MTG Salvation

If I had the money for Jace + Misty Rainforests + Vendilion Clique and the format slowed down more I would be interested in testing a Bant midrange build along these lines:

JTMS sounds wayyyy better in a control deck ;P

Although on a serious note, how do we win the value game against any blue control deck now? A resolved Jace in a stalled/grindy board is going to be end the game on the spot, it seems like. So the grindy/value game that we often win that matchup with is now a problem (assuming Saheeli wins against UW, etc control the same way Kiki does, value grind?)

I think our best bet against UW control is still to out-tempo them with 4x Voice, 2x Gaddock (!), and 1-2x Selfless Spirit backed up by 2-3x Renegade Rallier and 1-2x Blade Splicer, with a spell suite of a few Spell Pierce, Unified Will, Dispel, or Cancel to help push early threats through. In short it’s about having strong 2 & 3 drops rather than splashy come-back cards like Sun Titan or attempting to combo.

If you want to build your deck to beat UW control I think it might still be doable. My bigger concern is Jace pushing out the fair midrange decks that we actually do Ok against and selecting for more drag-racing linear decks. Building a deck that can handle both the fastest aggro-combo decks and grindiest UW Jace decks could be challenging. But maybe that’s an environment where Copycat’s combo/value split identity will shine... In the very least, having a more defined global meta with a few best decks could make it easier for us to meta-game with all of our flex slots and toolbox options. In particular Gaddock might be good against both the UWx Jace decks and the linear combo decks like Storm or Ad Nausam that are trying to get under UWx Jace.

Overall I’m pretty annoyed at the Jace unban since it seems like it’s mostly meant to sell A25 packs but I’m trying to stay positive.

Quote from Shelldell »

I think our best bet against UW control is still to out-tempo them with 4x Voice, 2x Gaddock (!), and 1-2x Selfless Spirit backed up by 2-3x Renegade Rallier and 1-2x Blade Splicer, with a spell suite of a few Spell Pierce, Unified Will, Dispel, or Cancel to help push early threats through. In short it’s about having strong 2 & 3 drops rather than splashy come-back cards like Sun Titan or attempting to combo.

The problem with that approach is that some of the other controlling decks have Anger of the Gods or Flaying Tendrils, both of which punish going wide with small creatures. It works against UW specifically or if you have the right answers at the right time (Selfless Spirit, early countermagic), but it can also go very wrong.

My thoughts on the unbans: We could in theory try both JTMS and BBE, but neither seems like it fits into our strategy well. We can't protect Jace and ourself reliably and long enough for him to win the game for us. However, maybe Squadron Hawk could help? (Card advantage engine with Jace's Brainstorm and okay creature to sac to Evo)
BBE has no synergy with our core (Saheeli, Felidar, Evo) since it triggers on cast, and a 3/2 haste is decent in some matchups, but doesn't really add anything extraordinary to our strategy. It would push us into a more midrange / aggressive role, but it's lack of synergy seems like too big a hurdle.
On the opposite side of the table, BBE could actually be a good thing for us. It's finally a relevant creature that can be blocked by a 1/4, and it also trades with Voice, Eternal Witness etc. If it becomes a big factor in the metagame (which is a big if), even Wall of Omens might become interesting again. Of course it can also occasionally cascade into Kolaghans Command or Liliana and destroy us, but overall I don't think we are unhappy about BBE in the format.
Facing Jace will probably not be great for us. We don't have a lot of pressure, especially since Jace kills Voice tokens easily. On the other hand, tapping out against us can be scary, so there will be games where the threat of the combo holds Jace at bay for a while.

I would be happier trying bloodbraid in the deck than Jace - whilst we would never want to evo into it, it's a good evo target to get Sun titan, and it's just good value by itself even if you cascade into evo (can't sac bloodbraid like this but anything else in play is fair game)

I think BBE gives this deck a decent boost. You don't generally want to Evo into it, but you can cascade into evo or saheeli and get a lot of value.

Enough of a boost that we want to run so many 4 drops? Although it does open up more 2/4/6 builds. Doesn't work with chords at all, of course, so don't want it in builds with chord I suspect. Also doesn't generally combine with silver bullets well, so will have to be quite careful with the ratios.

But agreed, BBE into Saheeli, Renegade Rallier (if active), Voice, Coiling Oracle (if used), etc all seem useful. Oath is okay in some matchups, broken in others.

Birds of paradise, lotus cobra, and silver bullets are the only undesirable hits (and that gets way better post-board). That I think is probably going to be one of the critical things - the average value will likely be quite high.

