MTG Salvation

Quote from javierillo_am »

Hi,

I will go in a few days to the GP Bilbao and I will do it with grixis shadow.
Seeing how the format is, what do you think about playing 2 thing in the ice in SB to face pairings like dredge, spirits, humans and the grave hate?

Would you make any major changes to the current lists for this metagame?

Thanks!

I don't like Thing in the Ice here. Between counterspells, Bauble, and Wraith, it can actually be fairly difficult to reliably flip, especially if you need it to flip quickly. I personally never gave up Engineered Explosives or Anger of the Gods, and those have done work in those matchups. Also, after getting wrecked by Affinity (both regular old school, and Hardened Scales) I think my artifact hate of choice is going to be Hurkyl's Recall. A lot of times a win comes from a big alpha strike, or sometimes they have redundant pieces where single removal just isn't good enough. I'm going to test that out going forward.

Side note: I didn't get them in time for GP LA, but my last two Expeditions came in to finish out my manabase.

Quote from motleyslayer »

this has been bugging me a bit the past few days, so I'm gonna post here

against tron and given the choice of either ripping their one one payoff or one of their mana rocks/expedition map, do you take the threat, an egg or the map? does having 2 discard spells change that? I was on the draw and took I believe the map first because that represented whatever he needed and then took the egg, leaving him with Ulamog. He then spun his wheels for a long time and drew the last tron land he needed to cast Ulamog turn before I would have killed him, which is variance I guess

Trying to keep Tron off of Tron is a fool's errand. They tend to have more ways of getting to ramped mana than they have threats once they do. You take the threat then try to kill them before they draw a second one.

This depends on a number of things. There is not a single correct answer.

If they have multiple of one or the other, then use discard to poke a hole in their hand. 3 Karns and 3 mana, or 15 mana and no payoff are equivalent for you. The top of the deck is dangerous, but they aren't currently killing you. Any very late game is bad for you because of both mana advantange and card power. Short of something ridiculous like Surgical on Urza's Tower they are going to murder you if you let the game go too long. Keeping them off balance in either direction is fine as long as you kill them before they get their game online.

If their threats are all Planeswalkers and you have live Stubborn Denials, then you don't necessarily need to prioritize them.

How good are their threats? You can beat a Thragtusk. You can sometimes eat one Oblivion Stone.
You can't beat Ugin and Ulamog.

You should generally lean towards taking payoff because there are less of them, and their mana sources are more plentiful and the lands are uncounterable, but if you have a fast clock then disrupting their mana.

Side note, Turn One Stubbon Denial on the play on their Map or on the draw on their Scrying is great. Good rule of thumb is that while hitting them with IoK is fine, never counter eggs and never focus on getting rid of them. Exception here is the last turn of the game.

Here's a wild idea I'd like some feedback on: maindecking Surgical Extraction. I feel that grave decks are so plentiful now that being able to maindeck SE could be very powerful, but the obvious issue is the card disadvantage which makes it so bad in any fair deck. However, I think if there is a fair deck that could pull this off, it would be Grixis Death Shadow:

• It can benefit from the lifeloss as an instant speed trick
• it can use it in conjunction with discard spells
• it has a gameplan that can really benefit from taking a single specific card out of your opponent's deck, like Path to Exile.

Then, there are a bunch of cute interactions:

• You could Mishra's bauble your opponent, see what they draw, then surgical to shuffle their deck or even surgical what they draw
• up a creek without a paddle vs tron (or any similar deck) you could Thought Scour them in hope to Surgical a tronland
• poor man's Gitaxian Probe

You would side out Surgical a lot, similar to faithless looting, but gain a large percentage against dredge and phoenix, the two top decks.

Quote from Bearscape »

Here's a wild idea I'd like some feedback on: maindecking Surgical Extraction. I feel that grave decks are so plentiful now that being able to maindeck SE could be very powerful, but the obvious issue is the card disadvantage which makes it so bad in any fair deck. However, I think if there is a fair deck that could pull this off, it would be Grixis Death Shadow:

• It can benefit from the lifeloss as an instant speed trick
• it can use it in conjunction with discard spells
• it has a gameplan that can really benefit from taking a single specific card out of your opponent's deck, like Path to Exile.

