MTG Salvation

• Cloud Key -> Honor-Worn Shaku It is true that both could be run but I still think there is a diminishing return on an over abundance of cost reducers since we really only need one at a time. There is an advantage to Honor-Worn Shaku in that it can be used for mana for artifacts still and really should be at least a Worn Powerstone level artifact here with the possibility to be a cost reducer as well for looping squee. Great call from imdehaven.

• Hoarding Dragon -> Tormenting Voice: There was the question of how much we wanted any one artifact. Paying five mana and needing a sac outlet when we won't really be abusing creatures is a little awkward. Instead we wanted to move some cheap filter into the list and see if it helps move the list along.
• Heirloom Blade -> Wild Guess: The blade proved to be kind of a lot of mana to play and then equip each time. There is some value to it but it is fairly specific in what it gets and we only have so many goblins in the list.
• Godo, Bandit Warlord -> Cathartic Reunion: Godo was in here almost 100% to get skullclamp and we just were not sure that we could justify the cost to get just that one card. There are a few others like Sword of the Animist but by the time you get to 6 mana to cast godo it looks less appealing to pay 6 mana to go get it.
• Vedalken Orrery -> Pirate's Pillage: Sometimes having mass flash / haste is huge. This list just did not seem to care as much as some of the other mono red projects we had done previously and giving up a card to have flash seems a little risky given how much hate it brings down on itself. I love Orrery but its a question of if it pulls the weight of the hate it brings to itself and in this list I was not sure that it would justify a card drawn. The fact that Pirate's Pillage costs 3R instead of RR like Wild Guess is actually an advantage as it means we can filter colorless mana and or store mana between turns. I think its one of the cooler filters of late and I want to give it a shot.
• Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician -> Azor's Gateway: Ib is really cool and there are a lot of things where landing Ib can end the game for you. My problem was more that every time I drew him he was bad. He seems like a goblin that you tutor for when he is right and any other time I saw him he was just something that rotted in hand. There totally are times where you might be sitting on a boardstate where resolving him and his tokens ends the game I just had a hard time making room for him right now given that it was a very specific setup for him to work out.
• Goblin Welder -> Faithless Looting: Most of our artifacts are good but they are value over time artifacts. Some of them are better than others but the welder is slow and a big target. I found him to be slow and rather reactive in this list where I tend to like him more when there are proactive things I want to be doing with him. The way I was trying to use him here made it a question of if something like Daretti, Scrap Savant.
• Knollspine Dragon -> Bontu's Monument: Knollspine was just so expensive to cast and very winmore in that he usually seemed good if the deck was doing good. Bontu's Monument should act like another Impact Tremmors with the difference being its interaction with tokens to which we only have Krenko and Siege Gang left in the list that make tokens. Overall I think it should be a similar effect and the little bit of lifegain on the monument might make a difference.
• Expedition Map -> Aetherflux Reservoir: I just found that there was not as much utility to the landbase as I wanted to play the map. When I run the map I generally want there to be a high priority land like a big mana land or something to speed me into action faster and I am not convinced that there is a nonbasic we need enough to run the map. Nykthos is probably the biggest hit we have and even when I was doing well this last week it was never tapping for more than like 6 I think at its highest. I think there is room to play sort of a Squee storm based plan with the Reservoir. We don't have much to recover life and the ability to fire up a bunch of lifegain and then fire the cannon off to kill players is a real thing for this deck.
• Helm of Possession -> Scrabbling Claws: Overall, we had some concerns with how much mana it was for the helm as well to use it. Beyond that we need something to sac and something to sac the creature we steal to because most of my experiences with this card is that it gets answered the turn it gets played. We have lots of goblin sac outlets but lots of those won't transfer all that well to a card like this. Scrabbling Claws is a cheap cantrip that also serves an important role.
• Golden Guardian -> Thermopod: I love Golden Guardian and I think its a really cool card. That said, the fact that our creatures are small means we need a small creature to fight and kill and then a sac outlet to throw it to. Its an interesting card but this might not be the best list for it. Thermopod seems a bit expensive to cast but its an effect I find myself wanting more of.
• Divergent Transformations -> Tuktuk Scrapper: when we brought in the transformations I thought that I would want to use it on squee more than it turned out I did. We run a lot of funky little goblins that sometimes need the right timing. Overall I just found myself not that impressed with it. Tuktuk Scrapper might not seem huge but we have a ton of ways to tutor for it which I think I am more interested in than the ability to value shatter multiple artifacts.
• City of Shadows -> Scavenger Grounds: I drew and had some issues with the city. Early in the game I had other things I was trying to do and city requires a lot of attention to bring up to speed. The turn you play it you can't get any mana out of it and given we are not really a token deck it has the problem that every time you use it you need to cast another creature (probably squee). The amount of negative tempo it has is actually sort of staggering when I actually had it in hand I found I could never play it over another land. The one time I got it early I also happened to have Squee equipped up with a Sword of the Animist and the additional cost to re equip to trigger my land there was just not going to happen. I had thought that City would be better early but I found that its just overall too much negative tempo without a commander like Derevi, Empyrial Tactician who can untap it to use it multiple times in a turn. I was a bit surprised that there really seemed to be very little graveyard dependence that I had with hits deck so adding Scavenger Grounds takes up very little room in the list but it gives me an emergency answer to graveyard abuse.
• Mountain -> Flamekin Village: I think there is a little bit of wiggle room to toy with some different land configs. The village does ETB tapped but it still gives red and we have three creatures (Goblin Sharpshooter, Krenko, Mob Boss, and Moggcatcher) that care about haste. I noticed in some situations I was hesitant to play them without haste or flash. I think its a small concession to make this swap as the ETB tapped doesn't hurt me much as I don't have much of it and being a nonbasic land only matters slightly on 2/3 of the mana doublers.

