MTG Salvation

Hey guys it's been a while. I took a break from the deck since I tried to really break the local meta with it, and as I've highlighted before the deck can be extremely inconsistent at times. But recently Sam Pardee put out some videos of a new variation. It got my cogs turning since it took what I liked about the Necrotic Ooze version of the deck and stream lined it. To put my thoughts concisely about Necrotic Ooze, it just went through too many hoops to try to combo off without having all the major benefits to off set its ability to tackle the modern format.

Here's Sam Pardee's most recent list.


I put together the deck and played around online a little and made some quick changes since I saw a lot of flaws in some of the main deck card choices based off of experience.


So after two weeks of playing this deck, here's my opinion:
Life from the Loam is one hell of a powerful card. If you've ever played legacy Loam (Jund Loam, Junk Loam, Depths Loam, etc) you should know how powerful of an engine it is. When we cut the through the breach and all the mana acceleration we become a dedicated graveyard centric deck and getting to dredge 3 and continue to disrupt your opponent till you combo off is a big deal. Watch Sam's videos you get a crash course on when to dredge and when not to. It is quite critical to know when to put the hammer down and dredge to your hearts content and when to take an actual draw step. Sometimes it's a draw 6 (3 lands + rite + fatty + crime), and at worst dumps a bunch of cards in the grave for you to use later. It does a whole lot to increase the consistency of the deck, let alone allow you to accomplish some neat little tricks with the various cards of the deck (Groyo Borbro, dump lands, Loam, dump lands = 18 damage), all in all it steps past the "cute" threshold and is actually just one of the best cards in the deck.

Raven's Crime does a lot against blue decks. Pressuring their hand as you progress your game plan is huge. Combine that with Boseiju, Who Shelters All, you will have absolutely no difficulty getting past counter spells.

Mulch reminds me of the good old days of French Rites in standard a couple years ago. There is the potential to draw 4 lands move to discard, discard your combo and go on from there. It also helps in finding Boseiju when you need it. Definitely the weakest of all the engine cards, but it fills a nice roll.

Finally Borborygmos Enraged is the real deal in this deck. Between your opponent shocking themselves and fetching, you might end up only needing a couple lands. With loam you won't have a problem with the kill, Goryo reanimate allows you to potentially hit 3 lands off the top and still trample over and deal actual combat damage and chunk them. It enables the core of the deck to combo kill unlike Fury of the Horde.

Those are the big cards in the deck, everything else is a flex slot. Sam seems to like Jin-Gitaxis a lot, but I honestly don't think it's all that good. Sure you get to make them discard their hand with eot Goryo, but I think for the most part Raven's Crime and Boseiju fulfill that ability quite well. Where Jin-Gitaxis falls short is guaranteeing drawing cards. Griselbrand is much more powerful in that regard utilizing it as a card draw engine to setup a next turn kill has made it so that I've never failed to combo. Goryo, gain 7, draw 7 (not enough critical mass), draw 7 again, move to discard, keep 6 lands and a Groyo. It's quite crazy how powerful the deck becomes when you get to know that you are going to guarantee a kill unlike the all in glass cannon build.

The weakness as all can assume is that this is an all in graveyard combo deck but in all honesty unless your opponent is putting tremendous pressure on you, you don't need to rush yourself into a relic or RIP. My sideboard is just a bunch of 4 ofs and I still need to figure the numbers and what effects I want since this deck can be tricky to sideboard correctly. But here are the cards that I'm working with:


This is definitely a start, and if you guys want to brush the dust off of your Goryo's and Griselbrands, you should give this permutation of the archetype a try.

The next thing I might work with is maybe a couple Necrotic Oozes, and maybe a fourth Griselbrand. I have high hopes for this deck, and this might be the most serious breakthrough this archetype needed.

