MTG Salvation

No, that is not slowrolling at least in mtg terms. That is generally how you play the game, making them use max amount of resources/getting the maximum information before you make a play. Slowrolling is more if your opponent is at 2 life and you wait till they are in their attack step or end their turn to cast the sudden shock you had in your hand with mana to cast the entire time.

Part of the card advantage and what I am going to try is a build with Blood Scrivener
I think combined with the deck rolling its hand out fast and being able to partially control hand size with the troll makes this guy nothing short of amazing. He is also a zombie so he has synergy with gravecrawler

Working on a list at the moment but this idea has gotten me very excited to say the least. Throw in some lili of the veil and bam. I am leaning towards a more black heavy version with geralfs messenger and gravecrawler vs the heavy green predator ooze and strangleroot geist. Not sure if it will be good but its got me brewing

^
I also do this, pull my potential picks to the front of the pack and when I take a card I shuffle the pack up so the cards are redistributed at least semi randomly not only because you are required at high level events but otherwise they may think i am intentionally signalling. One of the players at my lgs used to flip the cards upside down he was in the colors of lol. We told the owner pretty quick on that one he doesnt come there anymore

at my pre release we had 131 players, highest concentration was rakdos, but at the end of round two there was 6 guilds finished the maze because there was so many people (orzhov, rakdos, selesnya, golgari, boros, gruul). All the aggro colors were winning... Dimir had 1 win at the end of round 2, Simic and Izzet had 3 wins and azorius had 5. I feel the aggro colors have it better in this format to be honest.

You guys are way overreacting it isnt even that bad. In the even there is more than 20 targets on the board (wtf) this guy is not going to help the situation, and you will just have to divide them in groups and roll for the group afterwards.
Not that long of a process, not crazy hard to understand, really, comeon. I personally like the card it shocks! I am glad that wizards finally mixed up a pinger. Sure haste/flash/etc generic 1 dmg but this is what im talking about!

Honestly I would prefer cyclonic rift over saving grasp in the 2 snap 2/4 augur deck. I think dramatic rescue is better than the rift because in the corner case you need to bounce your own snap to recycle a spell or gain an extra two life it gets a nudge over cyclonic rift. However I think cyclonic rift would sneak in over the grasp for utility vs the advantage of being able to cast twice. In a resto angel build the saving grasp might be ok but I feel it is too narrow to really do much more than dramatic rescue.

Quote from patlienemann

You're right. let's destroy diversity in the meta and go back to jund

Yes, yes, I like the way this man thinks. As a scumbag jund player I have been reduced to playing esper control this season because it just feels so good. I cant believe how well the deck plays out for what everyone complains as the worst removal, worst counters, etc. Supreme verdict is amazing fyi i couldnt care for terminus but oh me oh my do i love supreme verdict.

In reality I dont really see the problem. Players are always crying about how standard gets stale too fast and there is only ever 2 decks competing for the deck to be usually. When we finally get some diversity of course people complain.

On the topic of blue creatures I have not tried it yet but Vendilion Clique may be worth a go and Skaab Ruinator is pretty awesome. The fact he has "synergy" with the idea of dorks attacking and dying, thirst for knowledge in my deck and can be cheated into play with vial in addition to being recast from the gy in long games is a winner winner chicken dinner :p.
I was looking at this card but it feels a little too cute and not actually that spectacular, Vexing Sphinx. There are a couple of tricks you can do with it and it has an ok sized body. (You can bin a card for 1 age counter, than on the next turn scroll up the age counters and proceed to bin 0 cards to draw 2). I am not sure if it is any good but seemed cute enough. I think at the end of the day I am going to steer clear of it because pathing it is such a beating and is not flicker saavy. Might be a neat addition though :p.

We had a ptq yesterday but there was also a snowstorm the night before and I got snowed in and did not make it in time :(... I think jaysim did top 8 however!

