MTG Salvation

Dominaria Card Review:



This card can somewhat act like a Leyline of Sanctity. It does everything Leyline does but slightly more. It's a flying creature, so it has an added benefit of attacking with a drawback of dying. Probably not better than Leyline because you don't get it for free sometimes, but it's interesting because as a creature you can Gifts combo it. If I had to make a judgement call, I wouldn't play it.

I really don't think anything in this set is that good for us. Karn isn't good enough when it's competing with Gifts/Jace for a draw source, and the ultimate isn't powerful enough. It also has a drawback of potentially losing us an important card. I could be wrong about it, but I would far rather slot in Jace. I think I'd rather play TKS as well. Damping Sphere is a great card, but it's also good against us.

The biggest thing with this set is that it's focused around historic cards. We do play artifacts, but our historic count isn't high enough because our only legendary creatures also win the game (and are few in number). They're also typically not the kind of gameplan we're trying to play, and do things like tap creatures or whatever. They're just not at a high enough level for Modern.

Some points I see:

• Celestial Colonnade is good, play some of them instead of some things, probably Flooded Strands.
• Snow-Covered basics are better in the second ones because of Gifts.
• Emrakul, the Promised End isn't that great, in my opinion. I don't find there's enough value in it, and usually some other card is good enough to bridge the gap if you need to go from 8-10 to 15. But I'm also interested in hearing your thoughts because I don't have a ton of testing data for it.

If you're playing a white deck to make Brave the Elements work, then you have 5c Humans (24/37 are white, not counting Phantasmal Image), various Death & Taxes builds, and then I guess Soul Sisters. Soul Sisters tends not to need a card like that because it has fliers for evasion already. D&T tends not to need a card like that because your opponent can't really stop you even if they have things (because they can't cast spells from mana taxes and land destruction). 5c Humans tends to be interactive enough between Meddling Mage, Reflector Mage, and Kitesail Freebooter, plus they have some various forms of evasion, so I'm not sure they really need it either. They also really don't want to play spells because of Ancient Ziggurat.

Brave the Elements as a card is pretty narrow. It's obviously good when it's good, but how often is that? Opponents can kill things in response. They might also have blockers in different colours. They might also be playing no colours. Or they might not even care about that card because they win around it.

tl;dr - 5c Humans, D&T, and Soul Sisters are good white decks. They probably don't need it. Brave the Elements can be good but it feels a little too niche.

Still waiting for Jaces to come down. I'm gonna grab a couple in the next month or so when they're more reasonably priced.

The problem is you need to ensure the player is of the appropriate skill for the deck. I'm talking about PT level players not us here on MTGS forums. So even if you go and compile the data, your skill level with each of the decks comes into question and so the validity of the data is uncertain. Like I said, MWP based tier lists are infeasible because of data collection requirements/issues.

I'm just gonna come and talk about aMSa and Yoshi for a sec. Amsa's never dominated a tournament or the scene in general. Melee is a strange esport because of how little in the way of major upsets there are. In fact, every major tournament in the past few years has been won by one of the Melee gods or the two godslayers Leffen/Plup. That's literally 7 players who've won everything in the past 10 years barring like one exception. Amsa's great, he's currently ranked 24th, and he's a ton of fun to watch. That being said, he isn't a dominant player, and Yoshi isn't that strong of a character.

Yoshi typically ends up around 12th on a tier list. Yes, that's a lot higher than Yoshi was ranked, and yeah aMSa is the reason. Yoshi has a lot of unexplored potential that players recognize. Parry is such a powerful and unique ability that lets him do some crazy things. One big thing going for Yoshi is the fact it's impossible to find good Yoshi players to practice against. Especially since aMSa's from Japan, he can come over and spike tournaments because people aren't prepared for the matchup.

aMSa is a lot like Bogles as a deck. Both attack on different angles than others do, and both are relatively uncommon. They can spike tournaments when people don't expect it, but people always know it's a thing. Yoshi, like Bogles, are never high up on the tier lists. And honestly, that makes sense. Tier lists aren't solely "what is the best deck to play", but also "what decks are my opponent's playing". Up until very recently, you were probably okay playing a deck that would auto lose to Bogles because you wouldn't run into it.

Now, you're basically saying we shouldn't have a tier list until we have perfect matchup data. That requires us to find a perfect pilot for every deck, have the player know how to play against every deck, and then have them play a large enough sample set. That's just completely infeasible. You're basically never going to get data you can feel good about in order to show matchup data. Especially since MTGO has to be one of the primary data sources, you just aren't finding good enough data for it to be reliable.

Ken knows this last point well, as I've seen some of the posts he's made on extensive matchup testing. In fact, I recall one in the 8Rack thread where he did a pile of plays on the play/draw in pre/post-board matchups after they had determined how both sides should play the matchup. It was a great read because he put in a few hours of testing to find the data he needed.

