MTG Salvation

A little piece of tech I found today, and did not see at the post.

If some of your creatures are stranded in hand or you exiled a few simians, it is possible that the creature count in grave does not hold a lethal haunting misery.

You could in some narrow situations avoid this, if a) you are using the songs of the damned plan; and b) you have an available morgue theft.

After you get the songs out, you cast everything you can that is stranded in hand (such as balustrades), cast morgue, get dimir house guard, cast dimir and use its ability to sacrifice your entire battlefield.

Unless you have a lot of simians exiled, that should suffice to guarantee some 3-4 extra damage in some cases.

The best way to keep this plan open is, whenever possible, to leave a red mana open after casting the songs so as to not spend the first morgue theft at simian spirit guide to cast anarchist.

Edit: just saw that Obzen already mentioned this, lol. Please consider this as a more detailed explanation of the plan

I went up against this last night. The guy did absolutely nothing all game, and just discarded his 8th card until I milled him. Two games in a row. It was literally a gold-fish match! Only on the turn I was going to kill him in the second game did he try to go for the kill. At that point, I had a hand full of nothing but countermagic.

What does this deck do against countermagic? Is anyone playing Duress at least?

Yep. Sometimes the deck does nothing, and if the game stretches long you're just going to lose to a counterspell deck. And sometimes it does this: http://www.twitch.tv/shaffawaffa5/c/3272626

I would basically never recommend playing it for money/tickets/prizes.

Would the tech from TE Gnaw to the Bone/Rats be worthwhile?
Mainly: Stinkweed to go with cycling. I saw ObZen had the Crypt Rats in the SB for plan B

Also, delve creatures like Grumag Angler or Hooting Mandrills? And try and just play it like Tombstalker in that Spanish Inquisition SB. You only need X cards in the yard, so it is harder to get blown out by Graveyard hate

Picked this deck up recently, trying to make some small improvements.

Like the land grant in the mix. I run that card in my elves list and it is kick butt. Can you maybe explain some of the changes youve made and go into detail of what to do? I have seen this deck played a few times but am still a little lost

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/1-land-spy-combo-without-anarchists-1/

I think that maybe a lot of the posters here have their decks on tappedout? In any case, I've been goldfishing and played a couple matches on MTGO. Actually did win a game.

1. I think that I like the Leonin Squire more than [[Anarchist]] but please convince me why it is worse, I am open to changing the slots back to Elvish Aberration and Anarchist. At a minimum, it is technically not needed in G1, so it makes the combo more clunky. I don't know that much has changed since the deck was tuned and honed.

2. Why play any forest cycler except Elvish Aberration ? It is the only one that seems to have a corner case use; tap for GGG seems like it would be more useful than reach on Pale Recluse; Valley Rannet and Wirewood Guardian are just vanilla dudes.

Anarchist is red and Simian Spirit Guides make red (that's the big part) as does Tinder Wall . By the time the combo is going off there should be a pool of black mana to pay the generic portion and to use Morgue Theft to put Ape back in hand to make the red. Hitting W requires mana in your pool + Manamorphose in hand or a Petal or Cantor in hand or play. Considering you often use the Manamorphose and Petal to set up the combo it's a lot more risky.

(I'm sure there are typos in this, but I just coughed and lost the very center of my vision and can't really see what I am typing.... time to leave the computer.)

Quote from Galspanic »

Hitting W requires mana in your pool + Manamorphose in hand or a Petal or Cantor in hand or play. Considering you often use the Manamorphose and Petal to set up the combo it's a lot more risky.

In the build I posted, the combo becomes Morgue Theft on Leonin Squire + Blood Celebrant. So essentially, this is no different than Simian Spirit Guide for R + Anarchist, except I'm postulating that it possible opens up more lines of winning, but at the draw back of removing the 1 forest cycler from the main deck.

1. Get Blood Celebrant, and Leonin Squire back.
2. Play Blood Celebrant, and play Leonin Squire off the W from Blood Celebrant.
3. Get back a Conjurer's Bauble from Squire, and use that to Bauble back your Haunting Misery.

Total mana for this route (assuming no cards that are needed are in had): BB8 for Morgue Theft, BB2 and 1 life for Blood Celebrant, Leonin Squire, and Conjurer's Bauble. The generic mana is going to be black anyway.

