MTG Salvation

Why are people going mental over the elder spell? Am I the only one who thinks that this will see approximately 0% constructed play?

It's extremely narrow and in almost best case scenario it reads "destroy target planeswalker". How often do you see yourself facing more than 1 walker? And even if all stars align and hell freezes and you get to cast it against 2-3 walkers AND it resolves, that means that a) all walkers have been activated at least 1 time b) 1-2 walkers have been activated several times over several turns, gaining their controller an accumulated advantage. Is resolving elder spell really gonna turn the tides at that point?

Yeah I lost a lot of money on that deal.

It wasn't me who suggested the Trophy Mage into Crucible tech. But I kind of like it. Tron and Scapeshift are notoriously bad matchups and that would definitely help sealing the deal. I do think if you were to include the combo that you probably want 4 GQs or 3 GQs + 1 Tech Edge or something to that extend. My gut tells me that Treasure Mage probably still is the best of the mages but I still think it's worth exploring. If you include a Vedalken Shackles as well, you already have something for almost every matchup to fetch.

Ace1: thanks for the link. It seems about right from my experience. Have you tested it yet? I'm not as excited about it as I was in the beginning. It's awesome with a Vial in play but a bit clunky without it.

streetMage: Smuggler's Copter to me is still awesome. I'm pretty sure that I've won as many games with it on turn 2 as I have with Superion. The scenario you describe doesn't happen a lot to me. Don't know if you've been unlucky and drawn it at a bad time or that you're simply not used to have it in your deck and don't play optimally. When you have it in your deck, you try to hold back excessive lands and creatures with small impact so that you have something to loot away when it gets going. Having something that helps you draw into gas in the mid-game when you need to close the game to me has been extremely valuable. At worst it's a 3/3 flier which can help chip away your opponents life total when you have a standoff on the ground.

Right now I'm switching between these decks with pretty good results. I haven't joined a league yet so they haven't really been tested but so far I like how they play out:





Spell Queller has been great at stopping Anger of the Gods + friends. It's also a decent deck to put it in with all the tax effects, making it hard to kill it in time. Lodestone makes it slightly hard to cast at times, but the nonbo isn't as bad as it might seem. Especially with Vial in the deck.

The second list is my favorite. I haven't played it as much but there's some raw potential here with tons of synergy. I can run a full set of Thopter/Sword without it being too painful to draw redundant copies since I have Disciple and Copter to loot them away. Disciple/Copter also help draw into the combo and Grand Architect can make a ton of mana with the combo in play giving you an early kick-start (and by kick-start I mean you go infinite). Thopter Foundry also gives the deck a sac outlet which pairs well with Hangarback.

Cool

I don't know the math but 20 artifacts seems to be working. Whenever I mess around with the artifact ratio it seems to fizzle more than what is optimal. But yeah let me know what you think. I still think that the card is sweet. I've started to add equipment now, getting those hits in is a lot easier with more fliers.

Hello again.

I've been away from the scene for a while but after seeing the spoilers I'm quite excited for the future of this deck. Mainly Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, which I think could be a huge upgrade for this deck.

1) It has flying. At one point I played around with Wingcrafter to break stand offs which seemed to happen a lot with this deck with the lack of removal. It having evasion also makes Swords playable.
2) It costs 5. 5 is often what 7 is to Tron and there aren't any good 5-drops outside of Batterskull.
3) It affects the board. Not being able to affect the board dirrectly was what turned me off about this deck in the beginning since you gave problematic creatures like Bob, Young Pyro and Lord of Atlantis a free pass to spin out of control.

The gearhulks also seem kinda sweet. Mainly the black, green and white one. I'm mostly leaning towards the white one as a sideboard tech against elves and such, since I've always been a big fan of the UW version with Thalia. Toolcraft Exemplar also seems decent in that vein. It isn't blue but it still fuels Chief Engineer, it doesn't block well but it's a good pilot for the Flagship.

So yeah, I'm really looking forward for this expansion. It might be my casual MtG comeback

Quote from Lantern »

Overwhelming Denial is a counter counterspell. Thats how it makes the most sense to me. If you force the second spell to interact with your opponent then youre probably doing it wrong. Doing it as a second spell naturally (lets say you are casting a combo card, and they interact with it, you can cast this. Or you counter their spell after interacting again.

Im still not sold on it, but its a nice tool.

In that case, it's just a worse Dispel. If you need to resolve something the "can't be countered" aspect of it becomes moot (they can just let it resolve and throw another counterspell at the combo piece).

Thoughts of Ruin

Quote from Am Shegar »

Well, to be honest, hypergeometric distribution is a thing, and it does decribe the odds of drawing correct cards from a deck - kind of(you need to factor in proper combinations, i.e ratio of creatures to buffs and to lands), but that's a long story.

I know what hypergeometric distribution is. But bringing it up is just a silly way of justifying a build when the issue isn't the pump/protection/fatty ratio but the quality of the individual cards, as sated 100 times already, hence the dead horse.