Here are my thoughts so far on BBE:

-BBE's ability to cascade into either Saheeli or Eldritch Evolution seems good and relevant to our plan. The perfect case of crack fetch -> BBE -> Rallier -> rez Voice from GY is a little too Christmas-y to focus on but I agree that in general BBE exciting as a value card.

-On the flip side, BBE using Cascade instead of an ETB is bad with our core. You don't want to Evo into BBE, you don't want copy BBE, and you don't want to flicker BBE, and it's taking up the space of the payoff cards that you do want to Evo into / copy/ flicker like P&K, Baloth, Rhino, etc... so BBE generates value itself but also makes our existing value engine worse. We gain 3-4 good value cards but make 10+ cards worse. That's a hard sell when you really think about it.

-The silver lining to Cascade is the uncounterable on-cast trigger that's potentially attractive vs UW Jace

-Evo-ing BBE into Titan is potentially powerful and value-positive. I've ditched Titan for some time now due to clunky openers and poor Evo setup but this might make Titan worth trying again.

-Cascading into a 1-drop -- especially a 1-drop Dork -- feels pretty bad, however, encouraging us to keep our 1-CMC slot trim

-These curve requirements encourage us to build in the all-in value-beats "Hoogland" style

-By taking up more of our space in the 4+ CMC range with 3/2 creatures we lose toolbox space and become more focused on an aggressive but relatively flimsy board of 3/2s. The deck needs a lot of ways to consistently stop sweepers post-board to avoid getting blown out.

-Rallier's Revolt requirement is awkward with BBE -- you need to pre-emptively crack a fetch when you cast BBE without knowing if you'll hit Rallier, lowering the chances you'll have Revolt when you need it. I used to play Rallier in a CoCo deck (another 4-CMC card that can pseudo-cascade into Rallier) and it didn't sound like a big deal but the drop in consistency was pretty noticeable over several games and eventually put me off Rallier in CoCo decks. There's only so many times you can tolerate cascading into non-revolt or targetless Rallier.

EDIT: I was wrong about Revolt off of BBE, thanks Lectrys

It’s an interesting, very pushed direction. A lot of us (including Hoogland) have become somewhat disillusioned by these sorts of all-in builds that trade consistency and interaction for explosive pro-active plays but I guess it’s possible that if we keep going all-in even harder if we’ll get to something great lol. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to buy a playset of BBE but I’m curious to see how everyone’s testing goes.

i happen to have BBEs from years back so i am gonna chip in to test. have to lose chord of calling in the deck unfortunately... this is what i ended up with:



Cascading into BoP is an issue. However it happened only 1/10 times. Cascading into Evo is not necessary a bad thing, you can Cascade -> Evo 2CC creature into Renegade Rallier to get it back (Voice of Resurgence). the deck feels like a value themed aggressive deck with a potential combo finisher as a back up plan. BBE feels like a sorcery speed collected company. any opponent will hate interacting with a resolving BBE with a Voice of Resurgence in play.

yet to decide if the BBE version is better than the Chord of Calling version. one of my concerns is the inclusion of BBE means no Chord (as mentioned above) and less silver bullets in the main deck.

I think if you run BBE, you also want Glorybringer (or maybe Angel of Sanctions). The dragon clears the way for the 3/2 to attack, and if you have a 3-drop in play and hit Evolution off cascade, having access to that effect seems very attractive. We shouldn't add BBE if we can't make use of its body reliably, so we need ways to convert it into damage. The cascade trigger alone isn't enough.

In a BBE build, Birds should probably make room for Hierarchs. Not making red mana can be compensated by using fetchlands accordingly, but exalted becomes noticably more relevant with BBE. Attacking through Snapcaster, Thalia etc and dealing an extra point of damage vs Storm seems like a solid upside.

I'm not sure I understand the "we don't want to hit two drops so let's have a heavier emphasis on 1-drop dorks" approach. 2 mana dorks still allow a turn 3 BBE, while also being a better cascade target. In Maniospas build, for instance, 7/32 targets are very poor hits off of BBE, and I don't see any evolution plays lining up that I like (love your other builds though, Maniospas!)

