MTG Salvation

Quote from natesroom »

Quote from natesroom »

do you keep a hand with no Arbor Elf, Sprawl or Birds??

So as i ve been playtesting this i wondered if you dont have any of the 10 mana accelerants in your hand its not worth keeping... agreed?

It depends. In game 1, if you have a 3 Moon and a good hand, having a slow hand is decent. If its G2/3, it may be keep-able depending on what decks your opponent is on.

If anyone is interested I have posted some matches from yesterday at my LGS. YouTube channel is called Decks Done Right tcg. Spoiler alert: went undefeated

Quote from chewyf5 »

Congratulations! Especially last Game was interesting with mull and nissa!
Could you post your Decklist?

Regards!

Thank you for your kind words.

I’m using my phone but my current decklist is:
Ponza with BBE:

Maindeck (60)
4 Arbor Elf
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Courser of Kruphix
3 Tireless Tracker
4 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Inferno Titan
1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Lightning Bolt
3 Molten Rain
4 Stone Rain
1 Primal Command
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Blood Moon
1 Cinder Glade
8 Forest
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Mountain
3 Stomping Ground
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Abrade
2 Ancient Grudge
3 Anger of the Gods
1 Beast Within
1 Fracturing Gust
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Trinisphere

Which is better for the mainboard?

1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and 1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
or
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance

Thanks!

Quote from limitless »

Which is better for the mainboard?

1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and 1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
or
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance

Thanks!

The 1st Nissa is only better the 2nd Chandra if you face deaths shadow frequently.

Some might say Nissa is also good against Jund, but Chandra is just as good in the Jund MU.

man i played Through the Breach Griselhoard beat me on turn 2 each time... should i have relic in sideboard or pithing needle or grafdigger cage for this matchup?

Quote from natesroom »

man i played Through the Breach Griselhoard beat me on turn 2 each time... should i have relic in sideboard or pithing needle or grafdigger cage for this matchup?

Honestly you just tip your cap, sign the match slip, and move on. Unless you plan on seeing that deck quite a bit because its all over your meta its probably not worth it to dedicate sideboard slots for this match up. It's not a super popular deck.

Has anyone tested the "Noble Moon" version of this deck to success recently? I'm starting to hit the point where the BBE hits feel bad more times than not...either BBE or the Arbor Elf/Sprawl needs to go. I've also noticed that BBE > Bloodmoon is a bit of a nombo with the fetches/courser/tracker synergy...kinda hard to shuffle those >3 cmc cards back into the pool, or manipulate your topdeck with a moon over your fetches. This also makes your Tracker draws suboptimal as well.

I'm thinking of either a more controlling/grindy/ramp-up version without BBE that has Huntmasters over BBE, Walking Ballistas, Acid-moss over Molten Rain, and Bonfires/Trinispheres maindeck somewhere...Probably with Dragonlord Atarka as a topend.

Or, going the Noble Moon route, with more of a lower curve, notably incorporating two drops like scooze and goyf, as well as hasty 3 drops to optimize BBE hits.

Are the 2 Birds of Paradise essential in the main deck? I am thinking of switching both birds to 1 land and another value creature to make BBE cascades much profitable. What do you guys think? TIA

Quote from mistahARK »

Has anyone tested the "Noble Moon" version of this deck to success recently? I'm starting to hit the point where the BBE hits feel bad more times than not...either BBE or the Arbor Elf/Sprawl needs to go. I've also noticed that BBE > Bloodmoon is a bit of a nombo with the fetches/courser/tracker synergy...kinda hard to shuffle those >3 cmc cards back into the pool, or manipulate your topdeck with a moon over your fetches. This also makes your Tracker draws suboptimal as well.

I'm thinking of either a more controlling/grindy/ramp-up version without BBE that has Huntmasters over BBE, Walking Ballistas, Acid-moss over Molten Rain, and Bonfires/Trinispheres maindeck somewhere...Probably with Dragonlord Atarka as a topend.

Or, going the Noble Moon route, with more of a lower curve, notably incorporating two drops like scooze and goyf, as well as hasty 3 drops to optimize BBE hits.

If you go back X pages to when BBE was first unbanned, there was some Noble Moon discussion. That's the route I went within the first 1-2 weeks of the unbanning for the same reasons you mention: lowering the curve to maximize BBE seemed like the most efficient option and 8 of our 60 MB cards are essentially land mines just waiting to be cascaded into (Arbor + Sprawl). It never gained much traction in this thread, because of the reluctance to shell out for Goyfs/Nobles. Whenever I decide to play Ponza, it's still the variant that I roll out and if you have the Goyfs/Nobles already then I'd recommend giving it a shot. Having the option to splash white unlocks a ton of SB options and cascading into something like Birds, which would otherwise be sub-par, isn't nearly as bad when you have exalted triggers/Kessig wR.

Quote from limitless »

Are the 2 Birds of Paradise essential in the main deck? I am thinking of switching both birds to 1 land and another value creature to make BBE cascades much profitable. What do you guys think? TIA

Have tried it with 22 lands and no Birds for a while, gotta say it really hurts opening hand consistency to completely cut Birds! I'm fine with 21 lands and only 1 Bird, for now, but 0 Birds meant too many slow hands I had to throw back, unfortunately.

