MTG Salvation

Current Foil Count: https://www.dropbox.com/preview/20190425_205301.jpg?role=personal

I have a Foil Dissension Breeding pool coming in the mail
And I own an Expo Misty I'm going to trade towards a couple MM Mistys
The Expo steam vents were chosen solely for faster fetching.

The Scalding Tarns will probably be the last pieces I pick up for the deck.

EDIT: Regarding UU for counterspell.... I think it'll actually be ok in conjunction with shoal... we essentially get spell snare early and counterspell late..

A few changes to my list: cut the 4th Scour for the 2nd Tarfire. Humans has become a deck again.

I'm also toying with the idea of playing 2x Return to Nature over my perpetual 2x Destructive Revelry in the board. I think the incidental gravehate might outweigh the 2 damage. Also, sometimes hitting GR is tough, especially because I so often operate on Island + Stomping Ground.

Return to nature seems like a really solid card over Revelry. In my experience, the artifact/enchantment hate is usually coming in against decks where our life total is relevant, so still being able to operate on island+stomping ground is very useful in that sense.

After almost 3 months, without much playing time and lots of studying, I can finally play a modern event again. I'm gonna sleeve up my cards and hit the local scene tomorrow.

my current list:


the mana base isn't like you guys suggested (I dont own a second copy of Vents or Pool yet). i'll try the stomping ground + island way.
I'm really excited to see how Peek performs.

Any major recommendations on the deck or on what to look out for? the meta quite diverse, not many phoenix players. what should I watch out for?

Our worst match ups are eldrazi, land destruction, taxes, and BGx,

Modern didn't fire again this week, so we drafted my cube instead. But dinking around on MTGO, I'm now playing 3 Mandrills, with a Savage Knuckleblade replacing the 4th. I liked it out of the side and think having a versatile creature like that might be good. I also cut the Hazoret and am back on 2 Huntmasters in the side. I just like the card a lot more, and I had a few points where the Hazoret was clunking in my hand because I had a fistful of counters. I need whatever threat that's going to be to be good against control, and I just want to hold cards against control until I need to interact. Huntmaster works well there.

Is anybody going to try God-eternal Kefnet in side? I put a copy in side (countercats, fwiw) but I still have to draw it. I feel it promising.

Quote from Mikefon »

Is anybody going to try God-eternal Kefnet in side? I put a copy in side (countercats, fwiw) but I still have to draw it. I feel it promising.

Our deck is pretty counterspell heavy, so many spells we reveal will have no purpose being cast. Sure we'll often reveal a cantrip (I run 10 in the form of Visions, Thought Scour, and Sleight of Hand), I'm not sure how useful a potential "20" cantrips would be. Usually I save my cantrip for when I know I'm digging for something.

As for her body - it's really great, she dodges hard removal, but still dies to Path, and doesn't necessarily move your game plan forward - at 4cmc, by the time she hits the board, she's just a more expensive goyf with some evasion. Though she might just get tucked 3 cards down if removed, that still sets up back a turn if we cant hold counter magic up to protect her. I'd rather cast a cheaper creature with a similar body so I can still interact with my opponent during their turn.

I think she is worth testing in the sideboard, but I don't think she'll be as useful as she looks in this deck.

You may reveal the card: so if it's either a creature or a counterspell or a land you can keep it secrets and nothing happens.
If you reveal you get to copy the spell and cast the copy (with a mana discount), keeping the original draw. So it's an actual card advantage (with a cantrip it's as you draw 2 cards the cantrip and the one from the copied cantrip; with a burn spell you can cast one more: being able to reach 6 damage with a single bolt may be huge)

Quote from CatParty »

but still dies to Path, and doesn't necessarily move your game plan forward

Note that she would get tucked even if pathed.

Played against the Neoform combo today. Absolute insanity. It's literally Spell Pierce or die. Yeah, sometimes the deck loses to itself. But my opponent said, after killing me T2 in G1, that he had yet to lose a game (not match). So when I Pierced the Neoform in G2 and won a few turns later, I felt great. Died G3 after getting beat with an Allosaurus Rider for a while. I held up Mana Leak the whole game, and was able to get them down to 2. Then they Nourishing Shoaled for approximately one trillion, and found the combo the next turn.