So I've come to terms with understanding and internalizing a few mechanics that are somewhat over looked. We all know about the propensity for the deck to implode, Draw 21 with Griselbrand and not get there, or drawing Emrakul when your opponent awkwardly has 7+ permanents and is above 16 life. I've built and played Tin Fists, Grixis, Jund, and almost every combination of those three. I haven't played the Necrotic Ooze version past a couple goldfish hands on cockatrice to see how it operated, so I don't think I have a firm enough grasp on every line the deck has to follow. Though the thing I'm about to mention should still overlap to some degree.

Let me set up the situation:
You have almost every combo piece in hand for a turn 3-4 win so long as your opponent isn't going to interact with you. We are on the Through the Breach plan but lack to prerequisite fatty to sneak in. We have 2 cantrips, a prism, and three lands. We've all been here, do we bother cantripping here on turn 2? Or do we just develop our mana and hope we just naturally draw into our last piece?

Another scenario:
2 Faithless looting, Pentad, Griselbrand, Spirit Guide, 1 cantrip, 2 lands. Awkward? We could go all out and pick a line and hedge our bets. Either way we have the resources to combo with Through the Breach or Goryo's. Risk the card advantage loss of looting turn 2 and go for broke, or hope for the best and keep ourselves open for a potential turn 3 Breach?

I have found it is almost always more beneficial to develop my mana first before I start committing to can trips or looting, especially looting. We will never have any idea what cards we will draw into, and if at any point you decide prematurely that we're going on the Goryo plan you might just be dead in the water. These scenarios are keeping in mind that despite our opponent being unable to interact with our combo (tapped out, aggro, no counter or discard.dek) we have some sort of clock on us (Nacatl, combo, starting to leave mana up for counters). That has inherently been the biggest problem I've face. I believe that is why many people believe this deck to be inconsistent. If you any other combo deck, playing cantrips might seem like the natural opening plays for the first 3 turns since they don't require much setup (Twin), other combos that do require setup are inherently more consistent (Living End cantrips galore, Scapeshift ramping). Goryo's Vengeance and Through the Breach both require setup and cantrips or tutors to help facilitate its ability to combo off consistently. The problem is, Pentad Prism and Simian Spirit Guide are impermanent forms of ramp. You cannot expect to utilize that mana unless you intend to combo off. If you do your risk the chance of cutting yourself off from precious acceleration.

So to really rationalize such an effect, there is a larger requirement when it comes to the math this deck runs on than I previously thought. Not sure if any of you can relate.

I guess this is where the problem of understanding that the aim to achieve competitiveness versus mediocrity conflicts. Can we agree with the statement that "We cannot consistently combo off turn 1, 2, 3, thus we should attempt to achieve a slower combo and ensure we increase our survivability till we achieve critical mass" is effectively driving the discussion how to build and play the deck as a second rate Tier 2 combo deck that doesn't have a particular edge over consistent turn 4 combo decks. I am trying to say that if anyone wants to build a competitive deck that does something better or the same than the already established Tier 1-1.5 decks then we should attempt to improve consistency to combo turn 1-4. If we are setting up to win the game on turn 5+ then I would suggest playing anyone of the aforementioned turn 4 tier 1-1.5 decks. If you love reanimating fatties in a much more controlled pace then I would alternatively suggest playing Gifts Ungiven as I mentioned previously. I've been staring at the Modern card pool since December to try and assemble the most consistent version of this deck. Sure I haven't applied myself every day nor every minute that I play magic since then, but I hope you do see that we cannot assemble a consistent turn 1-4 deck as well as pack in control elements and conceivably believe that we have a solid 75 card list.

Let me suspend my beliefs for a second and say we do build a deck that is less about assembling the combo and more geared towards control. What are we gaining from clearing our opponent's board when the win condition of the deck only cares about the opponent's life total? What are we to gain from generating tempo? Card advantage? At the same rate we are drawing and playing a land per turn, our opponent is also developing their game plan. Believe me when I say as a combo deck, we should be aiming to invalidate most if not all resources the game of magic exists in. We are aiming to break some set of rules to destroy our opponent despite them clutching 7 cards because none of them interact within the same axis of the game. Is an aggro deck going to sideboard something like Elixir of Immortality for the mirror? I would assume they would much rather draw a more proactive card that either puts a huge amount of pressure on the opponent, or that it out right kills, or provides reach. Why are we trying to be another version of an already established deck that is conceivably better than just playing the better deck? If you want a control shell then just play a control deck that does both things better.