The problem with the burn plan is that you don't have any aggression to support it. It's gonna be hard to burn your opponent out before he kills you with Prime Time etc. One thing you could do is to tune the deck to be more aggressive with stuff like Ensoul Artifact + Mox Opal + other mana rocks to help you run out a fast Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and then start animating artifacts.

As for controlling options, Spellskite is the first card I'd be looking to include. It does so much work against so many linear strategies + it protects your combo against Kolaghan's Command. Blood Moon would be the second card I'd be looking at. It slows down Tron, hoses Amulet Bloom and randomly screws over some 3-color decks. Vedalken Shackles is also worth considering. It's a nice combo with Trading Post (steal something and sac it to Post) and Chalice of the Void could be worth testing too. I don't know how well positioned it is right now but at worst you can play it fo x=0 and cycle it with Post.

I don't mind any of the cards (except maybe Boil and Choke) though I understand where people are coming from. Losing to Blood Moon isn't fun but it's just one of those things in Magic ...(like losing to Liliana for instance) I do however feel it's a bit unfair that both Blood Moon and Choke is in the format at the same time. As a blue mage I've had problems constructing mana bases that beat both cards before. Trying to beat both cards makes it more likely that you'll stumble one way or the other. So I would't mind a Choke ban but I think Blood Moon is somewhat fair in that it polices greedy mana bases all around the specter (we basically have Legacy mana without Wasteland) and degenerate strategies like Tron and Amulet. Choke and Boil however represents color hosing from old times. They don't attack certain degenerate strategies but attack fair decks without greedy mana bases out of the blue (no pun intended).

I don't have a MODO account nor experienced on playing online. I imagine it would be quite different. So, unlikely

Quote from Badabingbadabum »

Question: if you vial in Strangler in response to Violent Outburst can you snatch Living End before your opponent is able to cast it?

AFAIK, you wouldn't have the opportunity.

Violent Outburst would push onto the stack an instance of Cascade. If you were to respond to the Cascade, there'd be nothing but any previously exiled cards to diddle with (and that's like what, Simian Spirit Guides? You really want to give them more bodies?). If you let the Cascade pop out of the stack, then Cascade goes off as an atomic operation with no ability to interrupt to the exiling and casting process.

By the time you'd be permitted to vial in Strangler, Living End would've already left exile for the stack. I think any other cards exiled during Cascade might also be moved back to the library at this point, but I'd clarify with a judge or RA on the matter.

I think Living End never get suspended in that case, it just is Cast with no cost, so no.

I used to want to build Grishoalbrand until I played it round one of a PPTQ with burn. I said "really, this is my day I have to play the turn 2 deck with four gain 11 spells that cost zero". Game one he killed me on turn 3 or 4 after being at 1 from an attack. Game 2 I got him with a deflecting Palm on his borbor, causing him to not get the lands needed to kill me and then die on my backswing. Game 3 I saw him whiff after drawing 21 cards and not finding a life gain spell. I no longer wanted to build the deck.

It reminds me of somethig like belcher in legacy. Losing to belcher sucks, it's not fun to play against, win or lose. Sometimes belcher will get lucky and ruin some players days. Other times it'll get forced or draw poor hands and lose to itself. Do you ban that deck? No. Is it good that it adds a bit of variance to magic? Absolutely. Magic is good because it isn't wasily solvable. There's variance, there's things you can't account for, there's bad luck. I can't tell you how many times I've won games because my opponent whiffed or missed a land drop but I've definitely had it lead to my success in many tournaments. If we wanted to lay a game that was strictly about outplaying your opponent, we'd play chess. Obviously there's a bit of a gambler in all of us. I'll tell you what though, I'll tell the story about beating Grishoalbrand round one wih burn because he drew half his deck and whiffed far more often than I'll tell the story about how I won a grindy abzan control mirror in standard.

Bug could grant access to Bitterblossom, which could allow you to cut pretty much all creatures except your combo pieces. And even then you might not need to run the full 4 of each piece. 1 of each would guarantee the combo after two Leap activations, but that's probably not the most foolproof plan...
Collected Company would also not be necessary in the Bitterblossom scenario. You could then do the typical black control elements (targeted discard and removal (Shriekmaw?)) Or some blue based digging and a dash of countermagic.

Still, kind of hard to argue with "haven't lost a game yet." I'm definitely liking Shackles, though. That just seems too fun not to sleeve it up at some point.

*Edit* Of course, the entire concept above just turned your beatdown deck into a control deck, which is probably not what you're after. Being able to club the opponent to death if they stumble is nice.

Quote from Badabingbadabum »

Quote from Slarg232 »

I'm interested on seeing if Abbot of Keral Keep is as good as I think it is.

I'm 1-1 for my "called it" cards, so I'm really intersted if I'm going to be 2-1 or 1-2.

I think it's too slow. It's a T3 play at the earliest (T4 if you don't want it to whiff) and that's when 2/1 is too small and when Prowess becomes less good. I guess that Snappy is a 2/1 too but it's more centered around its ETB ability than its body. You can't play it with too many counters either (not that UR or Grixis Delver play a ton of those). I'm not convinced, but I could be wrong.

