MTG Salvation

With the Jace unbanning, we have one of the most powerful 4 drops in modern history. Can we take advantage of this?

NOTE - given that this is new, feel free to compare other possible green Jace midrange decks such as Jace Bant or Jace RUG

The general idea here is to use Jace as a card advantage engine which fuels our mid-lategame through his ridiculously broken brainstorms. Because of this, we can load up on good 2 drops without having to use dark confidant as a card advantage crutch. Essentially the deck is just Junk, but with jace and more discard over lingering souls and maybe rhino.



Obviously this is a very preliminary build, but it performs decently in testing.

PRO:
- Ridiculously good matchup vs. Death Shadow, Lantern
- Strong matchups against non-jace midrange, many of the "aggro" decks, and some of the combo decks
- Generally speaking, resolving a Jace when a control deck does not have a counter or a bolt will win you the game. Additionally, we included 2 maelstrom pulse and 4 thoughtseize in order to help combat enemy Jace
- Resolving a jace against non-jace midrange essentially always wins the game. Standard non-jace midrange does not seem to have an adequate answer besides lightning bolt in our BBE jund build. This may change if it turns out things like Dreadbore are viable in the meta.


CON:
- Most likely loses to Jace Control
- Loses to valakut, not much to be done.
- It still loses to RG tron, though it's game against eldrazi tron is actually OK ish, depending on how their sequencing and our discard goes.
- We also have a losing matchup against affinity, and our sideboard as BUG isn't as strong as BRG or BGW decks would be. Creeping Corrosion is not as good as Ancient Grudge or Stoney Silence
- We have a losing matchup to burn, may be necessary to include Kitchen Finks or Thragtusk in the side. Thragtusk being a bit too high to cast in a 23 land deck.
- Graveyard hate is limited to Nihil Spellbomb and Leyline of the Void, though BRW seems to make do just fine

So, I've been tinkering with a Sultai shell that is very similar, except I've been experimenting with Life from the Loam. Thoughts? It can feed Tarmo or any of your delve creatures, fill your hand for Lilli, and, most importantly, it interacts very well with Jace's 0. I made a few different choices, couple Scooze, etc. But mostly the same list.

I do believe Jace + Liliana is a good place to be. Not sure about the Green; but BUG is one of my favorite archetypes in legacy so I'm going to be brewing on this a bit more.

I hope others throw some ideas down here; I'll try to have some thoughts after some playtesting.

Alright; so I want to get this discussion going

• 21 Lands
  
• 2 Abrupt Decay
  
• 4 Ancestral Vision
  
• 3 Bloodbraid Elf
  
• 3 Fatal Push
  
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
  
• 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
  
• 2 Kolaghan's Command
  
• 4 Liliana of the Veil
  
• 4 Lotus Cobra
  
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse
  
• 2 Scavenging Ooze
  
• 2 Snapcaster Mage
  
• 4 Tarmogoyf
  
• 3 Thoughtseize
  

(note; just stole the manabase from a BUG build; this absolutely needs to be tweake)

That said, the basic shell is from
watching this deck on stream:
https://twitter.com/Bahra01/status/964192886299463680 - where the deck looked very good

Just played against Jeff Hoogland while he was streaming, so I guess the secret is out. I'm working on a pure master piece for the new format of modern (given the unbannings) I will not reveal the decklist yet but maybe there'll be a stream with further polishing of the deck

Having watched that deck on stream; it looks to be BUGr (basically Modern Czech Pile; which makes sense because Konig is a legacy guy).
Cards I noticed on stream were:

- Inquisition
- Thoughtseize
- Kcomm
- Tarmogoyf
- Ancestral
- Jace
- Fatal Push
- BBE
- Scooze
- Lotus Cobra
- Thragtusk (Post SB)


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I feel like LoTV can be shaved / removed here; but I'm not certain of that. Maybe go down to 3 copies. Anyone have thoughts?

So I have been brewing since the day the list was announce and these are the lists I have come to:

Lingering sultai (the only thing better that playing LoTV and JtMS together is playing them a turn sooner):
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/lingering-sultai-1/?cb=1518672308

Sultai(Tried and True Blue jund):
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/15-02-18-sultai/?cb=1518672331#

I have been playing JUND for the past couple months and both of these decks drew ideas, principles, and ratios from my time playing that.

Here's my deck that i've been testing with



I don't like serum vision in this deck because of how the card affects our manabase. It wants us to play Darkslick Shore vs Blooming Marsh and that creates more blue mana and lowers our green mana sources and this is still a BGx deck for the most part. Yes the blue is very good for Jtms but not for our Goyfs, Oozes, Grim Flayers, Abrupt Decays etc. From playtesting this deck i would remove Dismember and 1 Maelstrom Pulse and add in 2 Jace, Vryn's prodigy.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/lingering-sultai-1/?cb=1519098738 here is an updated list after some test hands/games.

I found oath of nissa to be lack luster in play as flipping over instant and sorceries felt really bad and the idea that it could enable delirium was also flawed because you couldn't chain multiples because of it not being able to grab enchantments. This in addition to a low instant count left me without a reliable way of getting delirium making flayer feel a bit lack luster. That said it still could be correct to play flayer with other things like engineered explosives or nihil spellbombs, but not in a lingering sultai build as it pulls the deck in too many different directions.

Ill keep you posted on the result of the testing but this seems to grind value better in a stalled out game where bob can accrue advantage/find removal spells to break the stall, which the deck naturally does buy simplifying the game state and clogging the board with souls tokens.

Cards that have performed well to far is the interaction between shambling vent and noble heirarch. a 3/4 life linker is nothing to scoff at and makes racing really hard for our opponents and heirarchs in multiples only make this better, the same being true for creeping tar pit.

Field of Ruin is being played at an all time high. 4 colors seems risky.