MTG Salvation

I'd be more excited about the canopy lands if there were a R/G one but there isn't so I'm bummed. Hopefully we get more than force of vigor out of this set.

Quote from CrypticCommander »

It's getting to the point where it's almost unbelievable, but I am currently 9/0/1 with this list at my relatively large lgs (60+ people for FNMs most weeks, and some real good players). I haven't lost since the last update, and only drew vs a slow UW player. I'm gonna quickly go over some of the differences between this and the other lists.

I envy you your metagame.
Yesterday's tournament for 21 people I went 3-2. (For the second time the same result) Here is my list I've already posted:


1 round:
0-2 against Ad Nauseam Combo

Nothing to comment on. Two quite fast games. I didn't manage to kill my opponent in time. Unfortunately, playing deck without discard or counterspells we don't have a chance here. After the sideboard I tried to play Cindervines, but it doesn't work against Angel's Grace.

2 round:
2-1 against RW Burn

The first game ended in a quick lost for me.
Second game I was able to kill Goblin Guide turn two with Molten Vortex and play Pulse of Murasa.
Third game I was lucky again getting Pulse of Murasa and I finished with big Goyf.

3 round:
2-0 against Martyr Life

Super easy and fast games. Loam engine + Molten Vortex in first game and Seismic Assault + loam in 2nd game with addition of Anger of the Gods. Opponent didn't find her GY hate.

4 round:
2-0 against Death Shadow

Funny games. Arboreal Grazer wins for me both games. It was able to block and made a ramp for me to be able to put a fast seisimic assault. I won second game without Life from the Loam since I was hit by Surgical Extraction. seisimic assault killed my opponent with 2 Faithless Looting finding lands.

4 round:
1-2 against RWG Scapeshift

It is a tought matchup but it is possible to win I think. First game I lost to Scapeshift, I was just too slow. Second game I put Alpine Moon naming Valakut and killed with Crasher. In the third game I kept my hand with two Ghost Quarter but it turned out to be too weak. The opponent played his Rest in Peace which I destroyed with Cindervines then put his second RiP then Titan.

To sum up. First of all I miss a black mana . I wish to have any chance against combo decks. I also would have an access to Fatal Push to deal with Titans and some other bigger threats. I think Arboreal Grazer is a good addition to our deck as a ramp spell and blocker, especially for Goblin Guide T1. I have not found any use for Living Twister. In 90% of cases, I preferred to play Crasher or Goyf or even acctivate Raging Ravine as and aggressive threat than dealing 2dmg for 3 mana. Commune with the Gods is one of the best cards in this deck since it is able to find Molten Vortex in turn two and put it into play, milling loam the same time - true story .

Scapeshift and Ad Nauseum are rough. If you are expecting Scapeshift to be big in your meta, Beast Within and Tectonic Edge are both good options on top of Alpine Moon. After a Scapeshift, your opponent gets their 6 mountains, you can Beast Within one to make the rest of the triggers fizzle. Same thing would happen with Tectonic Edge, but since it's on board, it's a little harder to catch your opponent with it (as they can just go get 7 mountains instead).

If you have a combo heavy metagame, RG is likely too narrow. Jund has hand disruption as you mentioned, but Temur with counterspells and Naya with KOTR, Repel the Abominable and Stony Silence are all possible options. All that will be covered in the primer.

This archetype is very cool because once you get all the lands, you can make slight changes to the deck colors to adapt in any metagame, from Lightning Helix and Timely Reinforcements for a burn heavy meta, to Swan's Song and Spell Pierce in Temur to counter any spellbased combo deck. The combo can be slot into a variety of shells which gives a lot of flexibility.

Ayula's Influence is a clear reference to Seizmic Assault. Anyone feel like brewing Bear Assault? If you replace Seizmic Assault with Ayula's Influence, the archetype could drop red - which might be useful if you want to brew a BG or UG list that's robust to mana screw.

Why not just play Ayula's Influence as Seismic Assault 5+ and stay RG? Bloodbraid Elf with 6+ copies seems pretty good. Free activations is what makes Assault so strong. This is a bit slower but you can just EoT in a handful of bears every turn.

Nobody freak out, but the number crunch has all but confirmed we are getting the Onslaught Cycle lands...
If we do get them, I'm somewhere between Bear Assault Pox and IceFang Coatl/FoF Bear Assault. I haven't been this excited for Magic in years!

That settles it. I'm officially sidelining my Jund list to start brewing a red-green version. Ayula's Influence looks amazing! Not so amazing that I want to give up Seismic Assault, which I think is a better card for the record, and Faithless Looting and Bolt, but I can see where green-black and green-blue versions of the deck might suddenly be appealing.

I certainly wouldn't mind getting Forgotten Cave and Tranquil Thicket either, since we kinda got hosed on the new "Horizon" lands.

And now I see Genesis is being reprinted (even stuff like Firebolt, Regrowth, and Unearth are great to have as options in Modern). I really love this set.