If you like to interact with your opponent, then you want the opposite of a combo deck. Combo decks are basically always trying to interact as little as possible. As the combo player, you're happiest when you get to completely ignore your opponent. And like FCG said, the decks that are good against Tron are decks that ignore the opponent. As it turns out, the best interactive spells are typically bad against Tron. Cards like Bolt and Fatal Push stack up poorly against their creatures, Inquisition doesn't solve any threats, and they tend to go over top of you too quickly.

If you want a deck that has interaction, you're typically looking at control, midrange, or tempo. These are the types of decks playing some mix of discard, removal, and counters. GDS is a decent matchup vs Tron, you have some powerful hitters that can get in under them, as well as some good counters. It's also a very interactive deck, playing a great mix of creatures and interactive spells. Another is UW Control. It doesn't seem like the best on the surface, but as it turns out, 4 Spreading Seas + 4 Field of Ruins makes the matchup pretty decent (don't know the exact number, but I'd say it's no more than 40-60 in either direction). It's a little less interactive being a control deck, but still something to consider.

Unfortunately, the idea of a deck with hand disruption/kill spells and also a combo win condition are rare. When playing combo, you tend to play more of a "ignore my opponent" strategy. So essentially, the two things you like are on opposite sides of the spectrum.

That all being said, maybe 4c Gifts Control might work for you. It's a control deck but it sometimes has the Gifts Combo win condition (it's explained in depth in the UW Tron primer linked in my signature). So even though you're trying to play a normal control game, you just randomly have this combo that wins games much sooner. It mitigates a lot of the drain on playing control when games sometimes end on turn 4. I have no idea if the deck is good against Tron, my inclination is to think it isn't great. The Crucible/Loam + Ghost Quarter plan is solid against them, I just don't know how viable that is in actual games.

I think probably everything you want in one deck isn't going to exist. 4c Gifts seems like the closest thing. If I had a better idea of your priority among the different things you want, then we can go find the best deck.

Yeah the data Ken posted from that spreadsheet is better. Something more concrete to work off of. I agree that it has some obvious flaws with it but we need to start somewhere. You need to be transparent in how the data is collected and aggregated. Ken's list was great, but it was a ton of work, more than people are probably willing to do.

We are giving you things to think about, you just simply choose to see what you want in the post. Instead of trying to figure out what we could do to improve it, you simply ignored and just saw we were attacking you. So let's try to calmly address all the issues.

1. Your list has no sources for information. We need to know where the data is coming from. Ken's old list showed what events it was coming from and had metrics for which share of the amalgamation came from which source. We want full disclosure on how the numbers are achieved. A few GP/SCG Opens doesn't really show enough data to support things, especially since the banlist change invalidates old data.

2. A tier list has to be objective in some way. It's either designed by aggregating MWP or by aggregating meta share. When you say "I think deck X is in tier Y", that's a problem. You don't get to make those decisions, not if you want others to accept your tier list. The only thing we accept are cold hard facts, which are the numbers. You can decide on what percentage makes the cutoff for tiers, but then all decks get placed into tiers automatically by such a cutoff.

3. You gave some really poor definitions of why decks are where they are or even describing decks. You say Ponza is bad because it never won, but it did. Decks don't even have to win either, they just have to place well. A top 8 is realistically the same as a GP win. You describe Burn as a burn deck plus 12 creatures, which is really the wrong thing to call it if it has that many creatures. Even Ascendancy Storm is being listed as a new thing, it died out shortly after the card was printed, but I absolutely remember it being a thing until Treasure Cruise got banned.

4. You skip over a lot of decks and then say that it has 30 decks. A tier list should encompass everything there's data to support. Mono U Tron is something I'm surprised to not see, same with Elves, but Ascendancy Storm is on the list? I don't know where you found data that had Ascendancy Storm on it to support being able to classify it objectively (I'd like to know if you did, it's possible I'm wrong and just haven't seen that data). This sort of suggests the same problem 2 addresses, which is the objectivity of your list. It needs to just show raw data and let people form their own conclusions from it. To decide what decks do or don't make the list from your own opinion is the wrong way to go about it.

If you're gonna make a list, you need to sort out all of these issues. It needs to be objective and have more data that is sourced. Not until the conclusions are drawn objectively can we take the list seriously.

The thing with your list is that you have way more tiers than lists usually do, and your distinction criteria isn't clear. You give a rather vague description that can encompass a lot of different decks depending on personal opinion. On top of that, how good/bad a matchup is depends on a lot of factors. You can tweak lists to be better in certain matchups, or players might be better at the deck and edge out a few points. For instance, I think people actually do agree that Reid Duke top 8ing the last PT with Abzan was a matter of how good Reid is with GB rather than the deck being well positioned. Or, for example, you said Affinity is a tier 3 and yet it's consistently putting up results still (it top 8'd the SCG event on the weekend).

