MTG Salvation

How would you build the following pool? I ended up playing WU Flyers with a very good amount of removal.

Well, now I kinda feel that I have to at least comment on this pool. Oh well ...

Blue feels obvious as the main color, with Teferi, the Djinn and Drake, and Clutches. Initially I though white would be the best complement here, and then splashing red makes little sense as it only really gives the Barrage. Without more wizards, Firefist Adept does too little as a splash, and the Commander is too color intensive for a splash. Upon closer inspection, the red cards are mostly solid overall, and splashing white for removal would be a good choice. Black and green are too shallow. So for me it comes down to U/R, U/R/w, W/U/r, or W/U.

Alright, after pondering way too long over this, I too think, that U/R is the best choice as a base. Splashing white for Teferi and more removal is a possibility, but I'm trying without white first.

(edited list)


This is as far as I got for now. Still too many cards. Not too happy with it. I want to take out the Homarid, but with the hole at 4 mana, I feel I need another creature, even if it is just a Hill Giant. I included the Powerstone Shard for that reason, too, since it lets me jump from 3 to 5 mana, and also provides another artifact for the Djinn's alternative cost. I don't like the Scholar, but at the same time want as many wizards as I can get for Firefist Adept. Can't take out any lands. Need all the big bodies I can get. Argh. This is a frustrating pool, and I haven't even touched any splashes yet!


Edit:
A new day, let's try to finish this list. Right now, I feel, that there's enough removal in the deck already, that you don't have to splash white. Teferi is mostly a card advantage engine with his first ability, but there are two card draw effects already for this, and Siege-Gang Commander provides more. So what remains is to remove two more cards. Let's get rid of the Homarid, since there are 5 3-drops and the Shard to compensate. And we probably don't need the Warcaller either with 4 more 2-drops. Since there's nothing to abuse its abilty with, it's just a bear, solid, but not overly needed. The 1/3s should be able to stall the ground in the early game, which is good enough, because this deck is trying to win in the air.

Still not overly fond of this build, but it's the best I can do. My deck would probably look way different and be far worse under pressure of time in an actual event. But this was a good excercise to improve myself, I think.

So I tried to reconstruct the deck that I actually played. It was something like this:



I counted [Academy Drake] as a 7 drop because I really only wanted to play it kicked.

Mana Curve:
2 CCCSS
3 CCCCS
4 CCCS
5 CCSP
6 CS
7 C
8 C


Some cards like Precognition Field were played just so that I could try them out and see if they were good or not. I was not very impressed by Precognition Field.

Blue is your best and deepest color, but there are also traps.

Slinn Voda is bad. I have never seen anyone play this card effectively. It's a vanilla 8/8 for 8, which is unplayable. The real value is at 10 mana, which any deck other than a real dedicated GU ramp deck will not pull off often enough.

Precognition Field is also bad. Too durdly. I've had bad experiences even with the better instant/sorcery saga that nets immediate value. This format is not good for a spells.dec.

I agree blue/red wizards is the way to go. You have enough Wizards to benefit from tribal bonuses, and Siege Gang is one of the best cards in the set.

White doesn't offer much, just Teferi and premium removal (which are splashable). No white bombs. No white synergies (can't go blue-white flyers, and not enough support for a Kwende double strike deck).

Skimming the above lists, I think blue/red lacks 23 playables so I would splash Teferi + 2 removals with a 7-7-3 manabase and call it a day. Teferi's minus ability is very relevant. He is not just card advantage. The splash gives you 3 cards that take bombs off the board!