1. Introduction
MartyrProc is white control (prison-like) deck based on assembling an immortality engine, and then winning at your leisure. How does one become immortal? Well the answer lies in the core of the deck:
Proclamation of rebirth allows you to gain 12-21 life per turn. Most decks in the format cannot deal enough damage to kill you once you have this soft lock going.
Emeria is slightly slower, but allows you to have free mana while you are going off. Ranger of Eos and Serra Ascendant are also core to the deck. With serra + ranger + martyr in your deck you can tutor up stall or win conditions with ease.
Some people think this deck is annoying to play against. It really is oppressive to certain strategies while very weak to others. If being "that person" who plays the annoying stall deck worries you, or if being completely cold to some number of decks worries you, this may not be the deck for you.
2. Sample Decklists
There are two main versions of this deck, the mono white version, and the orzhov version.
Here is an example mono white list as played by Steffen Van De Veen to a top 8 finish at GP Madrid.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin: This card is a great recursion engine. It doesn't cost any mana to start grinding your opponent down, and doesn't care what the cost of the creature you are getting back is. This means you can reanimate rangers for lots of value, or whatever finisher that died earlier.
Mistveil Plains: This card primarily is used to recycle fallen squadron hawks. You should always leave at least one hawk in your hand so that you can put its flock-mates back into your deck and then back into your hand. The card also puts important cards back into your deck thus increasing threat density late game. It can also fight surgical extraction by putting the target on the bottom of your deck. Lastly, and very importantly this card prevents you from decking. Even if your opponent goes to "infinite" life and removes all your win-conditions from the game you can still beat them.
Flagstones of Trokair: The mono white version of the deck can use this as a pretend fetchland to tutor for mistveil plains.
Ghost Quarter: Very good at hitting key lands such as manlands, gavony township, and tron lands. In the Orzhov version you can use it to grab the basic swamp if you need it.
Plains: Basic plains. Secretly best land in magic.
Tectonic Edge: can be used instead of Ghost quarter with the downside of not being able to hit 3 land tron or fix your mana. This is better in grindy matchups.
Cavern of Souls: Great for fighting counters. You should name human most of the time. Don’t play this in the orzhov version unless you give up on emeria.
Shambling Vent: This card is great in the mid game. Lets you apply some post wrath pressure, and is a reasonable blocker. A reasonable option if emeria isn't working out in your metagame (too much chalice, need caverns, a lot of graveyard hate or LD, etc)
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The deck should run about 24 lands because your combo requires 7-8 lands in play to function. If your game plan doesn't include forecasting proc, or getting emeria online you are probably not playing MartyrProc.
Martyr of Sands: Half of the name of the deck! Very essential to executing your game plan. You should very rarely (essentially never) cast this if you do not have 1 mana up to use it.
Serra Ascendant: The primary win condition. One important trick to know is that if you are at 29 life you can attack or block with it and it will not die in combat unless it takes 6+ damage. This is because of state based actions (same rule as 2/3 tarmogoyf not dying to lightning bolts). Damage will happen, serra deals 1, the other creature deals damage as well. Your life total is now 30, serra is a 6/6 with damage on it.
Ranger of Eos: This card holds the deck together. Most situations you will search for a serra + martyr, however you can also play other toolbox options such as Kami of false hope, Weathered Wayfarer, and a couple 1 mana weenies.
Weathered Wayfarer: Can search up emeria, ghost quarter, black sources, or mistveil plains. This card can lock tron out of the game. You can grab endless LD lands with this. After you run out of GQ you can grab mistveil, and start putting them back into your deck and searching them back out.
Squadron Hawk: Combines with mistveil plains to create a constant stream of chump blockers. In most games you should cast the first one and leave the ones you searched for in your hand as additional white cards for martyr. This card is over powered. Seriously.
Kami of False Hope: Combines with proc/emeria to turbo fog your opponent. Many decks cannot break this lock.
Student of Warfare: One of the 1-of weenie options to search for with Ranger of Eos. You do not need weenies unless the metagame you are playing in is harsh on your primary plan. Student lets you pay incrementally, which can be nice. You probably shouldn't play weenies though.
Figure of Destiny: The other weenie option. Can be leveled at instant speed.
Linvala, Keeper of silence: A great hate creature. Shuts down birthing pod combos, splinter twin combos, there are still combos I swear, and mana dorks!
Vizkopa Guildmage: A wincondition in the black version. You can activate her second ability multiple times and they all trigger separately. This means you can do double or triple the untargetted lifeloss. This card is excellent for situations where you cannot win through combat such as vs 8 rack with an ensnaring bridge out, vs the mono white enchantment list, boggles if they have spider umbra& daybreak coronet on a creature, or games where your opponent simply has a huge board presence..
Aven Mindcensor: Great card, usually sideboarded. Stops fetchlands, mana ramp, scapeshift, birthing pod, and lots of other tutors.
Wall of Omens: Reasonable speed bump. Not that good in practice.
Athreos, God of Passage: I love this card, but realize it isn't good. The problem with this card is that you don't apply very much pressure on your opponent. This lets them freely pay 3 life per trigger, meaning this card does stone nothing for a long time, THEN takes the game over. We have enough of that style already.
Ayli, the eternal pilgrim: This card. Oh my god this card. As if I needed any other justification for playing a black splash (orzhov charm is already the best card in the archetype). Lets start with what she does at baseline: 2/3 deathtouch for 2 mana. This means she comes down at the same point in the game as TKS, or any other eldrazi, and trades with them! Not many 2 drops can trade with the mid-sized aliens! This is only her worst case scenario. She can gain you some amount of life, possibly saving you, or getting you above 30. This isn't the ability that makes her shine though, we already gain enough life. Her 2nd active gives you additional ways to end the game once you are over 30 life. I actually think once you have 5 lands in play, she is better than Serra Ascendant in this regard. You are guaranteed to get value off her, more so than a serra ascendant which will be pathed most of the time. To summarize, if you are behind she trades and gains you some life, if you are ahead she crushes your opponent into the ground.
Necrotic Sliver: Recurring vindicates can be useful sometimes. This card is probably worse than Ayli at this point.
Sun Titan: Doesn't die to dismember, and offers additional recursion.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa Great wincon that is VERY hard to kill. bolt snap bolt is basically the only way, meaning that most BGx opponents will just get steamrolled by this guy.
Proclamation of Rebirth: The other half of the deck's name. This card allows you to abuse the efficient life gain from martyr. It also lets you get back your win-conditions. Should be saved for the forecast activations, but can be used as a solid 3 for 1 mid game.
Ghostly Prison: Shuts down splintertwin combo, kiki combos, makes delver tap out so you can do your stuff without fear of counters, makes young pyromancer look bad, makes your opponents "go tall" rather than "wide".
Wrath of God: Board wipes! All good control decks have them, this is no exception.
Path to Exile: Very efficient spot removal. Path can also be used on your own creatures (usually hawk) to ramp your mana if you are stuck, or to get you that last land for the recursion lock.
Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light: Good at dealing with everything. One of our only tools to deal with planeswalkers.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant: Not many people run her any more, but she can jump your serras pre 30 life.
Leyline of Sanctity: Stops some combos if they don't answer it. Stops burn and discard as well.
Nevermore: If you are playing Leyline, you should play this too. Leyline protects you from the combo, nevermore names their destruction card to protect the leyline. If you don't have a strong handle on the metagame and what cards people are playing I would steer clear of this. Nevermore never stops combos entirely. Splintertwin has 2 untap creatures and 2 twins (kiki and splintertwin). Birthing pod & Ascendancy come down before this does if you are on the draw, and both have answers to it should they not get their combo piece down. Goryo's has through the breach, the Valakut/Through the breach deck has summoning trap. (You get the point)
Silence: Similar to rule of law except that you have to cast it the turn your opponent is going off and its vulnerable to different things (counterspells instead of enchantment removal).
Grand Abolisher: I've never seen anyone play this, but its ability seems relevant sometimes. Interestingly enough I think this card is excellent versus boggles. Their only out to your kami lock is to path during your turn while you don’t have an orzhov charm in your hand to bring it back during their turn. The problem with it in counter spell matchups, is they all run infinite removal. Long story short, it’s a win-more vs boggles.
Kataki War’s Wage: Very good versus affinity. Affinity is a great matchup so you probably don't need this.
Ensnaring Bridge: Shuts down a lot of things, we can deck people when this is out. Not ideal, but it is technically a card that can be played.
cranial extraction and all of its variants: The 1 mana versions are worse than the 4 mana versions. They require you to already have one copy of the card you want in the graveyard. This deck doesn’t feature enough ways to achieve that. The 4 mana variants can be used to remove key cards from your opponent's deck such as scapeshift, Jeskai Ascendancy, etc.
Blind Obedience: Slows down haste creatures and splintertwin type combos. This is very relevant because your twin opponent can bounce your ghostly prison if that is all you have. With this out, you can replay the prison as they cannot go off during your turn. The converted mana cost of this card is 2 and GP is 3. This means that your opponent cannot EE away both of your shields (or echoing truth).
