MTG Salvation

Unearth has been working for me; digging out a young pyromancer or mentor (a 5th pyromancer, really) or recycling Kambal vs spell heavy decks can be very frustrating for your opponent. Cycling doesn't hurt the card at all. I like Mentor a lot, but need more ways to pitch him and get him back.

This deck needs Faithless looting 5-8 it feels like. The Bedlam revelers help.

so my only concern with the deck current relying on both pyros is [card]
Illness in the Ranks [/card] should we even care sinc eno one knows or plays of it

Quote from kiranearitachi »

so my only concern with the deck current relying on both pyros is [card]
Illness in the Ranks [/card] should we even care sinc eno one knows or plays of it

Plague Engineer is far more popular than Illness in the Ranks right now (at least on MTGO). Keep your removal for that guy, and deal with the rare IitR with the same old enchantment removal.

It seems like the 8 pyro lists have been putting up some good records according to MTGGoldfish. Is this build the future of the deck or can the "older" school Reveler builds still do work?



And I would assume that Illness in the Ranks is only really good vs Mardu Pyro right now(or am I forgetting something?)so I feel like it would be something that doesn't really need to be worried about.

Yes was just spitballing if it does get more popular do we even care

I think that Collective Brutality can be substituted with Guile right now. I see a 75 like this one:

I'm just currently testing a list, based on THIS SUCCESSFUL ONE. Tweaked it with some of my favorite (but underrated for this archetype) cards like Goblin Rabblemaster and Rakdos Charm, also 3 Unearth looks and plays pretty weird without Monastery Mentor, which I think is the best target for it.



Sooo, Goblin Rabblemaster+Yawgmoth, Thran Physician work as insane value engine without losing in agression. Even if oponent has some big creatures that block our tokens, you just sacrifice them to make blockers smaller. Loved them and thinking about adding more goblins, they are too fun!

Canopy-lands were great each time I drew them. This deck needed them for sure.

Smiting Helix is a big deal. Lifegain, removal and a value fodder with Seasoned Pyromancer and Faithless Looting was also what the doctor ordered for Mardu. Also considering now opponents often forget about Helix being castable from the graveyard. They always keep in mind Lingering Souls, but Smiting Helix works as a cutting edge tech in some matches.

Gonna test it more with my play group to get more experiene with this version.

I'm really, really excited about the deck right now. I was bummed because Guilds and Allegiance had nothing for the deck, but WAR and Modern Horizons have tons of new toys for the deck.

Right now I'm playing this list. I dropped Blood Moon, since red is really strong right now, and everyone fetches basics against the deck anyways, and started running Field of Ruin + Path to Exile. The fact that I'm not running Liliana or Nahiri mainboard means I have way less color requirements, and all the deck truly needs to start functioning is Black mana at turn 1 and RR from turn 3 onwards for Pyromancer. Also in the Blood Moon slot I started using Surgical Extraction. It's really synergistic with the rest of the deck, and is a good answer to many things running around.

At 61 cards because I really don't know what to drop. The deck really shines against UW and Jund in their current iterations. Seasoned Pyromancer is a beast. I kind of miss topdecking Bedlam Reveler but in every other situation Big Peezy is a better card. Army in a can, can be cast turn 3 without having to discard your whole hand, good topdeck, useful effect from the grave, Unearthable, more resillient to grave hate.

Also managing to stick Dreadhorde Arcanist is brutal. Even casting a Looting for free from the grave feels amazing and the card really punishes anything relying on the board(Bolt and Path) or hand(Inquisition and Thoughtseize), or even the grave sometimes(Surgical), aka most strategies. He's really, really, really good, and if he eats removal, then YP does his thing with impunity.

As a sidenote, casting Smiting Helix twice in the same turn, with the lands I have now, is really easy. It's the equivalent of Helix, Snap, Helix with the same overall mana cost and way less color requirements. Another reason I'm keeping Bolts instead of Push is for the slow, steady burn into that danger zone.



I want to get some Plague Engineers, and also toy around a bit with maybe Intangible Virtue, since Big Peezy really increases the ammount of tokens the deck produces. There's much testing to be done right now.

I've been trying Bag of Holding in one of those 8-Pyro builds, as they have 8 discard outlets not counting Unearth's cycling. Results have been mixed. It does dig fine, digs when Hellbent, is hilarious against targeted discard, can end up socking away precisely what I need later, and often ends up socking away 4 or more cards, but 4 mana to crack it is a pain, and not letting me profitably discard Flashback cards can get mildly annoying at times.

On a related note, I went down to 2 Smiting Helix in that deck because of previous bad memories of 4-drops in Mardu Midrange builds. I partially regret it because Yawgmoth, Thran Physician bleeds me to all hell (but is great in this deck). Maybe 3 Smiting Helixes is the best number for me.

Played a tournament yesterday and Lingering Souls really disappointed me a lot.
It felt clunky and slow.

Maybe this is too much brewing and too much of a Mardu Tokens strategy but what about this?



I feel this is a lot less clunky and Bitterblossom gives you a nice clock at a low mana cost. I cut Reveler completely as the amount of Instants/Sorceries is too low in my opinion to continue running him.
The lifeloss of Bitterblossom can be easily handeled with Brutalities, Kaya and Helix.
There is still some Graveyard synergy but not as much as before, making it more resilient in this time of Leylines.

The one offs are mainly for testing right now, i am not set on any of those. Albeit the Kaya looks insanely strong and i really want to give her a try.

Ive just settled on a new build i want to test. i havent posted here in a while but ive been lurking and upgrading my modern deck library accordingly with the upgrades from these new sets.

here is my take on a new mardu deck not including a standard mana base.




I dont know how mentor has been for you guys but I want to test him with unearth alongside skelemental. i think unearth with those two cards would be pretty dam good at least on paper. i am running 3 fulminator mages instead of molten rain in the SB too bc of the unearth synergy.

i do like seasoned pyro but I am not a fan of pitching before you draw.

haven't played against dredge that much but from what I've heard, the matchup is not good...

I'm probably trying something like this:


I know Kolaghan's Command is not really well positioned, but I still want to keep some, because my field has a lot of grindy and creature decks in which they're very good. Unearth is faster, but not a raw card advantage source, so I'll still try keeping 2 Kommands and adding 2 Unearths for now.

I think if youre on unearth you should play more fulminator mages in the board bc there is alot of value in bringing back a mage and popping lands left and right.

Nice tip! Also, Molten Rain being a Sorcery seems less appealing now that I won't play Bedlam Revelers. However, Molten Rain still has some appeal, because it triggers Pizzy and hits basic lands, what is really nice along with the Blood Moons.

Probably cutting at least one Molten Rain for a Fulminator though. Maybe two.

EDIT: wrong thread.

Nothing wrong with a 2/2 split

This is my current list with Magicfest Birmingham next month:

The deck could use abit of jigging, mainly the sideboard but i'm currently testing it against a modern gauntlet.

I was thinking of a list something like this



instead of athreos, god of passage I am considering Fulminator mage in the main deck since there are a lot of 3 colour decks running around that dont run many basics and usualy 20 21 lands. Any thoughts on athreos?