What about something inspired by Hoogland's kiki build? It has 12 rampers (cobra/oracle/rallier) that function well with BBE and the deck. However, the deck is built to synergise with chord of calling (rampers that provide mana through means other than their body, so they can also tap to boost chord). Throwing in BBE negates one of the most powerful things about the build



In terms of BBE, I think the deck is about as good as we're going to get it. Your outcomes are:
* 12 situationally powerful (bolt, oath, Evolution)
* 4 poor outcomes with a decent body (Cobra)
* 16 strong outcomes (Voice, Rallier, Oracle, Saheeli) - 5/4 power draw a card or 6/4 power, no revolt are both pretty strong outcomes for 4 mana, I'd say.

EDIT: Obviously we could increase the power of the BBE outcomes by swapping the ralliers for Tireless Tracker or whatever, and just have the 8 two drops for ramp. But the point remains that it's just not as powerful as it seems like it would be in GBR.

Worth noting that one of the best outcomes (BBE into Voice) is not that superior to a line of play our deck already runs (Rallier into Voice).

Just whipped up there's lots of problems with this deck, but here's the issues with BBE:

*If running BBE, you have to run other 4+ drops to evolve into, and have a plan for it (and if running dorks, your 3 drops have to be worth evolving into).
*In Kiki Chord, this is solved by running restoration angels. They're a great evolve/chord target.
*You want to minimise the misses: your dorks should be DRS, and everything else a payoff card. Jund/Junk sorta decks seem like the perfect place.
*You can't really run more than 1-2 chords if you're running BBE, because it is just a terrible thing to hit (about the same as a mana dork most times, though). So doesn't fit as well into an angel/chord deck.
*Ideally you want a deck where every card is just generically a payoff card. You have no control over what you hit. In an already inconsistent deck, you want as much control as possible by having specific tutoring options. Again, Jund/Junk seems like the place for it.
*As someone said, you want to be able to capitalise on the body. Archangel of Thune for instance could turn it into something pretty scary (BBE into lotus cobra and a stalled board state, with archangel of thune coming down sometime soon after and building up your board is pretty cool).

So... There's some obviously pretty powerful lines of play with it, but I'm dubious of the deck building requirements (the biggest one being everything that is 3 mana or below should be a generically high-impact card when cast for free).

Quote from Shelldell »

-Rallier's Revolt requirement is awkward with BBE -- you need to pre-emptively crack a fetch when you cast BBE without knowing if you'll hit Rallier, lowering the chances you'll have Revolt when you need it. I used to play Rallier in a CoCo deck (another 4-CMC card that can pseudo-cascade into Rallier) and it didn't sound like a big deal but the drop in consistency was pretty noticeable over several games and eventually put me off Rallier in CoCo decks. There's only so many times you can tolerate cascading into non-revolt or targetless Rallier.

You don't need to preemptively crack fetches when you cast BBE--you resolve the Cascade trigger, find out that it flipped Rallier this time, then you crack a fetch with Rallier on the stack. Collected Company forces the preemptive fetch crack, though, as by the time you know a Rallier will come out of that card, it's too late.

@Lectrys, that's an excellent point, you just get to cast it so it goes on the stack? Awesome interaction then

Maniospas, fair enough. And worth remembering that you'll probably board out some of those mana decks in grindy games, so that means they'll come out even less often. But I'm dubious about noble being better than cobra (the only time it is is when we need to be attacking with a 4/3 specifically. Is there a planeswalker with 4 loyalty we need to hit on turn 4?). Or am I missing something?

And of course with archangel of thune, cobra represents a threat (although ironically, so do all the mana dorks xD). Perhaps archangel of thune would suit your deck? Although given it's lack of actually doing anything upon resolving, it may be too weak if it's not a combo piece? Evolution into our angel being pathed sounds pretty bad. Although your mana base has several ghost quarters, is there room for 1-2 gavony township? They can go a long way towards mitigating the weaknesses of a deck full of dorks. And gavony is easy to tutor up with Knight or Oath.

Also would wonder if Knight should be courser of kruphix because he synergises with fetchlands, BBE (in that he lets you know what the top card of your deck is). Although I'm pretty biased towards him And revealing your top card is pretty serious information fail. Also dubious of e-wit!


EDIT: Or more likely, you already win all the grindy games and I'm going overboard, it's all the other matchups that the deck struggles with that deserves the focus (thus the ghost quarters?)

