MTG Salvation

When I saw Firesong and Sunspeaker I assumed everyone would be trying to maximize their abilities by packing as much big burn and as much repeatable lifegain into a deck as can reasonably be managed. But apparently people mostly synergized around boring ol' aetherflux reservoir. My favorite card has to be reaping the rewards - sac all my lands to spread around 30+ damage for the kill? Yes please.

Anyway, so here's my probably terrible build that's just about burning and healing as much as possible.

Tried this out in my usual group.

Game 1 I got a bit mana stuck and my artifact mana got wiped along with my commander, and I didn't get to cast it again until the end of the game. I was starting to recover a bit with some political maneuvering. Then someone had an infinite combo I couldn't stop.

Game 2 was vs muldrotha, upgraded-precon saheeli, and hanna. Hanna kept a really bad hand for no reason and didn't do much. Saheeli had an insanely explosive start with like 20 mana on turn 6 or so. Muldrotha was a bit slow. Tutored up a sol ring to speed things along, then SoFI with sunforger to 3-shot saheeli before she drew something scary (all her artifact creatures were turned blue by brudiclad, lul). Muldrotha started to recover and managed to get FS+SS off the board once or twice, but I had enough ramp to recast. She ramped a bit and tried to make some muldrotha plays to kill my commander again, but in response I burned her to death with both helixes + one other heal spell. Then hanna went down fairly quickly.

Game 3 was going interestingly and I was in a solid position, one guy had a bit board of tokens I was looking forward to gaining a ton of life from. and then someone had an infinite combo I couldn't stop.

Can't help but feel like my group might be running into some growing pains that make it difficult to play non-blue decks and still feel like the game is going to be satisfying. FS+SS is decent when it gets going, but like most RW decks its limited in its interaction, especially with slots dedicated to non-interactive stuff like ramp and lifegain. Silly build-arounds like this one can't really hold up against a lot of the better combos. That said, it's still kind a fun deck, even if it's limited and pretty on/off.

If you're frequently running up against infinite combo decks, you could try Lapse of Certainty, Mana Tithe, and/or Dawn Charm. All tutorable with Sunforger, and very few people ever seem to remember that white has any counterspells. They're all pretty situational, and not a solution to all combos, but could help sometimes.

Quote from OathboundOne »

If you're frequently running up against infinite combo decks, you could try Lapse of Certainty, Mana Tithe, and/or Dawn Charm. All tutorable with Sunforger, and very few people ever seem to remember that white has any counterspells. They're all pretty situational, and not a solution to all combos, but could help sometimes.

Lapse of certainty is ok, I think the others are too niche to be worth it (well, dawn charm is actually pretty ok overall, but I wouldn't really rate it as a counterspell). Sunforger tends to get targeted for removal often, though, so even as often as I'm tutoring for it, I'm not sure it's reliable enough to really make a reliable dent in combo decks. Especially since it only delays the inevitable in most cases.

My meta is pretty big and many people have a decent number of decks. So it's not an issue of "solve this one combo". Also I'd still say the significant majority of people aren't playing any combos. If I was going up against the same deck I could be more prepared, but I'd have to basically memorize the meta with proactive answers like mass LD or stax enchantments.

Nah I think the real solution is just to make another deck. Which is, in fact, the solution to all of life's problems. I'm almost up to 100 different commanders built...10 left to go.