MTG Salvation

So I’m a solidarity player who’s shifting deck to:




So that’s the general deck. Land a t1 threat, daze their thing, bounce a thing, adapt a salamander drake, unsubstantiate their abrupt decay. Win.

It unfortunately can’t race most other tempo decks like grixis or rug delver, but it’s a bit denser with permission that I think it’s possible to steal a win here and there.

Neat tricks - ninja + snapcaster mage can allow us to draw a card, then flash more stuff from the yard

Ninja + sprites - counters
More things.

The Pteramander I think can be surprisingly versatile since it’s good as a t1 play or as a t4 play.

I’m debating whether or not cryptic serpent is remotely playable (useless t1, good later on). Also debating if I should run thing in the ice as a finisher/removal.

I suspect that it can take some players off-guard, especially if you lead off pretending to look like miracles (t1 fetch go, holding stifle daze and wasteland t2).

There’s a thread on the source with this deck, but I figured that I’d tap into the minds here too!

Thoughts on if it should be more controlly or more tempo-y, and how i should do that?

I also thought of building Monoblue Delver with Pteramander as a budget option. I'd try to take a more tempo approach.

The core would be:


This still leaves you with 18 spells to add. I think True-Name Nemesis is the best extra threat you can play if you want to take the tempo approach. Thought Scour also plays well with many cards in the deck. Many could argue Stifle might fit into this deck, but as Team CFB claimed, that card makes you lose win% and I guess they were right. A few extra counterspells and some removal (playing just blue will usually be bouncers, Dismember or stuff like Piracy Charm) and the deck should be finished.

I guess that given that Ptelamander won't adapt until late, getting value from it with Ninja of the Deep Hours might be a good idea. However, I believe that the right way to play ninjas is with value creatures (Spellstutter Sprite, Snapcaster Mage, Baleful Strix...), and not cheap evasive ones, which would force the deck to go in a different direction.

This would be my first draft: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/decks/9031-monoblue-delver

nice list..

i'm not sold on predict. it doesn't gain tempo, needs setup (brainstorm or ponder) and I'm not sure how many tutors your opponent would have that ends up on the top of the deck..? or is it a card advantage card against miracles?

yea i think those ninjas and the sprites are mostly a part of a more mid-range build than tempo.

so far, I've shifted to this:


something like that.

losing red makes the final last health points quite unmanageable.. so psionic blast can help with that (found some while digging through my cards).
For some reason, i can't get myself to use thought scour. it just seems like i'm wasting tempo/mana. considering the speed in which we're going to be churning through instants and sorceries, i highly doubt we're going to need to spend more than 1U to adapt past turn 3-4. And by that point, we're still limiting our opponent's ability to establish a board, so it should be fine, right?

I'm still trying to find those salamander drakes... didn't get a chance to go to the prerelease

Why Snow-Covered?

Predict is cuter than good. Besides Ponder and Brainstorm, Delver of Secrets also allows you to know the top card of your library. If casting Thought Scour during your upkeep might be awkward, tapping two lands to cast Predict isn't exciting. That to not mention those times when you cast it blindly (had the sensation it was close to half the times in the few testing games I tried). In a vacuum, Thought Scour is a worse card than Preordain; however, with so many ways to know the top card of your library, being an instant and the occasional opponent who seems hesitant to crack his fetchland after brainstorming, I like it even more. I don't think you need to pack 8 Mental Notes in this deck and play them recklessly though.

Would you not be better off with one drops you can sac to counter spells?

recently saw a dude who posted a top 8 with a mono-U aggro.

seriously nuts build; didn't play well, but completely blew out his opponents cuz they had no idea what was going on.

No fetches (and neutered all stifles), 4 thought scour, jace's phantasm (post-board on the penultimate turn, he landed 2 phantasms, then at the end of the rug player's turn, thought scoured the 10th card into a graveyard to suddenly threaten 15 damage or something), ninja of the deep hours (against a RUG delver, he countered a thing with spellstutter sprites, attacked in, then ninja'd in 1 extra damage and drew a card... the RUG player's face was priceless).

brainstorms ended up being like a bad ponder which is something i can't really get myself to do (cuz of the lack of fetches). But this deck is real!

If anyone's still following this, my build's changed a bit recently:



Oh yes.

This has some pretty weird matchups as far as i've tested. thought scour has been pretty good against predict (but annoyingly turns on accumulated knowledge) and archive trap you can just shoot off when you draw a jace's phantasm. and you know how brainstorm is like a ancestral recall combined with fetch lands, right? well, now, we can run copies 5-6 via visions of beyond. it's possible to do some pretty fun tricks, like:
miracles player obviously digs for terminus, then plays it, i echoing truth my 2 phantasms, then recast them in the second main.

I like how archive trap works, actually. being able to pump the phantasms turns 2-3 is really good, and it can sometimes put your opponents on tilt (not sure why).
One of the greatest things you could do with this deck post-board is to counter everything as far as you can, mill for a tonne, then surgical the threats that you find scariest. it's probably not the craziest play to go turn 1 delver, archive trap+surgical, daze. Then what, turn 2 ponder for a 5/5 jace's phantasm and plan delver's flip, and you're off to the races.
It's not the greatest tempo, but nuking a mentor or vial or crystalline sliver or thalia feels pretty freaking good. also, you can see exactly what they have up their sleeve post-board.

Note - this is NOT close to tier 1,5. but this is a pretty hilarious "ah HA!" deck you can bring to a local to really go balls-to-the-wall/sideways strategy that they wouldn't expect. I also suspect that if you're a very savvy player, you could do some real damage with a list like this; especially since you can much better sculpt your strategy against what you're up against.

One last thing - this deck folds to chalice. a turn 1 chalice basically means you're a sitting duck till you find an echoing truth or something like that. Also, since i don't think they run any fetches at all, they're less likely to trigger an archive trap, and like half the deck is turned off at that point.

Nice list! You should include the new fetch Prismatic Vista