Wednesday Modern, 3-1 with 5c Rhino Saheeli
Round 1: I faced UW control and had really good draws in both games. Dork into turn 2 Blade Splicer, Rallier returning Oath and Gaddock Teeg respectively, Saheeli copying Rhino, etc. His draws were below average and he couldn't keep up. Luckily, he drew no Field of Ruin or Spreading Seas to punish my greedy mana. 1-0

Round 2: I knew that my opponent was on GW value town, and expected to struggle in a fair fight, unless Wingmate Roc or Elspeth help steal a game in the air. I did indeed have a quick Elspeth in the first game, and barricaded behind a Blade Splicer + Voice while he set up his engine. I ran out of basics against his constant Ghost Quarters, but Elspeth almost got to ulti before he overwhelmed me.
Game 2 and 3 both ended quickly via combo. Exactly what it's meant to do 2-0

Round 3: Tron. He was slow in game 1, and I got him to 5 life before Ugin it the board. Luckily, Golem tokens don't care, so another hit for 3 plus a Rhino from hand brought me over the finish line. Games 2 and 3 he had turn 3 Tron, and that was that. I knew going in that the matchup wouldn't be easy with my list, so losing to it was no surprise. 2-1

Round 4: Traverse Shadow. Another match with fantastic draws for me, I won in two games that weren't close. The highlight was Rallier returning Rest in Peace after it got hit by discard. 3-1

Bonus: Before the tournament I played a best of 5 against a friend with Affinity. I lost the first two with mediocre draws on my side, but won all three sideboarded games.

Overall I was very happy with the deck's performance, and I especially liked Blade Splicer. It was a solid attacker, blocker, flicker target, and even left me with a 3/3 after Ugin's arrival. Very versatile, easy to cast, and has plenty of synergy. Thanks maniospas, your repeated praise for the card finally got through to me, and it was a very good thing!

Another exciting take on it. Definitely like the idea of upping the siege rhinos if you're going to play them at all. I like the closing games aspect of Siege Rhino the most, for when you just need to burn the face. It may be a much better strategy than running 4 bolts.

Inclusion of Lingering Souls seems like another powerful decision, and goes a long way towards making black convincing. I like that you have these powerful Abzan cards and still have the option of comboing quickly for matchups where your main plan doesn't work.

Sad to hear Blade Splicer works so well, now I definitely have to pick some up ;P

How are you finding Wingmate Roc? It seems like sometimes it would be an insane value engine, but if you're in a bad state and can't attack profitably, seems pretty rough?

Wingmate Roc can certainly go wrong, and when I first tested the card (Abzan Evolution without Saheeli at the time) I was doing it with the intention to get this crazy idea out of my system. However, it impressed me immensely right away, and triggering Raid is easier than I thought. You can usually make some kind of attack with a Voice, Blade Splicer, Spirit token or Bird, and people often wait with their removal until after you attacked (Exalted makes them more likely to do that). Roc is great if you are ahead (I like it a lot more as an early Evo target than Thragtusk, since it just flies over most blockers), great in stalled board states (which deck can defend against multiple big fliers?) and great against spot removal. It's an insane blocker against Affinity, gains you a solid amount of life when you are racing, and 3/4 is just the right size to dodge both Anger of the Gods and Elspeth Sun's Champion -3. Basically the only clean answers to it are Thoughtseize, Supreme Verdict/Damnation, and counterspells. It synergizes with Felidar Guardian and Saheeli well (Saheeli even gives you the choice to copy before combat for 3 damage and some extra lifegain or post combat for a permanent extra 3/4 flier).
You do of course run into situations where you can't trigger raid, and casting Roc in these cases feels bad, but you are still getting a passable effect for your 5 mana. A Restoration Angel with nothing to flicker is the same size for example. My rough estimate is that I have played 100-200 matches with Wingmate Roc at this point, and the cases where I couldn't trigger Raid and lost because of that were a lot fewer than the ones where Roc was between solid and absolutely game winning. I'd say 90%+ of my Rocs were cast with Raid.

Emzed, makes sense, I'll put it on my list to acquire if I get a chance!

Regarding Jace... Has anyone tried Fleecemane Lion recently? The card was a big factor in the only tournament I've gotten first in (Standard GW aggro). The lack of value production is worrisome, but reading 'win the game if you hit 5 mana' in some matchups is pretty useful. He can only die to Terminus or Liliana/sac effects, I believe (out of commonly played things).

One final tournament with my 5c Rhino Saheeli before the unbans take effect, went 2-3.
List was the same as on Wednesday (see above, only swapped Damping Matrix for a second Stony Silence). I lost to Lantern, Titanshift and Burn while beating Jeskai Control and Affinity. Blade Splicer continues to perform very well, and the mana base worked smoothly. Overall I was happy with the deck and my play, but sometimes the opponent just topdecks Anger of the Gods right after you saw their hand...
There is another tournament coming up for me on Tuesday, I might run it back.