I played around with the noble moon thing for a while but after making various changes over time I was basically back to a worse version of ponza. The deck pretty much NEEDS to have 3 mana on turn 2 and for that to happen consistently you need 7-8 mana dorks. Turn 1 noble/birds tended to be a lot easier for my opponents to disrupt than utopia sprawl and that slowed me down a lot. If I didn't have a dork or the bird got bolted I ended up with a turn 2 goyf which really didn't interact or do anything.

If there was a two drop that actually provided some sort of actual disruption I think the noble moon route would be more viable but without it just felt clunky and slower.

Also, splashing white for the sideboard in theory seems as easy as throwing in a temple garden. This gives you a fetchable white source, 4 sprawl, and 2 birds . I imagine that'd be enough to cast a rest in peace

Yeah I went back and forth on buying the nobles/goyfs for a while, but the more I looked at it, the worse the idea sounded.

What about the other route, eschewing away from BBE entirely in favor of a more robust build?

Quote from mistahARK »

Yeah I went back and forth on buying the nobles/goyfs for a while, but the more I looked at it, the worse the idea sounded.

What about the other route, eschewing away from BBE entirely in favor of a more robust build?

This build is represented already by either Monster or Noble Ponza. You could start at either shell and make your modifications from there?

Basically your choice of midrange 3 and 4 drops to replace BBE and Molten Rains, and potentially reducing dork numbers in favour of Scoozes or more bolts.

I think I'd actually run acidmoss with trackers and huntmasters, and maybe atarka as the top end.

Last friday I went 3-1 with my Ponza deck. Here's the decklist:


I can't afford Chandra, Torch of Defiances, so I'm going with the budget version. It worked pretty well, a double Primal Command was pretty brutal. Also the +1 ability was surprisingly good.

I lost to Hollow One 1-2, and beat U/W Spirits 2-1, R/W Burn 2-0 and Esper Midrange 2-0.

Stormbreath Dragon was the MVP, 75% of the decks I faced played Path to Exile. Everytime I resolved a Stormie against them I won. Probably gonna add a second one in the mainboard. Blood Moon also was super effective, the Burn player had like 2 Lightning Helixes and Boros Charms in hand in game 1, and only 1 Plains in the 60.

Gonna test it again next FNM. Any ideas how to counter Hollow One?

Ancient Grudge and Abrade are our best anti-Artifact sideboard cards, Ancient Grudge is especially good against BR Hollow One decks because it still works after being hit by Burning Inquiry. I'm a huge fan of Stormbreath, its also great against Humans, and its monstrous ability is especially good in Ponza, since our goal is to keep our opponent from casting their spells.

Has anyone looked at using Arc-Slogger any further? Goldfishing, it can close out the game slightly faster than Inferno Titan or the hasty dragons we use, being able to do 6-8 damage before combat, depending on how late into the game it is played (how many cards we have left in the deck). Assuming we were able to get in with a Tracker or Bloodbraid, thats pretty much GG the next turn. It sees play in Legacy Dragon Stompy alongside a few other creatures that I don't think are really a good fit for our deck, but I think Arc-Slogger has potential as an additional mode of reach with Chandra and P/K, probably as a 1-2 of.

Running Arc-Slogger in a comp league right now and its doing rather well. It does some pretty serious work in the final phases of the game, clearing the way for your creatures, or just additional damage to the face. I've also noticed it has the hidden ability to dig for the bigger cards that get bottomed by BBE. Or, you know...lands...but if you've cascaded once or twice and then exiled your deck with Slogger, at least you know that the last few cards you draw will either be lands or 4-6 drops.

I'm currently running 1, as much as I like the card, 2 might be a bit too much, drawing multiples of it would feel pretty bad.

Does anyone feel like Ponza is a good choice for the current meta? Hollow One doesn't seem great, not sure on Humans, and not sure on Jeskai Control. They all seem on paper to be great matchups for Ponza, but in actual play, there just seem to be too many slight edges that push the matchup into their favor every time. Would love to hear feedback on how well or poorly people have felt they were matched against the Top 3 that seem to be dominating right now.

Quote from Crimson Lancer »

Does anyone feel like Ponza is a good choice for the current meta? Hollow One doesn't seem great, not sure on Humans, and not sure on Jeskai Control. They all seem on paper to be great matchups for Ponza, but in actual play, there just seem to be too many slight edges that push the matchup into their favor every time. Would love to hear feedback on how well or poorly people have felt they were matched against the Top 3 that seem to be dominating right now.

I stopped playing ponza entirely because of an influx of Hollow ones. The match up isn't just bad, it feels abysmal. Especially "funny" is when you keep a perfectly nice hand and they start with Burning inquiry and you discard your ramp, turning a sweet hand into garbage. If they put so much as 6 power on the board (lets say 1 hollow one and 1 bloodghast), that's pretty much going to be game. And bolting bloodghast feels baaaad. Post board Anger doesn't really even "solve" the match up, since its entirely possible they will draw the Hollow One half of the deck.