I've also seen a resurgence of two decks I haven't seen in a while: Humans, which was all over the MC, and Company Combo, which killed me T3 in two games. Weird, because I feel great about the Company matchup.

Modern is like a hydra: cut off one head, two more come to replace it.

To be fair, I think our matchup is probably pretty okay against the deck, but if it becomes a real thing, I'll be playing another Spell Pierce, because casting a naked Denial and having them exile a Spirit Guide in response is awful.

I went 2-2 the other night. It was a blast playing this deck again.

2-1 against Tron: The first game I had the surprise momentum and won by a margin. Game 2 he played Relic and I wasn't quick enough to Shoal for one. He then won after a long game with two Wurmcoil Engine. Game 3 went to extra turns, where I finished with Delver + Clique + Tarfire to bring him from 7 to zero.

2-1 against Suicide Zoo: Turn 3 win by the opponent while I didn't block with Goyf accordingly. After sideboarding 2x Dispel, I felt quite save and had the countermagic in hand at the right time. Dispel on Temur Battle Rage in Game 2, and Mana Leak on Death Shadow Game 3.

0-2 against Phoenix: The first game he bolted my Delver and Lightning Axed Goyf and then played Surgical Extraction on Goyf to take away my beater.
Game Two was great. I sideboarded Surgical Extraction and hit the Phoenix with it. He had one Thing in the Ice in the grave, which would have been target for the second Surgical but he played Thought Scour on my library after I scryed Delver and Surgical to the top. It went into almost never ending Pyromancer Acension card draw fest. He almost decked himself but finally finished with TiTi.

0-2 against Grixis Death Shadow: My opponent knew I played RUG Delver so he adjusted his gameplan and played more conservative. Delver not flipping for two turns didn't help either. Game two was rough because I didn't drew a second land during turn 2 and 3 which was too much of a tempo loss.

All in all it was a great evening. I'm tinkering around the idea to put a Saheeli, Sublime Artificer in the board. The idea of turning a Bauble into a Goyf for a turn seems great. Another idea would be Narset, Parter of Veils against decks that draw lots of cards (Phoenix). Would that be a reasonable play?
Thing in the Ice feels really bad to play against. How about more Vapor Snags? Snagging Allosaurus or Griselbrand seems like a nice play too.

My favorite answer to Thing has been Simic Charm, because it bounces it, but also pitches to Shoal to counter it.

Snagging a Griselbrand doesn't seem useful. They respond by Paying 7, drawing cards, Nourishing Shoal for 15, repeat, repeat, exile a few Spirit Guides, and kill you with Lightning Storm. I think the key to that matchup is to counter the Neoform or Evolution. Shoal is good for Neoform but not Evolution. Spell Pierce is the key one here.

Glad you had fun in the matches. Phoenix feels like an okay matchup, and so does Shadow. I find Suicide Zoo on the easy side, and we have tools to keep Tron off mana. It's really tough to beat Wurmcoil, but again, Simic Charm helps here.

The way this deck plays is just all I want from Magic. Playing efficent creatures, interacting with the stack + the burn damage for the reach. RUG has it all!
I'll look into playing a second simic charm mainboard. The versatility is great.
As a starter with this deck I really liked Peek to gain information at op's end step. It gives me more chances to plan ahead.

Quote from Temuric »

The way this deck plays is just all I want from Magic. Playing efficent creatures, interacting with the stack + the burn damage for the reach. RUG has it all!
I'll look into playing a second simic charm mainboard. The versatility is great.
As a starter with this deck I really liked Peek to gain information at op's end step. It gives me more chances to plan ahead.

I can't agree enough! It's a great deck.

As for Simic Charm, I'm only on UG (not RUG), but that's a card I'm back and fourth on. It's everything our deck wants to do in a single card, but somehow it always is the most lack-luster of the available tools we have. With more you'll have that consistently. I think 2 or 3 would probably be as much as I go in RUG

But yeah, As for Neoform, we're well positioned against it because we also have turn 0 interaction and counter magic on 1cmc, which is where it counts. But that deck does a LOT of cheating. I would not surprised to see it banned.

