MTG Salvation

I kind of dropped this idea by the wayside ages ago, but with the spoiling of Legion Warboss in GRN to double up hasty Fury fodder, and the presence other cards that increase consistency and/or speed like Skirk Prospector, and Open the Armory, I've decided to give this another go around:



Since only one gobbo has to get in per attack step, I decided Tunneler might be worth a try. Prospector is also great as reserve mana to get Breath of Fury down with fewer lands, and can carry Breath. FSD can also carry Breath into the red zone, but can become a fat beater under the backup Empty the Warrens plan while sneaking through via Tunneler.

Quote from mondu_the_fat »

The problem with exhaust is limited. When your deck is very thin, exhaust costs are unfeasible especially on commons. A mechanic that you're loathe to use in limited is not going to sell a set. Experienced players will handle it well enough, but the newbies wont. See arc slogger, which many players refused to play despite how powerful it was for the time. Reducing costs will, in turn, mess up constructed.

Rejuvination -- no way this is common.

I had sort hand-waved this away using Crow of Dark Tidings as my basis, but I suppose that's the legitimate concern if all exhaust spells are too inefficient to function without paying the exhaust cost.

Quote from mondu_the_fat »

Uncharted is annoyingly time consuming. Every time a player casts an uncharted spell, he'll look and rearrange the library.

I mean, my intention was to have it show up about as often as Cascade did, and that was far more time consuming in that you might have to reveal plenty more cards to get the trigger, so I'm not entirely sure that this will be a problem, but I'll take note of it.

Would both of these perhaps be better if I changed it to exiling/revealing (land) cards from your hand?

After a long hiatus from Magic in general, I recently got back into it, and I decided to try to create an entire block as a personal challenge. Story-wise, the first set takes place on a crowded, well explored, well understood continent with few remaining un-exploited resources. The second set would take place on a newly discovered frontier continent. The following are test commons for two of the mechanics I've devised; one for the base set, and one for the expansion.

[b]Mechanic I:[/b] Exhaust [COST] (You may cast this spell by exiling the top four cards of your library and paying its exhaust cost.)
This is meant to evoke the fact that in one the two settings in this plane, resources are scarce, so things are inefficient unless you steal resources from elsewhere. I'm not sure if 4 cards is anappropriate number, but it seemed deep enough that with repeated use you could easily deck yourself in limited/eat up all your outs in constructed. This is easy to balance given it has a mana cost, so the number is easily mutable.

[b]Ruinous Blaze[/b] 3R
Instant [b]{C}[/b]
Exhaust 1R (You may cast this spell by exiling the top four cards of your library and paying its exhaust cost.)
~ deals 4 damage to target creature.

[b]Gluttonous Fiend[/b] 2B
Creature - Horror [b]{C}[/b]
Exhaust 1B (You may cast this spell by exiling the top four cards of your library and paying its exhaust cost.)
If Gluttonous Fiend’s exhaust cost was paid, exile the top two cards of your library.
[b]2/3[/b]

[b]Tiresome Rebuttal[/b] 2UU
Instant [b]{C}[/b]
Exhaust UU (You may cast this spell by exiling the top four cards of your library and paying its exhaust cost.)
Counter target spell.

[b]Rejuvenation[/b] 4G
Encahntment [b]{C}[/b]
Exhaust 2G (You may cast this spell by exiling the top four cards of your library and paying its exhaust cost.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a card you own in exile on the bottom of your library.


[b]Mechanic II:[/b] Uncharted (When you cast this spell, reveal the top four cards of your library, then put them on the bottom of your library in any order.)
This mechanic comes in two parts: the above rider, and the unacharted qualifier, which describes the cards revealed in the process (like the "monstrous" or "reknown" qualifiers). Cards with uncharted have effects that depend on the number of lands "uncharted" as you cast them. It's meant to give the feeling of an unexplored frontier, and is specifically intended to contrast with Exhaust thematically and mechanically since the cards aren't actually "used up." I would really like to keep it to 4 revealed cards to makethe Uncharted/Exhaust contrast abundantly clear, but I'm unsure if 4 cards is enough to reveal at least one land in a consistent fashion. This can be remedied by wording cards like Galvanic Bombardment, but I'm not a fan of how complex that actually is at common, so I'm still trying to find ways to improve on this.

[b]Wandering Apothecary[/b] 1W
Creature - Human Cleric [b]{C}[/b]
Uncharted (When you cast this spell, reveal the top four cards of your library, then put them on the bottom in any order.)
When ~ enters the battlefield, you gain 2 life for each land card uncharted.
[b]1/3[/b]

[b]Mapmaker's Insight[/b] 1U
Sorcery [b]{C}[/b]
Uncharted (When you cast this spell, reveal the top four cards of your library, then put them on the bottom in any order.)
Draw a card, then draw an additional card for each land card uncharted.

[b]Windborne Miasma[/b] 1BB
Instant [b]{C}[/b]
Uncharted (When you cast this spell, reveal the top four cards of your library, then put them on the bottom in any order.)
Creatures your opponents control get -1/-1 until end of turn, where X is 1 plus the number of uncharted land cards.

[b]Grazing Lumberhoof[b] 2G
Creature - Beast [b]{C}[/b]
Uncharted (When you cast this spell, reveal the top four cards of your library, then put them on the bottom in any order.)
~ enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter for each land card uncharted.
[b]3/2[/b]


I'm mostly looking for thoughts on existing mechanics that could somehow interact with Exhaust, as well as critiques/suggestions on how to improve upon Uncharted.
EDIT - For some reason, it's displaying my bold tags instead of bold text... Is anyone else seeing this?