• Tuktuk Scrapper -> Shard Phoenix I saw the scrapper a few times and while yes, there are artifacts that need to die, I seemed to never be able to cast it instead of wheeling it for something else and it was never appropriate for me to tutor the card. There are artifacts that need to die, the problem is partially that the way in which we win is so rarely reliant on an artifact going away. Grafdigger's Cage is one of very few artifacts I could name that would be a big problem for this deck to get past but I see it so rarely (essentially never) that I would have a hard time making room for an answer until and unless someone started countering me with it.
• Reforge the Soul -> Chandra, Flamecaller I had a slow start one game and I had to spend most of my turn casting Reforge the Soul not as a miracle and it was literally.... the slowest and worst feeling I had. Chandra, Flamecaller feels a little better in that if I am behind and getting trained by my opponents I can cast her as a psudo sweeper. The fact that she is a little versatile between sweeper and draw / filter seems nice.
• Blasting Station -> Blasphemous Act Blasting Station was one of my lower tier sac outlets and I found that maybe I didn't need it. Its still a decent card I just felt it was lower tier for me in my needs right now and the tempo of Blasphemous Act seems great as I can sweep the board for cheap and keep moving.
• Faithless Looting -> Ensnaring Bridge - I do like Faithless Looting but it is technically card disadvantage in favor of filter. I need more ways to slow the game down and Ensnaring Bridge seems like a great way to do that. There is still some concern about the bridge conflicting with Door of Destinies or to a lesser degree Homura, Human Ascendant but I would say 95% of the time the way this deck does its damage and kills people is not through means of combat damage.
• 1 Mountain -> Thawing Glaciers I realized that I need to just keep hitting my land drops as the game goes on and Thawing seems like a good way to do that. It seems like I often have some trouble hitting lands when it gets to 5+ sometimes just due to not drawing enough cards and I think the value of thawing will be good. I like how in an opening hand I can use T1 and T2 on it and still land squee on curve. It just gives me another means of stretching my value for this deck which tends to be more of a mid - late game combo that requires a bunch of mana to work.

