MTG Salvation

yeah forgot to include storm.. i hate that deck it's the reason i still have brutality on my mainboard to deal with it . scapeshift is ok titan is the hard because of bojuka but for me it's winnable match .. it really depends on your draw and dredge

Well, a disappointing 1-2 tonight...

Match 1 vs Bant Spirits (2-0)
Typically the opponent plays Burn, so he may not be used to some of the lines in the deck. Big turn on game 2 involved him making an mediocre block and getting blown out by a Darkblast that wiped his board. I sided out 1 Shriekhorn, 1 Cathartic Reunion, 1 Creeping Chill, and 1 Bloodghast for 3 Lightning Axe and 3 Thoughtseize in an effort to preemtively hit Rest in Peace and have solid removal for his threats.

Match 2 vs Saheeli Combo (1-2)
Reasons Twin needs to stay banned in my opinion...game 1 I didn't know what my opponent was on. I've never played him before tonight, but figured it was some sort of combo deck as he played Opt, Serum Visions, and Sleight of Hand before my engine took him down. Game 2 he landed a turn 3 Saheeli Rai and I looked saddly at the Conflagrate I didn't discard the previous turn that could have answered her and failed to find anything relevent before he landed the combo. Game 3 I reboarded answers to the combo, then was promptly Surgical Extractioned into his combo. I relooked at my board plan for future matches and think the proper thing to do is bring in all the Thoughtseize, Lightning Axe, and Assassin's Trophy you can and board out Creeping Chill as disrupting the combo is all you really need to win, I think; didn't see many answer cards in any of the games on his side of the table thought he mentioned he did have a Rest in Peace in his board.

Match 3 vs. Tron (0-2)
I was Turn 3 Tron'd both games and just scooped. It is worth noting here that I drew my single Steam Vents while looking at 4 black cards in my hand, including Assassin's Trophy. This is the second time Steam Vents has been terrible when I needed a black source and I don't know if it outweighs the times I've needed to tutor up a blue source. I think I'll add my two Gemstone Mines back into the deck.

Other notes, I ran 20 lands tonight instead of the typical 19. I only mulliganed one time due to insufficiant mana. Most of the time I mulled because I didn't have any looting effects to get started with. I've noticed alot of other players on camra at various levels struggling with land if they fail to have 2 in the opening hand. I didn't have any issues hitting my land drops tonight, which was quite nice. I think bumping the land count back to 20 is correct and finding a cut elsewhere. Additionally, I ran 12 Dredge cards in the main, including 2 Darkblast, and had two occasions where the chain broke. Overall, I think I'll keep my count the way it is for now and see how it works next time.

Hope this helps! I'd love to hear what others think about regarding Saheeli Combo and if that match is really just bad as most other combo matches are. Until next time, Happy Gaming!

hmm for some reason i now prefer insolent neonate vs shriekhorn. i'm doing great with it enabling good combos with it

Can anyone give me some insight on Stain the Mind? How has it been playing for you guys? Do you guys normally just name hate cards with it?

@THUNDERWANG: I havent used Stain the Mind, but it seems to help shore up combo matchups specifically by proactively extracting their key cards. I'm sure that is the primary reason its in the 75.

Jeff Hoogland recently played an interesting brew, here, that transformed into BR Hollow One post board instead of fighting graveyard hate for game 2/3. I think this is an interesting idea and agree that the list needs Narcomoeba. Anyone have thoughts on this?

Hi all!

I think we could use some help with a sideboard guide now that creeping chill is a staple.

Does anyone with results, like @Polymorph who eould share his sideboard guide?

Thanks!

How does Dredge do vs Phoenix / aggro decks, tron and other combo like storm and Ad Naus? Thinking of picking up something different that I've never tried before and it's between Dredge, Affinity or Tron, but leaning towards Dredge mostly. The control decks I always play are just not cutting it vs all the aggro and combo lately.

Quote from Slowgod »

How does Dredge do vs Phoenix / aggro decks, tron and other combo like storm and Ad Naus? Thinking of picking up something different that I've never tried before and it's between Dredge, Affinity or Tron, but leaning towards Dredge mostly. The control decks I always play are just not cutting it vs all the aggro and combo lately.

Sounds like you want to give dredge a try

So, it is looting getting banned? or the bans will come after modern horizons? if the ban is done, does neonate repolaces looting?

Played in a 24 person FNM, capped at 4 rounds.

Round 1 vs. Hardened Scales. I'm on the play. I play a nut hand, but he has a lot of Hangarback Walkers and Arcbound Ravagers to stop damage from letting a Conflagrate kill him. I end up killing 8 Thopter tokens on a turn instead of letting him go to 3. He rebuilds pretty strong. I get there though. In the next game, I side in way too many cards. I literally could have sided 15 cards, but I left the 3 Lightning Axe on the bench. I kill some creatures and barely get through for lethal again. It took a while, but Life from the Loam and having enough chumps on the swing back to prevent lethal set me up for a big Conflagrate. GGs. 2-0.

