MTG Salvation

Not sure if 8 months counts as a necro; I've been a lurker for a while but this is my first post. Sorry if this does count as a necro. Anyway, I was wondering how you feel about Plea for Power over Concentrate. At worst its a less color-intensive Concentrate, and at best maybe you'll get an extra turn off of it.

What about Titania, Protector of Argoth or Song of the Dryads? The latter seems better than Beast Within if you use that.

So far as I can tell, the big hit from this set for Maelstrom Wanderer is Domineering Will. It's a decent cascade since you'll have haste to attack with the critters and it's a brutal combat trick when not cascaded.

Just wanted to drop by and say I really dig the Tolkien theme in the OP.

Updated second post with win cons. Holy cow do I need to update this old-ass, dusty deck list. Buuuuut, I'm lazy. For another day.

I was about to say, you're not allowed to play Rofellos any more. =(

Any updates? Do you still play this?

Lmao, yeah, my list is quite a bit different from the OP. I might get around to updating it, but no promises.

It has been brought to my attention that I have not updated my thread in a long time. This was originally intentional, as I was happy to shift my discussion to ambivalentduck's thread. However, since he has stated that he no longer runs the deck since the mulligan change, I would welcome discussion geared towards building an optimized Wanderer list back to my thread. I should probably start with an updated list, since even when I was holding discussion here, I never updated the OP list.

Assuming you had one, Capture of Jingzhou replaces which time walk?

e/ Also, I've noticed you run a lot more draw spells than I do, care to explain why you find them useful? I've been struggling with how to see draw spells, half the time I just end up drawing my bombs.

Capture would most likely replace Crush of Tentacles.

Card draw spells are at their best when you are met with resistance. Also, my deck plays a bit more towards the combo side, and the card draw ensures my big turns never run out of gas. But yeah, mana is usually easy to come by, so the more difficult resource is cards.

Which bomb spells do you run which I do not?

I'll get you my list tonight. Mostly MLD though, Devastation and such.

Great to see some new Maelstrom discussion. Been playing this deck for 1.5 years and still having great fun with it. I'll post my list tonight, but I had some questions for Mr. Coupon and other players. My list is a little more creature focused. Have you tested Pathbreaker Ibex? I suppose he's not as great in a creature light list, but with only 23 in mine he's an absolute house.

I've been missing some draw power in the deck. Besides Fact or Fiction, Consecrated Sphinx,Recurring Insight, and Greater Good, what is the draw source you're happiest to see in your deck? I want to try out Garruk, Primal Hunter, but the blowout potential is real. I suppose removal on Maelstrom is perfectly fine though.

Also Coupon I notice you don't run any spot removal. Did Chaos Warp, Beast Within not make the cut? Also, how has Oblivion Stone performed? Also been looking for another wrath effect (that's not MLD, I don't like playing those).

As for draw spells, you mentioned some of the better ones. I play Prime Speaker Zegana (I know nonbo to cascade into, but its still honestly great), Mystic Confluence, Rhystic Study, Time Spiral, and Tidings, and occasionally I play Sphinx of Uthuun and Wheel of Fortune. Season's Past is also an awesome card advantage spell, especially for this deck, considering the wide array of CMCs we play. Honestly drawing a ton of cards isn't as important as mana in this deck.

Pathbreaker Ibex is probably the easiest win condition for this deck in a mid-competitive meta. Absolutely absurd when it gets to attack. Awesome to clone, because you get to use your maths. Shaman of Forgotten Ways + Cyclonic Rift is a fun 21 mana combo as well.

I play Beast Within, Cyclonic Rift, Jace the Mind Sculptorand Decimate as my removal spells of choice. I used to play Karn Liberated, Chaos Warp and Song of the Dryads at various points as well. They are all good, but I like to cycle out great swaths of cards in my deck for my own amusement.

The best wrath effects in my experience are ones you don't mind cascading into. I play Balefire Dragon and Blasphemous Act. Some slower, more land/artifact-oriented lists can play All is Dust.

In terms of card draw, Concentrate, Harmonize, and Tidings are all very good because after ramping we can easily play them and still have gas for our turn. One of my favorites is Sphinx of Uthuun because Fact or Fiction is awesome, and Fact or Fiction on a relevant body with evasion is double awesome. Sphinx plays very well with clones (especially Phantasmal Image, Rite of Replication, and Food Chain. I also like Arcanis the Omnipotent as potentially repeatable card draw.

