MTG Salvation

I don't follow standard, so not sure if the card pool is there (I just got excited for this combo and ran into this thread), but I feel like this should be less dedicated combo and more part of a blue/red tempo shell that just happens to have a 2 card infinite/infinite combo where both halves are ok-ish by themselves. You get resistance to opposing removal by smashing your opponent's face in as hard and as fast as possible to try and force them to burn it all on other stuff to stay alive, until your 4 mana curve topper shows up as an infinite/infinite creature.

I kind of want to try brewing a U/R delver variant in modern with this and grafted wargear, but its probably not good enough there due to antisynergy with the delver/pyromancer spells theme...

I kind of want to play this in Legacy MUD. It will usually be 10-11 mana, which is at the top end of what I can hit, but I really want to cast this against miracles in one of those depressing board states where your opponent has a hand like Council's Judgement+Force+Brainstorm+Counterspell with a Jace and a top ticking up on an empty board. Sniping a Jace Ultimate with this would be hilarious, although you do run the risk of getting Cliqued.

Generally, decks in legacy can do so much that uncounterably mindslavering them is going to be devastating. The most fun would probably be trying to combo out various combo decks when you mindslaver them; trying to go off and commit suicide with combo elves, high tide, storm, reanimator....that sounds like too much fun. I may have to try this...

3 for 1s for 5 mana are usually good in most limited formats, assuming your plan is to out card advantage people. This one has a few hoops to jump through, so is a little iffy, but I would not be unhappy playing one main in most non-aggressive decks.

The last time I remember this effect seeing consistent play was Morbid Plunder in Mirrodin Besieged, where it was quite strong. Macabre Waltz has too many conditions to get your 2 for 1 to be really good, since you need both a madness card and two creatures in your graveyard. Madness, Delirium and self mill made it playable sometimes, but rarely amazing.

There were two people at my local shop with limited ELO ratings above 1950. That level was not too difficult to achieve by most people at the pro level of play.

One thing that is really important is to note that major tournaments have many rounds for exactly this reason. While any individual match can go against a player just due to being unlucky, your odds of winning a 15 round GP with a 33% expected match win rate are approximately the following:

Probability of going 13-2: 0.00259%
Probability of going 14-1: 0.00018%
Probability of going 15-0: 0.0000059%
Probability of top 8: 0.0027759%
Then you need to go 3-0 in the top 8: 3.5937% chance

Now, in reality, your odds would be better than this because you don't have to play against nothing but pros for the entire time. You can play some of your rounds with a 50, 60, or 70% expected win rate because your opponents are even worse than you. But realistically, if you're at 33% vs the best, you are incredibly unlikely to take down a major tournament.

I ran a casual deck that was around 500 cards for a while. It was basically 4x of every land tutoring, normal tutor and card draw effect I owned, combined with a mix of silver bullets, win conditions and removal. It was actually better than you would think; you get some compensation for the consistency losses in running an enormous deck:

1) You can include silver bullet cards that are bad against most decks, and you are very unlikely to draw them. Since your deck is huge, you can pack singleton grave hate, mass enchantment destruction, mass artifact destruction, etc and you barely dilute your plan at all.
2) You can play Invincible Hymn. It is hilarious against a lot of decks, especially if you recur it or cast a second one. Crumbling Sanctuary is similarly fun, but much easier to deal with.
3) You can play 5 color green off entirely basics just fine, because your mana is something like 180 forests/40 islands/7 swamp/mountain/plains. You hit almost all forests then search up whatever you need.
4) You are naturally resistant to non-infinite mill, which comes up sometimes in casual.

None of these are strong enough advantages to make up for the lack of consistency and general weakness of the ramp+card draw plan in a competitive environment, but it actually made a decently strong casual deck. It occasionally would even be able to beat some real competitive decks by either lucking into the correct silver bullet pieces or somehow getting Invincible Hymn off, but for the most part it was strictly casual. It was, however, super fun because you were both always doing stuff (you almost never ran out of cards because of all the draw effects) and had potential answers to almost everything somewhere in your deck. You also got to play random stuff noone ever sees, and games both generally turned out very similarly (you always ramped+drew then did crazy splashy stuff) and very different (what pieces fit that formula, exactly, changed every game). It was actually very much like a game of commander in that regard.

None of this is to say that this is a good strategy for winning, but it can be quite fun and is easily strong enough in a lot of casual environments.

Our store does 6 for a 3-0 record, 2 for 2-1 record and allows taking prizes as store credit for future draft buys, which is pretty big. We used to do 4 round tournaments where 4-0 got 12 and 3-1 got 4, which was extremely generous. The new prize payout seems much more reasonable.

