MTG Salvation

Welcome back Sunrise! Always appreciated your perspective while lurking the thread.

While technically the archetype is now considered Tier 2, the deck hasn't fallen as much as that might imply. Grixis Twin is still the most played deck outside of Tier 1, at around 3.8% (compare this to UR Twin at 6.2%).
However, the shift to UR does make sense with the increasing dominance of linear decks where the grindy cards offered by the black splash aren't of much use (Tron, Eldrazi, Bloom).
UR has also had more high profile finishes, namely BBD's Top 8 in Cincinnati, where he dropped even the Stomping Ground to streamline the manabase even further. And watching coverage at Charlotte, you could see that A Lot of people adopted his technology.

Quote from Deckerator »

What about sideboard card like Tribute to Hunger against Eldrazi?

Sacrifice my eldrazi spawn, get you?

Unfortunately not the best option.

Quote from Deckerator »

Hopefully you can help me. What makes this Twin version "better" than the other ones? When would you play Grixis Twin instead of UR or Temur? What are the pros and cons? Thanks for help

You get some "upgrades" from the regular twin lists, for example instead of roast/harvest pyre, we have terminate. You also get cards like Tasigur, Kolaghan's Command, and discard as options, which improves the matchups against some decks. These tend to be the most common differences. The cons are of course the mana base, which is slightly less consistent, slightly more painful, and slightly worse to blood moon. Variants that use flip-Jace will also tend to play more proactively at sorcery speed rather than reactive. The most general way to summarize it is that Grixis is the closest to control when compared to the other Twin variants.

If they dont have a Blight Herder, they dont have tokens. If there is a Blight Herder you are right...thats crap but without him they only have one creature maybe Ulamog or maybe Sower. In that situations it wouldnt be that bad

Grixis already has Terminate to answer the fatties (if the cast triggers haven't ended the game already, which tends to be more problematic than the creature itself).

As far as Twin is concerned, if you're already terminating Eldrazi's stuff you're probably going to lose.

I've learned the hard way that the only thing u need concern yourself with is comboing off before the sowers and all is dusts arrive, however you can delay it.

I don't think you want to bring Blood Moons vs affinity. You're basically just dealing with manlands, which you have plenty of options to fight as it is . I also don't like Negate, as they tend to dump hand quickly and we need answers to resolved threats (if possible).

On the play I would keep some remands and dispels (they run some Galvanic Blast and bring some Dismembers), on the draw I would probably cut remands. Also I believe it's fine to take one Splinter Twin, as once we're stabilised we can control the situation (with permissions/removal), unlike Burn which we really want to comboout ASAP, as most of their topdecks are useful against us.

Unlike infect's manlands, affinity's manlands are much less threatening since they end up most of the time being 1/1's unless there's something like a ravager or overseer out, but that still leaves them weak to kolaghan's and terminates, so it's not worth taking a turn off to shut off a couple of creatures (which they also have to keep sinking mana to use). Blood moon should almost be a game winning play when it comes down, and against affinity it slows them down only marginally. I would leave in Tasigur and not side in blood moon.

The issue is, do u want a 3 cmc enchantment in your hand against an aggro deck that doesn't exactly rely on its mainlands? You have bigger fish to fry like ravager and overseer.

Yes, manlands sometimes catch counters from a dying ravager but that's not something I would bring blood moon in for. Lightning bolts and terminates can settle the job for you.

Even further against moon for affinity is that it doesn't serve any other purpose than that; they keep their mana, albeit now it's red, which means they can still cast their most important spell against u: galvanic blast.

I would focus on playing the game on their combat phase or end step (apart from sweepers of course). Look forward to Kozilek's return.

Boys, it has been a pleasure posting with everyone. Maybe Delver will be good, who knows...

Capricious bastards!

See yous in the Delver/Jeskai/Naya type threads. Or come join the Eldrazi overlords. Just hope you preordered some TK Seers already...

Good bye everyone. See u in other threads. Here I went more combo because that was the best out against Eldrazi... And it's gone.

My goodness. Twin gone. Time to reimagine where this thread goes. Of the twin flavors we weren't all in on Twin anyway with sometimes only 5/3 game one. Does the wizards suggestion of Kiki work? Too much red? Or do we just move to the Grixis deliver thread?