Wheel of Sun and Moon: There are other graveyard hate spells, but this is the only one I could find that is one sided and white. This in theory makes it the best one for our deck. The current metagame has no need for graveyard hate, so I haven’t tried it yet. Keep in mind when playing with graveyard hate that you are also playing a graveyard deck. You don't want to hurt your own graveyard, and you should avoid playing non-white cards. The downside to this is that it is bad in the mirror because then you can't deck your opponent which is how most mirrors end. Batwing Brume Interesting twin hate suggested originally by James Malinowski Leave No TraceAnother interesting enchantment hate card originally suggested by James Malinowski
The most important thing to know when playing this deck is that it is a control deck, not an aggro deck. You should make the most conservative play possible in most situations. Most decks cannot beat you late game, so the more turns the game takes the more you are favored. If it helps, think of this deck as a modern turbo-fog deck.
Knowing when to cast your spells is the hardest skill to master with this deck. You need to keep cards in your hand in order to gain life off of martyr. I generally only cast anything if I need to, it’s going to win me the game, or if it dramatically slows down my opponent. Cards like Ghostly prison can be case as soon as you think they will resolve (unless your opponent is playing something akin to scapeshift or 8 rack).
The hardest card to know when to cast is serra ascendant. If you are above 30 life, it’s pretty safe to play it. But what about before? That largely depends on the matchup, the board state, and what other cards are in your hand. If your hand is 6 or 7 cards, and you have a squadron hawk, or ranger of eos, you should play it so that you can search up more squadron hawks, or not have to discard to hand size post ranger. If you do not have either of those cards and no martyr, I usually will play it if the number of white cards left in my hand will get me above 30 should I top deck a martyr. This gives you up to 13 “oops I win” draws for your next turn (martyr, ranger, and charm if you already used one martyr).
For every hand you draw, think to yourself: What does this hand beat, what does this hand lose to, and what is my game plan if I decide to keep this hand. Try to plan the first 4 turns of the game considering the possible draws you have. When I say plan I don’t mean make a plan and stick to it. What I’m saying is that you should have an idea of the possible outcomes of the hand. If you are on the computer you can use a calculator to determine % of drawing what you need if it helps.
Somewhat counterintuitively, this deck can mulligan well. While each card is effectively 3 life with martyr, you have squadron hawks and rangers to refill your hand if you had to mulligan low.
I’ve gone ahead and used a sample hand application to generate a pool of over 25 hands to discuss. I’ll choose from that some of the more interesting ones. All of these discussions are assuming that you are playing game 1 versus an unknown opponent. If there was a specific hand you were not sure of, post it and I’ll add it here as well. Be sure to let me know if it is pre or post board so that if you know the matchup I can use that information as well!
This hand is very land heavy; however it has both emeria, and mistveil plains, so you have some engines at your disposal. The hawk can fix the lack of white cards problem and the kami can buy you a turn. This hand can easily establish the squadron hawk chump engine to stall into better cards. It loses to things with trample and scavenging ooze, but overall it has enough stall where I’d keep it against an unknown opponent game 1 on the play or draw. It’s worth noting that this hand is better on the play because you can search for more hawks.
This hand has everything you want in it. The only problem is all of the things you want took up most of the hand and you only have 2 lands. This isn’t necessarily a problem because martyr can buy you time, charm can recur martyr, hawks slightly increase the chance you draw lands, and you have a path to exile which you can use on your hawk to hit a land if it comes to that. This hand is good against all of the matchups that you can expect to win game 1 against.
There really isn’t much to discuss about this hand other than the fact that it is exactly what you want for a long game opening hand. The 2 Martyrs and the removal spell assure you that you will make it to the proclamation. It has 3 lands which if I were allowed to hand pick a number of lands to have in all of my opening hands would be the number.
This is the toughest hand so far. 2 lands is less than ideal in any hand other than the nut draw of martyr + serra. Both of the lands cannot produce black mana, and there is no path to use on a squadron hawk to fix the mana issue. If you get to 3 mana you can stall out with prison, which helps get to ranger. If you are on the play and start with turn 1 emeria, turn 2 plains- squadron hawk searching for 2 more, you have about a 32.8% chance of missing your land drop and most likely losing the game. If you are on the draw (searching out 1 hawk) you have about a 19% chance to miss your 3rd land drop. On the draw I would keep this. On the play it depends on how much of a gamble you are willing to take. You can make an argument for chump blocking with the hawks until you hit the land, but without access to mistveil that seems like a losing battle to start as early as turn 3. That being said I’d mulligan this hand on the play.
This hand isn’t ideal, but I wouldn’t go to 5 over it. If it were a 7 card hand (with a 4th plains) I would mulligan to 6 with it. Because 5 card hands usually have mana issues and this hand has no glaring issues other than the fact that there is nothing particularly special about it I would keep this.
For a 5 card hand this is pretty reasonable. The lands can cast both colors, one is an emeria for late game, martyr, wrath and prison are good to get us to late game.
The plan for this hand is mostly dependent on not getting flooded. Assuming that you draw any spells before turn 4 the hand is fine. I wouldn’t play the serra ascendant on turn one with this hand. I would just try to play lands until I cast either the ranger or whatever I draw. If you are on the draw, and you haven’t drawn anything that is cast-able by turn 3, you should play the serra so that you don’t have to discard the following turn when you cast the ranger. If this hand was not game 1, and you know that your opponent plays thoughtseize, I would mulligan. If they take the ranger you are in a rough spot.
This hand has no threats, but is still a good hand. The hand is weak to scapeshift (3 dead cards),however most opponents are playing with creatures, and this hand is great at controlling the board. I would keep this hand.
None yet!
I will summarize your goal in each matchup below. For specific gameplay tips, check out the videos.
The goal here is to not die. Fortunately for us, our entire deck's premise is to not die! You should win these matches very easily.
The goal in this match-up is the get above certain life total thresholds and stay there. A 7 land scapeshift does 18 damage, and an 8 land scapeshift does 36 damage at most. This number changes based on if you GQ'd a valakut pre scapeshift and how many mountains are left in the deck. I'd say 98% of scapeshift decks run 10 mountains (2 basics). Keep an accurate mountain count because this changes how much damage they can do. Additionally if they scapeshifted leaving 0 basic mountains left in their deck and 6 mountains in play you can GQ one of their mountains with the valakut triggers on the stack and the whole combo does 6 damage (because the mountain you destroyed still sees the other 5, but the rest only see 4). Keep in mind you can castigate an obstinate baloth away because castigate exiles.
The goal here is to disrupt the combo and kill them before they can break the lock. Do not durdle forever in this matchup. Make getting a 6/6 a priority.
These decks are glorified burn decks pretending to be control decks. The main difference is that they might have an infinite combo in kiki+resto. Play it out like you are playing versus a slow burn deck and try to leave up spot removal and/or prison if they have 4 mana up and 2 or more red sources to protect yourself from their free win. I one time also saw the gifts reanimation package in a WUR list, so also be aware of that.
This matchup is about as close to a coin flip as you can possibly get. Martyr lock only stalls them until they get a second armor (the 1 drop aura that pumps for all other auras). Kami is key here as it stops ALL the damage. If you can get a fast 6/6 it helps a lot. The orzhov version is specifically much better in this matchup than the mono white version. This is because the kami lock only holds until your opponent paths the kami during your turn (unless you have enough life to survive a swing). The orzhov version has an instant speed reanimation, so you can simply just sac the kami, and then bring it back during their turn. Make sure to mistveil the charms back into your deck as soon as you can. Boggles has at most 4 paths, and you can tilt the odds in your favor by replenishing your charm numbers.
This match up, if played correctly is your best one. It is not the easiest match-up (Delver is the easiest because they have no tools to interact with you, but they have creature based damage which is slightly better than burn damage at killing you). The key to playing this matchup out is pretending they ALWAYS HAVE SKULLCRACK. The only time you should act as though they don't have skull crack is if you get a specific read that they don't have it. Playing around skullcrack means that if they have 2 mana up, do not crack martyr unless they try to kill it or you are about to die. This places a 2 mana tax on them the entire game because they need to represent skullcrack at all times or else you will just 4-7 for 1 them with martyr. Orzhov charm is amazing here as you can respond to their skullcrack by charming your martyr back and cracking it again. You gain 3 less life than the first crack, but let’s face it, you are playing against burn. Gaining 12 instead of 15 isn't the end of the world.
Additionally almost never is it correct to kill their eidolons. Mathematically, if you are at 30 or more life, and they are at 20 or less, they will die from their own spells before you do (assuming each spell is about 3 damage). This means that they have a finite amount of spell casts for the rest of the game as long as their eidolon lives. Also of note is I’ve never faced a burn player who has sided out their eidolons despite the fact that their eidolons are actively good for us.
Try to get a fast 6/6 and GQ them off of tron. Wayfarer is your best card in this matchup because you can use it to establish a lock using mistveil to recycle GQs after you run out.
Pretty easy matchup since it’s a glorified aggro deck. You want to save your GQs for their inkmoth's or strip mining them after you have multiple prisons in play. They run 1 basic island usually.
Wrath of God is the best card in your arsenal for the pod matchup. Your goal is to disrupt them from comboing long enough to kill them with 6/6 serras and/or guildmage. Save your path to exiles for combo pieces, linvala, and scavenging ooze if you can. If pod tries to midrange you to death it will not work most of the time.
