MTG Salvation

"Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water."
- Homer, Odyssey Book 12

Hello everybody!

The goal of this deck is to create choice situations for my opponents. But, much like Odysseus' choice between Scylla and Charybdis, the only alternatives are between bad and worse. It is reminiscent of a stax deck, but rather than outright preventing my opponents from doing anything, it aims to attach a cost to any action they take. They are free to do whatever they want, as long as they are willing to pay the price. Needless to say, this twist makes for slightly more fun and interactive games than your typical stax lockdown build. When playing this deck, I want the pilot to feel like an evil mastermind, playing games with their opponents and constructing elaborate schemes, where any action taken by the heroes will inevitably cost them something that they hold dear. Think Jigsaw from the Saw movies, or the Green Goblin, or Lex Luthor...hell, if you have ever liked a supervillain, chances are they have made a hero face a sadistic choice at some point.

Vial Smasher the Fierce and Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker are a very good fit, both in terms of gameplay and flavor. For one thing, they give us access to a wide range of really cool pain cards. Furthermore, Ishai is in line with a theme of the deck (cards that do something whenever my opponents cast a spell), and Vial Smasher is a powerful reducer of life totals in a deck that doesn't always have the capacity to deal large chunks of damage. She is also incredibly fun to have on the board, as I found that due to the random nature of her trigger, other players rarely feel unfairly targeted.


The cards in the deck can be separated into various thematic categories. There are cards that punish our opponents whenever they cast spells (Spellshock, Kaervek the Merciless, Painful Quandary, Kambal, Consul of Allocation), activate abilities or tap lands (Harsh Mentor, Manabarbs), put things into their graveyard (Bloodchief Ascension) or search their library (Ob Nixilis, Unshackled) . Then there are cards that force our opponents to give something to us every time they cast spells (Nezahal, Primal Tide, Rhystic Study and of course Mind's Dilation - which also has great synergy with Vial Smasher) or play lands (Sire of Stagnation). Finally, there are cards that force our opponents to choose between paying tribute to us or burning themselves (Combustible Gearhulk, Indulgent Tormentor, Sin Prodder, Prince of Thralls) or force them to choose between their own life or their loved ones (Killing Wave, Vile Consumption, Torment of Hailfire).

Naturally, our adversaries won't be happy with these choices, and they might put it in their minds to fight back. Which, of course, they are free to do - if they can afford it. Propaganda, Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs, Dread and Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts attach a steep price to attacking us, while Martyr's Bond makes it costly to remove our permanents.

Of course, what would a deck such as this be without our favorite Evil Mastermind, the nefarious Nicol Bolas himself. I opted for his Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh incarnation, as his +2 is just so gratifying (and I recently pulled a copy from a fatpack). To round things off, we have the usual assortment of ramp, draw, control (some unconditional boardwipes and removal) and protective footwork for our most unpopular henchmen to hopefully maintain our boardstate and chip away at opponent life totals until we can finish things up with a big Debt to the Deathless or Torment of Hailfire.

Because remember, kids:

"This is why only fools are heroes — because you never know when some lunatic will come along with a sadistic choice.
Let die the woman you love...or suffer the little children! Make your choice, Spider-Man, and see how a hero is rewarded!"
— Green Goblin, to Spider-Man

Played another game today, and managed to reduce everyones life totals close to single digits via Vial Smasher and an assortment of pain cards...and then died. To my own Manabarbs.

So! The deck needs a few more ways of closing out the game before people's attention turns to me. To this end:

- Everlasting Torment out

- Exsanguinate in

I might put Torment back in at some point, but for now I want a little more Oomph. Exsanguinate provides that. Gaining life is also useful in order to not die to Manabarbs.

Out:
- Mortify
In:
- Anguished Unmaking. Does the same thing, but better.

Currently looking for something to cut so I can play the amazing Soul Barrier, but not sure what. Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist is on the chopping block, but will get replaced with some other card draw, most likely Sygg, River Cutthroat. Maybe Harsh Mentor. I'd like to test the Mentor though, as I haven't actually gotten to play him yet, so I don't know how good or bad he is. I would really appreciate some suggestions here.

Out:
- Burning Earth
In:
- Soul Barrier

Burning Earth often deals more damage to myself than to my opponents, as I am running lots of nonbasics. Soul Barrier is just hilarious.

Running Personal Sanctuary should help you with not getting pinged from your own global damage effects like Burning Earth, Manabarbs, etc.

Quote from DementedKirby »

Running Personal Sanctuary should help you with not getting pinged from your own global damage effects like Burning Earth, Manabarbs, etc.

Very nice idea, I like it! What would you cut for it?

Quote from CasualCalamity1 »

Quote from DementedKirby »

Running Personal Sanctuary should help you with not getting pinged from your own global damage effects like Burning Earth, Manabarbs, etc.

Very nice idea, I like it! What would you cut for it?

Well, it depends. Personal Sanctuary would help you to actually return to your deck some of the cards you cut due to them hurting you. So you could even add those back. So it would be quite a couple of cuts, actually. Personal Sanctuary also helps you play cards like Heartless Hidetsugu in a much more broken way. Having W and B means that you can tutor for Personal Sanctuary also.

