MTG Salvation

Thank you for your list and insight, asimov. Personally i still play doran because the body scales better vs tasigur and marath, and the clock is about the same.

Can you explain how you arrived to a 50/50 mu vs tasigur ? It has certainly been the tougher deck to beat recently for me, though i still play the mana denial cards and they are horrendous in the mu for sure. What is the general strategy you adopt? Which cards do you find most useful to help you win?

Against Narset I'd say it depends on the opponent's list. The more classic way I have seen is a kind of maelstrom wanderer, no counterspell build. In my opinion the easiest deck to beat because it has the combined weaknesses of geist + wanderer. Hence both anti-hexproof removal (toxic deluge, council's judgment, liliana being the best) and mana denial (geddon, wasteland) are great. Against the winning list the build is a bit more different, it looks more like a GAA/Nin/Ruhan build. Here I'd say the speed is a bit less important because there is no jokulhaups/upheaval shenanigans, and more removal and disruption. So I'd rather mulligan my elves/moxes and try to stick a threat while not exposing myself to wraths, and prevent my opponent to gain too much CA with discard (for exemple, I probably duress away a tutor/card draw spell over a counterspell).


About Doran vs Anafenza as a general, I still wonder which one I'd rather play in my next tournament. During the few testing I have had, I have found they are roughly equivalent in terms of damage output, the +1 counter often offsetting the -1 base power on Anafenza. I also find Doran slightly better against Wanderer, Marath and in the mirror. They are both bad against Prossh, but both shut down some kill conditions. I think in the end Anafenza is still preferable because she is so good against reanimator, it must feel good that for one time, the aggro general is a trump against what the opponent could be doing (like animar is against us). But I have not experienced this a lot yet, and I am still looking for opinions on the subject.

Auto-include.
Solid ramp and fixing pre-Animar, and at best you cast it for free, put a counter on animar, then unmorph and gain 1 mana while filtering. This card seems to be made right for this deck.

Quick report from a 12-players tournament I had yesterday. The deck went well and the games were close so I felt like it was worth reporting.
Basically the same list that I posted here, with ulcerate for oust, putrefy for mesmeric fiend, linvala, keeper of silence for cataclysm.

R1 vs kaalia
G1 I go elf t1, doran t2 vs no play for my opponent, then I slow him down with rishadan port. When he plays kaalia the first time, I demonic tutor for liliana and edict her. Then he hardcast a dragon but has to attack liliana, which allows me to swing back for lethal, even through a second fattie he hardcsted.

G2 I have castigate t2 (take hammer of purphoros, only spell) and doran t3, he has servant generator t2 and hasty kaalia t4 who sneaks an utvara hellkite. I maelstrom pulse the dragon and hopes he doesnt topdeck another fattie, unfortunately next turn he topdecks again and sneaks in gisela, blade of goldnight and I go to 4. I tainted pact at his eot and figures out my best draw is parallax wave. I go through my deck and nothing who could be as effective as the wave and I exile all my library but 10 cards to find it. I exile both his creatures and swing with doran and KotR, on his turn he finds nothing and replays kaalia, I exile it again and ends the game with a geddon.


R2 vs Mimeoplasm
G1 I have elf t1, doran t2, my opponent does nothing and uses his cleanup step to discard inkwell leviathan. I can geddon to follow that up but I feel like the way he discarded could mean he has more lands in hand and just hold them up, so I wait on that and decide to add more pressure instead. Next turn, he misses in fact again his 3rd land drop and bring back the leviathan with life/death. This time I geddon, and he doesnt attack cause I am lethal on the swing back (life/death cost him 11 life). Next turn thanks to a mox and the elf, I can GSZ for deathrite shaman to lock his grave and deal him the last points of damage.

G2 I mulligan and keep scrubland, deathrite shaman, inquisition of kozilek. A chrome mox (pitching garruk)gives me the sick opening of t1 inquisition of kozilek (discard exhume, leaving lands, animate dead and a fattie) and deathrite shaman. My opponent has 2 looters but i always keep deathrite open and exile his grave at his eot. My threat deployment is very slow because I need the mana to leave deathrite up, I can finally put into play mother of runes, then doran. That allows him to loot twice a turn for at least five turns, finally he can show and tell a sphinx of uthuun which finds him toxic deluge at 10 life, but I sneak a SoFaI on the show and tell, and equip doran + deathrite is lethal on the next turn.