Round 2 vs. Mono White Humans. I am on the play again. He starts off slowly and I Conflagrate both his creatures while I put together a big board and some Creeping Chills. In the next game, the race gets somewhat close with me at 6 life after attacks and him at 3 life before a 3rd Creeping Chill ends the game on the spot. Tough for him to win against a deck like this, but he did his best, even with a mull to 5. Brimaz, King of Oreskos is a house! 2-0.

Round 3 vs. Ponza. He ramps out good stuff, but I have too much power on the board and a lethal Life from the Loam/Conflag gets him. In the next game, turn 1 Relic of Progenitus. He breaks it when I miss Narcomoeba and hit 3 Prized Amalgams. Bye bye Amalgams. He gets another Relic of Progenitus and makes 2 Clues every turn with a Tireless Tracker. Yes, Tireless Tracker beat me down. In the final game, he also gets 2 Relic of Progenitus, but I reload with Cathartic Reunion. I am down to 5 cards with Dredgers of all sorts in my yard. There are FOUR, yes FOUR Creeping Chill in my deck with 9 cards left and he's at 12. I haven't seen any life gain in these long games. I get him to 6 by Stinkweed Imp hitting 2. But he draws a card for the turn and plays Scavenging Ooze, eating Conflagrate and some creatures. Then he plays the card already in his hand - a Knight of Autumn to gain 4 life. He's at 11. I have 4 cards with 2 Creeping Chill. I scoop. GG. 1-2.

Round 4 vs. Burn. He won 3 die rolls today. I won 3 die rolls, with each opponent saying "odd" and it landing on 4. I roll and he says, "odd." 4. Should have been a sign, although I was scared. I can't find Creeping Chill, but have 1 in hand. I cast it on turn 4 after some chumps, but Goblin Guide off the top goes with Goblin Guide #2 and Monastery Swiftspear PLUS Lightning Helix as his card already in hand to 9 me to lethal. In the next game, he does turn 2 Rest in Peace, but I have 2 Narcomoeba, 2 Prized Amalgam, and I cast Stinkweed Imp to set up a Creeping Chill from hand for lethal. In the final game, I dodge Rest in Peace. My hand had 2 Faithless Looting and a Shriekhorn. I find Stinkweed Imps and abuse my graveyard to his 4, yes FOUR Creeping Chill in my top 33 cards. I said sorry since that felt damn crazy. He literally had no chance. He wondered if he should mull to Rest in Peace, but I literally had double Faithless Looting and dredged 3 Nature's Claim into my yard immediately, so I'm assuming I would have found at least 1 of those pretty quickly if I needed to. It was part of the reason I kept the hand. 2-1.

I finish 3-1 with the deck. Some plays were tough to calculate. I made a lot of mistakes in Round 1, but cleaned it up afterward. I wish someone could have watched my Round 3 to tell me what I could have done better.

In my experience Ponza is a tough matchup. We are so land tight that if we stumble it can be hard to recover. We spend all of our time dredging Loam just to keep out gameplan going, but that really slows our dredge clock. They are really good at making us go long, and that's a game they are better at.

Sorry, I just don't think that Ponza is that good a deck. But as I say this, it just got the top 2 at the Invitational Qualifier that I played at.

45 person Modern CASH tournament. Invites to their $5,000 Invitational to the Top 2.

Round 1 vs. BW Taxes Eldrazi. This guy has done very well in the past, all with the same deck. I have never played him yet, so I'm excited. In the first game, I keep on 5 with Shriekhorn. I don't find a Dredger, mostly putting lands in the yard. He does turn 3 Leonin Arbiter into Ghost Quarter on my Green source and I can't Loam. I just dredge, hoping it gets there. But it doesn't. I dredged so many lands into the yard early in the game, I had NO faith in drawing a land, especially a Green source, most of which were in the yard. In the next game, he doesn't turn 1 Aether Vial. On turn 3, I Darkblast Thalia, then Nature's Claim on Aether Vial. He plays 2 more creatures and succumbs to many dredged fellows with Creeping Chills. The final game can be watched here at 56 minutes https://www.twitch.tv/videos/392995237 I end up not finding good dredges until it's too late and he overwhelms me here. If anyone can figure a different line I could have taken, I'm all ears. I feel that this is the one round I could have played better. 1-2.

Round 2 vs. Tron. I find a lot of dredgy bois. She does Map into sacrifice Map to find the Tower. I kill her on my turn 3 before she can play Tower with flashback Conflagrate. In the next game, she plays a Forest for her 2nd land. I dredge a bunch of stuff, including triple Creeping Chill, and get there easily. 2-0.

Round 3 vs. Burn. I mull to 3. I scry Faithless Looting to the top after having land, Looting, Imp in my hand. I play them. He plays Monastery Swiftspear. I dredge triple Creeping Chill next turn. He scoops with Mountain and Swiftspear in play. I know he's on Burn anyway since that's what he played me last time. The next game is a race until double Creeping Chill on a 4 card Dredge basically makes this unwinnable for him. I'm now at 15 and he's at 6 now. Sometimes the deck is nice to you. 2-0.