Combo control like Splinter Twin aims to really tempo out the opponent and have the ability to just kill your opponent on the spot if they are not careful, or if they have generated enough of an advantage to go off. Twin also has the ability to just play a fair game of magic and beat face. Gifts Ungiven based decks are control decks at heart, they aim to ascertain a lock through the conventional means of card advantage, attrition, and then have the ability to "combo" by reanimating some sort of hugely impactful and game ending creature.

Some combo decks are meant to just go off and protect itself, there are no other means for it to win otherwise. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Legacy but Sneak and Show would be an example. You don't have access to cards that kill your opponent other than Emrakul and Griselbrand. You play cards to help you find either of the combos and as many protective counter spells to ensure you get to combo off. In many ways Modern Tin Fins is a weaker version of a Sneak and Show deck. But I am not here to argue that, I am here to inform you of the mechanics of this deck and implore you to see that we are not helping anyone who reads this forum in the aim to achieve competitiveness by telling them that this deck is inconsistent already so let's add cards that don't facilitate the combo.

If this deck is inconsistent, then work towards making it consistent. If you can figure out a way to give this deck a huge boost in numbers to allow it to go off turn 3-4 more consistently sacrificing the consistency of a turn 1-2 kill, I'm sure everyone here is eager to hear about it. One card that invalidated, or made everyone perceive that it invalidated, graveyard strategies is finally gone allowing us to quintessentially go off turn 2 without impunity. Why are we not leveraging that when we could of played any other build that was slower? Play to our strengths, not our weaknesses.

You know what's horrible about Fist of Suns? You need to have an extremely painful mana base. You don't get to combo off turn 1 or 2 with it (depends on the build, but using Simian Spirit Guides to go all in isn't a winning plan in my eyes). Casting a Griselbrand isn't all too exciting in this format. You need to 1) Resolve Fist of Suns 2) Assemble all your colors 3) Not draw multiples. Post sideboard you hope they don't bring in artifact hate, and if you're playing against a counter heavy deck you have to resolve every piece to go off. Janky is the right definition of Fist of Suns. It did well because no one knew how to play around it, and honestly I don't like to hedge my bets in punishing my opponent's ignorance. People already don't know how fast or devastating Goryo's Vengeance is. Why get cuter than a kitten kicking itself in the face?

I've said this before, if you want to play a turn 4 combo deck there are plenty out there that do it more resiliently than this deck. I can't sit here and try to contain myself when you guys are going off on tangents and diluting the potency of this deck. Griselbrand and Emrakul both have their merits, but Goryo's and Through the Breach are by far the fastest ways you get to combo. The ONLY problem the deck has is consistency, it can implode on itself. If we all start jamming control elements into this deck, I will have to politely ask of you to go look up Gifts Ungiven and Unburial Rites as your reanimating deck of choice. Trim the fat, build a combo deck that can be as fast and as consistent as you can. Necrotic Ooze has proven to be consistently on par if you aren't looking to Through the Breach which opens it up to more GY hate, but that is the sort of discussion this forum should follow.

Have you ever found an opponent recovering from an Emrakul attack and winning the game because you drew nothing the following turns? How have you dealt with that? I run a single Creeping Tar Pit and 2 Snapcasters to help with that.

