MTG Salvation

I am just getting into the deck. Here's the list:



It might not look like it, but I am a on a bit of a budget. It got the manabase and some of the stuff from a previous abzan deck. I've been slowly putting the cards together one at the time mostly from trades and some disposable income.

It's obviously missing the seer/finks combo which is another 50 bucks, the card draw land and of course the upgraded manadorks (which are off limits in the foreseeable future unless they get reprints).

What are some obvious, not so expensive upgrades?

I don’t think the meta is “wide open”, I do however think we’ll see more people playing swarm decks to emulate Humans, Fish and Affinity doing well - and also a lot of decks that traditionally do well against those, i.e. Jund, UW Control, decks like GWx Vizier.

Took this deck to a 6-2 finish at the SCG modern classic outside DC today, to a 18th place finish.


Matches-
Burn 2-1
GW company- 0-2. Had some terrible draws, mulled to 4 game one. Game 2, he got all his SB cards including- stony silence right before i landed ballista, hushwing gruff (shuts down the finks combo) and linvala, couldn't find my removal. game.
Affinity- 2-0. This matchup isn't too bad really.
Grixis DS- 2-0. Same as above, they have a hard time with all the grind from witness and finks, also decay rocks here too. Voice is good in this matchup.
Mono white taxes- 2-0 this one is fine, we have so many ways to get mana.
Eldra Tron- 0-2 Great player in the top 8 later. This felt worse than I thought, he had a lot of good disruption, and i had infinite mana through 3 companies that all bricked. bad beats.
Burn- 2-1. Again this is ok, game 2 he got there before could assemble but on the whole this felt ok.
Humans 2-1 piloted by Collins Mullen- Yes, that guy who won the SCG open last weekend. I got sweet combos on turn 3 and 4 in game 1 and 3, he didn't have enough disruption.

Overall, the deck feels great, and people have trouble stopping us most of the time on non control decks. The sigarda, mindcensor and to some extent the voice didn't feel like they deserved their spots- though i didn't play valakut or control so who knows if they need the cut, and I'm on the fence with pontiff too--The swarm decks all seem to have ways to pump their guys, it's hard to make the pontiff do it's job these days it seems. I feel like I want some more midrange game, maybe more trackers, KoR, goyf, planeswalkers? Something like this post board. MVP of the board today was abrupt decay, I think going to 3 might be ok.

I may not get on SCG website, but I was super close, tiebreakers went against my favor...Anyways, there's my two cents!

4) Why?! cc2 isn't better then 3? Gaping

I think a big part of the reasoning is if we drop a coco it doesn't matter if it's one more mana and we often have a 1-drop manadork that makes 2-drops inefficient. 3 mana instead of 2 isn't that much of a downside, but I think it's still risky to have your combo disruption potentially moved to turn 3.

I won a 31 person tournament yesterday, managed to dodge Eldrazi tron and valakut decks. Played against the new 5 color humans deck as well, which is a good matchup.

Met my friend in the finals, which plays the same deck, except he is trying 4 freebooter in the main. He said the card has been amazing the whole tournament and frequently won him games, so it's something I'm interested in trying out.

The fact that it's flying and not an artifact is an advantage..

3 of the matches are actually on camera, I can post them when they are put on youtube. (Against death and taxes, UB control and mirror)

Good to hear the positive results. Ironically on the last page of this thread I stated I would be considering testing kitesail Freebooter.... good to hear positive feedback so this has convinced me to give it a go!

Quote from Moneymakermich »

A remark on sideboarding: remember that in games 2-3 if you're on the draw, then it is a correct option to sideboard out a land. You will hit your lands count with +/- the same probability.

Interesting. Is that for decks playing 22 lands or the 21 version? Do you lean towards a specific land?

It’s all decks; 1 fewer land on the draw gives you the exact same odds of hitting all your land drops in the same likelihood as playing with the land in, on the play.

However in super low count builds, not recommended, because your opener is also crucial

Does anyone have any thoughts on Shaper's sanctuary in the side? I was considering putting 2 of them in my side against midrange and control decks which have a lot of targeted removal. My hesitation is that tireless tracker sort of plays the same role but is better because company can hit it.

I am going to try 2 Fauna Shaman in the main to try to have more options for searching up the combo creature pieces. It won't really help to land a Devoted Druid at the end of their turn but it should be able to help me hit a Vizier, Seer or Finks if I need them.