Quote from OmniSzron

Takeaways:
1) Spellstutter Sprite is surprisingly good. It has good targets against almost every deck in the format (except Tron variants I guess). It disrupts combo decks trying to dig for combo pieces, it counters hand destruction spells and most importantly, saves our dorks from Bolts, Paths and (sometimes) Pyroclasms.
2) Mangara was very good against slower decks and ok against faster ones. He has the potential to decimate Tron and UW control decks when paired with Minamo and some timely blinks.
3) The deck is very good G1 against the field.
4) Timely Reinforcements is super-annoying against us.
5) Moorland Haunt gives us some nice reach after Wraths but can sometimes screw our colours. I'm debating cutting one (out of two currently).

I'll try to do a similar report from the PTQ along with providing the complete decklist tomorrow.

I find any kind of token shenanigans is a rough time for us, still trying to find the most optimal way of dealing with tokens. currently i am playing a couple of extra fliers over ground beaters to dodge timely and detention sphere x 2 board and engineered explosives. After my ptq (also this weekend) i will have to give sss a go in the mb it seems like you are having decent results with it. I still feel as if without any way to pump it the 1/1 body is a do nothing but if it is countering very relevant things than it is worth a go i suppose, 1 drop removals are always good.
I like moorland haunt also but at the moment i am testing out skaab ruinator and they are a nonbo together so i have sidelined the moorland haunts for the time being in place of a 3rd tectonic edge.
I am also playing u/w at the moment because i feel without mangara this deck dies to a lot of different things because it can just not comepete. Mangara being a catch all is such a live saver
I feel like we have no real "bad matchups" but at the same time we have very little good match ups. a lot of matchups seem to be 45-55/vice versa or 50/50. Game 1 advantage is great and i couldnt love it more.

Good luck on the weekend dude!

Keyrunes can most definitely attack. They can not attack the turn they come into play without an outside source giving them haste because they will still be affected by summoning sickness (in the event you do not tap out for a keyrune for example). Like any other creature once a turn cycle has passed summoning sickness will pass and you can attack as you please with them.

Ill probably try a u/w list similar to this with the skaab ruinators in it. Going to start off with 2 and see how well they mesh or how clunky they are in practice.

Quote from LazyNinja49

It's a shame it's only non-mana abilities though.

I believe this is for things like avacyn's pilgrim which produce mana, not those which require mana.

Yeah its a start but your deck needs quite a bit of fine tuning to work out all the little kinks. Search effects are generally sour when it comes to arbiter.

About the U/W version I was looking into playing Skaab Ruinator instead of Geist of Saint Traft. He is huge (pretty much flying goyf) and can be recast from the graveyard if he dies to not path. Comes in off vial without having to remove anything from your graveyard. The only issue is in the early game I do not feel he will be reliable to cast if we do not rip a vial. I think he is worth testing, next week I am going to try and swap the two and see how it goes.

Haha I played that sun titan combo while it was around in standard except with phantasmal image so you had 4 sun titans. Also flickerwisp removes till eot so it takes longer than that. Its cute to say the least haha.

I updated my list a little bit, and remembered why I hated filter lands. With so many colorless lands already there were hands I drew which were like double ghost quarter and a mystic gate or a combination of only colorless lands. Changed them to glacial fortresses and they feel better. I want to find a way to put moorland haunt in but am not sure what to cut, I dont know if i can still consistently run 8 colorless lands in a 2 color shell. Ill have to give it a go. Going to test this list I think.


I think I am also going to try out playing less geists and more blade splicers/etc.

If this heavy lingering souls meta continues I think that sword of light and shadow may be the go to sword in this deck, gives us a bit of card advantage through raise dead and can sneak by those stupid spirits. Sword of war and peace might be good too but I think having pro-removal against jund minus bolt is also a plus. I dont know if modern is slow enough where the extra damage from the sword of war and peace will be a real game changer except against the couple slower "control" decks. It is worth testing that is for sure.