R3 vs Maelstrom Wanderer
G1 I have a mox to play doran t2, but then my threats are a bit slow (liliana and garruk) while he ramps up to 8. He cascades ral zarek and concentrate. He takes down garruk taping the wolf with ral zarek ability, I take down ral zarek and put him to 9. Next turn he upheaval and has 6 manas in play when I play doran t2 post upheaval. I think I have the win with a zenith into qasali on my next turn (exalted dealing the 21th general damage), but at 7, he has karn liberated and I concede.

G2 I have putrid leech t2, doran t3, maelstrom pulse on your signet t4, and armageddon t5.

G3 I play doran on t2, then stoneforge into SoFaF t3. He has a slow start and his first play is slagstorm on his t4. On my t5, I can equip SoFaF to doran, bash, untap and dust bowl his 7th mana source. On his turn, he cycles a time warp but cannot find 2 mana sources and concedes.


Finale vs Geist of Saint Traft
G1 I have a good opening hand with 3 lands + elf, liliana of the veil (best card in the MU) mana tithe and inquisition of kozilek back-up. He dazes doran on t2 and I edict his geist with liliana on t3. He has a geist t4 with lotus petal, but I can toxic deluge the board and he falls very far behind even if I lose my elf and fall short on mana. Several turns later he uses detention sphere on liliana to allow a geist next turn, but I can decay the sphere and he concedes.
G2 After mulliganing, my hand is quite bad with llanowar wastes, city of brass, elves of deep shadow for mana and putrid leech and bitterblossom for threats. I'll probably deal 15 damage to myself that game. I get doran counterspelled t2, and I use council's judgment on geist t3. I can play blossom and leech as he replays geist, but I have a very hard time blocking with him having into the roil, then feeling of dread, and aqueous form (which I can fortunately get rid of with nature's claim). I stabilize the board around 5 life but I have 2 clocks on me, bitterblossom and city of brass that he can tap with rishadan port. I got a geddon memory lapsed and a maelstrom pulse in hand. I think that his last card in hand is a meddling mage because he asked me the name of the geddon I put on top (which was in fact ravages of war). I decide to geddon and hope to draw a land. That resolves, and I draw a land before dying. I wait til I go to one with blossom and pulse the blossom, that also resolves. I then keep my 4 faerie tokens and my elf in defense, and attack only with the leech. He finds a eiganjo castle and feels safe to attack, but I block 1 faerie on the angel and 3 faerie + the elf on geist and it has to die. I eventually find a jitte that I can equip to the last faerie and the leech + faerie ride me to the victory.




About the deck in general, I have not found the good replacement to cataclysm yet. I have cut one discard guy for putrefy and have not missed it, I feel that putrefy is better in a marath vs anti-marath format, though against reanimator the discard guys are probably better than putrefy. I will try reclamation sage for the 2nd discard guy. Ulcerate is better than oust, though it is one less out to mirran crusader, so I'd be careful before playing it in my list (I don't like to lose to my own cards stolen by bribery and control magic). Linvala is actually quite underwhelming, even against marath. It seems like they run so many tutors that when I drop linvala, they get immediately FTK and she has done nothing. I am looking for a better card than linvala, which would ideally be good against marath and prossh, while not being too narrow in the other match-ups. I have thought about enlightened tutor, mirran crusader, fiend hunter, sign in blood, skeletal scrying as replacements, but none seems convincing enough for me. I would be glad to hear your opinions about this.

I still play them but I agree they are not at their best in the current Marath meta.

tidehollow sculler is still the best of them and it would take a lot for me to cut it, the two others are indeed replacable, and if it is to improve the marath (or aggro) match-up, I would go for more removal. The problem is removals are quite poor in other match-ups like wanderer, griselbrand, geist, and usually I like the 1/1 body (with equipment and tangle wire).

I think I will try putrefy for one of them because it can still be good against control/ramp, and see how it goes.

