MTG Salvation

The game is more fun when you have to balance costs and drawbacks anyway. The reason everybody hates Siege Rhino is that it's a dumb pushed creature that's nothing but upside. Do we want more of that? Or do we want to have to think and plan to make cool strategies work? Personally I'd prefer to see the general power level of cards go down from where it is now than up because it means you're rewarded for thinking and planning rather just just casting whatever the best thing is in your hand, on curve, every turn.

So after a several year hiatus, before which I had played magic for about 10 years, I'm looking at getting back into the Standard scene since it seems to me, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, that the general level of power creep is shifting back downward, and singles prices are a little less absurd then they were when I quit during ZEN/SOM standard, with a few exceptions of course. So since I'll be starting from scratch, I'd really like some general pointers of things to look out for in post rotation standard; I'm interested mainly in what the generally accepted 'staples' of the current format are, and a short list of cards of which it would probably be wise to grab a playset to gear up for the Kahns block coming in. Of course all dual lands go without saying, but in terms of rares/mythics/power uncommons, what are likely to be the most important cards to have from Theros and M15?

Don't undervalue Inspiration. In a build with Snapcaster it is much, much better than Think Twice.

Edit: Another card that has proven to be quite good in testing is Dramatic Rescue. It is very efficient at getting you to the late game and once again is bonkers with Snapcaster. It's easy to write the card off just on it's face, but I promise you, give it a shot next time you're testing against zombies or humans or tokens, and tell me that it's not good.

I playtested this quite a bit and I can tell you one thing; it's good, but you're never going to want more than 1 Veilborn Ghoul.

You guys should really consider playing Underworld Connections. It's really, really good. My take on tokens is completely different from the majority of the ones in this thread though, so that might make a difference to it's playability.



This deck basically wins off of Thragtusk. Thragtusk just wins games, over and over. The early tokens are there to clog the board, while doing a decent amount of incidental damage. Call of the Conclave, Lingering Souls and Golgari Charm are really very good at holding down the early game, and if the opponent gets draws with less action they can win on their own. And as, I said before, Underworld Connections has proven to be very, very good. I could see that getting a lot of play, in plenty of other archetypes as well. It's not quite Phyrexian Arena but it's close. If you get it with an Arbor Elf and an Overgrown Tomb you're just going bananas.

It's better than Quest by a pretty wide margin. I don't think we have to wait for Innistrad to rotate in order to see this get played. A strictly discard strategy isn't going to be tier one any time soon, but it doesn't really seem that hard to get your opponent down to one card or less while still interacting with the board either.

Quote from Acarna

There is so much untapped design space in Overload that they haven't even touched. I cannot actually believe the amount of crappy Overload cards they've made with such an amazing mechanic. The amount that affect power is ridiculous, there must be like 6 or something.

I actually don't understand why they've limited themselves so much with this mechanic. It really annoys the hell out of me.

I disagree, I think several of the Overload cards, while not necessarily super clever, are well designed and highly playable. Blustersquall, Cyclonic Rift, Mizzium Skin, Mizzium Mortars, especially Chemister's Trick. Love that one.

If I'm casting Altar's Reap, it's hopefully going to be sacrificing my Gravecrawler. Or whatever guy they just Tragic Slipped.

Altar's Reap is fantastic, by the way. Very overlooked card.

Spellskite has been pretty clutch for me in the mirror. Shutting down their early attackers lets me win the race a lot more consistently, and it makes non-morbid Tragic Slips and Mortarpod basically useless. For reference here's my deck currently, I'll be taking it to FNM tomorrow and I'll post a report after:



The sideboard keeps moving around, so I'm not sure if that is the optimal version. I have a lot of Mirran Crusaders in my meta, hence the Perilous Myr.

Don't underestimate Altar's Reap. That card is overlooked, big time.

That's a really good idea, I may include a Copperline Gorge instead of a Mountain also for a little extra consistency. I'm not too sure about Memory's Journey as that would also take a blue source to really be worth it, but Ancient Grudge is very good in this format.

Well I'm sad that this didn't get more attention so by way of bumping the thread let me just say also that upon further testing, this deck has continued to perform surprisingly well. I've run through the tokens mirror, W/B to be specific, and the win ratio was about 75/25 without boarding. Also against Mono Black/Zombies I haven't had many problems at all, aside from Diregraf Captain sticking for more than a turn or two. I continue to have a pretty good game against humans, the just can't connect through all the tokens early enough to not scoop to Elesh Norn or Wurmcoil. The changes I've made to the OP list so far are:

-2 Sorin
-1 Gut Shot

+1 Wurmcoil Engine
+1 Urabrask, the Hidden
+1 Dismember

So lately I have been piloting the following deck to moderate/surprisingly consistent success on Cockatrice:



Now, some of that might look a little haphazard, but there's at least some thought put into all the choices. The primary engine is Faithless Looting, because that card is bonkers. It tends to chain into more copies of itself, filters through the deck on par with Ponder/Probe decks, and allows you to make nasty plays from the graveyard very early.

The general plan is this: Play the early game, turns 1-4, like a token deck, establishing a formidable board presence early and probably getting in for decent damage while you're at it thanks to Intangible Virtue, then lock the game down with Sorin, or Unbury an Elesh Norn. You are able to this with surprising consistency thanks to the absurd card advantage of Lingering Souls and the ability of Faithless looting to set up your hand and let you play from the graveyard at the same time.

Instants/Sorceries:

Planeswalkers:

Dudes:

So, thoughts, comments, criticisms? I've tested against a fairly diverse field, primarily against non tier one decks, but I utterly stomp humans and delver decks that are light on counter magic. I have yet to play against Wolf Run, but I could see that match being less than favorable.

I've been testing a vaguely similar build, a bit more tempo oriented than fatty-drop oriented like yours, but I will say that Ponder is an all-star in my experience. Fixing your draws is critical and for play styles like this where you're not necessarily trying to control the game, but more to answer opponents early threats and dominate the end game, you need to dig more than you need the raw card advantage spells like Think Twice. Edit: ^^Yeah, plus the interaction with Evolving Wilds is hot.

For reference here's what I've been testing:



Still in the testing process, and there are a few choices that are sub-optimal, but it wins some games and utterly crushes a few of the existing archetypes, like anything that spends the first three turns durdling. Turn two Mayor, turn three Draw-Go is a win against a surprising number of strategies since several popular decks are light on spot removal. I am going to have to end up main boarding at least one or two sweepers I think, I need to scout my meta and see how heavy Tempered Steel is represented, because that deck gives me a lot of trouble if I don't hit at least two of my cheap answers in my opening hand.

My friends and I cooked up something pretty similar to this just last night. It actually works pretty well although I mostly tested only against B/W tokens but that deck is really tough to beat so I figure it a good metric.



Sideboard would obviously be full of choices. Let me just say that Altar's Reap + Gravecrawler/Messenger/Black Cat is ridiculous. Great card advantage. Also that Obliterator and Distress play well together, knowing what's in their hand is almost as good as taking a card out of it.

I've been testing her in a R/G/B midrange strategy and the interaction with Ratchet Bomb alone is good enough to make me want to play her in this meta. Tokens can suck it is basically what I'm saying.