MTG Salvation

Throw another voice on the pile of deck fun matters. It's a tricky sweet spot to try to land - you've gotta like it, it's gotta be good times to play, and your playgroup can't hate it too much. Any one of those goes to hell and the deck becomes jeopardised. A nontrivial amount of paper happens because of either of the first two going wrong, and then the deck lives in a drawer until I need something for a different build. The only times I feel sad these days is if I piece together a list that I'm fond of, but find out my opposition hates. I rushed Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder + Tymna the Weaver because the shell was a riot to pilot, plus come on, Wei Scout unironically used in EDH. Unfortunately, it was just greeted by sighs and groans, in spite of me openly trying to emulate another group member's build style. I tried to learn from my mistake, and didn't force Grothama, All-Devouring into paper through similar groans from Cockatrice testing.

A deck I wish worked out was my Xantcha, Sleeper Agent draft. The meta didn't mind, probably because I always felt like I was a few turns behind what everyone else was doing. The only way to get the deck to stop sucking would be to look into wrath crawl'y elements that the foes would hate, so I didn't even bother. Tricky one to balance, as mentioned.

I won't lie, the exile is pretty good. I'll eagerly await your report. There are times I wish I had more interactivity in the list.

Different thread, different deck, fair game by me

That's not that shabby an idea, but without haste/flicker Mangara feels inferior to Meteor Golem. That thing comes in, boom, thing is kill. If you draw flicker later - cool. This needs to live a full go of turns around the table, and if you choose to use him for removal before you land flicker he's gone. True, he costs less, but I feel we can stomach the overhead here.

I got to play Feather against some different decks recently, including braving a Cockatrice pub. Turns out the lack of board state worries are not altogether unfounded - one game saw The Mimeoplasm generate 50+ untargetable flying power and beeline my face, leading me to barely scrape by with an indestructible Feather on defensive duty against the biggest swinger as some lesser beefslabs snuck by. The whole game was a circus of blunders (ate an unnecessary Toxic Deluge as I got greedy and cantripped, wanting to get maximum value off a scry that made Feather work on defence) and questionable focusing (how was I on nine with no board or meaningful spells in circulation when the Intet with a mountain of mana, Swarm Intelligence and no blocking power was absolutely untouched?). I managed to topdeck Scroll of the Masters on my last turn and went out in a blaze of glory, scoring enough counters on there to take the Mim over halfway down to a voltron kill in one slam. When facing various stereotypical EDH go-wides, even having a defensive 1/1 chump army often feels like trying to plug up cartoon-style leak springs. The story's a bit different if the 1/1s are monks or you have Phalanx Leader, but this is nevertheless a valid concern for most Feather board states. The list is also quite light on wincons, and could use a smidge of souping up in that department.

Two birds, one stone!



There's no denying that in all scenarios where the level of you doing stuff is of some importance (there's no point comparing how hard you're winning if you're ripping 10+ spells a turn), Guttersnipe is better at chewing life than Aetherflux Reservoir. Even if you're not particularly shredtastic, an unattended gobbo is gonna end the game in about four turns on an average mid-game setup. In the same scenario, Reservoir's going to gain you about 20 life per turn cycle, translating to ~1.5 people dead in the same time frame. However, it does gain you life. As such, you can stem the bleeding a bit, and the Reservoir is still a sensible game ender, particularly when you go off the rails a bit later on. It also allows for some interesting political tricksiness. In that Mim game, had the topdeck been the Reservoir rather than the Scroll, I'd have managed to churn enough life in the turn to hold the threat of a 50-damage lazor over the Mim and get him to not touch me again. Oh yeah, and screwing with the stack to get maximum benefit from it is also a blast. I was considering Intimidation Bolt, but that's just a panic fog of sorts by comparison. I have nothing against other people killing each other May work it in at some point going forward if I still feel troubled on this field. I'm also starting to examine rocks for a potential Thought Vessel slot.