I don't understand the g2 vs Marath. If you killed his dryad arbor with go for the throat, how can she still be on the battlefield? And if there is fetchland, go for the throat, dryad arbor in graveyard, goyf should be 3/4 so he should trade with bell-ringer assuming there is doran on the bf, or no creature should die.

Too much removal is not so good against a various meta but it is definitely a good option if you want to improve the MU vs marath (the cost being worsening the MU vs wanderer, geist, griselbrand...).

Just played against spatiska's version, seems an awesome combo deck.

Some (maybe) new propositions :
- skullclamp
- recurring nightmare
- solemn simulacrum
- slavering nulls
- soldevi adnate
- fulminator mage

skullclamp is already a busted card and it seems that the deck runs a decent amount of sac outlets and X/1 creatures.
nightmare is a powerful card and the deck has lots of enters the battlefield triggers, plus the reanimation subtheme. Although I am not sure about this one cause it definitely costs a lot of mana.
simulacrum is a good value card and the deck makes good use of any extra mana. Also going from 4 to 6 manas is meaningful with grenzo in play.
slavering nulls is like a bad specter but cheaper, don't know if it is worth playing.
adnate seems quite good, at worst it refunds itself in mana to reuse grenzo's ability, at best it makes a good use of nekrataal, exarch and such.
fulminator mage to add to the denial disruption.

Gaddock teeg doesn't blank pact of negation, but that's true he's really good vs control match-ups especially blue, and ramp too. I don't play him because he blanks 6 cards in my deck, which is slightly too many, but would I go down to 5 or 4, I would consider him again. Also, the fact that it is not that easy to get access to him in my aggro, tutor-light list is a problem too. I agree that with shaman and others, he is better.


I can only encourage you to try council's judgment for one o-ring. The WW is a bit annoying, but the effect is so much better. There is no chance to get back the "target", and it can "target" anything but land means you have a good, clean answer for animar, geist, true-name nemesis. Also, the fact that you can tutor o-ring is actually not that important. Sure, your enlightened tutor can be an emergency button to deal with a problematic permanent, but the fact that you made CD for that, plus it is not even permanently dealt with, makes it sound like a losing proposition for me. I'd much rather use my tutor for a target that puts more pressure on the opponent, ideally recouping the card loss with something that generate CA. Once you have tried to play without the emergency o-ring, you will find that you didn't really need it, after all. Say your opponent taps out for a big planeswalker, like tamiyo or jace, and deal with your doran. Instead of o-ring it, I'd rather go for a Sword of Fire and Ice to kill it and then having a good, resilient threat to the board.

Great report and performance !

I wonder though, how you can exile two permanents with council's judgment. You have to vote first, right?

Also, how have been ajani, mentor of heroes?

Sorry I thought I had posted my list here some day.






If I am testing herald, it will be +1 Herald of Torment +1 Woodland Cemetery -1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence -1 Wooded Bastion.


It is not that Elspeth and Garruk are meant against aggro, but yes they can be good. Elspeth is at her best when the opponent has few ways to remove doran because her 2nd ability becomes really devastating. She's even more important against Marath and Animar because these decks can stall doran during the first turns and win easily the late game, and she can break the stall. Garruk is mostly in the deck as an additionnal answer to Animar, but is a fine card in other match-ups. If tempo is important, he can kill a small creature and gain a few life, which will hopefully be enough to win the race (if the opponent doesn't bother killing him, he is even better because he floods the board and search for good threats like Stoneforge or Knight of the reliquary). And in slower match-ups, he is like a more expensive but harder to remove bitterblossom.


They also fit well the general strategy of geddons, because if you blow lands every "each turn trigger" becomes very powerful as there will be almost no action but this for a few turns, and as they are hard to remove, the opponent usually cannot respond to the geddon with an instant removal for a PW. And they are also good at stalling if you are behind (it happens often against wanderer, ruhan or opposing planeswalkers) because the opponent will spend resources to deal with them and that might give enough room to get back in the game.

Actually now that I have bought the deck a few months ago, I don't want to throw it away right now. And I have played it for so long that it would be hard to know that well another Commander deck unless I practice a lot with it again. But doran is probably not best suited for this meta.

