MTG Salvation

To follow up on my earlier post, Simic Charm was fine sometimes but simply too expensive. I had to force myself to board it in (it never felt like it was great for a match-up) and it was sometimes too slow when I drew it. I've warmed up to Dismember quite a bit after more experience and needing cheap answers to Grim Flayers, Kiln Fiends, Thought-Knot Seers, etc. The card is painful but it's extremely efficient and seems well-positioned.

I may as well add a couple of other testing notes. I had been running 1 Unravel the Aetherin the board as an answer to Chalice of the Void on one, but Viridian Corrupter is better for that job. I'll be testing the list posted here for a little bit, even though Kitchen Finks has been such a star out of the board.

I'm returning to infect after some time spent away from the game. Having played some leagues in MTGO with a fairly stock list, I've gotten a feel for what most of the cards are for; however, I can't help but feel like Dismember isn't pulling its weight. Bringing it in against aggro decks, like Zoo, might be necessary, but it's so painful that I often question the plays I make. For example, it's not uncommon for me to fetch a Breeding Pool untapped to kill a mana dork or goyf while taking 7 self-inflicted points of damage. What a beating! Sometimes that's exactly what you need, but I've begun to wonder if an Unsummon effect wouldn't achieve the same goals.

With a quick search, I found some brief discussion of the idea about a year ago, but no notes on testing. Simic Charm was mentioned more recently and the card is enticingly flexible. The concern, of course, is how difficult casting it is compared to Dismember or even Unsummon.

I'm going to try shaving a Dismember from the board for a Simic Charm, run it through a few leagues, and see how it plays.

Haven't tried lab man, but Borby is nice because you can simply reanimate him and bolt a few creatures. He doubles as an expensive green card to pitch to shoal.

Haven't posted in a while because I hadn't been playing this for a while (BFZ limited captured my attention). My list is similar to the one on the last page but I'm now on 18 lands, 0 Manamorphose, 0 Izzet Charm, and 0 Compulsive Research; the cuts have been replaced with 3 Thought Scours and 2 Snapcaster Mages. Those 5 slots are basically flex; in my estimation, they allow for the most consistent and fastest combo assembly, but they can be swapped for hand disruption post-board and the deck is still fine.

Snapcaster Mage is good with stuff like Faithless Looting and Thought Scour (which okay on its own if you're trying to find a demon). Maybe these slots should just be Schemings and Izzet Charms. I still like Jace as a 3-of, but other than that I agree with a lot of what Kathal is doing.

If you've got two, I suggest trying out the Jaces. You don't need a playset to get a sense of what they do for the deck.

For sure. I mostly play on MTGO and people still get confused about what's going on -- in person, you need to have a deep understanding of the rules to keep things straight. My best advice would be to just let each interaction with Lightning Storm resolve before discarding another land. This keeps the stack as simple as possible.

@BatHickey:

The possible interactions are this:

• They may spend 2 life or a blue mana to redirect the spell to Spellskite until they run out of mana and life.
• Both players may discard lands to redirect the spell until they run out of lands to discard.

Their best chance with Spellskite is to not activate it or discard any lands until you have discarded enough lands to make Lightning Storm deal lethal damage to them. Then they let all of those triggers resolve and finally they start interacting with the spell.

To kill them with a spellskite out, you need an extra land (on top of the ones you need to discard to reduce their life total to 0) for each 2 life they have (starting at 3), each blue mana they have, and each land they have in hand -- in other words, if they're at 19 life with a spellskite out, you mus discard 8 lands to lightning storm to make it lethal, then 9 more lands to "counter" each activation of spellskite, then 1 more land for each one they discard, and finally 1 more for each blue mana they have available. You may have to discard 18 lands, which you won't necessarily have access to.

Again, the reason for this is that they don't need to activate spellskite or discard any lands until you have lethal damage pointed at their face. Once you do, they retarget the spell (in one of the ways described above) one time and force you to answer it by letting their retargeting resolve and then discarding a land to re-retarget the spell at their face (then they let that resolve, and may repeat their retargeting).

I hope that is helpful. (It's a whole lot simpler if you have a single Slaughter Pact, Laboratory Maniac, Echoing Truth, or piece of artifact removal.)

@Killer_manfred: What does this your list do? Cobra + Crab + Bloom + Loam generates a bunch of mana and mill, then you've got some worthless memnites, trinket mages, noxious revivals, and mystic retrievals...?

The core synergies of your deck are Bloom + Loam + Landfall triggers and self-mill + Vengevine. There's reasonable overlap, since Hedron Crab and Loam fill roles in both synergies.

• Summer Bloom
  
• Lotus Cobra
  
• Hedron Crab
  
• Life from the Loam
  
• Vengevine
  

Then you have extra self-mill stuff in Golgari Grave-Troll and Faithless Looting. Then you have a couple Memnites -- which serve a singular purpose of triggering Vengemvines, it seems -- and a bunch of random ways to tutor them up. Now, I know you said you don't like Gravecrawlers, but they're leagues better than your Memnite package. Why not cut out all the memnite nonsense and flesh out the list with baby Jace, Birds of Paradise, and maybe Scythe Leopard (sticking to Temur)? You could also go for the Knightfall combo, since it has other synergies with the list.

I tracked my last 20 matches on MTGO here. Included in that is a collection of the modern league (4-1) and assorted 8-man and 2-man queues. I won 14 of the matches; one of the losses should have been a win, but I was tired and accidentally decked myself.

This is obviously a tiny sample size and I'll continue to track my results -- especially considering I already went through the trouble of making that spreadsheet! Still, it's safe to say the results are promising thus far.