Total mana is the same for the other route. Morgue Theft mana is the same, 4 generic for the Anarchist, plus exile the Ape for red.

This requires you have more than one life, so that is the only draw back I see. This is the case when you have none of the pieces in your hand. But the Blood Celebrant + Leonin Squire becomes better when you have things in hand.

Here's one corner case. When you go off, you have Morgue Theft and Dimir House Guard in hand, but not Songs of the Damned. This line requires you generate a total of 10 mana when going off (need 3B for Balustrade Spy, then 3WBB for steps 1-4 below). But my point here is that it makes a lot of these kinds of lines possible, since Anarchist only targets sorceries.

1. Theft back Squire. 1B
2. Play Squire. 1W
3. Bauble back Songs. 1
4. Play Songs for 21. B
5. 21 B floating. Play Dimir House Guard. 17 B floating.
6. Sac Leonin Squire.
7. 8BB for Morgue Theft; 2BB for playing Blood Celebrant, Leonin Squire, and Conjurer's Bauble back Haunting Misery. BBB left.
8. Sac out the board to House Guard.
9. Haunting Misery for 24.

I get that, but what's the point in adding another color when 3 colors works?

The 4th color doesn't matter after you flip your deck, as I have shown. What matter's is that you are losing a forest cycler before you flip your deck.

Mainly I was trying to stimulate conversation. Is this the best the deck can be currently? It seems very tight, so I don't think that anything huge changes since a couple years ago when the deck was developed. But just wanted some confirmation, since I don't see a lot of discussion of the deck.

Also what I was trying to understand if making room in the SB mattered. And if this version is the agreed upon "better version" vs. one with Elves of Deep Shadow.

It sounds like you do not like Leonin Squire as a good alternative and that you think the deck is good "as-is". What about the Elves of Deep Shadow version? Any better or worse? Seems better against incidental life gain from the Gain Lands or similar.

Quote from cleverpseudonym »

The 4th color doesn't matter after you flip your deck, as I have shown. What matter's is that you are losing a forest cycler before you flip your deck.

Mainly I was trying to stimulate conversation. Is this the best the deck can be currently? It seems very tight, so I don't think that anything huge changes since a couple years ago when the deck was developed. But just wanted some confirmation, since I don't see a lot of discussion of the deck.

Also what I was trying to understand if making room in the SB mattered. And if this version is the agreed upon "better version" vs. one with Elves of Deep Shadow.

It sounds like you do not like Leonin Squire as a good alternative and that you think the deck is good "as-is". What about the Elves of Deep Shadow version? Any better or worse? Seems better against incidental life gain from the Gain Lands or similar.

I don't know if the deck is as good as it's going to be with the current pool, but I don't think it's good enough in the current Pauper metagame where most 2+ color decks run enough Khans lands to put them out of reach and a lot of other decks run life gain too. One of the weaknesses of Pauper is that most decks don't have any way to do deal more than 23-24 before the games grind to a halt (that's a long winded conversation in and of itself though). So, a lot of decks have added a little life gain to make themselves a lot harder to kill, right? So, unless this deck fires off before Turn 4, I just don't see it winning enough of the time.

I own a paper copy of the deck, love it, and play it when I can. But, you're talking about putting wheels on a mechanically unreliable car here - it probably doesn't matter since the heart of the thing barely works.

The main deck version that combos Cavern Harpy with Grey Merchant seems like it might be the best give the current metagame... just skip Haunting Misery all together?

Does Fires of Undeath merit consideration as insurance against incidental life gain like the Khans lands? Replace a Git Probe with Fires post-board and shoot them for the extra 2 they gained with two Khans lands with leftover mana from a Songs of the Damned? Under such circumstances it would be important to have a red source available so the mana that would be spent on the Morgue Theft targeting Simian Spirit Guide could be spent on the flashback cost for Fires of Undeath instead.

yeah I have the deck in paper and the sideboard plan of cavern harpy and celebrant seems better. does anyone have a good list with that combo main deck?

Locking due to the thread has been dead for 3 years. If you want to start new discussion on the topic please make a new thread.