MTG Salvation

The current deck I'm running is Esper humans and that is working out really well. I tried G/B before this but it seemed too slow and more of a mid-range deck. I'd appreciate any input anybody has on this subject.

This is my favorite standard deck, I'm sad to see the thread is so dead. D= How do you think BNG will affect this deck? I see some cards like Eidolon of countless battles being possibly good here, or maybe Brimaz, king of Oreskos.

On the other end of the spectrum, how do you think drown in sorrow or bile blight will affect us?

The reason it says "play" rather than "cast" is because you may play lands exiled with the Specter. Lands are not "cast" so it would conflict with the ruling. You still cast any spell of theirs you play, and pay the appropriate mana cost if you can.

I don't think the Phoenix is that great. I'm playing aggro, okay on T4 you can have a 3/3 haste flier then I will attack through and kill you. I'm playing control, okay you can have a 5/5 flier and I'll kill it with one of my many kill spells, or verdict. It's basically Polukranos with flying without the handy monstrous ability.

We'll see how it actually turns out, but 3/3 haste on T4 in an aggro deck doesn't seem like where it wants to be. Imagine playing against it with your deck rather than using it in your deck and see how your deck would react to it on T4. It's very underwhelming and not hard to deal with.

The Hero is amazing, I love his synergy with Bestow creatures, especially the new 3CMC bestow creatures. I'm excited to see what decks will use him.

So I decided to take your advice and modify it a little bit. I didn't want to add too many noncreature spells, since I feel like that goes in the opposite direction from where I want this to be. Here's the current list, and a very rough sideboard.



Pyrewild is sort of a random addition, especially when I already have GCR, but he's renewable pump so I thought he would come in handy. Gruul charm against creature heavy decks, Golgari Charm against control, and I couldn't decide what the rest should be.

Currently testing this deck, and it's the most fun I've had this format in Standard. It can consistently do 20+ damage by T4, and I'm thinking about 4x Golgari Charm SB against control and 4x Rakdos Charm against G/x devotion decks. Not sure about other matchups, but Jund has some good tools for games 2 and 3.

What do you think? Tournament-viable?

Quote from delfam

I feel the reason this deck is good is by being aggro. Running Elvish Mystic allows us a turn 2 Dreg Mangler. Without it our only play is turn 2 Lotleth Troll which isn't that good if the opponent has removal.

If we are moving this deck to more of a G/B Midrange deck I just don't see a reason to play it rather than Jund, as Jund is just better in most ways at being Midrange and packs more removal.

I definitely agree. It also helps when you have one land and a Mutavault (if you run Mutavault) and you need to play Boon Satyr T2. T2 Dreg also feels really bad on the receiving end.

I was thinking about taking something out for MB Mistcutters, I played against a deck that had them mained and it adds a lot of speed to the deck and can be pretty hard to deal with later in the game. I'm just not sure what to remove for them, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.

The Guildmage might be interesting to try. He can pump all your creatures and creatues haste tokens. I've also always wanted to use ordruun veteran for the double strike. I still think Akroan Hoplite would work well, Legion's boosts him and he gets buffer the more creatures you have.

That's literally my same set-up, 3 TS main, 1 and 2 Duress in SB. I don't have the Lifebanes though, for some reason nobody ever wants to trade them. :/

Thinking about what you said, maybe I do get a little too excited when I know they don't have a counter and it would probably be better to play a creature to capitalize than tap out and get rid of their entire hand. I'll definitely try that next time.

Try out Golgari Charm to kill a lot of those weenies if you aren't already. They gain life for Soldier, but it should wipe a lot of their board, and nothing they have protects against it. It can also kill Assemble the Legion (which can be really really annoying otherwise).

I've decided that while Rakdos's Return looks great on paper, it isn't meant for this deck. Three times I've resolved it for X=5/6 against control and wiped out their hand, and I've lost every time. It does nothing against Mutavaults, so they're still hitting us with those when we tap out to play it, and they can draw into so much more than we can. If Mutavault didn't exist, I think it would work a little better but it doesn't seem to do much at the moment.

I have a similar build. Running only 2 Mutavault doesn't mess with the mana very much, especially running 23 lands. A lot of lower costing aggro builds are fine with 22 colored lands, so 21 colored lands isn't too far of a stretch. I'll continue testing it, but so far it's helped far more than it's hurt.

Edit: Mono-U Devotion also runs 4 Mutavaults, and they have a ton of UU and UUU cards, it doesn't seem to hurt.

I love Viashino Firstblade in this deck. Very fast, very aggro. I also like the addition of Mutavault to help trigger the battalion and provide even more resilience against control. Boros Elite is also a very good, efficient one-drop. The next is more of a personal favorite, but Akroan Hoplite can get very buff very quickly in this deck. Anax and Cymede only seems valuable in a Heroic deck, and this definitely is not. Also, all of your creatures are white, why not run Brave the Elements?

I loved the format. Being able to play Predator Ooze consistently T2 or T3 in a 3-color BUG deck was amazing. Mono-green aggro was a thing. Cards like Strangleroot Geist paired with a topdecked Revenge of the Hunted won games very early, but also came into play later on.

I'll admit, there have been too many games where somebody played Think Twice on my turn and pulled a Terminus, but mostly it was a very fun format.

Now, every devotion deck feels very similar. For G/R, Mono-U and Mono-B in particular there seems to be only one way to build the deck. You NEED BTE, you NEED Nightveil, there's not a lot of room for creativity in those decks.

It's easy to forget too that this is only the first set in the block, and there's much room for growth in the format. I just miss the decks I had last format when it ended, tribal decks are always my favorite.

I could see it helping a little bit against crazy devotion board states if you can get up to 5-6 mana without dying first, but that shouldn't be too difficult. It also kills all nonland permanents, including enchantments or planeswalkers. It would definitely require a lot of testing, and maybe 1-2 would be more than enough.

I feel like Magma Jet is a good SB for many devotion decks, it kills Pack Rat, Fanatic, Burning-Tree, lots of mana dorks and it scrys 2 for you. Seems like a good way to get rid of their early devotion. Thoughts? Maybe Lightning Strike instead to kill the Nightveil specter as well?