-------------------------------------

Edit: I've thought about it for a few days, and I'm going to try to make Ayula's Influence work in the Jund colors. The mana will definitely be stressed, but I genuinely don't want to drop any of the three colors. Right now, I'm trying three Seismic Assaults, two Ayula's Influence, and one Living Twister as my payoffs, as I really don't want to draw duplicates of any of them.

I want to challenge that thought:
ESPECIALLY because of Ayula's Influence (which is a pay off card for Loam) you can suddenly move away from red towards other colours. Currently, the core is always RG, cause in Red you have the Assault pay offs and in Green you have the support elements. Since you suddenly do not need red anymore (as payoff enabler), you can go Gx as a core. This basically means, that you can build a BUG Loam shell without losing the high powered pay off card in Seismic Assault.

Sure, Ayula's Influence is weaker, since it doesn't deal with fliers (which there are a lot in Modern atm, Phoenix, Cracking Drake, Mantis Rider, Freebooter, Spirits (if they see play), Thopter Tokens from different decks,...) and it also struggles with utility creatures (cannot kill things like Bob, needs an attack step vs Planeswalkers) but at least the archtype has a possibility now to NOT play R.

I'm currently thinking about a BUG Control shell as what they used to play in Legacy. It abused Loam quite well, that you now also have a pay off card in that shell makes it really interesting. That you can also run straight UG with goodies like the new Tamiyo and Cuatl (and in general Snow permanents) is also something to keep in mind, just the lack of proper removal is a reason to not play straight UG.

Greetings,
Kathal

So, small report from my 3 rounds on Monday (yeah I know).

Basically played this:



I forgot to cut a card, since I was already late (and thus gave the opp a bye in the first round), so ups.

Round 2 vs Tron:
Game 1 I got Troned, nothing I can do here
Game 2, I have a quick draw with a Crusher which turns big, so he needs to kill it with Ugin, which than enables my sandbagged Seismic Assault to kill it and than him
Game 3, he drew exactly one threat, which was Karn, which got countered by my one off Disdainful Stroke. A Ravine killed him. He drew 15 from his 19 lands, lucky me.

Round 3 vs Amulet Titan:
Game 1 I get quickly killed, didn't help that I mulled down to 5 and kept a mediocre hand (was reliant to draw lands, which is rather though I heard...)
Game 2 was more balanced. He had no Amulet draw, but a double Tribe Scout, which both ate a removal spell. The Titan he cast on turn 5 ate the Disdainful Stroke, and afterwards it was cruse control
Game 3 was a slugfest. We both made massive mistakes, I had a 21/21 Crusher out but was unable to attack (cause the backswing would have killed me), he killed my Seismic Assault via a Blast Zone (really need to add two of them, they are bonkers) but thanks to an active Trade Routes + Loam I drew 4+ cards a turn, but never was able to find an Assault. I narrowly lost in his 4th extra turn, since I unnecessary shocked myself down to 6, which resulted into a lethal Titan swing :/

Round 4 vs Bogles
Game 1 he played a Bogle, I cried, he won
Game 2 he got greedy, played a Rancor line instead of the Etherial Armour, Anger of the Gods saved my ass here, cause he didn't drew any other Bogle and a suited up Dryad Arbor looks really bad in face of an active Seismic Assault.
Game 3 I had an early EE, but I was greedy and didn't play it on turn 3 to avoid an Totemic Armour on his Bogle and I got wrecked by this. Though, he had a second Bogle in hand, so it was GG most likely either way. He also had both Gryf's Boon (which the EE ate) and a Spirit Mantle, which resulted, that I couldn't block with my 12/12 Crusher :/

So yeah, 1-2 against two really bad match-ups and one okay-ish one. Definitely misboarded in all of them, but I had a crappy SB so meh.

Take aways:
-Arboreal Grazer is great on turn 1/2, but absolutely garbage afterwards. His highs are really high, but the lows... . Still not sure about if I want him or not, so far I lean to a slight "no", but definitely needs more testing.
-Trade Routes: *droll*, want a third one if possible
-Tamiyo: never drew her (sadly), but I thought myself often (in the mid/late game): Man, how bonkers would be Tamiyo right now.

Manabase: Need 2 Blast Zones in there, the U lands were no problem, want a 7th Fetchland though.

Greetings,
Kathal

Assault Loam seems to have a hard time beating Tron, Bogles, Amulet Titan, and probably TitanShift.

What one card totally ****s with all of these decks, while also fitting really well into our RG shell? Blood Moon. It's an enchantment that can be found with Commune with the Gods and Vessel of Nascency. In RG it really won't mess with us that much as long as we make sure to run some basic forests. It comes out so strong in tons of random matchups. I think I'm going to try an Assault Loam build with 3-4 of them maindeck.

The only bad matchup (I can think of) where blood moon doesn't do much is Storm...

http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38686

Quote from destroyermaker »

http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38686

Soiled myself on this spoiler. We have so many new tools, so many new builds to test now.