How do we feel about Metalwork Colossus? It's a pretty fat, recursive beater with affinity for noncreature artifacts. Trample might have made it overkill in standard, but it sure woulda been sweet for modern use.

Have you considered Platinum Angel instead? It lets you effectively run Pact of Negation for free, and explicitly beats any decks that can't remove it outright.

So... is the newly spoiled Paradoxical Outcome breakable in any way? Whiffing on lands and tokens makes Conflagrate sad, but it seems like it fits right in with Cheerios. This effect is so weird though, there might be other ways to abuse it.

No miser's Laboratory Maniac? If you leave your library with zero cards left, you can pick it up with Crypt Champion instead of Saffi and win. I'm not totally clear on the ruling of what happens if Laboratory Maniac comes in and makes your Altar of the Brood mill an empty library though.

Quote from Mastodon »

Could have some cool effects with descendants' path...but there aren't a ton of really sweet fatty humans and/or scouts.

That's what Mutavault is for. Turn 4 Worldspine Wurm is pretty terrifying short of a Path to Exile.

Quote from Exatraz »

Quote from vollick1979 »

Splinterfright and Gitrog seem to have a lot of potential power together. Splinterfright mills 2 on upkeep and combined with some Dredge cards you can make a very large Splinterfright.

You'd need to give him haste. I still think the best combo course is to get necromeba's killed off by Heartless Summoning and then casting Ray of Revelation from the yard and blowing it so all your Zombies are 2/2's or you just make a ton of 2/2 Zombies at EOT with Zombie Infestation and just beating your opponent down.

Haste is easily achieved via Hall of the Bandit Lord, which you can Life from the Loam back. The main issue is Splinterfright doesn't do anything in the graveyard, requires a lot of creatures in the graveyard (meaning we have to play extra creatures) and I can't think of any convenient way to get it back once it's been milled, so it might juts be better as a secondary win condition in case a hoard of Zombies isn't enough for whatever reason (Kozilek's Return?).

Personally though, I really like your idea, since Heartless Summoning seems more robust than reviving Gitrog, requires less setup, and actually contributes beyond acceleration by killing off your Narcomoebas for you. Ray of Revelation is sweet tech BTW. Not sure how it would really play out, but here's what a 10 minute think session got me:

Needs more Temur Battle Rage for that sweet one-hit kill.

Quote from taptwo »

Quote from Searys »

there is a way to use gitrog, it uses the fact that the cleanup step repeat itself:

514. Cleanup Step

514.1. First, if the active player’s hand contains more cards than his or her maximum hand size (normally seven), he or she discards enough cards to reduce his or her hand size to that number. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack.
514.2. Second, the following actions happen simultaneously: all damage marked on permanents (including phased-out permanents) is removed and all “until end of turn” and “this turn” effects end. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack.
514.3. Normally, no player receives priority during the cleanup step, so no spells can be cast and no abilities can be activated. However, this rule is subject to the following exception:

514.3a At this point, the game checks to see if any state-based actions would be performed and/or any triggered abilities are waiting to be put onto the stack (including those that trigger “at the beginning of the next cleanup step”). If so, those state-based actions are performed, then those triggered abilities are put on the stack, then the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities. Once the stack is empty and all players pass in succession, another cleanup step begins.

So basically, the combo is gitrog into play, darkmor salvage in hand and 8 cards in hand, you end your turn then at the cleanup step you discard darkmor, the ability of gitrog activate and go to the stack, you dredge darkmor.

After that, a second cleanup step will take place, but you have 2 more cards in your grave and eventually draw with the ability of gitrog, this is infinite with an emrakul in the deck.

This is unique idea, but I think I'm missing the punchline. You deck yourself but shuffle due to Emrakul, and do this infinite times. Then what? How do you win by shuffling your library 100 times?

If you have Heartless Summoning in play, as well as Bridge from Below and Narcomoebas in your deck, you've created a Modern version of the Four Horsemen combo since each repetition of dredge-until-emrakul will yield 1-16 zombie tokens depending on the number of Bridge from Below and Narcomoebas that get dredged in that specific cycle. Probably not tournament viable for the same reason Four Horsemen isn't legal.

Quote from mikej »

Cryptolith Rite

Decent ramp card

They effectively reprinted Earthcraft? Wow. This could lead to some interesting things.

Quote from aka_Dredge »

Footsteps of the Goryo is another one, if you want to reanimate something that isn't just legendary via Goryo's Vengeance. Sorcery speed, but worth a though.

Edit: nvm! Saw the singleton in OP

If mana's not an issue, Makeshift Mannequin gets you that instant speed temporary rez.

Quote from FourDogsInAHorseSuit »

Another new zombie we can all agree is unplayable: Stitchwing Skaab. I think we can all agree that four mana or two cards isn't worth a 3/1 flier.

I dunno about that. It's a recursive, evasive zombie that has fairly easy re-cast preconditions. Plus, getting one back let's you rebuy all of your Gravecrawlers and Amalgams, but maybe I've just got too much dredge on my mind.

Quote from cherub_daemon »

2RRB can get you a win at instant speed: Goryo's Vengeance + Lightning Storm.

My guess about that deck's core:

4 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Edge of Autumn
4 Noxious Revival
3-4 The Gitrog Monster
2 Lightning Storm

The dredgers, draw (other than Edge) and lands, I'm less sure about. Without proxying it up, I can't picture how the goldfish will go. Any glass cannon aficionados want to take a swing?

What does Lightning Storm do for you? If you're dredging away all of your draws to fill up your graveyard, you arn't going to get very many lands in hand. Unless you're referring to Life from the Loam, in which case Seismic Assault is probably better.