The key to winning post board games is learning how to beat relic. Relic is easily beatable by if at all possible never leaving a martyr in your graveyard alone. You want to force them to pop the relic to get rid of your martyr. If they pop the relic if you can, try to respond with a charm. Once you have the proc +7 mana combo up they usually pop it after you pay the 6 mana. This doesn't cost you a card which is nice. If you were holding a martyr after they relic just cast it the next time you have 2 mana and continue to go off the next turn. If you have multiple martyrs make sure you try to leave one in your hand for this line, as well as to protect it from getting killed and them nailing 2 martyrs for 1 relic.
Originally, I was not planning on making a sideboarding guide since it would need to be updated every month to match a sideboard that made sense for the current metagame. However, a sideboarding guide was requested, so I will write two. One for the mono white decklist posted above, and one for the orzhov version posted above.
This section is currently being written, however about 50% of the matchups are completed.
As a refresher, Steffen Van De Veen’s sideboard was:
IN:
1 Wrath of God
1Path to Exile
OUT:
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Weathered Wayfarer
NOTES:
You can leave wayfarer in on the draw if you want (leaving the last path in the board). I prefer to remove it due to it just being a lightning rod, and also not very useful in low land matchups. If you get mana screwed and they don’t kill it is good though.
IN:
Everything except castigates and Patrician’s Scorn
OUT:
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Proclamation of Rebirth
NOTES:
I take out the hawks because that is an easy 4 slots to shave. They aren’t very high impact and you want to put pressure on pod players. I cut Wayfarer because it is slow, and 1 proclamation, because I am not trying to draw the game out forever. The ghostly prisons are great versus pod, but there ultimately isn’t enough room to play them, plus all the removal, sweepers, and answers to birthing pod. Ghostly Prison doesn’t put pressure on them. Against kikipod leave them in.
IN:
4 Castigate
3 Aven
1 guildmage
1 necrotic sliver
OUT:
4 Ghostly Prison
3 Wrath of God
1 Kami of False Hope
1 Path to Exile
NOTES:
Cut the dead cards, add in some good stuff. Left over paths aren’t bad because they often bring in creatures, and if not they can ramp yourself.
IN:
1 Path to Exile
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
1 Oblivion Ring
OUT:
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Wrath of God
NOTES:
You take out wayfarer and linvala because they are slow. You take out the wrath because you don’t want to kill the eidolons most of the time. 2 wraths are still fine to sweep up the creatures that are chipping away at your life total.
IN:
1 Path to Exile
1 Wrath of God
1 Necrotic Sliver
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
1 Oblivion Ring
OUT:
Depends on the configuration of their list.
Notes: BGx is too general to be specific here, however usually more removal helps.
IN:
Disenchant
Patrician’s Scorn
Wrath of God
Vizkopa Guildmage
Austere Command
Necrotic Sliver
OUT:
3 Path to Exile
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
NOTES:
Bring out the paths because they only kill the Kor, and over 50% of your wins vs boggles are to decking them, so the Kor actually helps you by speeding up the match. Don’t bring in O Ring because you are bringing in enchantment sweepers. For the same reason, you can cut 1 ghostly prison. GP is very good at slowing down your opponent, but having too many in play when you scorn isn’t awesome.
Delver: Delver is 87.9% in your favor. This matchup is trivial and most of your losses will be to variance.
Burn: Burn is 96.2% in your favor. This matchup should be trivial if you play around skullcrack. The one loss I had to burn was a player that had 4 skullcrack, 4 flames of the bloodhand, 4 rain of gore. If that ever becomes a thing just increase the number of enchantment removal spells you have.
Scapeshift: Scapeshift is 75% in your favor. The matchup feels pretty good if you can resolve a martyr (only hard if you are dependant on a ranger to get it for you.
3 color snapcaster control decks: Burn is easy, UWR is burn. UWR is easy. 93.3%.
Zoo: Zoo is 87.5% in your favor. Kavu Predator is a sweet sideboard card I saw out of one list. Its only really scary if you have no removal or wraths at your ready.
Affinity: Aggro decks continue to be good matchups. Be careful of inkmoth nexus. 80%. I cut down to 1 ghostly prison and my win rate vs affinity dropped to 60%.
Aggroloam/dredgevine/Living End: These matchups are grindy, and you are great at grinding 83.3%.
SoulSisters: Low sample size (4-0), however I have trouble imagining ever losing to soul sisters. You have late-game, they do not. Their threats do not naturally have evasion, so you can just chump block with a martyr and sac it (or endless squawks). Mistveil or guildmage will be necessary to win this if the game goes long. If you are on mtgo don't spend very much time thinking, the clock can beat them as well.
Pod: Pod is 76.3% in your favor. Any matchup with an infinite combo is frightening, however as a control deck, we have the tools to disrupt it.
BGx: BGx is 66.6% in your favor. I'm usually pretty confident in the matchup. Liliana is a pain in the butt to deal with sometimes, and scavenging ooze can also be a pain, but most lists are not playing liliana right now.
Midrange: This category includes hatebears, D&T, Faeries, Skred, Bant, and Naya midrange decks 71.4%. None of them have enough data to get reasonable numbers on their own.
Boggles: Boggles is a very close 52.6% matchup. I'm usually pretty happy with this matchup if I have access to Kami of False hope and at least 1 enchantment sweeper.
Twin: Twin is a surprising 75% matchup. Infinite combos are scary, but that is why you are playing so much spot removal (in the orzhov version) and ghostly prisons. You have the tools to fight it.
Merfolk: I have a low sample size for merfolk, but so far it appears to be a favorable matchup at 3-2.
Tron: This matchup feels impossible. You can't beat a resolved Karn or emrakul. Try to kill them asap (and keep them off tron). Somehow my spreadsheet indicates this is a 60% matchup.
Ascendancy/Storm: Good luck to you. 28.6% and one of the wins was to my opponent timing out on mtgo. If you are playing on mtgo just gain tons of life and hope they don't click fast enough.
Amulet/Through the Breath: 36.4%. Beating emrakul or a hive mind is very very challenging.
The deck top 8'd GP Madrid in the hands of Steffen Van De Veen. Demannic (myself) got 52 QPs with the deck in the 2014 season 12 mocs month, and 70 in the season 1 2015 mocs. MTGSalvation user DraeK also got 1st place at a PPTQ with it!
Glad you asked. Firstly I'd like to point out that there are no soul sisters in this deck. The second and more important thing I'd like to point out is that soul sisters is an aggro deck. MartyrProc is a control deck. They may both gain life, but they are aiming to do two completely different things. When I'm playing martyr proc I frequently don't even make an active effort to kill my opponent simply because I know they cannot beat me late game.
A good way to think about it is Martyr of Sands is force of will. Soul Sisters is a legacy merfolk list, and Martyr Proc is miracles. They both play blue cards, they both play force of will, but their game plans are completely different.
It largely depends on your hand, but in most cases I wait till turn 2 to cast the martyr, and then on turn 3 I use it post combat and play the serra.
Do you want a more powerful deck or more flex slots? Orzhov is more powerful, mono white is more customizable. The white deck simply has more room for cards such as cavern of souls, O-Ring, and sweepers due to the 4 spell slots that get freed up and the 8 land slots. Basically what I’m saying is that the Orzhov version is better, but you can tweak the mono white one for specific matchups more easily.
Fantastic primer! My local meta is infested if burn and aggro decks, in fact I literally have not played against a deck that wasn't Burn, Delver, Mono G Stompy, Zoo, or Affinity in about 6 weeks, so I was looking to switch up decks. U Tron is pretty bad in a super aggressive meta, Soul Sisters seems a bit boring, but Martyr-proc (I always thought Reanimartyr was a better name) is just my kind of durdlefest.
I've been picking up the cards I need for a W/B build, and I was wondering if anyone had ever tried Icatian Javelineers as a 1 of. Ive been using this guy in various decks since Fallen Empires, he's gotten better and better with time, and he's even followed me all the way to Legacy and Vintage in a few decks. He pops unflipped Delvers, Confidants, Pyromancers, mana dorks, Thalia, etc, and can block/tap to kill something with 2 toughness. And in this deck he's tutorable and a reanimation target since he's a 1 CMC guy. I'm just not sure if the deck needs that sort of finesse since it can just power through most threats.
I've also been messing around with some of the other white reanimation spells like Immortal Servitude and Return to the Ranks as 1 ofs. Servitude didn't do much, but I've managed to get 3 Squadron Hawks and 2 Martyrs back in 1 go with Return to Ranks in a super grindy game.
A great primer. Well done! One of the better primers. You have a commendable enthusiasm for the deck.
May I suggest stony silence as a board card for tron? Being useful against affinity is a bonus, and it is relevant vs. ad nauseam and other artifact mana source-heavy combo decks. It can theoretically come in v pod. But it is excellent v two versions of tron...stopping mana source bauble activations is nasty, stopping mana washers can deprive them of pyroclasm temporarily, stopping fifty percent of their land tutors is great, and the cherry on the top is O stone. Realistically they run four O stones and maybe one all is dust in RG tron, leaving their board control as eight and seven mana spells, which since they cannot tutor or cycle as well is hard if you run any land kill. I have used the card in many, many decks, and always been impressed.
Also vs U tron they get no mana rocks with SS down, no mindslaver etc. With the UW gifts tron they lose signets, maps, so it is not as stellar.
On wheel of SM...I used this in GW proc list in a PTQ three years ago. It won me a game v pod, screwing up their combo at the time and making sure Wrath did what it said on the tin. In testing was good vs Storm and Gifts loam lists that were popular then. I have used it in today's Modern at events where RIP would screw me up, and it was ok.