Then, there are a bunch of cute interactions:

• You could Mishra's bauble your opponent, see what they draw, then surgical to shuffle their deck or even surgical what they draw
• up a creek without a paddle vs tron (or any similar deck) you could Thought Scour them in hope to Surgical a tronland
• poor man's Gitaxian Probe

You would side out Surgical a lot, similar to faithless looting, but gain a large percentage against dredge and phoenix, the two top decks.

Seems very interesting I might give it a try lol

Interesting Star City Games article by Ben Friedman. I wonder about Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. If anyone has experience, I would be interested. I'm not excited about running additional cantrips so I would like to have more answers. I'm not sold on Rise//Fall. I've run it off and an. I think it was better as an answer in Grixis Delver where you didn't expect a random discard spell. On the other hand, it seems like Rise is a good answer to Phoenix decks.

The problems are exactly what you would expect: It is a garbage, useless, unplayable card in a ton of matchups.

I see the upside of the cute interactions, but none of those are worth a card.
If you just want to pay life, play a Gut Shot or Mutagenic Growth because they actually do something.
If you want to use it as a discard spell, play another Inquisition or a Rise//Fall or a Collective Brutality.
If you want to get rid of UW controls Path to Exile, then just Thoughseize them again rather than pulling them out of their deck. Alternatively, Negate, Countersquall, Dispel, Spell Pierce.
A shuffle for Bauble isn't worth a card.
Surgical against Tron is useless without Fulminator.
Probe that doesn't cantrip is awful.

Note that I am being extra critical because you went out of your way to look at the positive. There is upside, which we cannot and should not ignore, but there is also very serious downside.

Phoenix is currently maindecking Surgical, but they can honestly use it better than us because it is a free spell. This is in what might otherwise be a Gut Shot slot because they already don't need help against Noble Heirarch, and can use the boost in the mirror. Really, they are just picking the least crappy card that costs 0. Shadow has already cut back a lot on its ability to be a fair midrange deck, losing the 4th SCM, Command, and adding stuff like Faithless Looting. Adding more disadvantage and a purely situational card comes at a huge cost.

That all being said, I don't think it is a hard no at the moment. A year ago, if someone made this suggestion I would have been much more blunt, and much more confident in saying:
Absolutely not. You are bad at Magic, you don't understand how Shadow works and what makes it good, you don't understand fundamental principles of deckbuilding and gameplay. You are strictly wrong, and if you put this in your deck you are stupid
Today, I am not so sure. I am still extremely skeptical, but it depends on your metagame read. If you expect a pretty open Moden field, which in most cases tends to be correct, then leave it in the sideboard. If you legitimately expect 40 percent Phoenix, then sure, its probably right.

My other observation here is this:
If maindecking Surgical Extraction is legitimately correct, then the format is broken and something needs to be banned, full stop.

I was definitely trying to sell Surgical Extraction mainboard a bit in my post, the card is kind of infamous for being a trap for new players thinking it is amazing to SE Teferi out of a control deck not realizing they just discarded a card for nothing.

That being said, I do actually think that the format is that broken that mainboarding a surgical or two is a real consideration. I'm going to be testing with it a bit.

I think there is definitely a meta argument for main deck Surgical. I played at a store a couple of months ago and, in five rounds, I encountered Phoenix twice. Surgical main deck would have won me one of those matches probably.

Hi there! After playing with and against pretty much every Modern deck there is, I managed to reduce my options to just two: BG Rock and GDS. Both decks feel good to me, but I can't decide which one should I invest in (playtest time is quite reduced for me nowadays).

I'll be posting this on the forum as well, I hope that's ok.

That said, my question is: why should and shouldn't I play GDS? The local meta is quite diverse, with Dredge, UW/Jeskai control, G-Tron, Storm, Ponza and Burn being played frequently.

I understand that GDS requires quite a lot of practice and it will make you work hard for your wins. On the other hand, BG Rock seems to be more consistent but lacks card selection and speed to close up the games.

I know that there isn't a right answer, but I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks a bunch!