Quote from DementedKirby »

Quote from CasualCalamity1 »

Quote from DementedKirby »

Running Personal Sanctuary should help you with not getting pinged from your own global damage effects like Burning Earth, Manabarbs, etc.

Very nice idea, I like it! What would you cut for it?

Well, it depends. Personal Sanctuary would help you to actually return to your deck some of the cards you cut due to them hurting you. So you could even add those back. So it would be quite a couple of cuts, actually. Personal Sanctuary also helps you play cards like Heartless Hidetsugu in a much more broken way. Having W and B means that you can tutor for Personal Sanctuary also.

I find myself more and more enjoying tutorless decks, so I don't think I will be adding lots of tutors, if any. I already run Vampiric Tutor, that should be enough for now.

Heartless Hidetsugu is worth looking into, maybe to replace Exsanguinate. I always wanted to play him somewhere, so maybe this is the deck for him.

- Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist
+ Mystic Remora

Ludevic...just kind of sucks. Remora is much better card draw, and on theme.

In my deck with Vial Smasher, three really good cards that I've used that you do not currently have in your list are Sunbird's Invocation, Vedalken Orrery, and Dig Through Time.

• Sunbird's is just a great card, and when you're casting a lot of higher-CMC things, the triggers are amazing.
• Vial Smasher triggers off the first spell you cast on ANY turn, so the Orrey allows you to get Vial Smasher triggers on more turns, provided you have the mana available.
• Dig is great, and it's a really nice Vial Smasher trigger, AND you can play it on an opponent's turn at instant speed for even more smasher triggers.

Quote from Outcryqq »

In my deck with Vial Smasher, three really good cards that I've used that you do not currently have in your list are Sunbird's Invocation, Vedalken Orrery, and Dig Through Time.

• Sunbird's is just a great card, and when you're casting a lot of higher-CMC things, the triggers are amazing.
• Vial Smasher triggers off the first spell you cast on ANY turn, so the Orrey allows you to get Vial Smasher triggers on more turns, provided you have the mana available.
• Dig is great, and it's a really nice Vial Smasher trigger, AND you can play it on an opponent's turn at instant speed for even more smasher triggers.

Thanks for the suggestions! I try to run as few copies of individual cards across all of my decks as possible. Vedalken Orrery is currently in another deck of mine - but I do run Leyline of Anticipation here for exactly the reasons you mentioned. However, I found that a lot of the time, I don't actually need the instant speed that much, because most of my cards don't really benefit from playing them at instant speed, and I do run a fair amount of expensive spells. This means that I often don't have enough mana to cast a spell during each of my opponent's turns anyways. I was actually thinking of cutting the Leyline for this reason. Does Orrery/Leyline work well for you? (btw, the hands down best card to make use of the "any turn" Vial Smasher clause is of course Mind's Dilation. This card is just absolutely nuts with (and without) Vial Smasher).

Sunbird's Invocation is a pretty neat idea. I run my copy in Riku atm, because there I can profit from the free casts by copying the spells that I reveal with Sunbird's. I will consider including it here though, if I end up cutting it from Riku again.

I considered Dig through Time before. It ended up not making the cut due to space constraints (and I didn't have a copy lying around). However, I never realized it's an instant. That's indeed a big plus, and now I will probably include it once I get ahold of a copy. Thanks!

Quote from CasualCalamity1 »

Does Orrery/Leyline work well for you?

Yes, Vedalken Orrery works great in my list, but my list has a lot of ramp and wants to use a ton of mana. I paired Vial Smasher the Fierce with Thrasios, Triton Hero, so I also want to cast spells from my hand on multiple turns for both Sunbird’s Invocation and Rashmi, Eternities Crafter. Also, I have a lot of big creatures, and casting them at instant speed helps give them pseudo haste when I do not have a haste outlet.

Quote from Outcryqq »

Quote from CasualCalamity1 »

Does Orrery/Leyline work well for you?

Yes, Vedalken Orrery works great in my list, but my list has a lot of ramp and wants to use a ton of mana. I paired Vial Smasher the Fierce with Thrasios, Triton Hero, so I also want to cast spells from my hand on multiple turns for both Sunbird’s Invocation and Rashmi, Eternities Crafter. Also, I have a lot of big creatures, and casting them at instant speed helps give them pseudo haste when I do not have a haste outlet.

Yeah, I can see Vedalken Orrery doing a ton of good work there. My gameplan here is probably a bit different than yours. This deck does not really aim to power out big mana plays, but create more of a pillow fort / soft stax boardstate by making my opponents' plays more costly through various taxing effects. Still, I do like the Sunbird's Invocation and Dig through Time and will test them.

- Blazing Archon
+ Angelic Arbiter Needed the Archon in another deck. The Arbiter fits well with the sadistic choice theme. I am curious to see how this works out.

- Capital Punishment
+ Pendrell Mists Needed to cut something for Pendrell Mists, and I often found the effect of Punishment to be a bit small. Council's Dilemma is a fun mechanic though and I might put it back in the future.

- Indulgent Tormentor
+ Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker The demon was always underwhelming, basically it's a vanilla 8/3 flier. I want to test another rattlesnake instead.