In other decks blind obedience has been good for me vs tron, buying a turn or two.
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I love martyr life, it was my first (casual) magic deck.
Regarding splashes:
Could you make this its own section? Right now it's only in the FAQ. Could you also go over other potential splashes and what they offer and what they lack? For instance, green for maindack quasali pridemage seems like it could be quite useful against storm, twin, ascendancy storm, pod, affinity and so on.
Could you comment on the issue of metagame:
How good was the deck before the rise of delver, burn and fast aggro? How successful where you? In case delver gets hurt by a treasure cruise ban, how good will the deck be in the future?
Regarding matchups:
Interestingly, I heard pod is a bad matchup.
Pre treasure cruise my sideboard was pretty rough, but I did pretty well in a few medium sized paper events with it. I started the spreadsheets thing back when I was playing BG dredge in standard last season, and as such don't have very much modern data pre KTK. According to my old spreadsheets my win rate was about 63% over the 40 matches I recorded. Burn is popular no matter what, so even if treasure cruise gets banned, there will be aggro in the format. I do think that the deck becomes worse if cruise gets banned, but white has amazing tools to fight whatever becomes popular. The deck will probably need a bit of a revamp, but it should survive the banning if that happens.
I'll work on adding a section for each color and what they offer in a splash. The videos and sideboarding section have priority, so after that. ETA: January 6th 2015.
Fantastic primer! My local meta is infested if burn and aggro decks, in fact I literally have not played against a deck that wasn't Burn, Delver, Mono G Stompy, Zoo, or Affinity in about 6 weeks, so I was looking to switch up decks. U Tron is pretty bad in a super aggressive meta, Soul Sisters seems a bit boring, but Martyr-proc (I always thought Reanimartyr was a better name) is just my kind of durdlefest.
I've been picking up the cards I need for a W/B build, and I was wondering if anyone had ever tried Icatian Javelineers as a 1 of. Ive been using this guy in various decks since Fallen Empires, he's gotten better and better with time, and he's even followed me all the way to Legacy and Vintage in a few decks. He pops unflipped Delvers, Confidants, Pyromancers, mana dorks, Thalia, etc, and can block/tap to kill something with 2 toughness. And in this deck he's tutorable and a reanimation target since he's a 1 CMC guy. I'm just not sure if the deck needs that sort of finesse since it can just power through most threats.
I've also been messing around with some of the other white reanimation spells like Immortal Servitude and Return to the Ranks as 1 ofs. Servitude didn't do much, but I've managed to get 3 Squadron Hawks and 2 Martyrs back in 1 go with Return to Ranks in a super grindy game.
Personally I like the name 16 martyrs for the orzhov list (4 martyrs, 4 charms, 4 rangers, 3 procs, 1 kami). Naming aside, this sounds like a perfect deck for your meta.
I have never tried the Javelineers, but it seems like an interesting tool box option. Ultimately it is probably a little too slow, and possibly unnecessary as the deck already has a lot of removal and sweepers, as well as linvala who shuts down mana dorks and random combos.
I don't like return to the ranks because it costs 5 mana to do what a hard cast proc does. At 6 mana it is slightly better than a hardcast proc, but lacks the recursive recursion aspect that a 6 mana proc has. Immortal servitude also costs more than a hardcast proc. Using Mistveil Plains you don't really need to recur 2 drops very often,mostly just a guildmage late-game (where emeria can do the trick minus taking up a spell slot). The biggest issue with these is you have to cast them. Proc is amazing since you don't cast it; you can establish your lock through any number of things. One time at a Super IQ my opponent had reanimated an Iona and I beat them because I didn't need to actually cast anything to win.
A great primer. Well done! One of the better primers. You have a commendable enthusiasm for the deck.
May I suggest stony silence as a board card for tron? Being useful against affinity is a bonus, and it is relevant vs. ad nauseam and other artifact mana source-heavy combo decks. It can theoretically come in v pod. But it is excellent v two versions of tron...stopping mana source bauble activations is nasty, stopping mana washers can deprive them of pyroclasm temporarily, stopping fifty percent of their land tutors is great, and the cherry on the top is O stone. Realistically they run four O stones and maybe one all is dust in RG tron, leaving their board control as eight and seven mana spells, which since they cannot tutor or cycle as well is hard if you run any land kill. I have used the card in many, many decks, and always been impressed.
Also vs U tron they get no mana rocks with SS down, no mindslaver etc. With the UW gifts tron they lose signets, maps, so it is not as stellar.
On wheel of SM...I used this in GW proc list in a PTQ three years ago. It won me a game v pod, screwing up their combo at the time and making sure Wrath did what it said on the tin. In testing was good vs Storm and Gifts loam lists that were popular then. I have used it in today's Modern at events where RIP would screw me up, and it was ok.
In other decks blind obedience has been good for me vs tron, buying a turn or two.
I'll add your suggestions to the card pool. Probably around when I add the splash section.
I also like BO, I'd been pushing that card pretty hard until this month. I cut it to try out some other options while twin isn't big.
Unnecessary. You'll notice that martyr is the only life gain in the deck. That is because it gains a lot of life and can be recurred. Kabira crossroads is better because it taps for white, but even that isn't worth it because it's a nonplains. If you add lands like that you need to cut emeria.
Interesting. What about replacing Ghost Quarter for Radiant Fountain in metas where Tron isn't as big of a thing? That could make the difference between Serra Ascendant being online or not. It also would be especially helpful in the burn match up. I do want to emphasize that this would be for the mono white build, rather than the black and white build.
Speaking of the differences, why do you feel the black and white build is better? Is Orzhov Charm really that good?
The burn matchup is very very easy, so I'm not looking to gain anything there. In the mono white build you could run it there, although I still think it is low impact. Ghost quarter also kills manlands and townships. Those cards usually deal more than 2 damage, so ghost quarter ends up gaining you life anyway.
About orzhov charm: Yes. Orzhov charm might actually be the best card in the deck. It allows you to do so many things you cannot do without an instant speed reanimation spell. It also doubles as a spot removal spell, and can bounce your own creatures.
For specifics: Without charm beating skullcrack becomes harder (you can recrack martyr in response to the skullcrack after charming it back), beating boggles becomes harder (they can disrupt the kami lock by pathing it during your turn. With charm you can sac it, then get it back during their turn to continue the lock), getting to late game becomes harder (double the martyr activations), you have half the instant speed spot removal spells (condemn doesn't help you where it matters like against the angel combo, or twin), you have effectively no combat tricks (reanimate a 6/6 during their attack, bounce your guy that their lifelinker blocked), and you have no way to protect your serra ascendant from a path to exile (bounce). The cost of splashing is minimal, but opens your sideboard up dramatically to cards like castigate. Non-scapeshift/splintertwin combo absolutely destroys the deck, and discard spells help a lot.
Sweet pirmer! I've been eyeing this deck a bit lately as a way for me to get into modern but I am worried about your warning: does the deck really draw that much hate? More than other control decks? Do people hate it like they hate fog decks?
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"Until you have lived as a statue, do not talk to me of pigeons."
—Karn, silver golem
I actually just added that because I was told to burn in hell about an hour ago. I wanted to make people aware that that happens sometimes. I would say less than 5% of people will say something to you on mtgo. On paper if they are that rude to you they might get a USC-Minor so I wouldn't worry about it on paper. You actually get a decent number of people who are really nice and compliment the deck too. I'll edit it again to make that more clear.
Demannic, with GP Omaha coming shortly I have been wanting to finalize a list and you seem to have done the most testing of the BW Martyr deck so I wanted to pick your brain about a few of your card choices.
Linvala is obviously a very strong card when she is good, shuts down twin, mana dorks and the like.. my question is that since we have no way to directly tutor her up like pod decks generally would how valuable has she been as an off the top one of? The maindeck I am currently on has cut her in favor of the 4th path to free up more SB slots, what are your thoughts on this.
As far as sideboard choices you are fairly tuned towards the online meta-game, assuming two BYEs for the GP are there any cards that you feel would be less necessary as the decks they are targeting are more fringe (boggles) and could be cut to make room for cards that are better against a wider range such as celestial purge since it improves the Storm matchup as well as others
With the way modern is looking right now I think this deck is quite favorably positioned so long as you can dodge all of the Emrakul decks basically everything else seems quite favorable, any input would be highly appreciated
After re reading the primer I must say I'm very interesting in putting this together. Can you talk more about what this deck should be doing on turn 1 generally? Is it generally, "Play Weathered Wayfarer, otherwise just pass, also does this deck always want to play, sometimes draw (go second). I'm more interested in the mono white version. Could Mana Tithe potentially work in this build? Finally can you spend a little more time talking about Kami of False Hope?
I'm currently on a bus typing on my phone, so sorry if this is formatted or worded poorly.
Scorn is specifically for boggles, and austere command is not as great if you aren't expecting that either (still fine though).
I used to not play linvala, but a guy on MTGO claiming to be Steffen van de veen talked me into it, and so far it has been good. This deck is pretty good at getting to 1 ofs due to the stalling nature of the deck.
One card I've been testing is ensnaring bridge. It stops emrakul, titans usually, ascendancy, boggles, and the attack on the Angel combo. I don't like non-white cards, but so far its been doing well enough.