Emrakul has been a love hate relationship. When it's good you usually just win, but anything short of that and you would much rather have Griselbrand. The problem is that Emrakul doesn't help you after you get into play if it doesn't just straight up kill your opponent. Playing against deck like Affinity or Zoo making them sac 6 permanents might seem attractive, but sometimes they might have 7+ total and they just leave their biggest beater or they just draw out of it and proceed to kill you faster than you can reassemble the combo since we expend so many resources to go off the first time. I tried to do away with drawing Emrakul when I didn't want to with Time of Need and as such I've marginalized that problem almost entirely. With Time of Need acting as Griselbrand 5-8 or Emrakul 3-4 I've just been able to go off with Griselbrand more consistently and that is also why I went up to 4 Furies in my list. Occasionally I do cast 2/2 Spirit Apes and go beat down on them. This all negated my need to try and figure out how to build the deck to increase Emrakul's lethality and focus more on existing resources and play lines.

Although if I were running blue, I would definitely include Snapcaster as a way to help improve consistency and an extra way to finish them off instead of running man lands. I generally don't like using lands that slow you down either by not contributing to combo off initially, or hinder your ability to keep certain hands.

Quote from Earthbound21

Why hasn't Goryo and Gifts been merged into one Solar Flare UBW deck? The only thing red really brings is Looting.

Gifts decks have historically been control decks, or at least the card Gifts excels in a control shell. Goryo's Vengeance requires inherent card disadvantage for "speed" or rather the ability to expend resources to close the game out early and on one turn to invalidate interaction with your opponent, a combo deck. Gifts Ungiven and Unbrual Rites can be played in the deck, but it does make for the most amazing packages as a Gifts deck can.

Quote from Ramosgay

This list looks consistent, but there are some points I'd like to discuss:

1) Lightning Axe: I'm a big fan of this card. In this deck it's 2x1 vs aggro, but it can be a dead card in your hand in some match-ups (twins, tron, maybe scapeshift...) because you need a target to be able to cast it. I had found myself with a perfect hand (goryo, grisel, axe, simian...) but hadn't been able to combo because I had no target for the axe. I used to run it, but I splashed blue for Izzet Charm since it seemed mor versatile to me. If you don't feel like splashing blue, maybe you could consider running 1-2 Forbidden Orchard. It provides you with a valid target for axe and fixes your manabase

I do indeed understand what you mean by how it can be a complete dud. All I can say is that it hasn't come up too often in my testing, but that doesn't take away from your rationalization. I might have to look into alternatives like 2-3 Lightning Axe with 1-2 Wild Guess to help with having discard enablers. Alternatively I have also utilized being on the draw where I just keep 8 cards in hand till clean up if I know I can combo the next turn. Either way this merits more exploring on my end.

Quote from Ramosgay

2)I guess your meta is full of control, since you are running two copies of Boseiju. I run 1 mainboard, and it's great when facing blue, but I suffer from it against other decks. Maybe two copies are too risky. Having 2 Boseiju when you don't need them cain be a pain.

So to give you my perspective I have to respond to the second part first. I understand that sometimes Boseiju ends up being your only land when you need to pay 2 to get mana to combo since you're stuck on lands. I have found it more consistent that I end up having too many lands in hand and wouldn't mind having some discard fodder off of a T1 Looting. Either way I believe it is no different in how you play cards like Thoughtseize and making decisions to T1 fetch and shock, it is all calculated risks. As such knowing that the meta in general is shifting towards being blue, at least from the popular forum/twitter/mtgo it behooves of me to be prepared for counter spells. It is more preemptive than anything else, and I haven't had trouble with changing my game plan accordingly when I have access to it.

Quote from Ramosgay

3)Defense Grid in the sideboard. One of the strenghts of this combo is that it can be casted at the end of the opponent's turn. It is a great advantage against control, specially if you have double goryo or 1 goryo / breach in hand. Which decks would you run Defense Grid against? Wouldn't it be better to run some disruption such as Thoughtseize , Guttural Response or even Pact of Negation?