In terms of cuts, I ended up doing the unthinkable and actually going after my protection suite. Valorous Stance may be modular, but gets used as removal infrequently. Plus, the toughness clause does limit it to some extent. All other indestructibility is one mana (Ajani's Presence, Sheltering Light) or effectively free (Ephemeral Shields). Spending two mana on it does not feel super good. At two mana, you get end-of-turn flickers, and plain indestructibility is nowhere near the same ballpark as that. Was considering offing Faith's Shield as well, but ultimately decided to keep it in for protecting the artifact haymakers. Especially as there's a new one in town.

My main gripes with the list is a number of rather suboptimal dorks and an absolute lack of instant speed spot removal. Land ramp is superior when possible, and you're in green. As such, it's available. I get that Beastcaller Savant helps you get out a turn three Arcades, but I feel this task would be better accomplished by Nature's Lore (especially if you fork over for the missing shocks and slot in the AKH G/W land). The other low-drop ramp chickens that are a bit iffy (Saruli Caretaker, Sylvan Caryatid, Ulvenwald Captive) at least have the decency of being defenders, so that might be worth it for you. Edge of Autumn and Song of Freyalise are a bit dubious. It's not like once you hit five lands you don't need any more mana, silly card. The only bit of affordable (i.e. not Three Visits) turn three Arcades land ramp the list is missing would be Search for Tomorrow. You could also look into the classic Cultivate variants, or even consider Wayfarer's Bauble/Font of Fertility.

As for spot removal, I'd start with Beast Within and Swords to Plowshares. Neither will break the bank, both will work quite well. Path to Exile would be lovely, but may be a bit outside budget?

I run Profane Procession, and I don't actually use it as removal that much. It's a rattlesnake play - don't come at me, bro, or I'll eat your guy. I have the comfort of an instant speed mana sink out of the command zone, so I get to hold it up and scare people away. Probably wouldn't recommend for general use.

It's a solid card in here. As mentioned, the fail case is you just put on some sort of value instant and don't open yourself up to response blowouts. And the best case if you instakill the table off this. A reasonable use case is removal, Niveous Wisps is also a good one.

Sorry, but that's a couple of tiers of jank beyond even meriting consideration. I'm already not running Chromatic Lantern

The initial primer work has finished, to match the timing of me papering the list out. Check out the snazzy new OP with far too many words, and the chart thing. I believe I state my case pretty sensibly. If any of you have any feedback, it'd be much appreciated

As is typical for me when scraping one of those primer things together, I looked at some cards I wasn't running while writing up options. I may have had a weird, situational Karn, Silver Golem thought that didn't go anywhere, but I spotted an easy way to spruce up my mana base.



Both of these lands tap for both colours. That's pretty handy in the deck, given its penchant for casting cheap, coloured-heavy stuff. The list should be fast enough so that the life loss won't be too much of a bother. Two basics took the hit, bringing me down to seven of each. That should still be enough.

That it most certainly does

Sword of Lotus Flip has been perfectly a-ok in my build. It's a Thran Dynamo tier mana payoff if you clonk someone, and clonk someone you will. Not everything needs to be rocks. It also doesn't hurt I run Sword of Feast and Famine. Just diming mana generation, really. And the shell slurps it all up happily.

Cool. Now all we gotta do is get you running cheaper, diverse protection and your transformation into my build will be close to complete

Quote from NoNeedToBragoBoutIt »

1. Anguished Unmaking
2. Utter End
3. Despark
4. Vindicate
5. Mortify
...
N. Unmake

Yeah, pretty much this. You get Swords/Path that absolutely annihilate Unmake. I run those two, along with the first two of this list, in my Orzhov shell. I'm also eyeing Despark, but recall games where I'd need to pop a Ashnod's Altar, Goblin Bombardment or something.