• Krenko, Mob Boss -> Thaumatic Compass - I noticed a continued trend that I always felt that Krenko was too slow for the list. Really I don't run haste or flash for the most part and without having either of those I have not wanted it most every time I have drawn this card. I don't really have a lot of ways to boost my goblin count either so it really came down to a question of if I could opening hand it or not which every time I saw it I found I had better things to do. Thaumatic Compass can be handy in that when it flips, it flips to be ramp and a potential removal tool. The cost to use the maze effect seems very affordable. I tried out Mysifying Maze even though it never made the list my issue was constantly the fact that the cost to use it was too high given how many threats constantly come my direction.
• Moggcatcher -> Vance's Blasting Cannons moggcatcher has the same issue as Krenko in being that he is something that people should panic remove and I don't have much to haste / flash to enable him to the point that he feels like a good play. Vance's Blasting Cannons is a card that made a very early list of ours for squee but we cut it not knowing if we could chain cast well enough. I like that if its drawn early its card advantage and as it makes it later it turns into ramp / removal. Being that we repeat cast squee as part of what we do I think we have the consistancy to flip this like I want. It seems like a really cool card and I would love to see what it can do.
• Shard Phoenix -> Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - so, really I love everything about ugin other than his cost. Everything else about him seems like what I want for my removal suite. His flexibility and the fact that he often stays in play after you use him the first turn as a sweeper is the reason I am running him over All is Dust. We are also cutting a lot of the creatures in this change so our colorless effects are a bit higher with this change and things like Managorger Hydra make me want to just punt it through the window when I am playing squee.
• Siege-Gang Commander -> Inspiring Statuary I have seen siege gang show up in my hand a few times now and I have yet to cast it. Given that we often use squee as blast fodder it seems like the bodies to block and clog up the field is kind of covered to some extent by squee already. The cost to play and use the gang in a turn is kind of high as well not to mention that its 2 mana to do 2 damage which feels a little so so on top of the cost to cast them upfront. I just have not been finding myself liking the gang that much right now. Inspiring Statuary seems interesting to me because so few of our artifacts actually tap to do things so this seems like a potential to provide quite a bit of mana in a turn. I want to try this out at least but its also possible that something like Thran Dynamo might be a little more stable but I want to test this out and see how it runs. I can think of a lot of games where I sit with 2-4 artifacts in play and need to cast some sort of squee enabler before looping squee.
• Kher Keep -> Thespian's Stage Kher Keep has been..... not really what I need given that most of the time that a token might do anything I can loop suqee for less mana than the keep. I want to try out the stage in part because it can still copy basic lands in a pinch but there is the remote chance that I copy Lost Vale which is non legendary. There is also the chance that I copy someone else's Nykthos or Coffers if an Urborg is in play.
• Flamekin Village -> Mountain being that we are cutting a lot of our things that would have cared about haste, we are also moving to a basic land which has the potential to double off a mana doubler. It also removes an ETB tapped land which is probably not the end of the world for a control / combo list but I guess every little bit of efficiency I will take.

• Impact Tremors -> Gate to the Afterlife I do like impact tremmors but my concern is often that its impact is such that it needs to live for somewhat of a long time for me to feel it pays off so the impact is slow to add up and often it needs to live a long time or be added onto another card for it to add up. Gate to the Afterlife is really really strong filter and the bit of lifegain. The difference to me is that Gate can stall and get me to a stronger card while Impact Tremmors needs to live a long time and or be combined with another effect.
• Inspiring Statuary -> Mana Geyser I am just trying out a few ramp options. I think the potential of the burst of mana with Geyser could be strong for a big play turn.
• Wild Guess -> Outpost Siege I have had some conflicting results with Outpost Siege in the past but I can actually see both sides of it being potentially appropriate in here. The draw seems a bit better than the pings but I want to test it at least.

• Tormenting Voice -> Chain Reaction I wanted to pick up another wrath effect and it seems like right now Chain Reaction might be more appropriate from the standpoint of casting cost and effect. I just need to slow people down more and I am not seeing the wraths I run quite frequent enough right now. I have been noticing with my cheap filter that often they are not quite good enough in that a lot of my deck has the same kind of function and I don't gain benefit from my graveyard much with this deck.

Early Game

Mid Game

Late Game