To be fair I've played around with Boseiju, Pact, Defense Grid, and to a more limited extent Thoughtseize, in my sideboard ranging from 3-4 ofs. It's mainly based off of empirical results that Defense Grid has provided the most proactive protection against counters. I am already running Boseiju in the main as of now because I can rationalize beyond results that it is the most flexible mainboard protection since there is limited room. Pact is definitely all in, and in some cases will just give you one more thing to worry about when you are unable to combo kill your opponent when post sideboard you have to trim down some of your consistency. Thoughtseize has been a major let down since it doesn't allow me to use my life total as a resource nearly as frugally and is absolutely no guarantee that you are out of danger as you are at the whims of your opponent's top deck. But the counter point to this is that Thoughtseize is a play style card, I'm sure many people have used it and piloted it with great success, I just don't fall into that category.
Dispel effects are also teetering on the edge for me since it does require your to have extra mana up when you go off, and sometimes I really want that mana for Children and not for reactionary spells. Defense grid can come down as early as turn 1, and as a result negates the requirement to play on their end step. And at the very least they have to use their resources to deal with it either via counters or removal, I'm all for them wasting their cards on something they will have difficulty dealing with than Pentad Prisms and Time of Needs. Though sometimes I do lead off with Time of Need even when I have either one or both of the fatties in hand and draw out their counter spells. Results may vary.

Quote from Ramosgay

What have you removed to add Time of Need?
Currently I have removed two Spoils of the vault to add 2 Snapcaster mages, but I will try Time of Need and see which one works better.

I'm still fiddling with numbers, but as of right now I've taken a page from Gerry Thompson and cut the Blue from the deck. His list was much older and honestly I find it interesting that the core of the deck hasn't changed that much except for the fact that he didn't run Fury nor Children and went for a prolonged approach with what I assume as Griselbrand being a card drawing engine to get Emrakul or sequential Griselbrands to kill the opponent. I don't like Nourishing Shoal as a Children replacement since it takes up more slots and isn't nearly as effective as being to gain 21 life if there is a need to dig deeper/put yourself back at a high life total.

Here's my list for refence:



That is where I am as of right now, by no means the end all be all.

Quote from aregand

I was thinking about adding an Elesh Norn to search with Time of Need to give a toolbox effect against tokens. Anybody tried this?

Groyo's already expends a lot of resources, you want to tutor for Elesh to have her go away EOT and doesn't actually kill them? I abide by the rule "Does this kill my opponent any faster or better than Griselbrand or Emrakul?"

Quote from TheRogue

the idea that bitterblossom will make a sea of 1/1 flyers that makes attacking with griselbrand impractical and emrakul's annihilator less effective, is somewhat irrelevant. theres already other decks doing just that with lingering souls, as well as affinity throwing ornithopter in the way of either of our legends.

I'd say if your already experienced in fighting through either of those situations, then adapting Fury of the horde version to cope with bitterblossom shouldn't be much of a stretch. just remember to pack your electrikerys and/or electroylze.

He's right. I also forgot to mention earlier that while in my testing against Zoo we realized that Zoo will put themselves at 14-15 life by turn 3 very consistently because of their fetching of lands and shock lands. I feel that will be with a bitterblossom, and as such I think Emrakul will be a 1 hit kill just like in the Zoo match up for Faeries. Thus entirely negating the need to even worry about flying tokens since you wiped out their entire board.

I'm playing Time of Need right now to help smooth out the consistency, allowing me to choose the fatty of choice if there is need to be specific. So far it may have slowed me down by a small percentage, but has added to my turn 3/4 combo kill consistency.

