MTG Salvation

Any pointers on what to focus on when facing sneak/show/omniscience? It's giving me a hard time, but its likely my misplaying. Wanted to know how you guys strategically deal with it. Thanks!

I'm curious as to the benefits of running a Gaea's Cradle in dark maverick. What would they be and how would you best take advantage of it? Also, is there a consensus on what burn-hate card to pack in sideboard? Currently I run 3x Leylines, but I'm interested in hearing alternatives.

Suppression Field is ultimately a meta call, as it's strength lies in combating planeswalkers, DRS, fetches, lavamancer, gavony, twin, vial decks, etc. Will also eat abrupt decays quite well. In an infect driven meta, I would advise against maining it, and probably use either a vial or more removal. As you probably know, blanking their spells on ourturn is normally the better decision. I would love melira, but she's very specific as far as hate goes.

As fate would have it, I did wind up fitting in 2 Horizon Canopies to accommodate for replacing the Knights with Voice. Bastions have been good in testing, and the reason I avoided manlands is due to the non-synergy with field, it also came down to the CiPT effect which put the hurt on my tempo. I might test a tec edge, whatever helps my match-up vs Scapeshift.

Great suggestion for Valorous Stance, will add it into testing.

Was referred to this thread for my deck. Have been having success with it lately, utilizing good ol Suppression Field. This capitalizes on the current meta, which is more activated ability intense than 2 years ago when I made this. Suggestions/comments are welcomed:

So returning to modern after what seems like 2 years or so, decided to unwrap my GW deck to see if it still stands up to the meta. So far it seems very good still after testing in about 20 or so Cockatrice matches. The deck plays like a bit of maverick and a bit of taxes, but I'm pretty sure I posted it in Tom's thread a while back so I'll do it again:

**Edit: Deck moved to G/W Maverick**

Let's see, ways to really piss people off. An excellent way to troll people would be to make a Shahrazad inception deck, utilizing Hivemind. Another way to troll the table is to play an old modern eggs deck and very very slowly ping each player to death one by one in one turn.

Ok, now on to your deck. I really like the Spoils of Evil addition, combos nicely with Exsanguinates (since you can't really run Cabal Coffers efficiently in this deck).

Quote from Kabirum

i thought so. but this is a pretty cool trick for this deck. Seeing i could run it on the rats and scholar of aetheros.

By the way is this the old wording for life link?, if not is it possible to get double life link?

I wonder what other cool things i can find in black to use with vampirism.

Looking at the new BNG spoilers, they definitely are making white and black stronger, and the third set should have the minor god Aetheros (BW).

Multiple instances of "life link" on a creature are redundant, same goes with deathtouch, first strike, and some other abilities.

Black is king when it comes to the life-drain game, one of the all-stars of life drain is Exsanguinate. Very potent if you run it with cabal coffers and a bunch of swamps. Kokusho is another all-star, and can be combined with nasty reanimation tactics, Recurring Nightmare for example.

Making your w/b deck to mono black makes your mana base dirt cheap and lets you spare your money for more pricey cards.

Edit: Being that I was terribly disappointed in Phenax (UB God), I'm hoping that Aetheros and the Izzet god don't get the same treatment.

Quote from Kabirum

i guess but its not really that efficient in multiplayer.

Oh wait that is a great combo

crypt rats late game , vampiric link it then use its activated ability to board wipe and gain tons of life.:p

But does it kill u in the process if u don't have more life than ur opponent?

It will only kill you if you pay into it more than the amount of life you have (e.g. you have 4 life, you pay 7 to deal 7 damage to everything, the damage goes through, reducing your life to -3 and you die due to state based actions. If you instead paid 3 instead to do 3 damage, you would live long enough to trigger Vampiric Link and gain life.)

I'd honestly be interested to see a B/R multiplayer control build come out of Mogis, God of Slaughter.

Edit: Actually, I hope the G/B god is not that awesome. Why? Because it's already cake to build competitive G/B, in my opinion its the strongest 2 color shell in multiplayer.

Thanks for the replies guys, after quite a bit of brainstorming different ways to make the deck, it actually wound up taking an entirely different route than I expected (was initially going to try out that Gibbering Descent+Mindslicer idea). But rather I wound up incorporating the concept into my UB deck that I was also trying to improve at the same time:

Here's a rough draft:



My thoughts:
Abyssal Gatekeeper and Strix = early blockers/deterrents
Kokusho = the center of the deck, the deck revolves around multiple activations of him via legend rule with the other copies of him or by using Evil Twins as copies 5-8. Wraths, tutors, and other effects make this happen too. A volrath's stronghold can recur this even more.
Mindslicer = still very good with mass removal/Diabolic Intent/Rise of the Dark Realms/etc.
Sepuchral Primordial and Rise of the dark realms = Alternate finishers, looks like it can play well with Mindslicer's ability
Aura Thief = for my specific meta reasons (e.g. Phyrexian Arenas, Lurking Predators) Suppose it could be a 3rd arena otherwise.

Thoughts? Suggestions? I'm already starting to like this better than my old UB build, but I'm still open for avenues of improvement.

EDIT: Update 1/25/14

Changed the decklist slightly, but the changes are certainly felt. Took out Phyrexian Arena, although it's a nice way to draw cards, I felt strixes and intents were sufficient for keeping the deck in momentum. The one intent-target I felt was definitely missing was Phyrexian Reclamation, feels like it will be great for stringing kokos together, among its other uses. arise of the Dark Realms have been replaced by Rite of Replication as the finisher. At 4, it can make a kokusho to sack, at 9 it is an exsanguinate for 25 (with the added bonus of your original kokusho to attack off any remaining stragglers). I know Kokusho being good in multiplayer isn't exactly news, but I feel like I'm getting something here. List below:



Edit #2 Recurring Nightmare in place of Phyrexian Reclamation, if I really want to be mean. (The whole thing would just make it another RN-kokusho deck, so screw it)

Was thinking about an idea revolving around Diabolic Intent and a bunch of creatures with nasty LTB abilities as synergy. Mindslicer, Abyssal Gatekeeper, and Kokusho all come to mind. The tutor immediately after a mindslicer death trigger looks like something neat to exploit, although I'm not really sure where to start with a build like this.

Any suggestions or ideas on how you would make a deck like such? Thanks!

Unless I'm reading it wrong, doesn't the whole devotion requirement actually HURT his ability? If I'm correct, he isn't even a creature that you can mill with until your devotion is 7. If this is the case, I would abandon any leftover hope about this card being good in general.

Well, as the God of Deception, Phenax certainly deceived us by making us think he would be a good card (a.k.a. not mill). Well done MaRo, you silly man.

Phenax, God of (....) 2UB
Legendary Creature - God [M]

Indestructible
As long as your devotion to blue and black is less than seven, Phenax, God of (....) isn't a creature.

At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, that player puts the top 7 cards into his or her graveyard, then discards X cards, where X is the number of creature cards put into the graveyard this way.