Across my five years of EDH, I came across one guy who was keen on wishes. He came from a rather brutal meta of origin, he'd tutor a Jokulhaups to flip off his Maelstrom Wanderer, he was absolutely unconcerned by what is taboo in casual circles. His MLD++ at least tended to have the decency of ending the game in short order, so I wouldn't make a fuss out of Bearer of the Heavens sealing a Marchesa, the Black Rose insta-gg. And then one day he set his eyes on the wishes. Somehow he interpreted the official rules that he could tutor for banned cards, and brewed a deck with the solitary purpose of setting up a Time Vault lock. At that point I opposed.

I'm not at all unhappy to see an official clarification of wishes not working.

Ah man, so many great memories with this format. The forum's on fire for various nostalgia trips recently, what with that weird red scourge beast in random card of the day getting me thinking of my old mono green fat deck and now this

• The oldest one I recall explicitly was one of the first games of a papered out Patron of the Orochi. It was my second deck, and the first case of me brewing something explicitly from the ground up. I set down the Patron, I got out the Ant Queen, I was making bodies in everybody else's turn, everything was going according to plan. And then a guy lets rip a wipe. Whoops? I promptly tapped some ants, ripped Chord of Calling, got out Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and animated all my foes' lands. The mixture of confusion, disgust and awe on the wrath caster's face in response to the grossest play of my EDH career served as a testament to me having figured out how to do this whole "put cardboard together" thing to some degree. The game was closed out in short order.
• Creatively breaking out of locks, like what Weebo describes, is some of the coolest stuff you can do in the format. Daxos the Returned did a fair share of zany interactions with the sort of stax nonsense that runs around unchecked on Cockatrice. A Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur deck was wreaking havoc on a game, and a Mindslicer was living in someone's bin (probably as a result of the Jin Gitface hand size clause). I had Debtors' Knell and Attrition out. Oh yeah and there was also a Winter Orb, courtesy of Jin Gitface. I kept picking up the Mindslicer with the Knell, waiting until Jin's end step, and popping the Jin with the Attrition, making him ship his hand. The Jin revealed himself to be a dreadful pilot, repeatedly recasting the Jin into the same exact setup without any sort of interaction mana or anything left up. He lost that game.
• My favourite stax juke came courtesy of a different Cockatrice game, wherein some Kozilek variant had all the rocks and various stax pieces to make everybody's life difficult while circumventing it himself a bit, you know the shtick. I was the last one up as Daxos just wasn't that scary within the confines of the room. For some reason, a bunch of nice things were in my bin, and then I skilfully acquire Replenish off the top. Oh would you look at that Skybind and Thoughtrender Lamia. And other friends. The guy's hand got burnt to a crisp, I was able to start flicking the lock pieces in his end step so I'd escape from under them, and he was still stuck suffering their full effect. Asymmetric they may have been, he was still somewhat tangled up by them. Felt good to whip the game around on him like that.
• Sometimes it's nice to watch other people do stuff too. I remember a game in the paper meta where the meagre Kemba, Kha Regent managed to take the game by slapping various equipments... onto a goat token. Nobody could do anything about Rambo Goat, and we all succumbed to its power. Another time, a friend got the absolute nut draw in his Marchesa, the Black Rose robot tribal list and combo killed the table turn three. This hadn't happened to him yet, and it was entertaining watching him offer stumbling renditions of "I'm sorry, guys, this draw was just unbelievable". I pointed out that those were similar loops to what I'd put on repeat when one of my decks would do a stupid and a further degree of mutual understanding was achieved.

Nor surprised Skullclamp got ultimately binned. It did seem like overkill in a list that's as draw-happy as this one.

I acknowledge your Coalition Relic scenarios, but realistically you'll be using the Unwinding Clock mana for instants, and the Paradox Engine setup means you don't really care that much about banking anything either. Veilstone Amulet is pretty ok, I've never gotten around to testing it. A ton of the deck's instants are already various forms of protection, so this would probably end up largely redundant, occasionally doubling an indestructibility spell or off-target flicker for spot removal blanking.