I think like disenchant more than purge unless you are expecting liliana, most purge targets are enchantments except her. I'll get back to you more once I have access to my laptop.
Runed Halo might be worth a shout as anti boggle tech. Aura of silence is obviously decent too. Scorn is great, but not flexible. I normally use Spellskite as anti Infect, twin and Boggle tech, but it is colorless. In decks like this I like overlapping board cards, Halo hits equipped Etched Champs early on, and can come in vs any deck practically.
The c purge can also hit Rhino and Redcap in pod...I wonder if that is why the GP list ran 3..? The charm in splash version probably makes Purge less necessary?
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I don't like runed halo for the same reasons I list in the nevermore breakdown. Runed halo has the downside of not being able to protect other prison elements. I completely agree with you about charm being the reason purge is probably less nessisary in the orzhov version. I hadn't thought of it like that, but it seems spot on. The white version lacks instant speed spot removal, where the black version has a good amount, but needs more ways to hit non-creatures, hence disenchant.
Manatithe is useless because games go late most of the time. Kami is a 5th martyr that has the added bonus of stopping 100% of the damage, which is good vs inkmoth, twin, angel, boggles, and certain niche game states vs just about anything. Kami with charm backup lets you solidify the damage lock.
On turn 1 I usually play a tapped land or fetch (for a tapped land). Turn 2 I either pass representing removal, cast a hawk, or cast a martyr. You aren't in a rush to really do anything because of your late game. Vs pod I run out martyrs and Serra's t1,because they dont run much removal, and decay costs 2.
I had been upping my celestial purge count since I have ran into UR storm a few times online since the players champs and it is able to hit both goblin electromancer, young pyro, siege rhino, redcap etc while still being able to remove ascendencys and liliana
I can certainly see the argument for just more disenchant instead of the purge since the primary hate cards against us are going to be artifacts and most of the threats from other decks are just enchantments anyway
Is the matchup against Emrakul decks bad enough that it just is not worth having a 1 of ensnaring bridge? If they are RG tron they usually have one of each eldrazi so Ulamog can just kill the single bridge the turn they want to attack. In a big field like a GP there are just too many decks to be favored against every 1%... but since it seems likely that Pod, delver, twin, burn etc are going to be the much larger % of the meta is hoping to just fade the miserable matchups and using the sideboard slots to help shore up the few coin toss matchups that we have makes the most sense in a vaccuum
It feels like I may just be hoping for the Magical Christmas Land where its just 12 delver decks in a row all the way to the top 8 but who knows, that may be the way to actually put more numbers on the board for martyr
I agree with you on the sideboard slots helping out the medium matchups more than the fringe complete losses. I don't really know the exact paper metagame because I mostly play online due to time constraints. I brought up bridge as a suggestion based on your eldrazi comment, and I think its reasonable because it also beats other decks that go tall, while GP beats decks that go wide. Because writing this primer I wanted to test out more cards. So far the best one I've tested out was necrotic sliver.
Going back to purge: I don't like it vs pod because it doesn't kill scooze, Angel, spike feeder, or pod.
For storm, I think rule of law is pretty good there, and also vs ascendancy, and decks like twin. When they go for the combo they can't counter your spot removal. It also incidentally stops hivemind+ pact in the same turn, allowing you to deal with it.
Speaking of different metagames: I added a tab to the spreadsheet where you can input an anticipated metagame and it calculates your chance of placing in a daily, 8man, or getting day 2 with 0, 1, or 2 draws at a gp. I'll upload that with the next big primer update.
This post is probably riddled with phone typos and autocorrects, so I am sorry to everyone who reads it before I go back in and proofread it on my laptop.
Posting via mobile so I can't get too much into it, but, I run the mono white list minus a wrath of god a ghostly prison, and minus 2 weathered wayfarers, in their place I run 2 aven mindcensors and 2 baneslayersz, definately great to main board hate vs scape shift and tron and also to have an alternate wincon if serra ascendant won't happen if a martyr gets surgical extraction
To be honest I am not exactly a Halo fan in any deck. It always can do something, it never does a lot. Its best use is boggle nullifying. Where it does sneak into my lists (and I mean generally here) is when it replaces a Leyline, when I feel that I want an extra bit of coverage against a specific deck but still want Leyline effects. It sort of ends up being a Leyline in some matches (eg scapeshift) but not others that have multiple targeted spells/abilities (eg 8 rack). In this case some of the matches Leylines are good against- burn for example- tend to be ones that any lifegain deck should do well against, hence my suggestion, but it is not a card I am happy running.
Nevermore is just such a bad card, and the primer analysis on it was spot on as to why. It really needs to either be a cantrip, on a tough body or a flashy one, do more for 3, or cost 1. Basically it needs to be a better card. No doubt if it were blue it would have made breakfast and taste of candy.
On alternate win cons I have jammed an Elspeth in....makes naked Serra a threat and a half, and is very grindy in keeping with the late game mentality of the deck.
On Purge in the Pod match- scooze seems to be the biggest culprit for ruining days. Could running C Purge allow the 4 paths/Wraths to be saved more often for Scooze (in the mono white version)? Is scooze why the mono GP list was running main Linvala, I wonder?It certainly seems to be a pig of a card.
MartyrProc is white control (prison-like) deck based on assembling an immortality engine, and then winning at your leisure. How does one become immortal? Well the answer lies in the core of the deck:
Proclamation of rebirth allows you to gain 12-21 life per turn. Most decks in the format cannot deal enough damage to kill you once you have this soft lock going.
Emeria is slightly slower, but allows you to have free mana while you are going off.
Ranger of Eos and Serra Ascendant are also core to the deck. With serra + ranger + martyr in your deck you can tutor up stall or win conditions with ease.
There are two main versions of this deck, the mono white version, and the orzhov version.
Here is an example mono white list as played by Steffen Van De Veen to a top 8 finish at GP Madrid.
4 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Mistveil Plains
2 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
1 Cavern of Souls
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Serra Ascendant
4 Ranger of Eos
2 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
4 Path to Exile
4 Wrath of God
3 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Banishing Light
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
2 Aura of Silence
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Celestial Purge
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Aven Mindcensor
Here is an example of the Orzhov version of the deck as seen in the daily queues on mtgo by Demannic:
9 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Mistveil Plains
3 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
4 Godless Shrine
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Marsh Flats
SPELLS
3 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Orzhov Charm
3 Path to Exile
3 Day of Judgment
4 Ghostly Prison
4 Martyr of Sands
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Serra Ascendant
1 Kami of False Hope
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Squadron Hawk
3 Aven Mindcensor
1 Patrician's Scorn
1 Austere Command
4 Castigate
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
1 Day of Judgment
1 Disenchant
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Path to Exile
1 Necrotic Sliver
Here is an esper list:
4 Martyr of Sands
3 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Ranger of Eos
1 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
1 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Squadron Hawk
3 Wrath of God
4 Path to Exile
4 Orzhov Charm
4 Serra Ascendant
2 Lingering Souls
1 Utter End
1 Sky Hussar
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Marsh Flats
4 Godless Shrine
1 Swamp
4 Ghost Quarter
6 Plains
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Wrath of God
1 Utter End
2 Entreat the Angels
4 Castigate
1 Celestial Purge
4 Ghostly Prison
2 Aven Mindcensor
Here is Demannic's BW Cavern list, note the lack of emeria, opting instead for Caverns and manlands to combat chalice of the void:
4 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
3 Cavern of Souls
3 Ghost Quarters
2 Shambling Vents
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Swamp
5 Plains
4 Martyr of Sands
4 Serra Ascendant
4 Squadron Hawk
2 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
4 Ranger of Eos
Spells(18):
4 Path to Exile
4 Orzhov Charm
4 Ghostly Prison
3 Proclamation of Rebirth
3 Wrath of God
1 Kami of False Hope
2 Celestial Purge
2 Stony Silence
4 Lingering Souls
2 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
1 Wrath of God
1 Sun Titan
2 Rule of Law
Here is a Mardu List featuring Nahiri and Emrakul (Idea originally by Lear the cat):
1 Mistveil Plains
3 Ghost Quarter
2 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Godless Shrine
1 Blood Crypt
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
5 Plains
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Kami of False Hope
4 Serra Ascendant
4 Martyr of Sands
4 Path to Exile
4 Squadron Hawk
3 Proclamation of Rebirth
3 Blood Moon
4 Ranger of Eos
3 Nahiri, the Harbinger
4 Wrath of God
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Hide/Seek
2 Crackling Doom
3 Slaughter Games
1 Anguished Unmaking
2 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Kami of False Hope
3 Lightning Helix
3. Discussion of Card Options
Emeria, the Sky Ruin: This card is a great recursion engine. It doesn't cost any mana to start grinding your opponent down, and doesn't care what the cost of the creature you are getting back is. This means you can reanimate rangers for lots of value, or whatever finisher that died earlier.
Mistveil Plains: This card primarily is used to recycle fallen squadron hawks. You should always leave at least one hawk in your hand so that you can put its flock-mates back into your deck and then back into your hand. The card also puts important cards back into your deck thus increasing threat density late game. It can also fight surgical extraction by putting the target on the bottom of your deck. Lastly, and very importantly this card prevents you from decking. Even if your opponent goes to "infinite" life and removes all your win-conditions from the game you can still beat them.