Ended up playing Modern at the LGS this week. Went 2-2. My list is mostly just modified from old lists I played and I tossed it together with a few additions of newer cards I had laying around. The sideboard was hastily thrown together.



Round 1 vs GW Tokens 1-0
This games was an easy win. It looked like the guy had grabbed a Selesnya Guild kit and added a few cards, so I handily won both games without much problem.

Round 2 vs UW Control 1-1
These were close games. I won the first game by dropping an early threat and slinging counters to get the win. Chart a Course was pretty great in this game. Games 2 and 3, I decided to double down on the aggro plan. I only boarded in one Disdainful Stroke and took out a Bolt. In hindsight, I should have added some cards that help me keep pace with card advantage. Both games played out pretty much the same. I went on the aggressive, but ran out of tricks by the time late game hit and got outvalued. I'm considering the possibility of adding more Chart a Course either in the side or in the main because the card felt really great in this matchup.

Round 3 vs UW Control 2-1
Went to 3 games. Game one I scrapped a victory by sneaking in a bolt-snap-bolt for the kill after a Supreme Verdict cleared out my board. After the last round against UW, I tried to switch to a more midrange gameplan. Game 2, Supreme Verdict, followed by a Teferi I had no answer for lead me to scoop after it was clear that I wasn't going to pull back into the game. We went to time and ended up having a messy judge call after I tried to Simic Charm an unblocked wolf token for the win. Judges ultimately ruled in my favor, but I didn't feel great about the win because of it. Swapping in the grindy cards and getting rid of Shoal seemed to be the right call. Crackling Drake is a house. He's a sweet top deck that can the turn the game around in a single combat phase.

Round 4 vs Humans 2-2
First game was close. I landed a Tarmogoyf which was beating down pretty hard, but he couldn't outrace the double Mantis Rider beatdown. Game 2, I went on a full midrange plan. I did a good job of keeping the board under control, landed a Huntmaster and began flipping him, but a well-timed Meddling Mage via Aether Vial stopped me from Snapping a bolt from the grave. I had the means to turn the game around in my hand, but I needed to use that bolt to get rid of a Mantis Rider to not die from lethal.


All in all, I'm rather surprised how strong the deck felt. With some tinkering, I can probably tool it the meta a little better for some better results. There are definitely some holes in the list I played (no grave hate and no hard removal for bigger threats), so when I break this deck out again, I'll definitely be making some adjustments. The main deck felt okay, but I need some more reps in with it to really adjust numbers and cut the fat, so to speak.

Quote from Grindor11 »

But yeah, As for Neoform, we're well positioned against it because we also have turn 0 interaction and counter magic on 1cmc, which is where it counts. But that deck does a LOT of cheating. I would not surprised to see it banned.

But it's the mulligan rule that enables the deck, not the card itself. Ban the enabler!

Anyway. I've been thinking about the Neoform deck and countering it turn 0. I haven't been at my LGS in two weeks, and who knows if I'd encounter it, but it seems like playing against it I'd like to run a critical mass of 2cmc blue spells, which my deck seems to be quite lacking atm. Currently I have 6 cards in the main deck that are 2cmc and blue, and 1 card in the sideboard (Echoing Truth). If Neoform.dec begins to make a regular appearance at the LGS, would you recommend running more 2cmc spells? or just accept the loss and keep a spell snare/pierce open when you go first?

Published an article this morning about my thoughts on the new Domri in this deck: http://modernnexus.com/war-domri-temur-delver-gr-moon/

Here's the list:

My LGS had basically no singles from War, so I bought two packs and pulled a Saheeli and a Return to Nature, which I'll be trying as 1-ofs in the main and board, respectively. Saheeli replaces the second Tarfire for now, and Return replaces the second Revelry. Online testing tells me Return is just straight up better than Revelry, mostly due to ease of casting cost, but also in that it's incidental gravehate. The verdict is still out on Saheeli.

Online, I'm running 2x Saheeli main and 2x Domri in the side, but have drawn precisely zero of them in the six or so games I played yesterday.

Hi all,
I was playing around RUG Traverse a few months ago and I had funny games.. as I am more of a Control Player I would like to try different stuff and cut the Tarmogoyfs and Traverse. Here is what I am going to try and every input is welcome: