MTG Salvation

- This deck feels very fun for those who like triggering a lot of abilities. At least at the lower tournament level, many opportunities exist to blow out players with clever counters movement. It is not uncommon for opponents to accidentally allow lethal because of the inherent complexity of the basic gameplan.

- Fast clock and linearity. Oddly, our tricks give the deck a fair bit of linearity; decisions usually follow a set path with relatively few real branches. That is to say, the way our creatures work means we don't have to play around removal, or sometimes even sweepers. This makes it less tiring to play over a long period of time, as long as you get good at counting damage. [may not be a pro for some people]

- Very strong anti-creature matchups. Decks like Affinity, Humans, Spirits, GB, Value Company, Merfolk have atrocious matchups against us due to their inability to remove or efficiently deal with value engines like Walking Ballista, Steel Overseer and Hangarback Walker. Lifegain decks are also particularly open to Inkmoth Nexus swings
- Decent Tron and Burn matchups. Tron can't wipe our board with Ugin, and, oddly, we actually go bigger than them with a modicum of time. We also don't mind things like Oblivion Stone as much, given cards like Hangarback Walker and Inkmoth Nexus avoid it. Burn is actually around our speed, but doesn't have a good way to deal with our creatures. Post board, Nature's Claim swings the matchup as well.
- OK matchups against Land based combo, and Spell based combo. These depend heavily on sideboard cards. Damping spheres give us a nice catch all against Land/Spell combo, and Dragon Claws give us a decent way to fight Burn.

- Less vulnerability to sideboard: We aren't quite as vulnerable to cards like Deflecting Palm, Kozilek's Return, Izzet Staticaster, Reclamation Sage and Destructive Revelry as a traditional artifact deck due to our shenanigans. We have some resistance to Creeping Corrosion and Shatterstorm as well.

- Weaker matchup with Jeskai, Jund, UW, and Grixis than normal affinity. We don't have 4 Etched Champion to bail us out in these matchups, and we aren't consistently presenting as fast a clock when disrupted.
- Volatility of hand quality. Your clock and flexibility swings wildly depending on what you draw, and our mulls are very bad. This means that sometimes the deck just won't seem very strong.
- Still get dumped on by Stony Silence and Kataki, War's Wage
- New Weakness to Rest in Peace

SCG Modern Classic Baltimore 14th

GP Barcelona, 9th place, 7/2018

Blinkmoth Nexus - Affinity afficianados may be confused by us running only 0-2, but the reason is that in many cases, the deck ends the game in one or two big swings. Because of this, Inkmoth Nexus is actually way more valuable than in normal affinity, where you plan to use multiple turns to increment out damage. Additionally, scales needs all of its mana and can't dump hands quickly, unlike normal affinity. With only 20 lands and 4 opals, Getting green/more artifacts is just more important than eventually being able to use Blinkmoth.

Problem 1: Graveyard:
Without sideboard, we're very bad against graveyard decks, but we can devote a lot of the sideboard in order to patch that up (typically 6-8 slots)

Damping Sphere - this is why our storm matchup is ok. The deck typically plays 4 as part of its "graveyard" hate suite, though the banning of KCI has made 3 common as well.
Grafdigger's Cage - a more graveyard focused hate card which performs better against Dredge but worse against tron as compared to damping sphere
Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt - Yet more gravehate which is played to supplement the above two. Relic's are better vs. Control and GDS than the others, because they can keep cards out of the graveyard. Tormod's is typically prefered though because it requires no investment, which is slightly stronger in this deck because you can still sac it to ravager.

Problem 2: Gotcha Sideboard Cards
We're actually a graveyard deck in the sense we need to sacrifice things for them to proc effects. We need to deal with Rest in Peace and Stony Silencce

Nature's Claim - Almost always a 4-of, because it doubles as life gain when targetting our own Hangarbacks.

Dismember - Hits Kataki, and also helps cover Hollow One, Gurmag Angler, and Thing in Ice

Metallic Mimic - the two main reasons this finds itself as a one of in some lists are that it can name construct (cast Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista for 0. And because it can name servo (Animation Module gives you a 1/1 for evey mana you have open. However, by itself it's quite weak and easy to remove, and you don't really want more than one.
Aether Vial - Not really played anymore, due to our X/X's not working well with it.
Voltaic Servant - Not worth playing without Aether Vial


Taplands (Llanowar Reborn, Ruins of Oran Rief - there are various lands which may be useful, depending on the meta. Llanowar Reborn in particular has appeared in recent GP lists, and is useful chiefly because this deck is very mana inefficient (we have too many 2 drops, and often leave land untapped anyway).