I will not delve too deep into this discussion on faeries as it detracts from the topic, but to indulge you gentlemen you have to understand that Faeries with Bitterblossom is in no way going to be any different than the UR Delver list that popped up at the end of last year. It will be "popular" and people will understand it is underwhelming in the Modern format due to the already existing strategies that undermine a tempo game plan. Jund is absolutely still a deck, with hand disruption and a 2cmc uncounterable vindicate will definitely overwhelm a deck like faeries DRS or not. Affinity has no problem with a deck that needs a turn 2 Bitterblossom to help it snowball out of control when it can effectively attack through over time when there is the inevitability of losing 1 life per turn. I will give this one caveat, a deck that were to take the strategy of being the anti-combo deck using a large quantity of counters may indeed be a tricky match up. But for that deck to crop up there would be a reason for it to be invented, and as of right now this deck is obscure enough to not be on everyone's radar. Faeries could be that shell for such a deck to exist, but do you understand that if it draws too much of the wrong half of the deck it gets completely run over by the rest of the format? I will more than welcome a deck that is devoted to attempt to hate on one particular deck as it is dismantled by the already top tier decks that have proven themselves in the format since it's inception, let alone the Naya Zoo decks that will be seen play regardless if it is the best strategy in the format analogous to the amount of burn being played.

To get back to the point of this deck, if you don't go for the Fury of the Horde list you have single handedly removed the reason to play this deck over any other turn 4 combo deck: it can combo Turn 1, Turn 2, Turn 3, and consistently turn 4. You cannot say the same for many, if at all, for any combo deck. If you are looking for a combo strategy that's just different but is just more consistent then by all means pick your poison. And to really build upon everything that has been said so far, I would consider "tech" or a strong deviation of the originial strategy/build if it had the figures to back it up. Todd Anderson was the last person to take it to a Modern Daily event and even get featured in the top 8, I heard at GP Prague there were a trio that Day 2'ed but last I heard it was the fist of suns tech to catch people off guard not the Ooze build.

The only grave hate I've been losing sleep over has been Surgical Extraction, and honestly I'm only concerned because Zoo is a damn fast aggro deck that can afford to play 1-2 threats and sit behind an extraction. We all know a turn 3 Through the Breach is your only hope at that point, and it has to be Emrakul because Griselbrand is not going to stabilize you at that point if you need to draw cards when they can just bolt you to death after smacking you with impunity with a 3/3. This is not off educated guess work either, it is after running a gauntlet with my play test group to get a feel for the post ban era that we found going for Griselbrand is extremely dangerous after going to <14 life on turn 2+ since they can just burn you right there on the spot after you activate Girselbrand once and you whiff. Zoo is also another reason why playing Thoughtseize seems like suicide and where Lightning Axe supersedes the potential draw back post sideboard.

Scavenging Ooze main or side has been extremely underwhelming against this deck since they need to have either 2 green sources open to not open themselves up to double Groyo's, or the simple fact that there still is Through the Breach to lean on. Either way we are forcing the deck with Scavenging Ooze to play off of a couple lands or risk just getting blown out. That effectively put Scavenging Ooze as a turn 3 GY hate card and honestly that isn't much assurance for anybody playing against this deck.

What everyone really should be concerned about is their Twin match up. It is an absolute nightmare no matter what build you play. Turn 3 is where this deck begins to find its legs and have the potential to combo. That also happens to be the turn Twin can just make you tap your fatty of choice. Also they do play dispel, so there goes a turn 1 or 2 most of the time post sideboard unless you happen to have Boseiju or Pact as insurance.

Seriously, they just unleashed a can of worms... there is no reason in my mind why this deck should not be taking over the tournament scene in the near future with the bannings of DRS.

So my constant problem I've been having with this deck, albeit I've only played in 8 mans, is the inability to dig deep enough for all the key cards needed to combo off consistently. My record hasn't been all too bad, probably somewhere in the 45-55% avg win rate, but despite running a more cantrip heavy build I still find that it isn't enough to gain traction when RNG kicks in. That is some times I keep a 3 serum vision hand with a faithless looting and lands and just durdle as my opponent just smacks in for lethal on T5.