@Maniospas, you run Baloth in the main, right? As I outlined in another post, I think that's potentially a significant advantage over Siege Rhino against burn (although if you're running several, I'm not sure). Also, being 5c Saheeli means a more painful mana base and thus a weaker burn matchup, so I suspect the matchup is not as favoured for Emzed. Lantern I always felt like we had a decent shot at, would be curious how you found the matchup @Emzed. Titanshift is interesting, as in my early posts that was something I expressed concern about + suggested that the way to beat it is to combo ASAP (although in your case, sin collector might be the best way to beat it). How did you find that matchup?

As for Fleecemane Lion, I was arriving at a similar conclusion, although will likely test it just in case. The most common cases of Fleecemane being useful:

- Fits into aggressive builds (as a 3/3 body on turn 2, it's a reasonable threat).
- Very likely baits removal (making it easier to combo or land bigger threats).
- As a high-priority target for your opponent to kill, it has great synergy with renegade rallier.
- Fleecemane Lion is a much better late game top deck than Nacatl/Watchwolf.

Some of the more niche/rare benefits:

- Can go monstrous or threaten going monstrous. This is way better in Kiki Chord where you want to leave mana open on their turn, but still potentially useful here. It represents an 'answer or die' in some matchups, which always has some potential value.

I'm wanting to try some more aggressive beatdown builds, and was struggling to find a two drop I liked (Tarmogoyf has some very weak arguments against it and the very strong argument that I don't have $400). Will let you know if it goes well!

EDIT: Terminus did occur to me, and you're right, it absolutely wrecks both the monstrous benefits and the rallier synergy. Definitely non-viable if that's a decent share of the meta.

Yeah my Lantern and Burn matches were close and my opponents' draws were really good (Lantern / Goblin Guide in every opener), whereas mine didn't come together quite so well (no fourth mana source to cast double Rhino after keeping a hand with 3 lands + Oath). I don't think those matchups are bad, but sometimes you just lose.
Titanshift is not a matchup I felt comfortable with, but once again my opponent had some close to perfect draws: Game 1 (he went first) he started with tapland, then on turn 2 cast Explore + Bolt on my Hierarch, turn 3 bolted my second Hierarch and ramped again, and landed turn 4 Titan. Game 2 I started very well and had him almost dead on board after exiling his only relevant card with Sin Collector, but he promptly topdecked Anger of the Gods to wipe my board and followed it up with more action. These things happen, and in turn I got a little lucky in my match vs Jeskai Control (that guy must have nightmares from the insane hands he saw with Vendilion Clique in all three games).

I don't think Fleecemane Lion has what it takes to compete in Modern. It's a 3/3 for 2, with an ability that only becomes relevant pretty late in the game. And with 'relevant', I actually mean you then get the choice to invest an entire turn's mana into a move that's likely going to fail in the matchups were you would want its effect, since the creature dies to basically every removal spell. Otherwise you still just have a 3/3 vanilla. I played the card a lot when it was in Standard, it was fine there, and I even considered it for Modern before, but quickly dismissed the idea. The format is just too fast and brutal for such a card.

I've actually done little testing with a Saheeli list featuring 2 Jace TMS, and so far it appears promising. Jace actually fits into our shell nicely, since we already have Oath to dig for it and fix our mana, defensive creatures to defend our planeswalkers, lots of shuffle effects (+ Oath and Saheeli scry), and situational tools we sometimes want to trade for a few fresh cards. We keep having trouble with our beatdown plan being effective enough in matchups where our combo is unreliable, but Jace offers us a whole new dimension that doesn't require attacking with 1/4s to win the game.

Credit goes to shelldell for building the initial list with Jace, I've only changed a couple of cards from his first draft.

Minimal testing so far but I am convinced that being the Turn 3 Jace deck is a good play to be. You might even want more Jace to be honest.

A Derrick Davis got 32nd place at the SCG Modern Open this weekend (~1000 players):
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=118933

Am I overvaluing Noble Hierach in the above list? If your only hard red card is Pia And Kira, wouldn't it make more sense to swap it for anything else and use Nobles over Birds?

Then again, I didn't make top 32.


I'm also interested in testing JMTS in any list that would have run Riverwise Augur

It's possible that he did not think to put in Noble, as often Birds is a go-to in these sorts of decks.

That said, BOP/P&K means 5 extra cards that put something flying on the table. I imagine that was something that could be extremely relevant for chump blocking.