MTG Salvation

Two potentially stupid questions from someone who hasn`t played the deck:

1) How do you choose between Matter Reshaper and Skyspawner? What decks/meta would you prefer one or the other against?

2) Could Elder Deep-Fiend or World Breaker be considered as spicy singletons, maybe one over the fourth Drowner? They are just so sweet, I`d love to play them.

The other banners at this point are pretty neat but I like this one the most. I don't have any LGS's around me that play Modern so I've built up my MODO collection quite a bit but I should be moving in a few months. I may start building Bant Eldrazi in paper since there should be a modern scene where I'm going.

Nest Invader could be a good acceleration to cast TK in t3 in a hand without eldrazi temple or dorks. He could replace 1 birds or talisman of progress because he is a better topdeck.

Did you tested Scion Summoner? He has toughness 2 (like nest invader), cost 1 more (harder to be destroyed by EE), makes a 1/1 token and has devoid.

How about Eidolon of Rhetoric against combo stuff?

Easy to cast, block stuff very well, don't disrupt our estrategy cause the late game is about big guys and is very annoying against Storm and AD (both hard match ups).

How do you guys play against RG Ponza? For me is the wrost match up until now (that I faced off). Tons of LDs and Blood Moon.

I don't like the idea of Nest Invader; I think in many cases it dilutes our game plan. Sure, against Ad Nauseam/Tron we want that easy ramp into TKS+Smasher to close out the games fast, but in other cases like vs Death's Shadow we don't care about speed as much as we do about reaching our heavy lategame with Displacer+Drowner/Witness/Thragtusk. A topdecked Invader when you're looking for any of these might result in a game loss.


And as people have said, Eidolon is too narrow. If Storm was a 10-90 matchup, I would definitely bring in a hate card against them, but the fact is that it's not. We look for flexibility in cards, not raw power. In that sense, Graffdigger's Cage/RIP/Relic are far superior.

Could be another matchup for the reflector mage combo

I've moved it to SB only, since the mana gets too awkward without caverns on human. Also don't bring it in against decks that very easily bolt the bird because you might get screwed out of blue with caverns on human. I also don't think it's great against the mirror, as you're trading off card quality for tempo and that's not clearly beneficial. It's really just saved for matchups where you clearly play the control and don't want your opponent to stick a particular creature.

Gideon intervention naming vizier or chord might also be worth considering in the matchup but that's hard to say, as you might just die to finks beats.

I am also liking needle / revoker in the side. I'm not seeing a lot of valakut anymore thanks to death's shadow, so I cut a disdainful stroke for it.

As someone with little to no experience with the deck: Why is the most common fetch/basic setup Heath/Forest/Plains and not Misty/Forest/Island? We have more blue creatures than white, and the blue ones give us colorless mana to cast TKS/Smasher under Blood Moon. What good does the Plains do?

Quote from Havrekjex »

As someone with little to no experience with the deck: Why is the most common fetch/basic setup Heath/Forest/Plains and not Misty/Forest/Island? We have more blue creatures than white, and the blue ones give us colorless mana to cast TKS/Smasher under Blood Moon. What good does the Plains do?

From my experience, path and most of our sb cards. With caverns, it helps to cast our eldrazis.

Usually, we take the plains against decks w Blood Moon, otherwise it'll be the shock lands first.

We also have substantial blue sources with Yavimaya Coast. Though, there are some lists that run 2 heaths n 2 mistys.

So to construct a sideboard plan against them...

In:
Cage (x1-2)
RIP (x1-2)
Pithing needle / revoker (x1)
Flashfreeze (x1)
Worship (x1-2)

To consider:
Linvala, keeper of silence
Disdainful stroke / negate / Stubborn
Reflector mage
Batterskull (on a birds or skyspawner)

Out:
Reality Smasher (x4)
Matter reshaper
Ancient stirrings (x1 if bringing in lots of colored cards)
Drowner of hope (x1 if running 4)

I would keep in skyspawners because they can at least attack when the board state gets clogged. Plus batterskull with skyspawner is the real deal.