4-0ed a 10 people small event with Abzan Counters Company. I have the cards to play the Bant variants (bant counters company, bant company, bant knightfall, vizier knightfall), but never tried those because they all seem worse on paper.

At that event I played against Eldrazi Tron, Grixis Delver, Naya Company (with renegade rallier and stuff like seal of fire MD) and Jeskai Control (with MD queller and geist). I believe Reflector Mage may be huge in the Eldrazi Tron matchup, perhaps also against Grixis (DS or Delver, both have big delve threats), but with all the removal Grixis and Jeskai have, cards like Kitchen Finks, Sin Collector and Voice of Resurgence are very good, demanding 2 cards from their hand to get rid of them. Abrupt Decay is also really nice against Delver, Death's Shadow and Spell Queller.

Against Storm, I'm not sure which one seems better: Bant - Spell Queller or Abzan - Sin Collector/Tidehollow Sculler. Also, with 4 Chord of Calling, finding Scooze and Eidolon of Rhetoric becomes easier with Abzan.


TL;DR: Is anyone experienced enough with BOTH Abzan and Bant variants of the Vizier combo to bring any conclusions of why choosing one over the other? Abzan feels good to me right now.

I think you have a it a bit backwards, if anything Shaman simply increases your chances of comboing turn 4 and turns every creature in your deck into a combo piece late game fitting the primary objective of the deck better than any card in those "flex slots". Shaman continues to spiral out of control post board vs. decks not looking to interact.

Shaman is at its worst vs. anything looking to grind that you can't necessarily toolbox against.

I stand by the card as a multiple in Bant lists as tutoring up Queller every turn can just bury a lot of decks.. as a 1-of in Abzan lists I'm honestly not a fan.

Can someone explain the 2 Eldritch Evolution in Matthew Tickal's sideboard?

I think the Matthew list is just trying to play the meta. Showing a vizier and a devoted druid to mislead the opponent into sideboarding wrong against the combo when in reality he's just playing a toolboxy grindy value game.

Quote from spankxz »

what do you think about the 62 card maindeck list? the pilot stated that its even better than 60 cards since he got lower odds of drawing into the wrong toolbox creatures. played a few games online, went really well. the sideboard was absured against storm =)

Occasionally this comes up. Normally the answer is fairly easy; never go above 60, even if someone can anecdotally show you that they've had success.

There are a few (very rare) caveats. Decks like scapeshift have in the past had decent statistical reasoning to go to 61 cards. Not always but occasionally. Living End (and back in the day, living Twin) also had a similar kind of rationale.

Does it apply here though?

By going above 60 cards you will be actively sacrificing a number (small but significant) of games where achieving an early combo is essential in the matchup. As modern is such a proactive format, you could go so far as to say that a quick combo from this deck is important in *most* matchups. In those cases, going above 60 is detrimental because you are less likely to draw what you need. This is obvious, but worth reiterating.

In longer, protracted grindy matchups I could see an argument for making this deckbuilding choice.

And of course it goes without question that with the core of this deck, anyone can win games regardless of the fluff they put around the core parts. What's important is the bigger picture and what gives us those all-important percentage points against the field.
I don't think going over 60 cards gives us this.

Besides, the list only plays 21 lands (and 11-12 mana guys). In grindy games you will want to sideboard some of them out, and that may result in mana issues. I played yesterday with 21 lands and 11 dorks and got stuck on 2 mana in 2 games over 4 rounds.

test for you guys =)

opening hand on the play against eldrazi & taxes. you're currentl 1-1 and this is for the match.
additional info - only removal spell you've seen is path to exile.

1x razorverge thicket
1x noble hierarch
2x devoted druid
1x vizier of remedies
1x collected company
1x chord of calling

would you keep?

Quote from purklefluff »

test for you guys =)

opening hand on the play against eldrazi & taxes. you're currentl 1-1 and this is for the match.
additional info - only removal spell you've seen is path to exile.

1x razorverge thicket
1x noble hierarch
2x devoted druid
1x vizier of remedies
1x collected company
1x chord of calling

would you keep?

No. Good hand against any other deck but the chance to be land-locked is too high. Together with the high chance that they'll take vizier from our hand and stop us from chording. Plus, they should have about 6 spells that kill our manadorks. And if one of these things happen that's almost a guaranteed loss.