MTG Salvation

The list I took today,



Some notes
- I tried to find some Golgari Charms for the board before the event started, but the store didn't have any.
- I'd like to cut the Edict and TNN to look at rebalancing the sideboard a bit to include things like Sylvan Library and Golgari Charm with/over Decay's. I originally ran two TNN, but even with DRS they just seemed to push the mana of the deck more than it wanted.
- In general, the deck seems to have a very good combo matchup, and a very poor aggro matchup. I'm trying to find ways to rebalance the maindeck/sideboard to make this not feel quite as binary.

Sunday Legacy 11/12/17: 7 people showed up (first time we hosted it was two weeks prior and there were 11) decks present were:
1 BR Reanimator
1 High Tide
1 Grixis Delver
1 Sultai DS
1 Death and Taxes
1 Merfolk
1 Spanish Inquision

The previous event also had a BU Tin Fins, Bant Deathblade, ANT, and UR Delver, and something else over High Tide that escapes me.

Rd 1: Bye

Rd 2: Ian on Death and Taxes.

g1: I didn't write down who was on the play, but I believe it was Ian, who mulled to 6. It looks like I cast and early thoughseize and grabbed Jitte from his hand of Thalia, Batterskull, Flickerwisp, and Jitte (did land -> mom turn 1). I ended up going something like delver, drop to 12, double death's shadow when he had a Mom and Thalia out. I let him take back an attack when he realized he would take a ton on the swing back, but drew a fetch. His life went 20-16-5-dead. I took a gamble after thoughtseizing him that I could probably finish him before he could get a swords to plowshares into his hand, since otherwise mom could lock out a single threat from me.

sideboard -4 daze, -2 spellsnare, -1 death's shadow, +2 decay, +2 engineered explosives, +2 dread of night, +1 true-name nemesis. There's another player that hasn't shown up for one of the regular flights that also is on DnT, and he has 4 caverns (turns out Ian only had 1), and I cut most of my counters besides Force for more removal, and a threat that is stronger against Swords.

g2: I actually took really bad notes here. But turn 1 mom into turn 2 stoneforge mystic for battleskull (I think turn 1 I pondered or something trying to find a fatal push). On my turn 2 I had dread of night and decay in my hand, so I dropped Dread hoping to be able to get more action in my hand. He is able to drop battleskull, but I get a pair of delvers out. I decay the germ token, and he gets out two phrexian revokers (both on explosives). I hold up two wastelands, but he's only playing planes. I drop him to 8 before he plays karakas for his 5th land to equip battleskull. I have to brainstorm lock myself, and despite two dread of night out can't answer the revokers (note: Golgari Charm in the future might be good here).

g3: I didn't change my sideboard strategy. I tempo him out. Delver, git prove, his hand is, wasteland, 2x revokers, stoneforge mystic, helm of obedience, 2x planes. He mistakenly wastelands my watery grave turn 1. On my turn I flip delver, fetch for another watery grave, play deathrite shaman, and on my third turn death's shadow, on his third turn he plays rest in peace, passes. I'm now super aware of his Helm, and while he's still only on 2 lands, I want to close it out quickly with him at 14 and me at 10, I look at doing something like activate DRS drain (him at 12), dismember it (me at 6), swing him down to 3, but realize it doesn't really change the clock and attack him down to 8 and pass. He goes land, mom, I dismember end of turn and he concedes. 1-0.

I'm not sure if I should have still done the dismember play just to try and stop a swords, but he had open mana and might have done it that turn anyway. Turns out he sideboarded terribly and took out Serra Avengers.

Rd 3 versus Jack on Fish.

g1: I'm on the play. I think Jack mulled. I thoughtseize, see lord, merrow rejerry, jittle, master of waves, cavern, and take jitte. I shock myself, get a delver and death's shadow out with me at 10. But he has a vial on 2, and drops 2 lords, followed by 2 more. Islandwalk and a bunch of self harm do me in.

sideboard: +2 decay +1 tnn, +1 explosives +1 diabolic edict. -2 spell pierce, -1 ds, -1 drs, -1 daze, -1 ts.

g2: I draw a land of wasteland, 2 git probe, decay, edict, thoughtseize ponder, and reluctantly keep. The hope is to double git probe and then based on what I see either thoughtseize or ponder. I double git probe, see no lands. 3 turns later, I still haven't seen one, with a chalice on 1, and a vial out. Eventually he plays TNN and a lord of atlantis so i can't even edict it anymore. I scoop.