It's far better to encompass the list from tournament results and meta percentages. Like Ken used to do, you compile day 2 numbers, top 8 results, and meta shares, and do it across several platforms (MTGO, GPs, PTs, SCG Opens, etc.). You get a depiction of what the field is playing, because realistically the field is playing what they think is good and that approximates well. If you could get perfect percentages for deck win percentages then it would work out well, but you realistically can't.

To give an example, I completely disagree Affinity is a tier 3 deck. Sure, it has problems, but that doesn't make it bad. In fact, it exactly fits your tier 2 criteria (it's quite consistent and steals a lot of game 1s). You might be an underdog to Jund, sure, but it's not like it's 90-10, it's more like 55-45 or 60-40.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

Dark Steel, while I was on the 25 land build, my opponent boarded in 3 or 4 fulminators against me. He hit me 3 times in fairly quick succession, but It ended up hurting him and he lost.

After reading top player articles on the mirror, I'm not 100% sure we should side out ALL the discard in the mirror, unless we have good cards like Finks, Hazoret, etc. I'm actually off the fulminator plan now for the mirror.

The way I see it, I think discard is bad in the mirror because it's dead late. The idea in general with Jund is that your cards are either threats or answers. So in the mirror, you want to make your deck have the most powerful threats and answers. Generally speaking, your 2-for-1 cards are super powerful. BBE is a good threat because it's literally a 2-for-1. Discard can remove any threat proactively, even removal, but if you draw it at the wrong time it's super weak and does literally nothing. That's why I think it's bad, I don't want to run the risk of drawing it late game. As long as my threats and answers line up in a way where we're drawing a good number (minus variance) and can stonewall each other at points, then there's no benefit to the discard.

The other major thing is that outside of the discard, there's isn't a lot you dislike. Maybe you think Bolt is bad when creatures like Goyf get big or something, but it's still good at killing other things. Maybe you think Maelstrom Pulse is bad because it kills your things too, but you can force situations where it's good. What I find is that the core is generally not bad and I don't have a lot that I think sideboard cards are better than.

When it came to Fulminator Mages, I didn't think that they were better than existing things. What would I cut? Bolt? Bob? Maelstrom Pulse? These all don't seem worth it to me. Mage seemed like a "good when you have a best case scenario" that I wasn't sure I liked. In some cases it does kill a threat (i.e. manland) but you also have to telegraph it. Opponents can opt not to animate them and play out other cards instead.

My mirror results are very mixed right now, and I think perhaps I'm being a little too active in using removal rather than being selective. I haven't played enough to conclusively determine anything though, and a fair chunk of them were lost by mana issues (i.e. flooding / screw).

So I still have mixed feelings about the land count. Last event I played 25 lands and flooded a lot. This time I played 24, some games I flooded but I did legitimately lose two games from missing land drops. I lost one game to the mirror after he hit Bloodbraid into Dreadbore for my Lili, then Bloodbraid into Fulminator Mage to keep me from getting four lands.

Speaking of which, I know the mirror is about getting 2-for-1s and just incrementally gaining advantage that way. Does that make Fulminator Mages good? My sideboard plan today was EE, two Kitchen Finks, Last Hope, and Tireless Tracker, cutting the 5 discard spells I have in the main. I still have three Mages in my board though. Fulminator becomes mediocre later on, but if it means you get to BBE sooner, does that make it good?

Blue green decks exist, but generally not the kind that you're hoping for. Green tends to be good at ramping, being aggressive, or putting pressure from big creatures, which limits the types of decks you can expect. You can get ramp out of green, but what kind of ramp deck wants blue (the controlling colour)?

As it turns out, when you've got more mana than your opponent you can just instantly win the game with Scapeshift. The most common UGx deck has always been Scapeshift because that's what that colour combination can do.

There's UGr decks that play a tempo style game, akin to the Eternal Command or RUG Delver decks of old. They're not popular right now but they're certainly something using UG. There's also some Sultai midrange flavours that people are trying to make work now.

I guess maybe 4c Gifts Control is closest to what you want. It's every colour except red, but it's a grindy control deck. It has a bit of a combo aspect to it, and doesn't have a ramp aspect, but it's a control deck for sure.

I can't think of any UG decks that are playing things like Rampant Growth and then not abusing the mana. You basically need to combo finish them if you're going far enough into the ramp plan as the control player.

Looks like 25 to me. If it was 26, I'd be complaining that 26 lands was too many.