Quote from Arget »

The only bad matchup (I can think of) where blood moon doesn't do much is Storm...

If you are looking at RG Loam, Storm isn't a bad matchup for the list. Our creature disruption can mess with their cost reducers well, which makes them have to go hard mode most of the time. Scavenging Ooze is really important against that deck, and is one of the most critical cards to include in the current metagame. Game 1 it is still likely storm favored as you need these pieces to do well, but it's only 60/40 at best.

Postboard we have more ways to deal with the gameplan of storm, which pushes it slightly into our favor. Just make sure to bring in either Anger of the Gods or Engineered Explosives to deal with Empty the Warrens.

The allure of the loam archetype is that you can shift to different color combinations to fit the metagame. The best versions against noninteration are Jund and Temur, Jund with hand disruption and edicts, Temur with countermagic. RG is very limited in its disruption, but Blood Moon works to fill a possible slot. Let me know how it does.

Quote from Kathal »

-Arboreal Grazer is great on turn 1/2, but absolutely garbage afterwards. His highs are really high, but the lows... . Still not sure about if I want him or not, so far I lean to a slight "no", but definitely needs more testing.
-Trade Routes: *droll*, want a third one if possible

Manabase: Need 2 Blast Zones in there, the U lands were no problem, want a 7th Fetchland though.

Greetings,
Kathal

I've found grazer to be a less than stellar card to say the least. The tempo lost from being on the draw is pretty well solved by big removal spells like Lightning Axe though, and that's what has been doing me wonders recently. I had been freaking out about losing on the draw, but after reading a few theory articles on the topic of tempo advantage, my recent list's removal package has been pretty stellar in smoothing out a lost die roll.

I feel like all interactive decks in modern have to play this polarized game plan of "Do I have this card that really matters in this matchup?" Most of the matchups you faced last week seemed to be that way. The Amulet matchup is pretty good - that is, if you can line up Ghost Quarter against their Simic Growth Chamber and other bounce lands, or if you can kill their Azusa. I'm leaning more and more heavily on Ghost Quarter, as it is a land that is necessary in a lot of matchups in modern, and can be turned into colored mana if need be for the cost of a land. I feel like we need to run 3 of them.

I just finished finals so all my time is going into the new primer. I'm gonna leave out the new cards for now as we need to test them still, but it should be up by this Wednesday. Cheers.

Quote from destroyermaker »

http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38686

This is going to be very important in this archetype. Being able to still recur lands after your loams are hit with surgical extraction is huge

The other two abilities are less important but the -1 is nice for picking off small creatures or taking out bigger ones in conjunction with Seismic Assault

The ultimate will probably never matter, but thats alright

Quote from destroyermaker »

http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38686

There is still hope for this set I love this walker

Quote from CrypticCommander »

I just finished finals so all my time is going into the new primer. I'm gonna leave out the new cards for now as we need to test them still, but it should be up by this Wednesday. Cheers.

Thanks for doing the hard work I look forward to seeing everything compiled neatly and greatly appreciate it.

@crypticcommander I hope you have something about Trade Routes somewhere in there.

Anyways other than seeing how Wrenn can fit into the deck, I’m gonna work on a temur list with some snow land shenanigans. The core I have in mind now is

4x assault
4x Loam
4X looting
2x Trade Routes
4x Ice-Fang Coatl
3x Glacially Revelations
4x Skred
(25 cards)

Glacial Revelations, while requiring deckbuilder constraints, has the potential to draw 3-5 lands. For a while I was running Shard Convergence as a way to refill the hand when Loam got surgical’d or exiled, so i’m Interested in trying this.

So the bear enchantment and the new planeswalker made me decide to buy this deck again, i truly feel like those are very exciting cards for this archetype, which i could never make work before.

So questions, is triple green and triple red on our payoff cards makes it impossible to splash black? we always want to be able to play those on curve so i'm thinking about going gruul with 4x fire-lit thicket, i believe this land will become a must include.

Utility lands? Not much room i guess because again, triple red and triple green are rough. Blast zone and ghost quarter are probably too good to pass up? Unless they print a fixed wasteland, but i think between ghost quarter, tectonic edge and field of ruin modern has enough wasteland impressions.

Do we need creature-lands? The new snow thing that turns into a construct seems nice but needing a snow basic and no producing of colored mana hurts... Ravine is maybe still better but i'm not in love with etb tapped.

If you don’t go down the snow route you can play 4 stomping ground, 3-4 fire-lit thicket, and you can even use ghost quarter to get basics in a pinch. I think if you did use both enchantments your splash probably shouldn’t have any CC costs for it (like smallpox for instance)

Reprint of Nantuko Cultivator. Good card?

https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/241/hall-of-heliods-generosity

If this is legit then we got a new toy

Edit: still no source for the land that returns enchantments from the yard to your deck, but it was a physical picture of a card so everything is pointing towards a godly fake or really real early leak.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/btv2ce/mh1_hall_of_heliods_generosity/

Is the Reddit thread with the photo of the physical card.