MTG Salvation

It's also worth mentioning that Nihil is potentially 1 mana cheaper for the clear a graveyard effect (if you are sure your opponent has a Delve creature in hand). This is incredibly relevant on the draw.

I think both Relic and Spellbomb are perfectly viable options. I personally like Relic more. I like that it's tap ability lets you sometimes get a lot of value out of it without cracking it. Like against delve cards, a turn 1 or 2 relic just tapping every turn can do a lot of work. I'd generally vastly prefer the relic vs decks with delve cards. I also don't mind that it exiles my yard. I don't really find myself using my yard much at all other than Sword which tends not to sit there long. So I don't mind exiling my own yard

thankfully no tron top 8'd!

I'm not convinced there is a whole lot we can do, but I am experimenting with cutting my academy ruins and inventor's fair and one other land, bringing in 3 ghost quarters, then I made room for a maindeck crucible. Though so far I lost the only game I played against tron. Though I am kinda liking it, as I rarely ever activated fair or ruins. extra ways to deal with nexuses out of affinity are really nice

lots of aggro has just made me go up to 4 foundry/3 sword to maximize odds of just drawing into them, which is usually great vs anything attacking you to death


it's not really gameplay related, but I have always enjoying making my own custom Star Wars themed tokens for my decks. Ages ago I made A-Wing thopters and have been using them in paper for awhile. Though I recently had an idea to make new one that fit in the dice tray of my deckbox (Ultimate Guard Flip & Tray). So today I made these, which turned out pretty well I think. Similarly I recently made some 5/5 tokens for artifacts I animate with Tezz

First time posting. Loving the discussion on this deck. I’ve been playing a little bit on MTGO and am putting together a paper version.

Question for the more experienced - given Jace is on the masters 25 packaging, if they unban him on The 12th, then do you make room for him?

I guess the rationale would be a non-artifact win con that fits in a with the more controlling nature of the deck.

Jace will not get unbanned and if he does every deck that runs blue will run that card

I wouldn't go too deep into worrying about bans/unbans or whatever. The format at the PT was really healthy looking, so I think it'll lead to them playing it very safe with the banlist

Either way bans of really anything are probably a ways offs given the good state of the format. So effort put into planning for events that are, imo, very unlikely, is probably a waste of effort

Quote from Systrill »

... So effort put into planning for events that are, imo, very unlikely, is probably a waste of effort

Good advice. Thanks.

On more of a ‘sure thing’ note then, given that everyone and their brother will be running a bunch of artifact hate, any advice on potential SB tech? I see some lists have been running Padeem, but how does that go with trying to dump your hand for bridge?

I find Padeem great. People often board out removal because it's bad, so they don't have a lot of ways to answer Padeem. usually by the time you have padeem out, it's not too hard to play 2 things a turn, especially when one is often a land. Though if you are facing down lots of 1/1 tokens, then there can be an issue there as drawing 2 lands is a real possibility. But overall I love a padeem in the board.

I also really like the abrupt decays and pulses to help out vs hate like Stony and Relic. As for beating actually artifact destruction, outside of Padeem it can be an issue. Welding Jars are good. Sometimes it's a matter of hoping you can get either a jar out, or redundant pieces, or something like a chalice of the void out. You can sometimes beat artifact destruction by just overwhelming them with threats, through the thopter sword combo, bridge, chalice, etc. Shatterstorm is a nightmare scenario though

What made you prefer KCI over Time Sieve? I liked Time Sieve because it seemed more reasonable to cast on T2 and possibly turn on an inactive Opal. Having said that, KCI combo can technically be done on a couple lands since all you need is a whir (potentially using prism) while Time Sieve needs 5 mana sources. Another interesting point... KCI loses to Devoted Druid combo if both are active. Per the rules the active player must eventually make a different action, so you are dead on your own turn, and even if that weren't the case they can still kill you while your new thopters are on the stack and haven't entered the battlefield.

@mastahours: KCI Still won't win you the game in extra turns. Just infinite life. You have to wait a turn before you can actually kill them. This is also a big boon for Time Seive. When you are trying to race someone by having a kill combo instead of a value combo you want to be doing just that, killing them. Karn still resets the game and Druid combo still kills you. KCI is better against the grindy decks but I don't think you need the 3rd piece against them anyway. The lingering souls impression is good enough and if that for some reason isn't Tezzeret as the third combo piece is fine.