I've never cast this for madness, although it has been theoretically possible in a few decks. Its won me a match as a cancel vs. an Ever After targeting Elusive Tormentor. Mostly though, it fills a similar role to Deny Existence and just counters a random creature in the midgame. It has been reasonable filler in the high spell count Rise from the Tides decks I have been playing.

This card is a very strong build around. There are almost no answers to making 10+ zombies except winning before it happens, countering it or playing the black uncommon sweeper. It is probably the hardest to answer win condition in the set. There are several cards this deck desperately wants that noone else does, with Pieces of the Puzzle being the key one. It usually isn't hard to get all the copies of Pieces at a given table if you really want them, which can get crazy since it digs you straight to your win con while picking up the bounce/removal pieces you need to not die before you get there.

I've done this deck 3 times now, and it has ended up being competitive every time. I've started just taking this immediately on seeing it and testing if the deck is open, because it is quite strong if it is. Also, the deck is super fun; I got to hit this with a geistblast on turn 9 for 18 zombies in the finals of my last draft, which is just a really fun way to win a game.

I will second that I only want this in a Rise from the Tides deck. It digs you to your win condition while simultaneously getting you the bounce and removal necessary to stay alive. Something like 15 Sorceries/Instants, 2 Trail of Evidence and then the rest as 2 drops (bonus points for Thing in the Ice or the guy who flips when you sac a clue) is my ideal. At 15 instants/sorceries, this gives you 2 cards from this a little under half the time.

It is good, actually, because this is the sort of card you can get 13th pick a lot of the time, which really helps fill out the instant/sorcery count for the deck.

You can also do a controlling green deck on the clues plan. That tends to be more forgiving of splashes.

Quote from scottjhebert »

I would rather say it's a 'high ceiling' scenario rather than a 'best case' scenario, but yes, the Journal isn't required.

I agree, that's not a best case scenario. The best case scenario I can think of would have been if I had been able to play it in a game where I did turn 2 Erdwal Illuminator into turn 3 Trail of Evidence in a R/U deck with 16 instants/sorceries. For the rest of the game, I got to double investigate every time I played a spell, and many of my spells had investigate riders. I had like 16 clues in play at one point. Normally, that much card advantage would be a nearly insurmountable advantage, but the deck was running a fair amount of card draw as part of the 16 instants/sorceries, so there were tempo/board presence issues that prevented it from being an unbeatably strong position. A Tamiyo's journal there just lets me demonic tutor every turn for the rest of the game, directly pulling answers out of the library for whatever the opponent does and casting the card draw spells with any leftover mana until I get enough in the yard for a lethal Rise from the Tides.

Given the power of enchantments in this set, I feel relatively comfortable maindecking a single Root Out. Most people are going to have a target, and sometimes that target is going to be really important.

I love how incredibly strong the uncommons are in this set, and how many ways they can go. I've done 16 spells R/U with Trail of Evidence as a value engine to lead to a Rise from the Tides kill. I've done a G/U grindy investigation based deck with a pair of Fleeting Memories as the primary win condition. I've done mono-red werewolf aggro with Spiteful Motives and Breakneck Rider as the core engine cards. I've lost to Behind the Scenes more than any other single card so far. The rares seem much less dominating than usual by comparison, which I really like, and I've seen a lot of different strategies work.

The amount of card advantage available in the set and relative weakness of the common 2 drops also helps push the games a little longer and adds a lot of decision points to the game, which I feel leads to more depth. Overall, I am deeply impressed with the draft experience with this set, and I am very much looking forward to playing much more of it.

Quote from RubarbKnight »

And then the more understandable mistake. Not paying attention to non-creature permanents (unless it deals them damage in some way). And how much this impacts threat assesment, what they use removal on. etc.

I've seen people ignore very powerful enchantments in favor of mortify'ing a green non-trampling fatty instead.

This. It takes people a while to understand the threat of cards and mana vs. more obvious threats. If you have two opponents, one of which has a Baneslayer Angel+Serra's Ascendant with two cards in hand, and another who has 7 islands and a Caged Sun with 6 cards in hand, don't oblivion ring Baneslayer Angel. There is a very reasonable chance you're all about to lose if that blue player untaps with Caged Sun still around. I've been the blue player in that scenario, it didn't end well for anyone else.

I feel like the 8+ mana ones going to be really good as control finishers or if you build a dedicated ramp deck, or if you face off against a dedicated control deck. Otherwise not as much.

On the other hand, I love dedicated control strategies. I will be very excited to see if it is possible to pull off 5 color control leveraging that blue converge card draw spell everyone else probably won't want, removal from all 5 colors and eldrazi finishers.