I probably should have mulled the hand due to the lack of a colored source on principle, but I basically had 1/4th chance of hitting a viable mana source on each of the successive draws. Ugh, writing that out makes it clear it was 100% a mulligan, but I wanted to get away by being greedy. This is the second time in a row I've lost to merfolk, and a matchup that seems terrible to the current build of the deck.

Technically with only 7 people, the event ended there. But I stuck around to play... Allen on THE SPANISH INQUISITION.

g1: He does a bunch of stuff, I force his Diabolic Contract, and daze something else. On his second turn he successfully pays for his turn 1 Summoner's pact. He ends up having a bunch of mana in play, and I sit with a Fatal Push and spell pierce in hand. He eventually tries to go for a infernal contract, I think, but I spell pierce the second land grant and he's forced to top deck for a few turns. I eventually get out three deathrite shaman and just drain him from 20 to 0 without seeing a delver or shadow.

sideboard -1 daze, +1 flusterstorm. Now, why not side out Fatal Push/Dismember? Game 1 I spell pierced a land grant that would have fetched Dryad Arbor, and I could have fatal pushed that. I also know he sides in Tomb of Urami or whatever it's called, and just wanted to make sure I didn't get cheesed out. Note earlier how I've felt very secure against unfair decks with my first 60.

g2: we both mulligan, my second hand is basically FoW, blue card, 2 daze's and 2 lands. He land grants, showing manamorphose, dark ritual, summoners pact, belcher, carpet of flowers. Turn 1 I force carpet of flowers, and on turn 2, he tries a bunch of stuff to get a belcher into play with eats a daze, and he scoops with zero cards in hand.

That's it exactly, yes.

I agree with Hume86, unearth is probably too inconsistent. There was a list a while back with main deck reanimate so you could do cheaky stuff like cycle street wraith, reanimate for the life loss/threat, but I think going the UB(x) goodstuffs pile is probably more consistent/powerful. Either CFB Lets Play Video or random MTGO 5-0 list might be the one I'm thinking about.

I put 2 True-Name Nemesis in my board but the 3 mana feels very expensive in this deck, even in my list with Deathrite Shaman. I've since swapped them out and made sure I have answers for my opponents TNN.

A few things:

-I was getting stuck in areas where opponents were wasting me, and I had no way of getting back in the game outside of just ripping off the top of the deck.
-I was getting into situations where both my opp and I had gone through most of our hands, and they had a better post-attrition sink.
-I was having problems with a straight UB Death's Shadow build dealing with planeswalkers besides interacting with them on the stack.
-Opponent DRS often made it feel that my waste/stifles were not as effective as I imagined them to be.

DRS makes me stronger against wasteland and gives me potentially stronger turn 2 plays with the extra mana, since the overall curve of the deck didn't change much with my changes. However, sometimes the extra mana isn't needed, but even then I can often ping for two, and the life gain ability when I'm at precariously low life has also saved me a few times. I'm better able to splash/reliably cast golgari charm or now abrupt decay out of the board. Thoughtseize kept the next lifeloss componenets of the deck static across the two builds, and makes me less dead to Jace, Mirran Crusader, TNN, etc.

I'm still not sure if its right or not, but I think there's decent merit to talking about the pros/cons of the changes.

My LGS is looking to start a bi-weekly legacy flight, and I have a bunch of unused death's shadows lying around, so I decided to build into the deck a few weeks ago since the basic build is a bunch of staples + a single underground sea. I started with the Josh Utter-Leyton Shadow build recently, but started adopting it into a Sultai build.



I decided that I thought Street Wraith and Stifle's were the worst cards in the deck, and went to -4 Wraith, -4 STifle, -1 Fetch Land, and went up to +4 Deathrite Shaman, +4 Thoughtseize, +1 Bayou. My sideboard is also different, in that I wasn't running Engineered Explosives, Nihil Spellbomb, or another Spell Pierce, and was only on 14 cards in general it looks like... Instead I ran +2 True-Name Nemesis, +1 Diabolic Edict. But, particularly the TNN and the lack of Engineered explosives looks to be 100% a mistake.

I went 1-2-1 at my LGS's first legacy event, beating BU Reanimator/Tin Fins, drawing against Grixis Delver (but think I would have won if the opp had been given a game loss for showing up 15 minutes late, hyper casual event, or if I had one more turn). Lost against Merfolk and UR Delver, which feel like terrible matchups without cards like Explosives to board in. I'll probably try to add in Abrupt Decay's and Engineered Explosives to the sideboard. Other cards I'm looking at evaluating are also a 1-of-Berserk in my main deck, and a Sylvan Library in the board, and adding a Breeding Pool over a watery grave.





The general form of the deck seems to do okay, I've seen builds t16/32 across a variety of events recently.


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