Yea, I think we are very much on the same page. I've spent so long yelling at people about Surgical Extraction and how bad people are at using it, but the format is just ridiculous enough that you could very easily be right.

Quote from michaelvogler »

Interesting Star City Games article by Ben Friedman. I wonder about Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. If anyone has experience, I would be interested. I'm not excited about running additional cantrips so I would like to have more answers. I'm not sold on Rise//Fall. I've run it off and an. I think it was better as an answer in Grixis Delver where you didn't expect a random discard spell. On the other hand, it seems like Rise is a good answer to Phoenix decks.

I really like the Jace. It actually won me a game vs whir prison after ensnaring bridge which was halarious. It is quite good in grindy matchups like Jund etc... Not sure if it is better than the 4tb snap, but I am sold on it right now.

I have just started running rise // falls because Michael Rapp sold me on it... We will see how that goes. I like boarding it in against low land count decks, and yeah the Phoenix application is useful. I will probably end up cutting it soon though because it doesn't feel good enough for me to be honest.

Hey everyone,

I'd like to promote a discussion about our cantrip selection. I've seen many decks recently split our cantrips in 3 copies of Thought Scour, Bauble, Serum Visions/Opt, and 1-2 Faithless Looting. I firmly believe that 4 Thought Scours are needed in order to power up our early delve threats. Likewise, if our goal is to get those threats on the board ASAP, I don't see how the first copy of Serum Visions/Opt is better than the 4th copy of Bauble. I'd much prefer to pop 2 Baubles and play a discard spell T1 than T1 discard with Visions/Opt in hand.

Since our deck is no longer designed to grind (1 or 0 K commands, 3 Snaps, no LoTV) I don't see how spending mana on Serum Visions or Opt can be beneficial for our strategy. For example, if the pilot feels they constantly need to dig for land, the 18th land should be preferable than one the 2-3 loose copies of extra blue cantrips.

What's your experience with these splits and what are the pros and cons of your split? I'm currently running 4 Thought Scour, 4 Baubles and 18 lands. I'm very happy about it, specially due to being able to hit land drops for 3 CMC spells in the sideboard.

Looking forward to hearing your comments!

Hey guys. Wondering how we approach the UW Spirits matchup specifically. It seems like Bant is easier because our Stubs can hit Coco, but UW feels very bad. Haven't won a game against my team member except when he scooped on a mull to 5.

Quote from TheMcFearless »

Hey everyone,

I'd like to promote a discussion about our cantrip selection. I've seen many decks recently split our cantrips in 3 copies of Thought Scour, Bauble, Serum Visions/Opt, and 1-2 Faithless Looting. I firmly believe that 4 Thought Scours are needed in order to power up our early delve threats. Likewise, if our goal is to get those threats on the board ASAP, I don't see how the first copy of Serum Visions/Opt is better than the 4th copy of Bauble. I'd much prefer to pop 2 Baubles and play a discard spell T1 than T1 discard with Visions/Opt in hand.

Since our deck is no longer designed to grind (1 or 0 K commands, 3 Snaps, no LoTV) I don't see how spending mana on Serum Visions or Opt can be beneficial for our strategy. For example, if the pilot feels they constantly need to dig for land, the 18th land should be preferable than one the 2-3 loose copies of extra blue cantrips.

What's your experience with these splits and what are the pros and cons of your split? I'm currently running 4 Thought Scour, 4 Baubles and 18 lands. I'm very happy about it, specially due to being able to hit land drops for 3 CMC spells in the sideboard.

Looking forward to hearing your comments!

I run 4 scour, 2 serum visions, 1 looting, and 3 bauble. It feels perfect to me. I like this because I agree with you, the 4 scours are necessary, and I love the looting game one to bin useless cards.

I still am on the serum visions because I like how it grinds. You mentioned our deck is no longer meant to grind, but I think that is partly incorrect because there are definitely matchups where we do grind them out still - the meta is just a bit too fast to want the 4th snap and playset of visions in our mb.

Those are just my initial thoughts from your comment. Hope this provides a somewhat different viewpoint to the visions argument.

