf, this deck cannot beat it. Additionally, it's not an either/or situation, since you can run Go for the Throat for situations where that is relevant and Verdict for situations where that is better. Very often Verdict and Go for the Throat will be doing the same thing anyway, and you gain a huge advantage from having access to a sacrifice effect in certain matchups.

Barter in Blood is probably worse than Damnation. I just mention it because if Damnation is only going to be hitting 2 creatures on average, Barter becomes better because its a sacrifice effect (same advantage as above). As far as sacrificing our own creatures to it, this is solved by just holding creatures until after you cast it.

Has anyone played 1-2 Phyrexian Arena in this? Since Confidant can't attack for relevant damage in this deck, it seems like it could potentially be quite good. Control can be a difficult match, and Arena seems like it could go a long way towards improving it.

Also, Isochron Scepter has been great in this deck. It crushes the mirror and can shut some decks out of the game until they find an answer for it (assuming they have one). Sometimes you can just imprint removal, which other times you can imprint a Funeral Charm and just keep forcing them to discard in their draw step.

I think this deck needs to run 3-4 Geth's Verdicts for Geist of Saint Traft and (more importantly) the GW Aura deck.

Also, what do people think of Damnations/Barter in Blood in the side for Affinity? I think Tendrils might be something to look into as well, though I think it may be a bit too slow.

I've been testing this deck out with Isochron Scepter and Shadow of Doubt.

I've only played two games with it, but I like it so far.

I think this deck should try looking into Descendant's Path and maximizing the number of Demons it runs.

I have been running this with considerable success the past few days.

Trading Post doubles as an enabler of Underworld Connections (to regain the life loss) and of Demonic Rising (which is also good with the keyrunes)

And because we don't run any creatures, we can run an absurd number of sweepers, which is what this deck aims to do.


4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
13 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Stensia Bloodhall
2 Appetite for Brains
2 Cremate
4 Pillar of Flame
2 Victim of Night
4 Rakdos Keyrune
2 Tribute to Hunger
4 Underworld Connections
3 Trading Post
2 Barter in Blood
4 Mutilate
3 Demonic Rising
1 Manor Gargoyle
2 Magmaquake
2 Rakdos' Return

Sideboard (roughly):
3 Duress
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Pithing Needle
3 Slaughter Games
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Reverberate
1 Homicidal Seclusion

Quote from Sauceman

How can you afford 4-of's of the chase miracles and GoST but not dual lands? Those would be pretty important.

I'm pretty sure the first list was for Block, so the dual lands weren't legal.

There is no reason to really adopt the official Modern banned list for Modern Pauper because the formats are completely different and many things which make cards problematic in Modern are not legal in Modern Pauper. For example, Wild Nacatl is pretty underwhelming without fetch lands or shock lands. Affinity (without Plating) is just a normal deck in Pauper, whereas it'd be nuts in Modern.

Banning Ponder or Preordain and especially Empty the Warrens is also completely illogical.

From what it sounds like, you are just banning cards that you don't like, not cards that are negatively affecting the metagame.

Does anyone have any thoughts on running 4 Mulches with some number of Reclaims?

Quote from Barandis

And speaking of additions that don't seen to be considered much yet (like Curse of the Bloody Tome above), why aren't people playing any main deck Skaab Ruinators? I know that exiling cards from your graveyard is the antithesis of many of the cards in this deck, but if you have the opportunity to play a 5/6 flyer on turn 3 when your deck often starts with few threats, don't you take it even if it means slowing down your later Spider Spawning by a turn or two? I don't mean playing a full set because drawing two would be very bad, but having one or two certainly couldn't hurt, could it?

Besides, this deck otherwise has trouble answering flyers and needs an edge in the mirror (which really suffers from the "luckiest man wins" syndrome) and the Ruinator could provide it.

Has anyone tried this, and if so, what sorts of results have you seen?

I think Ruinator would be taking the deck in a different direction. Not that that is a bad thing, it's just different. Taking three creatures from the graveyard (plus himself) equals 8 life on a Gnaw or 4 Spiderr/Wolf tokens, which is pretty considerable. If you run Ruinator, you really are going to want to make it your win condition and get rid of some other things, potentially even Splinterfright since -4'ing him locks you up for awhile.

That being said, I still think the deck could work, though I'm not sure if one big flyer is better than a bunch of tokens, since they can still just chump block the Skaab often enough to make him useless.

I do kind of want to take this deck in a Reanimator/Lab Maniac direction which is pretty possbile with Unburial Rights I think.