MTG Salvation

So I got top 8 at a pptq recently with U-tron of course. Played a list that had a 60 close to one of shok's with main deck crucible, 2 dismembers being the standouts. In the side I played 2 tks as the large difference. Went 7 round swiss. Lost round 1 to hollow one, then beat jeskai control x2, humans, g-tron, esper polymorph (ikr) to draw into the top 8. Lost round 1 of top 8 to two nutty dredge hands so what can you do. I will be playing another pptq the weekend following this and then another the next weekend if I dont win. Deck feels strong right now but maybe surgical isnt enough in the board and I might go back to playing tormod's crypt. I'm not streaming currently because I switched jobs and moved cities but I might start again in october or something keep an eye out. If you have an questions about the list I can answer them but I felt the changes were little but I could post the results. Btw I feel as if we have the same talks about the same cards over and over so I you are new and have a card question check out pierakors faq first that talks about a lot of the choices. It's a bit dated but I see people bring up chalice, talismans, solemn, ect again and again. They have pros and cons and most are covered here http://magicgatheringstrat.com/2015/09/mono-u-tron-faq/

Yeah people can play whatever they like but ive put in quite a few matches with one mindslaver and I have never wished I had another one. Its a nice way to just end a grindy game with the lock and an out you can hope for in bad situations, but it is the first card I pitch to thirst given the chance. If im not in a position to lock the game im not real keen to cast mindslaver.

Another card I wouldnt mind upping to two is field of ruin. Manlands can actually be a problem since bounce spells cant hit them and ugin and ostone cant wipe them. I run two dismember main but ive still died several times to ravines and fumaroles. I just dont know if the deck can support any less blue; hands without islands are so much worse on turn two when you cant remand/condescend/repeal; and field on turn three as a blue source is still really anemic. Its good for getting you a second blue source, not so much the first.

A problem with forum like this is anybody new isn't going to read 732 pages of discussion to see what's already been said. Your link will soon be on an old page itself and that'll be the end of that l. Notwithstanding that I wouldn't point someone to a 2015 source for info on a deck anyways. The format is ridiculously different now and there's no way to know which advice in there has been rendered bad advice by format change

to get back around to the mindslaver, i found myself almost exclusively using the treasure mage to get my 1 off slaver. spending that 3 mana on the mage early game and mid game almost universally prevented me from playing and popping the slaver. so if im going to be using it for 1 card 90% of the time plus, why wouldn't i just use the card itself. i've waffled on the treasure mage a lot and the conclusion i came to is if you're going to play tool box style cards like that, it's not beneficial unless you're going deeper into that deck style of archetype. running a 3 mana tutor as a one of that has 2 or possibly 3 targets, and you take just 1 target a wildly overwhelming percentage of the time is bad math. i have been on 2 slavers for a while and there is no way i would ever bump back down to 1 in this deck

I don't play treasure mage at all because it doesn't seem good to me. I play trinket mage which gets ballista 90 percent of the time but occasionally grabs map chalice or explosives. When it does get ballista it's still putting two bodies out instead of one which is worth something. It lets me put out a blocker or pressure early while I can sandbag ballista until I get more mana.

How good is a second mindslaver on turn 3? Or a fourth wurmcoil or whatever. The various mages are played because the early body is sometimes useful at buying time vs aggressive decks, or making control decks do something (go ahead, path my scathe zombie).

I don't think I've ever seen a case where I used trinket mage or tolaria for a ballista and it made any difference vs drawing a ballista. I have however maged for map to complete Tron or find academy ruins at times where a straight ballista would have been moot (albeit never actually bad)

When you're behind early trinket mage can get a ballista to cast next turn giving you two cheap bodies. Treasure mage puts a dead card in your hand instead. I can't imagine ever feeling great about t3 treasure mage tutoring mindslaver.

So I took my build to a pptq and had reasonavle results. I suffered from the same issue that I garnered control of games but too often struggled to close. I had turned my nose up to the idea before but I think I'm gpomg to try a version of the deck with gifts ungiven. I put it together and am going to test it locally tonight. Gifts when youve got critical mana feels like game over every time

What are the key cards or changes to running a single gifts? I haven't tinkered with my list in a while but could try that out. Like would you main a crucible of worlds?

I think unless you play noxious revival or buried ruin most gifts piles get a turn slower:

Crucible ruins slaver and? I think you have to go map tolaria crucible slaver here, then tolaria or map for the ruins, then top the slaver and go off.

Board wipe - ugin ostone cyclonic and? I guess ruins here to force then to give you rift ugin or face looping ostones? Or you can toss in a wurmcoil/bskull/balista which are not wipes but could stabilize you too.

I just think revival and buried ruins would be going way too deep for a single gifts, so it becomes less obvious what you want to tutor for as you dont get "guaranteed" results without them. I think a lot of the power hinges on academy ruins tho, and crucible main would help ensure you keep access to it.

