MTG Salvation

Round 1 vs UW Emeria grindfest. Game 1 she answers some of my stuff with counterspells, D-Sphere and Flickerwisp shenanigans, but I outgrind her when I get the chance to crack Fair and get Crucible, which gives me unlimited tutoring and also turns off her Emeria engine. G2 is another grindfest, nobody draws any disruption so we both end up developing stupid board presence fast. I end with online Bridge, Thopter-Sword, Earl (lol) and a Tezz online but am stuck on 4 mana so can't quite go over the top while still under pressure as she Flickers my Bridge many turns in a row so I gots to be careful. Accounting for the chumping she can do, many times even ult'ing Tezz I would only bring her down to 1 life. Then before Emeria comes online and she starts recurring more stuff (incouding Flickerwisps, red flag) I topdeck Whir and ballsy-ly opt to grab Quicksliver Fountain! Well this tempo play will give me the game within a couple turns, which is all I needed. 1-0.

Round 2 am paired against RW Burn. "Uh-oh". He's on the play. Luckily my opener features Brutality, which gets full value killing a Guide, snatching a Bolt and draining two. But he's still got more Burn and critters, and topdecks more. I shortly drop a Bridge, cast another Brutality and throw out my hand to stop the remaining creature onslaught. I take out a Helix and stabilize at 1 single life point in the process! Topdeck Thopter Foundry, sac all the Prisms, Baubles and Opal to get 5 Troopers and 5 life put him on a 3 turn clock FTW.

G2 I see him fetch a basic Plains so I am weary and fetch a basic Swamp off my only Delta to T2 Brutality him again. REWARDED: double Blood Moon hand!! I shortly cast Trading Post and will gain 12-16 life off it while pushing all the critters off cliffs. With Jar backup, he concedes when I resolve Witchbane Orb. 2-0.

Round 3 up against Grixis Shadow-Goyf. This guy just decided to cram everything in one deck lol, and is undefeated so far. Long story short, we shred each other's hand apart til he T3 Tasigurs. I stumble on lands, but dear lord! What a sequence I pull off Crucible: T3 Crucible (stuck on only D-Shore and GQ, using the single counter off my Prism to resolve this). Take a hit. T4 no land drawn dammit; GQ the Shore with floating mana, get Island. Play Shore from grave. Cast Sword off floating mana to set up next turn Whir into Foundry. Take a hit to 8 life. T5 still no land. No land? No problem. Re-play GQ, float U from Island, GQ it, get another one, tap Shores, tap a bunch of artifacts to get combo (Jar backup turns off K-command). Never knew Crucible could get you out of mana-screw toward a triple-blue costing spell two turns later!!!

For G2 I see him siding in up to 8 cards! My opening seven is weak, so I mull to six. Then, it's stone cold nuts: Grave, Grave, Sword, Foundry, Whir, Bridge. Snapkeep. Scry to top: GQ. T2 topdeck is Thoughtseize, which nabs Shatterstorm out of his hand. My follow-up topdecks are Welding Jar, land and Tezz. Just what. 3-0, and undefeated!

• Seeing Tezz and Whir all night (both 4-of's) felt mighty powerful, like stupid powerful.


• Opals and Baubles and Prisms work together to make the build real fast. There's a couple of games where I was on the short side of mana, BUT Bauble always drew me into more mana in time. From an alternative point of view, it felt like the deck is packing so much action, that you can never get enough mana; HOWEVER you also never need all you cards to outplay the opponent as you are packing such bombs, really. I still suspect that the 3rd Brutality or 3rd Opal slots could be given to a 22nd land, but you'd lose an edge (Burn/speed) and potentially flood a couple % points more often. Will keep build as is and being super careful about mulliganing.
• Baubles specifically were great. They let me see I had another turn to live against the Burn opponent (revealing a fetchland on top) so I could take a turn setting up that Foundry that won me the game. They enabled T2 online Opal in 2+ games. I scryed off them often, even leaving fetches untapped for later scrying, or casting main phase Whir so I wouldn't draw topdeck card I didn't want. They are hard to play a sequence right but the payoff is real in terme of velocity and consistency points. We're one of the decks that benefit the most from it.
• Quicksilver Fountain: while I only cast it once (and it gave me the game that, between her Wisps and D-Sphere and Disenchant, really could've swung either way otherwise), I regularly asked myself "how would it perform on this board state?" and it's really looking good. Also, I've talked about it to a lot of spikes around. For it's fast effect, single SB slot use granting us an effective 5 Blood Moon on board, and for its synergy w/ Thopter Foundry for perma-Spreading Seas effect, pilots agreed left and right this seriously deserves testing
• Removal: 4x Push (easy Revolt!), 3x Brut and a Capsule make for a solid suite of removal that complement very well the Bridge, Thopter and Tezz plans. They also relieve a great deal of pressure off us, on finding Bridge, which I could appreciate. And while we still can't technically remove Tasigur, pre and postboard I counted all these ways to effectively "deal" with it, which add up to plenty IMO: Ensaring Bridge, Combo & not Thopter chumps, Artifact 5/5s, Damnation, Earl of Anguish, Goat tokens!!!