Quote from SamAffandy »

Quote from Havrekjex »

As someone with little to no experience with the deck: Why is the most common fetch/basic setup Heath/Forest/Plains and not Misty/Forest/Island? We have more blue creatures than white, and the blue ones give us colorless mana to cast TKS/Smasher under Blood Moon. What good does the Plains do?

From my experience, path and most of our sb cards. With caverns, it helps to cast our eldrazis.

Usually, we take the plains against decks w Blood Moon, otherwise it'll be the shock lands first.

We also have substantial blue sources with Yavimaya Coast. Though, there are some lists that run 2 heaths n 2 mistys.

No, I mean, why do we need a basic Plains? I understand that we need white mana to cast outr white cards, but being locked out of blue under Moon seems much worse than being locked out of white.

At least with white we can cast path to find a forest. But the real reason is that we are very often hungry for white and very rarely with blue. Just try playing with islands against a deck heavy with mana disruption and you'll see how badly you'll want white sources.

10-11 white sources are needed but only 8-9 for blue.

I think it's wrong to ever cut skyspawner because it's a wincon in locked worship boardstates.

Also my recorded winrate with skyspawner is 60% (n = 200~) vs 51% with reshaper (n= 50~). Take that for what you will. The only time I clearly want reshaper is against junk. Against jund it quickly becomes irrelevant in size and is chump blocking, and against burn the card advantage is often irrelevant if it doesn't flip into a land or dork.

I do think reshaper makes ewit more palatable mainboard, though.

I think a split is still the best bet. 3 reshaper/ 2 skyspawner for me.

I think 4 skyspawners are a bit too much. We seldom have a problem casting a t2/3 tks/rs anyway

I still prefer the 3-2 split between Reshaper and Skyspawner. I think both have merits in the current meta and it comes down to preference I guess.

What about this list?



I have all the stuff in my LGS, but I guess the most annoying decks are RG Ponza, AD Nauseam and Gifts Storm.

I was running before:
-3x Reshaper
-1x Wastes
+1x Witness
+1x Skyspawner
+1x Yavimaya
+1x Wastes

With this I had an ok resut (4-0, 3-1, 2-2), but I'm missing the Reshaper against heavy removal decks and Witness isn't that good against Blood Moon. Also I flooded a lot with 24 lands.
Maybe 2 Blessed Alliance can be a good option in the SB, but I cant't see a spot.
Also, if someone help me with the side out plan it would be awsome!

I don't know why people are afraid of blood moon. The only time I have found blood moon oppressive is on turn 1 or 2. We can deal with it on turn 3 fine.

I would rather have a solid mana base than fear moon.

Any thoughts on what to do about the new counter company deck?

Wait for the inevitable ban.

The new CoCo deck will be difficult for us as it was good when Eye was legal - this is just something you will have to accept. However, sb cards that are good:

Cage for CoCo/Chord
Pithing Needle (Naming Devoted Druid usually)
Rest in Peace
Surgical Extraction (Finks usually)
Dispel - for CoCo.Chord we dont really run this though - Stubborn denial (although erratically effective)
Explosives or any extra removal

Full disclosure - i'm not playing Bant Eldrazi atm - there are just too many bad matchups and bloody CoCo decks (Abzan, Knightfall and Elves) IMO habe pushed Eldrazi out of the meta.

I think it's worth taking another look at snapcaster. Ewit has clearly shown to be a viable consideration, but it suffers from the same problems as snap (you need a good card in the graveyard before you can get value off of it). With snap over Ewit you're trading the inevitability of the Ewit recursion for mana efficiency. GG is often harder to cast than U alone, and you can path-snap-path by turn 3 but that's not possible with Ewit. Yes, Ewit+displacer+path is often winning, but being able to displace a snap for a single snap is already really good.

I played a mirror match last night in which I got to recur 2 paths and 2 disdainful stroke because of snap/displacer.