I have always been of the opinion that people who play less than 4 Thought Scours are just total psychopaths. Gurmag Angler is the best thing this deck does, and Thought Scour is the best enabler. Playing less than 4 makes no sense to me.

Bauble is great, but it isn't just strictly better than the blue cantrips. People still really undervalue Snapcaster-cantrip, but Baubles don't let you do this. They also still offer selection when you draw them without fetchlands, and Serum Visions in particular is the best selection cantrip available in the format. Bauble is explosive, but the delay makes it slower and more awkward in the mid to late game.

Opt and Serum Visions are also just really, really powerful Magic cards. You don't need them to have specific, flashy reasons to "contribute to out strategy". They are part of the reason we can play 17 lands, and the reason that we can play 1- and 2-ofs in the sideboard. They improve our velocity, consistency, and threat density. The Legacy version of this is Ponder and Brainstorm, and while we have to play Street Wraith and Thought Scour for other reasons, the selection cantrips are still integral to the deck's power.

I honestly don't think you need the 18th land, and would just play a Serum Visions in that spot. It still lets you find your third land drop post-board, but it also lets you ditch lands late game or in Game 1s when you just need gas.

The bigger cantrip question for me is this: What is up with the people lately playing Sleight of Hand over Serum Visions? It has been in a number of lists lately, and I would love to hear the reasoning form someone who is using it.

And yet, Ben Friedman just wrote an article yesterday defending a full playset of Baubles. 16th place at GP Tampa, his 75 had zero copies of Serum Visions or Opt. He also recommended these cards in the flex slots that could be any number of additional Snapcasters, K Commands, Stubborn Denials, and so forth. Even looking at mtgtop 8 averages and totals within the last two weeks shows less than half of the decks are using Visions, and most of them only two copies. The others are using two copies of Sleight of Hand instead.

The combination of Friedman's expertise and these points of data show that this deckbuilding aspect is not as trivial as "Serum Visions/Opt are powerful blue cantrips, play them." In fact, the low number of copies of a single of those effects makes me think they are not particularly impactful.

To add to the Serum Visions vs Sleight of Hand debacle, I believe what divides pilots is the issue of selection now or later. Not too long ago people were saying that Serum Visions' scry is useless in GDS due to the amount of fetching and shuffling involved. Sleight of Hand (or Opt for that matter) digs deeper for the card in your hand now instead of providing a random draw and a setup for later turns. I think this argument anti-Serum is debatable in the sense that Visions' scry makes Bauble and Wraith blind draws better, but it has its own merits.

To be clear, I don't think 4 Baubles is wrong and I don't think the blue selection cantrips are sacred cows. Basically all of them have pluses and minuses, the only sacred cows are Wraith and Scour. I definitely get the argument for 4 Baubles, especially if we want speed. It is a great card in this deck.

Opt: I only like this if the deck is operating a lot at instant speed, which right now it honestly isn't. The more Bolts I play, the more I like it, but I don't think it is good enough.

Serum Visions: I understand that people value the immediate selection, but I could make a counter argument that Shadow is the best Visions deck in the format specifically because of its play patterns. Other decks have to make sub-optimal plays, or fetch basics pre-emptively to keep the scry. Shadow fetch-shocks all the time regardless. The other big strength is Street Wraith, as you mentioned.

Sleight of Hand: A big plus I see currently is how it helps us dig specifically for Surgical on turns 1 and 2 againt Pheonix. If we are trying to play long mirrors and duals with GB and control, give me Serum Visions all day. Thats not the meta as it currently exists, though.

A 17 land deck needs cantrips. From my point of view, there are 14 slots in the deck to fill. 4 Wraith, 4 Scour, 3 Bauble are set (others will argue the 4th Scour is debatable, but I strongly disagree). Any of the above three blue options, as well as the 4th Bauble, an 18th land, and Faithless Looting are all in the running. This deck hates flooding and without Command is even worse when it floods out, so the land is a non starter for me. I wouldn't call any other selection "wrong".

Looking for a SB replacement for my Phoneix match up. I don't have any surgicals, so it's Crypts or Spellbombs? What's the pick here? Is the 1 mana that important?