Flagstones of Trokair: The mono white version of the deck can use this as a pretend fetchland to tutor for mistveil plains.
Ghost Quarter: Very good at hitting key lands such as manlands, gavony township, and tron lands. In the Orzhov version you can use it to grab the basic swamp if you need it.
Plains: Basic plains. Secretly best land in magic.
Tectonic Edge: can be used instead of Ghost quarter with the downside of not being able to hit 3 land tron or fix your mana. This is better in grindy matchups.
Cavern of Souls: Great for fighting counters. You should name human most of the time. Don’t play this in the orzhov version unless you give up on emeria.
Shambling Vent: This card is great in the mid game. Lets you apply some post wrath pressure, and is a reasonable blocker. A reasonable option if emeria isn't working out in your metagame (too much chalice, need caverns, a lot of graveyard hate or LD, etc)
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The deck should run about 24 lands because your combo requires 7-8 lands in play to function. If your game plan doesn't include forecasting proc, or getting emeria online you are probably not playing MartyrProc.
Serra Ascendant: The primary win condition. One important trick to know is that if you are at 29 life you can attack or block with it and it will not die in combat unless it takes 6+ damage. This is because of state based actions (same rule as 2/3 tarmogoyf not dying to lightning bolts). Damage will happen, serra deals 1, the other creature deals damage as well. Your life total is now 30, serra is a 6/6 with damage on it.
Ranger of Eos: This card holds the deck together. Most situations you will search for a serra + martyr, however you can also play other toolbox options such as Kami of false hope, Weathered Wayfarer, and a couple 1 mana weenies.
Weathered Wayfarer: Can search up emeria, ghost quarter, black sources, or mistveil plains. This card can lock tron out of the game. You can grab endless LD lands with this. After you run out of GQ you can grab mistveil, and start putting them back into your deck and searching them back out.
Squadron Hawk: Combines with mistveil plains to create a constant stream of chump blockers. In most games you should cast the first one and leave the ones you searched for in your hand as additional white cards for martyr. This card is over powered. Seriously.
Kami of False Hope: Combines with proc/emeria to turbo fog your opponent. Many decks cannot break this lock.
Student of Warfare: One of the 1-of weenie options to search for with Ranger of Eos. You do not need weenies unless the metagame you are playing in is harsh on your primary plan. Student lets you pay incrementally, which can be nice. You probably shouldn't play weenies though.
Figure of Destiny: The other weenie option. Can be leveled at instant speed.
Linvala, Keeper of silence: A great hate creature. Shuts down
birthing pod combos, splinter twin combos, there are still combos I swear, and mana dorks!Vizkopa Guildmage: A wincondition in the black version. You can activate her second ability multiple times and they all trigger separately. This means you can do double or triple the untargetted lifeloss. This card is excellent for situations where you cannot win through combat such as vs 8 rack with an ensnaring bridge out, vs the mono white enchantment list, boggles if they have spider umbra& daybreak coronet on a creature, or games where your opponent simply has a huge board presence..
Aven Mindcensor: Great card, usually sideboarded. Stops fetchlands, mana ramp, scapeshift, birthing pod, and lots of other tutors.
Wall of Omens: Reasonable speed bump. Not that good in practice.
Athreos, God of Passage: I love this card, but realize it isn't good. The problem with this card is that you don't apply very much pressure on your opponent. This lets them freely pay 3 life per trigger, meaning this card does stone nothing for a long time, THEN takes the game over. We have enough of that style already.
Ayli, the eternal pilgrim: This card. Oh my god this card. As if I needed any other justification for playing a black splash (orzhov charm is already the best card in the archetype). Lets start with what she does at baseline: 2/3 deathtouch for 2 mana. This means she comes down at the same point in the game as TKS, or any other eldrazi, and trades with them! Not many 2 drops can trade with the mid-sized aliens! This is only her worst case scenario. She can gain you some amount of life, possibly saving you, or getting you above 30. This isn't the ability that makes her shine though, we already gain enough life. Her 2nd active gives you additional ways to end the game once you are over 30 life. I actually think once you have 5 lands in play, she is better than Serra Ascendant in this regard. You are guaranteed to get value off her, more so than a serra ascendant which will be pathed most of the time. To summarize, if you are behind she trades and gains you some life, if you are ahead she crushes your opponent into the ground.
Necrotic Sliver: Recurring vindicates can be useful sometimes. This card is probably worse than Ayli at this point.
Sun Titan: Doesn't die to dismember, and offers additional recursion.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa Great wincon that is VERY hard to kill. bolt snap bolt is basically the only way, meaning that most BGx opponents will just get steamrolled by this guy.
Ghostly Prison:
Shuts down splintertwin combo, kiki combos, makes delver tap out so you can do your stuff without fear of counters, makes young pyromancer look bad, makes your opponents "go tall" rather than "wide".Wrath of God: Board wipes! All good control decks have them, this is no exception.
Path to Exile: Very efficient spot removal. Path can also be used on your own creatures (usually hawk) to ramp your mana if you are stuck, or to get you that last land for the recursion lock.
Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light: Good at dealing with everything. One of our only tools to deal with planeswalkers.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant: Not many people run her any more, but she can jump your serras pre 30 life.
Rule of Law: Combo hate.
Leyline of Sanctity: Stops some combos if they don't answer it. Stops burn and discard as well.
Nevermore: If you are playing Leyline, you should play this too. Leyline protects you from the combo, nevermore names their destruction card to protect the leyline. If you don't have a strong handle on the metagame and what cards people are playing I would steer clear of this. Nevermore never stops combos entirely.
Splintertwin has 2 untap creatures and 2 twins (kiki and splintertwin).Birthing pod& Ascendancy come down before this does if you are on the draw, and both have answers to it should they not get their combo piece down. Goryo's has through the breach, the Valakut/Through the breach deck has summoning trap. (You get the point)Silence: Similar to rule of law except that you have to cast it the turn your opponent is going off and its vulnerable to different things (counterspells instead of enchantment removal).
Grand Abolisher: I've never seen anyone play this, but its ability seems relevant sometimes. Interestingly enough I think this card is excellent versus boggles. Their only out to your kami lock is to path during your turn while you don’t have an orzhov charm in your hand to bring it back during their turn. The problem with it in counter spell matchups, is they all run infinite removal. Long story short, it’s a win-more vs boggles.
Kataki War’s Wage: Very good versus affinity. Affinity is a great matchup so you probably don't need this.
Ensnaring Bridge: Shuts down a lot of things, we can deck people when this is out. Not ideal, but it is technically a card that can be played.
cranial extraction and all of its variants: The 1 mana versions are worse than the 4 mana versions. They require you to already have one copy of the card you want in the graveyard. This deck doesn’t feature enough ways to achieve that. The 4 mana variants can be used to remove key cards from your opponent's deck such as scapeshift, Jeskai Ascendancy, etc.
Blind Obedience: Slows down haste creatures and splintertwin type combos. This is very relevant because your twin opponent can bounce your ghostly prison if that is all you have. With this out, you can replay the prison as they cannot go off during your turn. The converted mana cost of this card is 2 and GP is 3. This means that your opponent cannot EE away both of your shields (or echoing truth).
Patrician's Scorn Zero mana Boggles hate.
Thalia, guardian of thraben: slows down spell based decks.
Disenchant: artifact/enchantment removal.
Castigate: Discard! Exiles meaning you can hit cards like obstinate baloth with it. It also is white for martyr.
Austere Command: Catchall sweeper. Sweeps whatever you want it to sweep.
Fracturing Gust: Another artifact/enchantment sweeper. Slow, but gains a lot of life.
Aura of Silence: Artifact and enchantment hate.
Celestial Purge: Describes itself.
Wheel of Sun and Moon: There are other graveyard hate spells, but this is the only one I could find that is one sided and white. This in theory makes it the best one for our deck. The current metagame has no need for graveyard hate, so I haven’t tried it yet. Keep in mind when playing with graveyard hate that you are also playing a graveyard deck. You don't want to hurt your own graveyard, and you should avoid playing non-white cards. The downside to this is that it is bad in the mirror because then you can't deck your opponent which is how most mirrors end.
Batwing Brume Interesting twin hate suggested originally by James Malinowski
Leave No TraceAnother interesting enchantment hate card originally suggested by James Malinowski
Knowing when to cast your spells is the hardest skill to master with this deck. You need to keep cards in your hand in order to gain life off of martyr. I generally only cast anything if I need to, it’s going to win me the game, or if it dramatically slows down my opponent. Cards like Ghostly prison can be case as soon as you think they will resolve (unless your opponent is playing something akin to scapeshift or 8 rack).
The hardest card to know when to cast is serra ascendant. If you are above 30 life, it’s pretty safe to play it. But what about before? That largely depends on the matchup, the board state, and what other cards are in your hand. If your hand is 6 or 7 cards, and you have a squadron hawk, or ranger of eos, you should play it so that you can search up more squadron hawks, or not have to discard to hand size post ranger. If you do not have either of those cards and no martyr, I usually will play it if the number of white cards left in my hand will get me above 30 should I top deck a martyr. This gives you up to 13 “oops I win” draws for your next turn (martyr, ranger, and charm if you already used one martyr).
Somewhat counterintuitively, this deck can mulligan well. While each card is effectively 3 life with martyr, you have squadron hawks and rangers to refill your hand if you had to mulligan low.