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/january-18-2016-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2016-01-18

I think Grixis Delver is a decent option going forward, but it still has issues with Burn. Still, it's a good place to start.

I also think that Grixis control with a small Kiki/Exarch/Pest package COULD be decent. We shall see.

I personally will be playing Delver first. Either Grixis or Temur or Jeskai. I don't have Jace flipwalker yet so no Grixis Control for me, but to be honest I've always loved Delver, and it might be it's time to shine again. If not that, I would recommend a Jeskai list to many of you. You can still play the Kiki package, or just go straight midrange.

Good luck to all.

Quote from HomelandZecurity »

I think Grixis Delver is a decent option going forward, but it still has issues with Burn. Still, it's a good place to start.

I also think that Grixis control with a small Kiki/Exarch/Pest package COULD be decent. We shall see.

I personally will be playing Delver first. Either Grixis or Temur or Jeskai. I don't have Jace flipwalker yet so no Grixis Control for me, but to be honest I've always loved Delver, and it might be it's time to shine again. If not that, I would recommend a Jeskai list to many of you. You can still play the Kiki package, or just go straight midrange.

Good luck to all.

Just a heads up: Jeskai Delver is bad. UR is much better.

Quote from MrM0nd4y »

Just a heads up: Jeskai Delver is bad. UR is much better.

Uh. Okay smartguy.

For starters I wasn't talking strictly about Jeskai Delver, I was talking about Jeskai as a shard in general. Granted, that was a little confusing from my post.

So first I will reiterate: I think a Jeskai deck of some sort will prove to be strong again in the wake of Twin. Most likely it will go bigger than Delver, but you never know. I will probably pick up some form of Jeskai, and it will probably be based on whatever version sees the most success in the coming weeks. Most likely it will have Cryptic in it, maybe Geist. But not necessarily Delver.

However, saying "Jeskai Delver is bad" is an offensive and poorly written statement. For starters, it's not bad. It's certainly unpopular, but I wouldn't call it bad. And going forward, NO ONE can say what is good or bad. So try not to come across as so cocksure.

That really makes no sense at all WotC should just go ahead and ban the islands

I don't know if this is an alright discussion topic for this thread, so I am sorry if I break any rules, but I am curious where everyone is going?

I was looking into grixis delver but honestly that deck is gonna have a hard time with twin gone. Maybe even gifts but it hates the tron matchup from what I've seen... or something else... I honestly can't really find anything I feel good about. Grixis control is ok, but I don't love it in the tron/eldrazi meta incoming. I'm not going to play goryo's because I wouldn't want to get banned again later. Scapeshift is also a pretty significant cost of building into.

I also considered updating our list to just be a tempo deck bigger than delver... but I think it'll have a tough time with the matchups twin shore up. (Burn etc...)

So again... I really don't know where to go at this point. Curious where everyone else is.

I, for one, won't be going to Delver or anything else like that. I already have linear decks for when I'm in that mood (Tron, Knightfall, Living End). I'll probably look into Kiki-Control types of strategies. The thing I liked about Twin so much was the way it could be controlling, or tempo or all-in combo from game to game -- even from moment to moment within the same game. It was the most flexible deck in the format and I played UR/URW/URB/URg and even RW variants at different times. I think it may be one of the best all around Magic decks in the history of the game for the simple reason that it always allowed flexibility of thought. Losing it changes almost nothing (the critical turn in Modern is still T4) and sucks.

Quote from MrM0nd4y »

*****, please. That was more than a little confusing.

And I remain firm in my conviction. Jeskai Delver is worse than both Grixis and UR and is not worth playing.

This wasn't THAT confusing smartass. My quote:

"but to be honest I've always loved Delver, and it might be it's time to shine again. If not that, I would recommend a Jeskai list to many of you. You can still play the Kiki package, or just go straight midrange."

While I didn't explicitly mention Delver, I was pretty clearly talking about other Jeskai strategies in general. Last time I checked, WUR Delver wasn't considered midrange and didn't exactly play kiki jiki.

I'm fine with your convictions, but they don't apply to everyone else. If you want to present that kind of info, there is a nicer way to put it. All you had to say was, "I think Grixis or UR is better than Jeskai Delver personally." I would have been fine with that. Instead you came across like a pompous prick trying to talk down to someone else. In the climbing community, we call people like that "sprayers".

Start with respect, you'll get it back tenfold. But don't be a sprayer.