O-Stone is there as a catch-all for if we have to play from behind. Fabricate finds it. I'm usually not excited to get it, and Thada or Acquire can annoying grab it from us (although usually someone else is playing them to steal anyway), which is annoying, but it has never played its way out of the deck. Stone, Karn, Crush of Tentacles, and Devastation Tide are my answer cards. I love Rift, but don't play it because it is a poor cascade. Chaos Warp I never played, but really went into the rearview after the change to the tuck rule. Beast Within is very reasonable, I just tend not to play spot removal in favor of splashier mass removal. Beast Within could easily be better than Karn, frankly, it just doesn't have quite the upside. I would certainly listen to the argument.

I don't play Ibex because of my low creature count (same reason I'm not running Craterhoof). It seems good for a more aggro-heavy rather than combo-heavy build, but that is not how my list functions.

For those of you who have played these, if there is one slot for [Cyclonic Rift, Karn, Beast Within] which would be your choice, and why?

Cyclonic Rift is the best of the three because you can cast it earlier if you have to. Sometimes something needs to be removed at instant speed or you die. More early interaction is better now that the we no longer have Partial Paris mulligans.

Considering changes:
-Karn
-Scroll Rack
-Kiki
-Conscripts

+Cyclonic Rift
+Jace the Mind Sculptor
+Deadeye Navigator
+Palinchron

Reasoning: I borrowed Jace for another deck and forgot to put him back. My bad XD. Neither Karn nor Scroll Rack have lived up to expectations for me. I agree with the advice that Rift is most likey superior to Karn. The overload is certainly better. The fact that has the versatility to be used early game if need be is a plus. I have been unreasonably stubborn against it because it is not a good cascade, but the card is a house in most decks and has earned a spot for testing. I switched from DEN/Chron to Kiki/Con upon realization that you can't infinitely cascade my deck off of DEN/Chron. But I am guessing infinite mana is still better on average given how much bigger the bodies are, how much stronger the effect is vs removal (both in terms of protecting itself and the fact that you still untap), and my draw density. This also cuts down on random red spells in the deck.

Any thoughts?

Cascading into Palinchron feels good every time. It feels like you can't lose.

Yeah, one of my favorite wins came as such. It was 2v1 (me being the one), and I went first. T1 Trop, Crypt, Sol Ring, Fyndhorn Elder. T2 Wanderer cascading into Skyshroud Claim, Palinchron. Floated 2 with untap on stack, untapped 4 lands, cast Temporal Manipulation, chained enough turns to kill both off of commander damage before they got a second turn. It felt good

Hi guys! I've been playing a lot of Wanderer on cockatrice



As you can see, I'm trying Twin combos as my kill-con. It's pretty easy to Food Chain into them since there's so much redundancy, and having something like Twin on Glen Elendra is pretty good. Am I missing anything important?

I'm surprised by lack of Pestermite. Do you consistently find your combo cards? It looks like it would be awfully tough to do, but I have no experience playing that type of list. How do you keep from folding to spot removal? Is there enough protection?

A few quick hitters:
Misthollow Griffin is absolute garbage. Food Chain is an easy enough win without adding a do-nothing card to your deck.

Kessig Wolf Run needs to be on the list. With our mana, it can easily turn Maelly into a one-hitter.

Tolaria West functions to find Mana Crypt and KWR. It's the hotness. Especially since you run Cradle and LED.

Both your overall threat density and card-draw density seem very low. I feel like you could Wander into a Recurring Insight (which I strongly recommend) for 7 cards and hit zero content.

I'm a little confused by your ramp, which embraces both one-drops which most other builds have long since abandoned (albeit in theme with Cradle/Priest) and wonky 4-drops that seem a bit worse than some of the ones you are omitting. If you are looking for ramp packages, I would suggest browsing my and AmbivalentDuck's lists for strategy, as you seem somewhere between where his and my ramp philosophies fracture.

But other than that, I have no experience playing modern Twin combo, and the Kiki-Conscripts are about to be cut from my deck for being too fragile, so to a large extent you are pioneering this theme. I can chip in with my experience, but at the end of the day, it's your testing that matters, not my my testing with my theme.

Mr Coupon, I have kept tabs on this thread since following you when you were posting on Ambivalent Ducks thread. Do you intend to update your list?

I've been working on other decks recently. There are some newer cards I need to test, I'll update when I get some decent testing in

Edit: current differences from OP

-Kiki/Conscripts
+Deadeye/Palinchron

-Blatant Thievery (never as good as "should" be, UUU is a B at times (more for restricting other plays than being hard in its own right)
-Scroll Rack
-Karn (I think)

Not sure what last 2/3 additions are... kinda embarrassing.