We shall see.

I'm mostly concerned because the card I called right last time was Kolagahn's Command, to which everyone in my playgroup all said it was "Too slow" and a "Bad Blightning". I'm the one who got the last laugh and I want to see how this one turns out

Quote from Sheepz »

Griselbrand reanimator winning before turn 4 very much depends on your definition of "consistent" at which point we get into what an acceptable percentage is. But my point is getting rid of it opens the floodgates for arguments that "oh yea this consistently wins turn three but hey you run such and such hate so it's fair" which is not something I'd want in the format. Glass cannon combo decks that win before this like griselbrand are currently allowed due to the consistency clause, but as others mentioned earilier if you get rid of that you can get the turn three combo decks that take much longer to ban out due to having to ban on the basis of power level which requires lots of data and no one is ever happy with. Look at pod and how that was banned for its power level within the format. People still cry all day over that.

I'm not sure what the point of you bringing it up is supposed to be. If it's the fact some people don't like the Birthing Pod ban, I would say that's because there are arguments that Birthing Pod wasn't really that overpowered (it did have some absolutely atrocious matchups). But that's a different discussion, quite frankly.

If a deck is too strong, it's too strong. Putting in this "you cannot consistently win before this turn" rule is just as absurd as setting a specific metagame share percentage at which point a deck automatically gets a ban.

And this is my problem with the way the turn 4 rule it set up. The way it's currently written (again, maybe they changed it in-house but didn't feel the need to announce it) is that top-tier decks can't win consistently before turn 4. Which means that if a deck just happens to be good (not overpowered, just good!) and win quickly, that's unacceptable. Which I think is absurd. Ban decks that are overpowered, not decks that are good but violate some arbitrary rule that isn't an actually valid way of examining power.

Point is getting rid of this rule, which seems to be simple house keeping due to the overlap with the power level rule, shuts down stupid ban list arguments.

Except it doesn't. "Consistently wins before turn 4" and "top tier deck" are both rather vague and subjective terms. It doesn't shut down an argument about whether Amulet Bloom needs a banning because no one knows for sure what those terms are actually supposed to mean and whether or not they apply to the deck.

Also note that if they banned based on power level, people would likely cry for hard data from wizards on win percentages which is something I would not want them to provide.

Bloodbraid Elf, Deathrite Shaman, Treasure Cruise, Birthing Pod, and Dig Through Time were all banned on power level. How would this be any different?

You see how this could be opening a can of worms between the increases time span required to ban and the extreme likelihood of back and forth power level arguments on this?

How much was the time increased for Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time, which were banned at the first available time after their printing?

You keep claiming "it's harder to ban things!" but they do ban things for power level. That should be the actual reason something is banned, barring cases like Eggs where the banning occurred due to factors outside the game. I don't see why Modern shouldn't be treated just like every other format when it comes to banning.

@Both of you; PLEASE stop referencing legacy as a successful model on which to base modern. A large portion of the players don't want it to be like that and in fact play modern for that very reason.

Uh, my reference to Legacy wasn't in regards to it being successful or not, just showing how faster=/=stronger by showing that the fast combo decks aren't very good and the good combo decks are slower, showing that speed is just one factor in whether a deck is good or not.

Quote from khaosknight69 »

No, the -1/-1 counter and the +1/+1 cancel each other out, so it would die and undying would see no counters and bring it back again

Actually, no. The state-based action where the creature dies for being 0/0 happens at the same time as the state-based action that cancels out the counters. The creature goes straight from being on the battlefield with both counters on it to being dead.

704.7. If a state-based action results in a permanent leaving the battlefield at the same time other state-based actions were performed, that permanent’s last known information is derived from the game state before any of those state-based actions were performed.
Example: You control Young Wolf, a 1/1 creature with undying, and it has a +1/+1 counter on it. A spell puts three -1/-1 counters on Young Wolf. Before state-based actions are performed, Young Wolf has one +1/+1 counter and three -1/-1 counters on it. After state-based actions are performed, Young Wolf is in the graveyard. When it was last on the battlefield, it had a +1/+1 counter on it, so undying will not trigger.

The card would work if you had the ability remove the +1/+1 counter directly though.

Quote from Badabingbadabum »

I have a fascination with undying too. I want them to print a card to abuse it, but also kinda wish they don't, since it will almost most certainly be broken if they do. I think they looked very careful at previous cards before printing the mechanic.

Ion Storm, Power Conduit, and Ooze Flux all do pretty interesting things with undying for starters, but they all have limits and take a lot of setup to get really stupid. You can get a pretty cool casual deck out of that but it isn't strong enough to be a serious competitive contender.

How much more viable would this deck be with the addition of Collected Company? There's a zillion mana sink creatures that are 3 cmc or less, and Collected Company can then get any combo piece. Thing is that you need to be playing quite a lot of creatures in the deck (I'd say at least 18 if you have quite a few cantrips and fetchlands, but err on the side of higher), and Pili-Pala still has to not be summoning sick.