Round 4 vs. Mono Red Phoenix. I shuffle for probably a total of 12 minutes this round. I keep getting nonfunctional hands, including no landers. Mostly, I just keep having Narcomoeba, Prized Amalgam, and Creeping Chill in my hand with no Faithless Looting, Shriekhorn, or Cathartic Reunion. I mull to 2. I get killed by Swiftspear, triple Manamorphose, double Faithless Looting, now a Phoenix hits me too. I lose shortly after that. Non functional game. In the next game, I can't find playable hands again. I keep on 5 with Shriekhorn. It gets Creeping Chill, but hold on. He Surgical Extractions with the trigger on the stack and this makes my dredges even worse the rest of the game. On the bottom of my library, the 4 cards had 3 Narcomoebas. THAT'S why I lost. Hmph. Shuffling... 0-2.

Round 5 vs. GB Midrange. He forgot to drop out of the tournament. Lucky win for me! 2-0.

Round 6 vs. GB Midrange. The 2nd time in the past 2 tournaments that I did not play GB Midrange until playing against it twice in the last 2 rounds. Well, I guess, technically I didn't play against it in Round 5. I Dredge way too many things, seeing Faithless Lootings and having too much of a board for double Tireless Tracker to hold back. I Lightning Axe Scavenging Ooze after Nature's Claim on Nihil Spellbomb all on turn 2. Then I dredge my way to success, even discarding a 2nd Nature's Claim to Cathartic Reunion because I wanted to save my last card, a land, for landfall. 2-0.

I go 4-2 for 13th place. Me and 2 friends went 4-2 while another friend lost in the Top 8 after going 4-1-1 in the Swiss.

Quote from FrenchFryNinja »

In my experience Ponza is a tough matchup. We are so land tight that if we stumble it can be hard to recover. We spend all of our time dredging Loam just to keep out gameplan going, but that really slows our dredge clock. They are really good at making us go long, and that's a game they are better at.

Quote from Xaricore »

Ponza is a difficult matchup indeed. There are reasoned why I run 3 basics in my list, against a lot of Field of Ruin decks, decks that run Assassin's Trophy, Path to Exile, etc.. needless to say, if we can at least have Life from the Loam available to help, should be a little bit better but it’s still an uphill battle.

Yeah, I can see it. I figured that we really only need our first 2 lands to do at least 60% of our game plan, which still can beat decks that durdle. The issue is that Ponza actually has a lot of haymakers. Inferno Titan, Chandra, Pia and Kiran, … all of these slow us down a bit when grave hate like Relic of Progenitus and Scavenging Ooze can punish slow starts. I can't always be on the play and have a blazing start!

It's just that I expect to hopefully dodge Ponza in Round 1, then dodge it if I'm 1-0 in Round 2, dodge it if I'm 2-0 in Round 3. I don't know what happened in his other matches, but I'm pretty sure that his opponent could have won at least in 1 of those rounds. He got smashed by UR Phoenix in Round 4. Don't get me wrong. I played Ponza as a clear meta deck - it has good game vs. Tron, Amulet, and Valakut. It beats big mana. But outside of some sweepers, quick Aggro runs it (IMO of course). Outside of enough grave hate drawn, grave decks run it. Outside of your opponent drawing trash or a hate card punishing them, quick Combo absolutely SMASHES it. I'm sorry, I just haven't played against it much. Usually it's the Arbor Elf into Utopia Sprawl and some stuff, followed by Inferno Titan. I usually beat those draws easily. (mostly because I play quick Combo)

*I personally feel that drawing a Blood Moon late in the game can be a death knell. Drawing 2 Stone Rains late in the game when both players are top decking seems bad. But then I saw my friend on Scales draw land, land, Mox Opal, Arcbound Ravager, land, Mox Opal, land while his opponent drew Chandra Torch, Arbor Elf, Chandra, Inferno Titan, Utopia Sprawl, Pia and Kiran, and finally the actual card that won him the game Ancient Grudge, on the final turn.

Quote from Slowgod »

How does Dredge do vs Phoenix / aggro decks, tron and other combo like storm and Ad Naus? Thinking of picking up something different that I've never tried before and it's between Dredge, Affinity or Tron, but leaning towards Dredge mostly. The control decks I always play are just not cutting it vs all the aggro and combo lately.

phoenix is more explosive .. but dredge is more consistent imo ... in our meta there are lot of phoenix decks and most of the im im beating them .. even if they manage to flip a thing in the ice that still favors me because i can conlag them for like 10-12 dmg in 1 turn ...



hmm i think so or maybe burning inquiry

hmm i think so or maybe burning inquiry

I have tried Burning Inquiry and found it to be ok at best.

The missing flashback is a huge deal when you dredge it (losing consistency) and the random discard does not always discard your dredgers. Basically once you start dredging Burning Inquiry is a dead card in your deck.

Quote from Xaricore »

Dredge is in a really good place right now. Against Phoenix, it can be a challenge, they can be faster than us a good portion of the time and there is the issue that some of the decks now run Surgical Extraction mainboard to deal with the other most competitive deck, us.

What do you board in against Izzet Phoenix? Is Leyline of the Void good against it?

More generally, when does Leyline come in besides the mirror? Against Hollow One, Storm???