KCI has its benefits but I am still firmly against running the third piece. The games I lose because I can't instant win with thopter/sword are far fewer than the games where time seive or KCI are do nothing cards.

@MastaHours: By "Lingering Souls Impression" I meant that just assembling thopter/sword is very similar to chaining together lingering souls but doesn't cost you a card. In grindy games two copies of lingering souls will just end a match. If we untap with thopter/sword we get the same effect of creating a bunch of flying 1/1's (and we get some life gain out of it) which typically ends the game even if the foundry were to die.

Here is my current main deck:



I have changed things up a little bit as of late and I like the results so far. The deck is like half lantern half tezzerator. The lantern lock can end games with 3-4 pieces EVENTUALLY but I figured I would play Thopter/Sword and end the game in a turn or two.

Quote from TugaTog »

@Reedy26 One of the guys from my regular round said that it was banned in the new MTGO Beta Client.
He has now confirmed that it turned out to be a false alarm.

I would also have been quite surprised if they would ban the bridge... but you never know.

This was proven false. Images were photoshopped. It was just someone trying to cause trouble. Just double confirming because I freaked out over it at first.

Is it too early to start brewing with SFM? =P

EDIT: Deleted brewing. SFM somehow did not get unbanned, but instead JTMS did. Well, we can use Jace, too.

Quote from Reedy26 »

do we think jace will just get banned again at the next announcement or nah need to know whether to fork out for a playset.

Surely given the price of him they wouldn’t dare re-ban him in the next year at least...

So, as someone that has never played magic with legal JTMS, what does this do to our deck? What do you drop to run it? And is it an auto 4-of?

I am SUPER excited to add a couple Jace's to the list. Seem's like a fantastic way under Bridge to win and otherwise filters into the right answers. I'm thinking 3/2 split Tezz/JtMS to start. Probably want a more explosive start so more zero's and 1's in the deck to maximize Opal starts and Whir into Bridge. Fatesealing your opponent out of answers that are relevant to bridge while setting up a relatively quick win is definitely an added boost to the deck. I am super excited.

This is really exciting! But this particular bit :

Quote from Reedy26 »

i think lantern gets a lot worse since jace can basically negate the lock so we probably want to move back to a normal tezz build.

...I have to disagree with. Lantern decks play from 2 to 3 Pithing Needles mainboard, and one more in the side. Counting the full playset of Whir and Ancient Stirrings to fetch them, I believe they'll have plenty of answers for good old Jace.

I anything it's an über-powerful tool that they got for themselves.

Oh man, Jace unban! Unexpected but not unwelcome. I did think it was possible, just not likely, but I hedged my bets and thankfully picked up copies on mtgo and paper already, so all set!

I didn't end up playing Tezzerator at GP Toronto, played Mardu Pyromancer (ton of fun) instead. Was running into a TON of artifact hate on mtgo after the PT.

As for Jace, *****, I don't know where to start. Probably start experimenting with Thopter Sword and UW Control until someone figures out better options. I dunno if it makes more sense to run them along side Tezz, or instead of Tezz or what, but excited to try it out!

Super quick and dirty first thoughts on where I might start my testing

JTMS is unbanned! Lucky for me Monday night is Modern night and I jammed a ton of games with it. First my list then some discussion about it and JTMS:


So the quick Tldr: JTMS is strong but by no means busted. Putting JTMS behind an Ensnaring Bridge and using him to assemble a combo is a disgustingly powerful combination.

Once I decided that I was going to be playing JTMS I wanted to understand why this card is better than Tezzeret 3-4. Spoiler, it isn't. Tezzeret is still the better planeswalker in our deck. However, it is not by a monumental difference. This allows us to play 5-6 4 mana planeswalkers that are game ending on their own. Now if that is our strategy how do we make it better?

Play them ahead of the curve. This is why I am playing 6 mana rocks and 19 lands. We maintain a large number of mana sources but dedicate about 1/4 of them to speeding up the deck.

My win rate against bloodbraid jund with 4 K Commands, 2 Maelstrom Pulse, 2 abrupt decay, was favorable. That is absurd. This version is so incredibly threat dense between the walkers, azcanta, the combo, and ensnaring bridge that they have a hard time keeping up and navigating their way through it.

@Racing089: i like what i see very much. I’d probably sleeve up 71/75 similar cards to this, trying to accommodate a playset of CMC-1 targeted discard somewhere, to better interact with combo/control/Tron. And of course, hate.