I was trying to think of a turn four non-tron gifts pile that would stabilize you and set you up to win vs a beatdown situation. You could grab missing tronland, wurmcoil, batterskull and - I guess aetherize or ruins?

Ill ptobably have to play it a lot to get a handle on what gifts can do vs various decks and where its worth a one-of something to facilitate better gifts piles

So in order to facilitate a gifts build I'm going to change my build up quite a bit. I agree the changes aren't warranted for a 1 off gifts so I'm going to run 2 or 3. I think it can be versatile enough to warrant it.

Here is the list ill run tonight

3 remand
4 condeacend
3 repeal
4 thirst for knowledge
3 gifts ungiven
1 cyclonic rift
3 chalice of the void
2 oblivion stone
4 expedition map
1 mindslaver
1 crucible of worlds
3 walking ballista
3 wurmcoil engine
1 ugin, the spirit dragon

8 island
12 urza land
1 field of ruin
1 academy ruin
1 buried ruin
1 tolaria west

In order to make the list work I had to trim some control. That's why I bumped the chalice up in the MD to 3. Lots of fast decks, chalice can break their back. That's also why I upped the O-Stone, to give some extra board wipe.

The way I'm trying to manage the deck, you dont have to rely on the gifts, but late game, if you draw it, its guaranteed slavery lock getting the slavery the 2 ruins and crucible. If its early use the gifts to assemble tron pieces or to get board wipe etc.

Ill give it a good rigorous test tonight and report back

So thats where I'm finding the hole in trying gifts online. I didnt add the buried ruin either, but just generally I get the 3rd and 4th best card for the situation which is often not very good Meanwhile you drop your 2 best cards in the GY.

situation 1) need 1 tron piece.
Tutor: Tron land, map, tolaria, whatever = get map+tolaria, 3 mana to finish tron is not putting us ahead mana for that turn at least, and we have to fish out our crucible if we want it now.

Situation 2) dying and need sweeper
Tutor: ugin, rift, ostone and... ruins?
Get: Rift+ruins probably. Bounce their board, then probably not have enough to immediately ruins+ostone (11 mana)

Situaiton 3) dying and need life
Tutor: bskull, wurmcoil, ruins, crucible.
Get: ruins+crucible.

Situation 4: need counterspell on the stack
Tutor: remand, condescend, supreme will, commit
Get: whatever the 2 least effective are. Commit would require access to 8 mana, etc.

Situation5 : have tron lands need to win.
Tutor: slaver, crucible, tolaria, map.
Get: tolaria+map, use to get ruins, ruins slaver.


Every gifts combo pretty much takes +1 turn before you get what you actually want. Adding noxious revival improves things a lot, but now you've got noxious revival in your deck. Buried ruin is less overhead, but then you have to reduce your blue count or something like gemstone cavern and its still pretty expensive to do what you want to do.

I would think as you get up into 2+ gifts you should just go UW and play actual gifts tron where the deck is built to abuse the card. And a one-of may just be a little too awkward at getting what you actually want

I would agree on the skill intensity. Everytime I cast it ifelt like there should be a correct four for the exact situation but it requires a tonne of forward thinking to get it right. I was hoping for some shortcuts like in classic gifts it's just norn or Iona, or in 4c you just make pure value piles like souls snap pulse cryptic or rites and a bunch of five drops.

I feel like a tonne of reps are needed to optimize play of a single gifts in this deck. Worse, as a singleton you won't see it that often to really master it. And when all is said and done it may not be much better than a supreme will for all the effort

What I did find with my gifts experiment was that maindeck crucible and batterskull were both pretty good. I've always had one crucible in the board for field of ruin decks, but maindecking seems reasonable as we can pitch lands to thirst and recur a couple lands (which we can find with tolaria or map). Bskull felt really good vs path and detention spheres. It's a little awkward because it eats fatal push and such g1 and then eats ancient grudge g2, but keeping one tower up to protect it is pretty doable, and it's a turn faster vs burn.

On the other hand emrakul the promised end was always dead. I think you want your finishers to be artifacts so you can toss them to tfk early and recur them w ruins later. You also don't want too many cards over six CMC period or you can get really lousy hands vs fast decks. I never actually cast emrakul, just found it was even more of a Mulligan than say sundering titan.

I'm on 25 lands with no signets. With academy ruins, field, GQ, and gemstone cavern I'm up to sixteen non-blue sources and 9 blue (7 island a river and a tolaria). Kind of worried that's getting too low on blue.

So I ran the aforementioned list and went 3-0. Played against Spirits, GW counter company, and 8-wack. Not necessarily prevelant decks but all hard matches for U-tron. Afterwards ill say maybe 1 or 2 card tweaks are in order but I'm not gonna mix it up afyer not losing. Ill try running it again on Thursday night and see how it rolls out.

