MTG Salvation

I'm thinking of taking out 2 Master of Waves and a Kira for 3 Phantasmal Image.

SB would be
3 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Ghost Quarter
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Negate
1 Dispel
2 Tidebinder Mage
1 Kira

Does twins ban mean dismember can leave the main board and we can put back in vapor snags?

Quote from dreamcaster »

Does twins ban mean dismember can leave the main board and we can put back in vapor snags?

I've been testing this on cockatrice and it seems fine. Not really so much of a NEED to kill something mainboard anymore, also helps way more against things like Wurmcoil.

If BGx is still a thing I'd still keep Dismember around just in case. Personally if I start playing with more than just two copies of Tidebinder Mage (or even main them) I would actually just switch to Vapor Snag.

I stand with those that say we should wait and see how the meta shakes down before making any changes that are TOO drastic, but if MoW is what ends up on the chopping block, I would probably replace how ever many copies with Phantasmal Image so that we still have effectively 4 MoWs.

So what does a sideboard with Chalice, Dispel and Negate look like? I have typically taken out Dispel if I have Chalice in since they tend to conflict.

This is my current sideboard:

• 3 Negate
  
• 2 Dispel
  
• 2 Tidebinder Mage
  
• 2 Relic of Progenitus
  
• 2 Ghost Quarter
  
• 2 Tectonic Edge
  
• 1 Dismember
  
• 1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

I understand that we ran 4 harbingers main for his bounce effect, which was really good against twin. But just because twin is now gone, why do we have to assume that his vaule is less than tidebinders? If we think infect, tron, burn, eldriza, bogles, etc. what does tidebinder really do in these match ups that harbinger doesn't do all ready (and in some of these neither do nothing at all). While I agree we could probably drop 1-2 in the main and maybe move to sb, I don't think tidebinders mage fills that slot.

Even without Twin, Harbinger is a really solid card against other creature decks. I can't see taking it out.

I won 1st on my fnm last week with this fun deck, i drop all master of waves and replace with Triton Shorestalker, playing with more aggressive style.

Creature
4x Master of the Pearl Trident
4x Lord of Atlantis
3x Cursecatcher
4x Silvergill Adept
3x Harbinger of the Tides
4x Triton Shorestalker
3x Merrow Reejerey
3x Phantasmal Image
1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

Sorcery
4x Spreading Seas

Instant
2x Dismember
2x Spell Pierce

Artifact
4x Aether Vial

Land
4x Mutavault
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Wanderwine Hub
13x Island

Sideboard
3x Tidebinder Mage
2x Dispel
3x Negate
1x Dismember
3x Tectonic Edge
2x Relic of Progenitus
1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

Game 1 Zoo 2-1 win
Game 2 Grixis delver 2-1 win
Game 3 Mono Blue Mill deck 2-0 win
Game 4 Scapeshift 2-1 win

Triton Shorestalker unexpectedly great, with Lord with him on board , he definitely are some threat, can force opponent waste his removal spell on him.

Question:

I have Merrow on board, my opponent cast a creature. On my next turn if I CAST a Harbinger, can I make the Merrow trigger first to TAP his creature, and when Harbinger resolves, bounce the tapped one to his hand ?

Correct. Merrow Reejerey triggers on cast then Harbinger bounces on ETB.

Extension is fine, you just don't want to OVER extend. Just enough to make your opponent use the explosives, but still have enough in waiting for after the boom.

Quote from shinck88 »

3x Lord of Atlantis

Explain please, and make it a good one

Soo about %15 of the meta is just up in the air right now with Amulet Bloom and Splintertwin gutted.. I'm not sure if it will play out this way but I think we may see those Twin players switching to either Grixis Control or some kind of Delver variant. And if this occurs, along with a Zoo, Affinity, and Tron heavy meta a full 4 copies of Chalice of the Void main deck may be viable... Thoughts?

Mistaken, it was cursecather that i play 3

If Tron and Eldrazi get better, UWx Control gets worse, and I think Twin out makes them better. U-based control is very weak right now. Mid-range Combo (CoCo) and aggro combo (ANT) become more prevalent but are not the threats Twin or Bloom were.

Tempo decks like Merfolk do get better and you might even see UWR Geist and Delver come back, as the best U-based decks.

Prison-style control (GW Hatebears, Lantern Control) get better too, or, IMO, actually become the only viable control-style decks with a shot at Tier 1.

The real winners are aggro and mid-range, whether with normal wincons, Tron/Eldrazi style, or CoCo-Chord Combo.

I've been doing some tinkering from my last list. I've been trying to support a more midrange approach with protection and disruption.



So the idea is to have a very threat-dense MB, with considerable disruption and protection. I opted to try 4x Sea's Claim because I wanted to see how relevant it was to turn 1 Sea's Claim an opponent. So far it's worked out pretty good, and I feel like I've won games I probably shouldn't have won because I disrupted their mana early on.