I’ve gone ahead and used a sample hand application to generate a pool of over 25 hands to discuss. I’ll choose from that some of the more interesting ones. All of these discussions are assuming that you are playing game 1 versus an unknown opponent. If there was a specific hand you were not sure of, post it and I’ll add it here as well. Be sure to let me know if it is pre or post board so that if you know the matchup I can use that information as well!
This hand is very land heavy; however it has both emeria, and mistveil plains, so you have some engines at your disposal. The hawk can fix the lack of white cards problem and the kami can buy you a turn. This hand can easily establish the squadron hawk chump engine to stall into better cards. It loses to things with trample and scavenging ooze, but overall it has enough stall where I’d keep it against an unknown opponent game 1 on the play or draw. It’s worth noting that this hand is better on the play because you can search for more hawks.
This hand has everything you want in it. The only problem is all of the things you want took up most of the hand and you only have 2 lands. This isn’t necessarily a problem because martyr can buy you time, charm can recur martyr, hawks slightly increase the chance you draw lands, and you have a path to exile which you can use on your hawk to hit a land if it comes to that. This hand is good against all of the matchups that you can expect to win game 1 against.
There really isn’t much to discuss about this hand other than the fact that it is exactly what you want for a long game opening hand. The 2 Martyrs and the removal spell assure you that you will make it to the proclamation. It has 3 lands which if I were allowed to hand pick a number of lands to have in all of my opening hands would be the number.
This is the toughest hand so far. 2 lands is less than ideal in any hand other than the nut draw of martyr + serra. Both of the lands cannot produce black mana, and there is no path to use on a squadron hawk to fix the mana issue. If you get to 3 mana you can stall out with prison, which helps get to ranger. If you are on the play and start with turn 1 emeria, turn 2 plains- squadron hawk searching for 2 more, you have about a 32.8% chance of missing your land drop and most likely losing the game. If you are on the draw (searching out 1 hawk) you have about a 19% chance to miss your 3rd land drop. On the draw I would keep this. On the play it depends on how much of a gamble you are willing to take. You can make an argument for chump blocking with the hawks until you hit the land, but without access to mistveil that seems like a losing battle to start as early as turn 3. That being said I’d mulligan this hand on the play.
This hand isn’t ideal, but I wouldn’t go to 5 over it. If it were a 7 card hand (with a 4th plains) I would mulligan to 6 with it. Because 5 card hands usually have mana issues and this hand has no glaring issues other than the fact that there is nothing particularly special about it I would keep this.
This hand has no plan. I don’t like when hands have no game plan, so I would mulligan it.
For a 5 card hand this is pretty reasonable. The lands can cast both colors, one is an emeria for late game, martyr, wrath and prison are good to get us to late game.
The plan for this hand is mostly dependent on not getting flooded. Assuming that you draw any spells before turn 4 the hand is fine. I wouldn’t play the serra ascendant on turn one with this hand. I would just try to play lands until I cast either the ranger or whatever I draw. If you are on the draw, and you haven’t drawn anything that is cast-able by turn 3, you should play the serra so that you don’t have to discard the following turn when you cast the ranger. If this hand was not game 1, and you know that your opponent plays thoughtseize, I would mulligan. If they take the ranger you are in a rough spot.
This hand has no threats, but is still a good hand. The hand is weak to scapeshift (3 dead cards),however most opponents are playing with creatures, and this hand is great at controlling the board. I would keep this hand.
I will summarize your goal in each matchup below. For specific gameplay tips, check out the videos.
Additionally almost never is it correct to kill their eidolons. Mathematically, if you are at 30 or more life, and they are at 20 or less, they will die from their own spells before you do (assuming each spell is about 3 damage). This means that they have a finite amount of spell casts for the rest of the game as long as their eidolon lives. Also of note is I’ve never faced a burn player who has sided out their eidolons despite the fact that their eidolons are actively good for us.
This section is currently being written, however about 50% of the matchups are completed.
2 Aura of Silence
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Celestial Purge
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Aven Mindcensor
This section is being rewritten
1 Patrician's Scorn
1 Austere Command
4 Castigate
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
1 Day of Judgment
1 Disenchant
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Path to Exile
1 Necrotic Sliver
1 Wrath of God
1Path to Exile
OUT:
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Weathered Wayfarer
NOTES:
You can leave wayfarer in on the draw if you want (leaving the last path in the board). I prefer to remove it due to it just being a lightning rod, and also not very useful in low land matchups. If you get mana screwed and they don’t kill it is good though.
Everything except castigates and Patrician’s Scorn
OUT:
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Proclamation of Rebirth
NOTES:
I take out the hawks because that is an easy 4 slots to shave. They aren’t very high impact and you want to put pressure on pod players. I cut Wayfarer because it is slow, and 1 proclamation, because I am not trying to draw the game out forever. The ghostly prisons are great versus pod, but there ultimately isn’t enough room to play them, plus all the removal, sweepers, and answers to birthing pod. Ghostly Prison doesn’t put pressure on them. Against kikipod leave them in.
4 Castigate
3 Aven
1 guildmage
1 necrotic sliver
OUT:
4 Ghostly Prison
3 Wrath of God
1 Kami of False Hope
1 Path to Exile
NOTES:
Cut the dead cards, add in some good stuff. Left over paths aren’t bad because they often bring in creatures, and if not they can ramp yourself.
1 Path to Exile
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
1 Oblivion Ring
OUT:
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Wrath of God
NOTES:
You take out wayfarer and linvala because they are slow. You take out the wrath because you don’t want to kill the eidolons most of the time. 2 wraths are still fine to sweep up the creatures that are chipping away at your life total.
1 Path to Exile
1 Wrath of God
1 Necrotic Sliver
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
1 Oblivion Ring
OUT:
Depends on the configuration of their list.
Notes: BGx is too general to be specific here, however usually more removal helps.
Disenchant
Patrician’s Scorn
Wrath of God
Vizkopa Guildmage
Austere Command
Necrotic Sliver
OUT:
3 Path to Exile
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
NOTES:
Bring out the paths because they only kill the Kor, and over 50% of your wins vs boggles are to decking them, so the Kor actually helps you by speeding up the match. Don’t bring in O Ring because you are bringing in enchantment sweepers. For the same reason, you can cut 1 ghostly prison. GP is very good at slowing down your opponent, but having too many in play when you scorn isn’t awesome.
Read Only:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l6f-JPcuu0bJZhMuQvz5Sc_WSw4d91CAjLdQh-aXP6I/pubhtml
Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6-1lrXJkrLUZ1RNSE45NnF2NXM/view?usp=sharing
spreadsheet where I keep all of my tournament matches played with the orzhov version of the deck. There are 268 matches backing this data. In addition to the numbers I'll give my opinion on the matchup.
Spreadsheet link last updated 1/5/2015. Numbers below updated 1/5/15.
Burn: Burn is 96.2% in your favor. This matchup should be trivial if you play around skullcrack. The one loss I had to burn was a player that had 4 skullcrack, 4 flames of the bloodhand, 4 rain of gore. If that ever becomes a thing just increase the number of enchantment removal spells you have.
Scapeshift: Scapeshift is 75% in your favor. The matchup feels pretty good if you can resolve a martyr (only hard if you are dependant on a ranger to get it for you.
3 color snapcaster control decks: Burn is easy, UWR is burn. UWR is easy. 93.3%.
Zoo: Zoo is 87.5% in your favor. Kavu Predator is a sweet sideboard card I saw out of one list. Its only really scary if you have no removal or wraths at your ready.
Affinity: Aggro decks continue to be good matchups. Be careful of inkmoth nexus. 80%. I cut down to 1 ghostly prison and my win rate vs affinity dropped to 60%.
Aggroloam/dredgevine/Living End: These matchups are grindy, and you are great at grinding 83.3%.
SoulSisters: Low sample size (4-0), however I have trouble imagining ever losing to soul sisters. You have late-game, they do not. Their threats do not naturally have evasion, so you can just chump block with a martyr and sac it (or endless squawks). Mistveil or guildmage will be necessary to win this if the game goes long. If you are on mtgo don't spend very much time thinking, the clock can beat them as well.
BGx: BGx is 66.6% in your favor. I'm usually pretty confident in the matchup. Liliana is a pain in the butt to deal with sometimes, and scavenging ooze can also be a pain, but most lists are not playing liliana right now.
Midrange: This category includes hatebears, D&T, Faeries, Skred, Bant, and Naya midrange decks 71.4%. None of them have enough data to get reasonable numbers on their own.
Boggles: Boggles is a very close 52.6% matchup. I'm usually pretty happy with this matchup if I have access to Kami of False hope and at least 1 enchantment sweeper.
Twin: Twin is a surprising 75% matchup. Infinite combos are scary, but that is why you are playing so much spot removal (in the orzhov version) and ghostly prisons. You have the tools to fight it.
Merfolk: I have a low sample size for merfolk, but so far it appears to be a favorable matchup at 3-2.
Ascendancy/Storm: Good luck to you. 28.6% and one of the wins was to my opponent timing out on mtgo. If you are playing on mtgo just gain tons of life and hope they don't click fast enough.
Amulet/Through the Breath: 36.4%. Beating emrakul or a hive mind is very very challenging.
Vs Burn
8 man
League(Decktech + 5 rounds)
Eldrazi Vs. Series
A good way to think about it is Martyr of Sands is force of will. Soul Sisters is a legacy merfolk list, and Martyr Proc is miracles. They both play blue cards, they both play force of will, but their game plans are completely different.