Here's my current list:


The SB is still a work in progress, as is the mana base (though I'm not giving that too much attention for now, since it's functional). I don't really like taking out more than 3 cards from the main, and they're 1 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, 1 Izzet Charm, and 1 Compulsive Research. I don't always like taking out Goryo's even if I know they boarded in GY hate, since they might not even draw it. It's possible that the SB should contain 2 TTB and two Desperate Ritual to improve our chances of spitting out a quick demon against, like, infect. Of course, a few Darkblasts in the board would improve that match-up, too. Now that I'm actually thinking about it, the SB I would try next is this:


That's still a bit raw, but it's probably better than what I've been playing with. I'm always interested in other opinions on my cards. I'll try to start keeping track of which turn the games are ending on, since I'm noticing a lot of turn 3 kills.

@Dr_holiday:

Drawing Griselbrand is great, but not drawing him isn't the end of the world. We can summon Worldspine Wurm with ttb or reanimate a borby; the former is usually game-winning, and the latter is usually able to at least function as a couple of bolts plus card draw and damage. Still, I've also been intrigued by Jinny, but he's hard to justify over Emrakul.

A couple other cards I'm testing:

• Spoils of the Vault: The idea being that we're equipped to lose some life with the Shoal package and it's a cheap and instant tutor for either Griselbrand or a way to put him into play. Honestly, it's not great in a lot of match-ups. If they're pressuring your life total, it's a whiff, and it can be unnecessarily risky in other cases. I think a copy in the board when you need to combo more quickly than the opponent is fine, but in my testing it doesn't belong in the main deck (it's generally the first card I side out).
• Compulsive Research: I'm running one copy in the main. There should be at least two in the 75, I think. It provides card advantage, a discard outlet, and moderate digging.

I might try a copy of Steam Augury in the board against more controlling decks. I'm sure it's good, but it might just be too expensive. Similarly, I plan on testing Dark Petition.

A couple of notes with my list (see previous page for now, I'll post my exact current list tonight):

• I've been happy with 3 bJace's and 2 copies of Through the Breach.
• Blood Moon has been under-performing out of my sideboard. Maybe I just don't know when it's going to be good, but I put it in against an Esper list and it was just a brick. The guy had an Island in hand when I cast it one game, so maybe that was just unlucky, but it sucked in both post-board games. It doesn't help that my list is three colors.
• Desolate Lighthouse might just belong in the sideboard. When it's good, it's great, but the 60 is really tight and there are a lot of cards that could fit in that slot.
• I'm still working on a good sideboard plan. I sometimes trim 1 Goryo's Vengeance if I expect graveyard hate, or a Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and a Compulsive Research if I know I need to be fast, or a Spoils of the Vault if I know my life total will be pressured, or as a last resort I will cut some number of Serum Visions; still, it's really difficult to make room for sideboard cards. Maybe this should just mean I need to put only very hateful cards in the board, since stuff like Pithing Needle rarely makes it in.

@Dos_Rogue: Through the Breach (TTB) is, in my mind, plan b. It's usually at least twice as expensive as Goryo's Vengeance (unless you splice the latter). The reason I play it is that it gets a Worldspine Wurm into play, dodges graveyard hate, and is kind of like more copies of goryo's. Drawing 2 TTBs feels bad and I frequently find myself discarding even the first copy. I'd cut an Izzet Charm before I'd cut any number of Jaces if you want to add a third TTB. (The first Charm is sweet and offers a lot of flexibility, but it's worse once they know you're playing it.)

Side note: I spent about a week away from this list; I was mucking around with a Narset build, but I've given up on that so this is what I'll be playing with on MTGO for the foreseeable future. That list seemed sweet and was fun to brew, but it was wildly inconsistent and just much less powerful than a shoal package.

One quick note on the list is that I'm playing a Desolate Lighthouse and that the mana can sometimes be painful -- largely due to the inclusion of Izzet Charm. I might try out some number of tango lands, but we really want a UR one and having an opener with only one or two of those is not going to feel good.

In general, this approach came about because I figured Serum Visions and baby Jace were better options than stuff like Pentad Prism, Tormenting Voice, and Night's Whisper. Since there are at least a couple people interested, I'll start tracking my results (and playing sober) so I can share something more than "it seems to be doing well."

My opinion, KingOfThePandas, is that if you're taking out Distortion Strike you probably don't need Spell Pierce since you're running 3 Blessings. I'd consider replacing them with another Groundswell and another Become Immense. But that's just my opinion.

Cool idea. I like the idea of Relic of Progenitus a lot in a list like this. Looks like the list is just a draft, but casting Ulamog seems ambitious (requires resolving a herder or sower almost always).I think you need more of a solid game plan aside from "exile stuff and get value with Blight Herder and Oblivion Sower."

Dissipate or Syncopate could be reasonable in small quantities. Surgical Extraction could be cute but is probably worthless except in the board.

Delay would be at its absolute best in a list with these Eldrazi and I think it's absolutely worth it. (That card alone makes me want to try this out.)

Here's my question: if we call casting a monster off of Blight Herder or Oblivion Sower plan A, what is plan B? Serum Visions is mostly used in combo decks. Remand, too, is used in combo decks -- also tempo decks. But the rest of the list looks more like midrange/control.

edit: I also like Scavenging Ooze, but 4 copies may be too many. I think we need ramp if we're playing 5 and 6 cmc creatures as our main plan. Birds of Paradise, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Farseek, or Sylvan Caryatid would be reasonable.

Can you post your decklist?

For real though, it's hard to give an answer without knowing how many you're running and what the rest of your list looks like. Replacing them with counters is okay, but replacing them with more pump might make more sense. It also depends on your meta, a bit.