First, about ulcerate, the card is good. I have switched with oust and it is definitely worth the slot. Until now, I have always killed a X/1 or X/2 with it, so it looked like a bad disfigure, but the 3 life never cost me the game either. And I imagine I will be glad once I killed a Grand arbiter or Jenara with it.

As a replacement for cataclysm, I started by putting back the fiend hunter I had cut for council's judment (which is great by the way), but fiend hunter is not really what I want anymore. I find that I have enough removal so I was looking for a threat that is good against combo and ramp (say, I want it to be good against marath, wanderer and reanimator, for exemple). Linvala, keeper of silence was in my deck at first, and she's definitely good against marath and various creatures strategies, but she's not at her best against wanderer and reanimator. She's all right but not great against tempo decks like geist or clique, but neither was cataclysm.

I've also remembered that asimov used to play herald of torment in his doran build, and I've found Elspeth was very good against marath, so I am willing to try him as a 2nd elspeth, though he is way worse on a strict power level scale. He also shakes a bit the manabase, which needs a adjustment to support more black manas. To play him I cut wooded bastion for woodland cemetery.


I will try herald, then linvala, and report my results about them. Hopefully one of them will be good enough to make up for the loss of cataclysm.

Deluge is great against marath, animar and they are the hardest generals to beat. It is also very good in the mirror and against geist. In other matchups it varies a lot and its truly bad against wanderer.

For me the loss of cataclysm is really hard for the deck to recover. It was a weapon of choice against ramp and combo decks, and one of the best cards against marath. All of a sudden ramp match-up become tougher to beat and they are a large part of the meta, I doubt Doran is still very good in here.

Also removing threats the deck become weak against control like griselbrand or GAA, and adding threats means probably adding pod with toolbox and I dont see the point of still playing Doran instead of just switching for Marath.

I agree that arbor elf is cuttable, he is definitely one of the worse mana elves. I still play him cause I want to maximize my chances of having 3 manas t2 but he is sometimes awkward indeed.

I don't like very much blackmail though. For me its a real problem that you can't discard what you truly want as soon as the opponent has 4+ cards in hand. Also not seeing all the cards means even if you made your opponent discard, you're still playing around some cards, which I think is not a good place to be. The whole point of playing targeted discard is, besides the disruption, to be able to maximize your hand. A known negate or force spike is a lot worse than an unknown one. I may be wrong, because blackmail is slightly better than other discard spells when the opponent has few cards in hand, or when all cards in my opponent's hand have equal value. But I like my discard spells to be good against control and combo, and blackmail is not good against either of them.

I would advise playing a land instead of arbor elf, especially if your land count is already low. But m15 has ulcerate which seems worth testing, so I like trying this in that slot also.

The main reason to play garruk relentless is to have more outs to animar. He's also quite good against liliana of the veil and maze of ith which are typically hard to deal with. Finally he's a good way to apply pressure against wrath-heavy decks, like oloro and GAA. If animar wasn't legal, I would probably look for better cards to play in that slot though.

He is not good against marath where the best you can do is trading with a mana elf and gain 2 life, or against geist where he is to easily dealt with.

In most matches he's all right, not great but not awful either (a bit like bitterblossom). When flipped, the -1 ability is much more useful than the +1.

I think demonic consultation is too dangerous to be played. Unlike Iname, we don't have a card that wins the game right on the spot, but geddon effects, on the right set-up. And geddon is not always a good effect to have in hand anyway (like in the mirror for example). For me, tainted pact is more like a super-impulse than like a worse demonic tutor. I try to always crack all my fetchlands before using it, and i think about at least 2, sometimes 3 cards that will satisfy me enough to stop digging. And sometimes, I am just digging for a WB land, for exemple, which the deck has plenty of. In a lot of these situations, demonic consultation would be totally unplayable because it would be too dangerous just to grab a card that let you in the game.


Another card which should be included, though, is council's judgment in my opinion. A maelstrom pulse that can deal with geist and animar is worth the tough double W in the cost. At first i thought about cutting pulse for it, but finally I cut Fiend hunter for it. Same mana cost, an obvious improvement as the removal effect. I still need to see if one less body is a problem, but I think it will still be fine.