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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I've been picking up the cards I need for a W/B build, and I was wondering if anyone had ever tried Icatian Javelineers as a 1 of. Ive been using this guy in various decks since Fallen Empires, he's gotten better and better with time, and he's even followed me all the way to Legacy and Vintage in a few decks. He pops unflipped Delvers, Confidants, Pyromancers, mana dorks, Thalia, etc, and can block/tap to kill something with 2 toughness. And in this deck he's tutorable and a reanimation target since he's a 1 CMC guy. I'm just not sure if the deck needs that sort of finesse since it can just power through most threats.
I've also been messing around with some of the other white reanimation spells like Immortal Servitude and Return to the Ranks as 1 ofs. Servitude didn't do much, but I've managed to get 3 Squadron Hawks and 2 Martyrs back in 1 go with Return to Ranks in a super grindy game.
May I suggest stony silence as a board card for tron? Being useful against affinity is a bonus, and it is relevant vs. ad nauseam and other artifact mana source-heavy combo decks. It can theoretically come in v pod. But it is excellent v two versions of tron...stopping mana source bauble activations is nasty, stopping mana washers can deprive them of pyroclasm temporarily, stopping fifty percent of their land tutors is great, and the cherry on the top is O stone. Realistically they run four O stones and maybe one all is dust in RG tron, leaving their board control as eight and seven mana spells, which since they cannot tutor or cycle as well is hard if you run any land kill. I have used the card in many, many decks, and always been impressed.
Also vs U tron they get no mana rocks with SS down, no mindslaver etc. With the UW gifts tron they lose signets, maps, so it is not as stellar.
On wheel of SM...I used this in GW proc list in a PTQ three years ago. It won me a game v pod, screwing up their combo at the time and making sure Wrath did what it said on the tin. In testing was good vs Storm and Gifts loam lists that were popular then. I have used it in today's Modern at events where RIP would screw me up, and it was ok.
In other decks blind obedience has been good for me vs tron, buying a turn or two.
Pre treasure cruise my sideboard was pretty rough, but I did pretty well in a few medium sized paper events with it. I started the spreadsheets thing back when I was playing BG dredge in standard last season, and as such don't have very much modern data pre KTK. According to my old spreadsheets my win rate was about 63% over the 40 matches I recorded. Burn is popular no matter what, so even if treasure cruise gets banned, there will be aggro in the format. I do think that the deck becomes worse if cruise gets banned, but white has amazing tools to fight whatever becomes popular. The deck will probably need a bit of a revamp, but it should survive the banning if that happens.
I'll work on adding a section for each color and what they offer in a splash. The videos and sideboarding section have priority, so after that. ETA: January 6th 2015.
Personally I like the name 16 martyrs for the orzhov list (4 martyrs, 4 charms, 4 rangers, 3 procs, 1 kami). Naming aside, this sounds like a perfect deck for your meta.
I have never tried the Javelineers, but it seems like an interesting tool box option. Ultimately it is probably a little too slow, and possibly unnecessary as the deck already has a lot of removal and sweepers, as well as linvala who shuts down mana dorks and random combos.
I don't like return to the ranks because it costs 5 mana to do what a hard cast proc does. At 6 mana it is slightly better than a hardcast proc, but lacks the recursive recursion aspect that a 6 mana proc has. Immortal servitude also costs more than a hardcast proc. Using Mistveil Plains you don't really need to recur 2 drops very often,mostly just a guildmage late-game (where emeria can do the trick minus taking up a spell slot). The biggest issue with these is you have to cast them. Proc is amazing since you don't cast it; you can establish your lock through any number of things. One time at a Super IQ my opponent had reanimated an Iona and I beat them because I didn't need to actually cast anything to win.
I'll add your suggestions to the card pool. Probably around when I add the splash section.
I also like BO, I'd been pushing that card pretty hard until this month. I cut it to try out some other options while twin isn't big.
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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Speaking of the differences, why do you feel the black and white build is better? Is Orzhov Charm really that good?
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
About orzhov charm: Yes. Orzhov charm might actually be the best card in the deck. It allows you to do so many things you cannot do without an instant speed reanimation spell. It also doubles as a spot removal spell, and can bounce your own creatures.
For specifics: Without charm beating skullcrack becomes harder (you can recrack martyr in response to the skullcrack after charming it back), beating boggles becomes harder (they can disrupt the kami lock by pathing it during your turn. With charm you can sac it, then get it back during their turn to continue the lock), getting to late game becomes harder (double the martyr activations), you have half the instant speed spot removal spells (condemn doesn't help you where it matters like against the angel combo, or twin), you have effectively no combat tricks (reanimate a 6/6 during their attack, bounce your guy that their lifelinker blocked), and you have no way to protect your serra ascendant from a path to exile (bounce). The cost of splashing is minimal, but opens your sideboard up dramatically to cards like castigate. Non-scapeshift/splintertwin combo absolutely destroys the deck, and discard spells help a lot.
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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—Karn, silver golem
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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Linvala is obviously a very strong card when she is good, shuts down twin, mana dorks and the like.. my question is that since we have no way to directly tutor her up like pod decks generally would how valuable has she been as an off the top one of? The maindeck I am currently on has cut her in favor of the 4th path to free up more SB slots, what are your thoughts on this.
As far as sideboard choices you are fairly tuned towards the online meta-game, assuming two BYEs for the GP are there any cards that you feel would be less necessary as the decks they are targeting are more fringe (boggles) and could be cut to make room for cards that are better against a wider range such as celestial purge since it improves the Storm matchup as well as others
With the way modern is looking right now I think this deck is quite favorably positioned so long as you can dodge all of the Emrakul decks basically everything else seems quite favorable, any input would be highly appreciated
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
Scorn is specifically for boggles, and austere command is not as great if you aren't expecting that either (still fine though).
I used to not play linvala, but a guy on MTGO claiming to be Steffen van de veen talked me into it, and so far it has been good. This deck is pretty good at getting to 1 ofs due to the stalling nature of the deck.
One card I've been testing is ensnaring bridge. It stops emrakul, titans usually, ascendancy, boggles, and the attack on the Angel combo. I don't like non-white cards, but so far its been doing well enough.
I think like disenchant more than purge unless you are expecting liliana, most purge targets are enchantments except her. I'll get back to you more once I have access to my laptop.
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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The c purge can also hit Rhino and Redcap in pod...I wonder if that is why the GP list ran 3..? The charm in splash version probably makes Purge less necessary?
Manatithe is useless because games go late most of the time. Kami is a 5th martyr that has the added bonus of stopping 100% of the damage, which is good vs inkmoth, twin, angel, boggles, and certain niche game states vs just about anything. Kami with charm backup lets you solidify the damage lock.
On turn 1 I usually play a tapped land or fetch (for a tapped land). Turn 2 I either pass representing removal, cast a hawk, or cast a martyr. You aren't in a rush to really do anything because of your late game. Vs pod I run out martyrs and Serra's t1,because they dont run much removal, and decay costs 2.
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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I can certainly see the argument for just more disenchant instead of the purge since the primary hate cards against us are going to be artifacts and most of the threats from other decks are just enchantments anyway
Is the matchup against Emrakul decks bad enough that it just is not worth having a 1 of ensnaring bridge? If they are RG tron they usually have one of each eldrazi so Ulamog can just kill the single bridge the turn they want to attack. In a big field like a GP there are just too many decks to be favored against every 1%... but since it seems likely that Pod, delver, twin, burn etc are going to be the much larger % of the meta is hoping to just fade the miserable matchups and using the sideboard slots to help shore up the few coin toss matchups that we have makes the most sense in a vaccuum
It feels like I may just be hoping for the Magical Christmas Land where its just 12 delver decks in a row all the way to the top 8 but who knows, that may be the way to actually put more numbers on the board for martyr
Going back to purge: I don't like it vs pod because it doesn't kill scooze, Angel, spike feeder, or pod.
For storm, I think rule of law is pretty good there, and also vs ascendancy, and decks like twin. When they go for the combo they can't counter your spot removal. It also incidentally stops hivemind+ pact in the same turn, allowing you to deal with it.
Speaking of different metagames: I added a tab to the spreadsheet where you can input an anticipated metagame and it calculates your chance of placing in a daily, 8man, or getting day 2 with 0, 1, or 2 draws at a gp. I'll upload that with the next big primer update.
This post is probably riddled with phone typos and autocorrects, so I am sorry to everyone who reads it before I go back in and proofread it on my laptop.
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
MartyrProc
Daily Digest
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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBizarroDavid
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
Nevermore is just such a bad card, and the primer analysis on it was spot on as to why. It really needs to either be a cantrip, on a tough body or a flashy one, do more for 3, or cost 1. Basically it needs to be a better card. No doubt if it were blue it would have made breakfast and taste of candy.
On alternate win cons I have jammed an Elspeth in....makes naked Serra a threat and a half, and is very grindy in keeping with the late game mentality of the deck.
On Purge in the Pod match- scooze seems to be the biggest culprit for ruining days. Could running C Purge allow the 4 paths/Wraths to be saved more often for Scooze (in the mono white version)? Is scooze why the mono GP list was running main Linvala, I wonder?It certainly seems to be a pig of a card.