I took out Aether Vial because I have a love/hate relationship with this card. It's obviously a huge nut draw to have it on turn 1, but if you draw into it past your first or second turn, you're usually wishing that you just drew another threat instead. So i've been trying this list out to see what works better. So far, I think it works well due to the fact that I always have threats to play, and I can frequently leave 1 mana open to either Vapor Snag or Spell Pierce and protect my lords. I get mana screwed sometimes, but I prefer being mana screwed over flooding out. When I get mana screwed, I'm usually stuck on 2-3 lands, but I at least have something to play every turn due to having low CMC creatures. With Vial, I'd flood out, or draw more vials, and not have any threats to play. It's a different play style, but when you think about it, all it does is make those matches where you never drew a Vial that much better.

Has anyone here tested Clever Impersonator? It would have to replace MoW, but I was thinking about the potential benefits. It comes in as a Lord at the very worst, but it also can become any permanent on the field. This means we can copy Liliana's, Karn's, and just pretty much auto win. I need to do some testing with it.

Ghost Quarter works better for me than Tectonic Edge. When I'm facing Tron, I want to blow up their lands as fast as possible. I feel like whenever I wait for them to have 4+ lands, that's when the game swings hugely in their favour, and even if you blow up a land and bring them down to 3, there's a good chance they were still able to cast something big off of their mana, which sets you back much more than you can set them back.

I still don't like using Harbinger of the Tides, especially in a Vial-less build. It's much more mana efficient to bounce a creature with vapor snag and/or hold up that 1 mana for a Spell Pierce/Dismember. The added benefit of Vapor Snagging your own Lords is a huge plus, something that's harder to do with Harbinger.

As it stands, the changes i've been thinking of making are to cut the 2x Spreading Seas and add 1x Merrow Reejerey and 1x something else. It might be cute to take out 1x Master of Waves as well and throw in 2x Vendilion Clique cuz I still think that card has huge potential.

My list would then look like this:



What do you guys think?

I'm pretty interested in the builds you've posted above. I don't see as big of a need for Cavern in a Twin-less world, so I may switch out my 2 for Ghost Quarters. If I remove Aether Vial, I'd go back up to 20 lands, or even 21, which is what I play in Legacy with 2 Wastelands.

I've been playing (thanks to Nikachu) with 3 Phantasmal Images, 1 Kira, and 1 Clique maindeck, as well as 2 Vapor Snag and no Reejery. It's felt really good overall, and the more I end up playing against Eldrazi and Tron, the less I want vial and the more I want Sea's claim. I also find that there are far fewer creatures I want to bounce right now, so I may even bring in Tidebinders to some extent.

Image has truly been a beater. I'm going to have some time to sling around on MTGO today and I'll post results later. I imagine playing a 3/3 split of Seas, explore a vial-less build, and pray for the best. My big concern without vial and harbinger is Infect, since the number of the number of times I've harbingered a Blighted Agent is too high to count.

You hope there isn't an increase in Blood Moon out of people's sideboards and you have a counter up for it when they play it turn 3.

Quote from wasabizod »

I'm pretty interested in the builds you've posted above. I don't see as big of a need for Cavern in a Twin-less world, so I may switch out my 2 for Ghost Quarters. If I remove Aether Vial, I'd go back up to 20 lands, or even 21, which is what I play in Legacy with 2 Wastelands.

I've been playing (thanks to Nikachu) with 3 Phantasmal Images, 1 Kira, and 1 Clique maindeck, as well as 2 Vapor Snag and no Reejery. It's felt really good overall, and the more I end up playing against Eldrazi and Tron, the less I want vial and the more I want Sea's claim. I also find that there are far fewer creatures I want to bounce right now, so I may even bring in Tidebinders to some extent.

Image has truly been a beater. I'm going to have some time to sling around on MTGO today and I'll post results later. I imagine playing a 3/3 split of Seas, explore a vial-less build, and pray for the best. My big concern without vial and harbinger is Infect, since the number of the number of times I've harbingered a Blighted Agent is too high to count.

It's true, we can get away without having Cavern of Souls, we shall see what the metagame looks like soon. In regards to Reejerey, I would never play less than 3 of him. His Tap/Untap ability is waaaaay too useful to go without. In a vial-less build, Reejerey would enable us to dump our hand if we wanted to flood the board with creatures. Plus, he's another Lord, and having more Lords in your deck insulates you from heavy removal due to the fact that you can be quite confident that you will draw into more Lords and re-stabilize your board. I'd go up to 2x Kira mainboard. Playing with only 1 means your probably won't see her very much. The fact that she protects your creatures from removal is the reason why you want to see her as much as possible.

Quote from AlexCheroky »

And what about splashing to White?

Splashing white doesn't make much sense to me. I don't want to ever have to deal with any more mana issues for such a small benefit. Stony silence is great against Affinity, but IMO, Spellskites, Kira, Spell Pierce, and Phantasmal Image copying their fliers is more than enough for me. Plus, with my creature heavy build, I will have stronger dudes than them. It's also worth noting that Affinity players also run their own Spell Pierce's, which means they can easily counter our Stony Silence.

Path to exile is the worst card because it has anti-synergy with our Seas effects. It just gives them back the land that we Seas'd. I can see Harbinger of the Tides doing a lot of work in this matchup, which is something to consider, though I still opt not to run him because I prefer bouncing with Vapor Snag instead. Vapor Snag simply has more applications, which makes it more useful in more situations.