I saw the Fist of Suns list that was going around last week, and I at first didn't like it. The concept of running fist is that it takes even more resources to combo off with it, and it required the Emrakul side of the deck to be the most effective. And then on the other end you have to play looting effects for Goryo's Vengeance and it seems all bad since they directly contradict each other's game plan. So I tried to tinker with the list a little by stream lining the deck to be a Emrakul deck that uses Through the Breach and Fist of Suns to put an Emrakul into play by generating lots of mana by turn 4. I ran cards like Ancient Stirrings and Time of Need to find Emrakul and cut Griselbrand entirely and gave it a spin. Also note that I cut a lot of the can trips for Peer Through Depths and kept in Serum Visions as my only other dig spells. It had the advantage of not running out of the GY, but it was hell when every one packs artifact hate in the sideboards and can anticipate a Through the Breach by holding counters. All in all it was a failed approach since they all needed way to many resources to combo something that isn't going to stay in play to win the game half the time.

So I took what I learned from the silly brew and tried to reapply the core to Modern Tin Fins/Griselbrand Reanimator. Time of need is one of the most consistent ways to tutor the exact card you need for the price of 1G. Peer Through Depths digs really deep and gets a discard spell, Goryo's Vengeance at instant speed, or Through the Breach if you are having trouble dealing with grave hate. Albeit it isn't as fast since they are both 2cmc, but they don't need to be a full 4 ofs when running in conjunction with more looting effects to help filter through the deck.

Also the mana for the Fist of Suns list is 8 rainbow lands, which helps a great deal when trying to run 5 colors. I don't think I can go back to a janky looking mana base when the benefits of being able to generate all the colors with minor pitfalls don't seem to be all to egregious, and also something very relevant to note is that scalding tarn is the best fetchland when splashing green as it fetches almost every main color source you require: Blood Crypt, Steam Vents, Watery Grave, Breeding Pool, Stomping Grounds.

What do you guys find the biggest problem when piloting the deck? I know I absolutely hate it when I have no option but to dump an Emrakul or the combo eot to Izzet Charm when you draw the combo off of it but don't have the mana to cast Goryo's on the Griselbrand you discard a turn cycle ago.

Hey all, it's been a while since I've revisited this shell. In short, Modern season died and without a huge support for the format every week I too faded into finding other things to tinker with, namely legacy. The one thing I loved about this deck was the enigma of Trinket Mage and cmc 0-1 artifacts that shut off engines, or render a resource null. Since GP San Diego the only Modern decks I've been playing with have been UWR, Jund, and Junk. So I have a fair bit of knowledge I feel like that I didn't before I went down to San Diego.

So right now I've been putting the core concept of the deck through its paces again. Previously I was on UWR, before that BUG. Now it is Esper colors with a major twist and I think it deviates to a large extent from where this journey started.



So I've identified that Tezzeret isn't nearly as good as he is in Legacy. It sounds blasphemous to cut out what attracted me to the build in the first place, but that's what I've identified. The deck at its core was a prison/control deck that utilized soft locks to land a haymaker and close the game out in quick succession. Tezzeret is a wonderful grind card, but the thing that after testing/researching/debating/realizing was that once you had the corresponding artifact to lock your opponent Tezzeret didn't help sustain you in the realm of keeping your opponent locked out of doing other things to kill you, nor did it force your opponent's concession since it was an unbeatable threat. There isn't a Thopter/Sword combo to lean on to stabilize, nor is Chalice on 1 lights out for most decks in the format. I leaned on Wurmcoil for a lot of my matches in testing, so I wanted to push that angle a little more but it has been so intermittent since then I haven't really given it much thought till this past week.

This isn't to say Tezzeret doesn't have a place in this deck, but I'm diverging away to see where this takes me and hope to collaborate ideas with the greater internet community to see where this takes off. So there isn't much question what I've filled in since then by looking at my deck list. There's a Modern 1k coming up soon in my local area and my group have been starting to ramp up testing for it since most of us who play legacy already have had a fair share of playing legacy since SCG LA. I'm more than certain if this is the final direction I'm taking with Uxx Thirst/Shackles, I'm probably gonna have to jump off this thread since it is drastically different from what it was intended for but who knows, I might just go back to playing BUG since I had the most success with that build.

It's the most reliable way to counter GY hate