I will say this aboit it. Weather I was using gifts to get slavery online, tron online, or just pure value piles, I will say every gift I had either won me the game or clearly was the pivotal point that paved for the win. Also if your gifting for utility, throwing an Ugin in as bait is great, even if your on 3islands and 1 from piece, no one is giving you the ugin, so it narrows their choice to 1 of 3.

The only down side I had was seemingly from going from 9 islands to 8 for the buried ruin, I seemed to feel it. I'm reluctant to bump to 25 lands. Ma6be moving the field of ruin to the board is something ill have to assess

Nice finish. I've found the same thing with ugin in gifts piles- especially against decks like spirits, gifts turns into 3 cards.

It could be worth trying a karn+talisman list with extra gifts, too. Talismans would help offset buried ruin in terms of blue mana, and karn is kind of like ugin in that your opponent will almost never give you karn off gifts. He does also synergize with crucible, and with the extra chalices in your build.

I'm definitely not above jamming a second gifts in my crucible-less, buried ruin-less build tbh.

As for how to play it in less gifts-centric builds, I agree with barrin... I've always looked at it as a card advantage spell, and not necessarily as an instant game-winner. You get your 3rd and 4th best cards for any given scenario, yeah, but we have plenty of redundancy, not to mention recursion in the forms of snappy and academy ruins. Running it without a 100% guaranteed slaver lock pile is totally fine: there are a few lines you can take where if your opponent does everything to keep you off of academy ruins, you can either get 3 out of 4 wincons or just rip through like 20 cards, which should usually be enough to win.

Snapcaster is very good with gifts (and just by itself). I'd recommend one in your list VickVega, if budget isn't a concern. It lets you recast relevant spells that you giftsed for and didn't get, and if you don't need to answer something immediately, you can flash back gifts.

I totally agree about chalice main. I'm on 3 main and I feel pretty good about that. Maybe ill put a 4th in the board, we'll see. I find if for nothing else, even against the decks you said chalice was meh against, chalice on 1 to shut off path to keep wurmcoil online wins games.

Also for UW control, a lot of my matches had gone G1 me, G2 them but takes 40 mins, G3 time and draw. It may seem a little janky, but I'm trying Sphinx of the final word in the board. Against any of the Uxx control decks. They have 4 turns to rip a terminus.

As for karn, I'm not too horny for him in this deck. Karn is great but a lot of the time he feels like 7 mana to exile 1 permenant. Honestly if I was going to invest 7 mana into that kind of effect, all is dust would be better. If I make more slots for plainswalkes, I think id be better off putting in more Ugins

Ya as far as scion, I'm not enthusiastic about that either. I feel like supreme will would let you see more cards in the end for less mana at instant speed. Admitedly ive done no testing with the scion, but it just doesn't fit with my personal paradigm of blue tron. I see why green tron runs it, they don't have access to other real card draw but blue does. But that's just personal preference

For what its worth I agree that karn scion doesnt seem to do anything blue tron actually needs. More often than not I have zero artifacts on board, or I have one out that is winning the game anyways. If karn ticked up to a game ending ult I could see it, but those servo tokens are anemic and slow ass card draw doesnt seem that good in a deck full of cantrips and dig.

Most people play one karn though so there has to be something to it (not unlike 2 slavers and tec edge - which similarly seem illogical to me).

I would love to see a u walker with x in casting cost like nissa steward of elements for this deck. Something you could fire down early to take a hit and loot or something but that would be huge with eight or more mana. Someday

I did finally change the tech edge to a field of ruin and trim to 1 slaver after I moved to gifts lol. That being said I did tuck that 2nd slavery in the board. Most notably because against any combo like storm, ad nauseam, scapeshift, swans(yes I did run into that at a pptq) resolving just 1 slavery is game, so the 2nd slaver in the board still feels warrented.

Vs burn how do people feel about chalice on one asap vs chalice on two on turn four? Ie would you wait?

Chalice on two stops destructive revelry and lots of spells, but not their creatures or rift/bolt/spike. It stops us from casting spatial contortion and repeal for one (ie our best answers to their one drops) as well as remand and condescend for one.

I used to think waiting for chalice on two was the right move so that it doesnt just get revelried away (I believe its common for burn to run four copies) but im starting to think getting it down on one asap is usually worth risking the revelry.

I also bring in two spell snare vs burn and storm which are just massive nonbos with chalice (either chalice is on one and we cant snare or its on two and already counters the spell we could snare).

How about storm? Do you chalice one one asap? Or hope to land it on two? I believe chalice on two v storm is gg unless they are playing wipe away instead of echoing truth (?) cant ritual or manamorphose.

Risk would be tapping out turn four and getting remanded and then combod out of course. The threat of that alone probably makes it better to just chalice on one asap and hope it hinders them

Storm usually runs Repeal MB aswell, if they haven't cast that many or any cantrips it's sometimes better to put it on one. But generally speaking chalice on 2 just wins very often.