MTG Salvation

Getting rid of the Centaur Glade triggered a cascade in deck re-design, and the finisher package has been cut by half.



I pretty much never, ever kept either one of those two cards in a starting hand. They also don't respond to tutors. With Nemata, Grove Guardian's built in pump, as well as the two dedicated creature finishers we're running, the two cuts shouldn't be missed too much.

This makes the token engine/finisher/tutor interaction about as streamlined as can be, as every single engine/finisher is now responsive to the vast majority of tutors. There was (and still is) a case to be made for the three options that have been cut in the past few days, but for now their absence hasn't been felt (in part thanks to the Reito Lantern backup floating around somewhere in the deck - if I can get a tutor online that could grab any of the three cards I cut, I can take an extra turn to get the Lantern online and set up a very solid recycling system of anything that may have gotten binned).

So, room to fill up. After considering oh so slightly expanding the deck's competence, instead more redundancy is added to already present functionality. Book of Rass is cheap, mana wise, but should be used sparingly for similar reasons to Tornado. I'll eat my words on Wayfarer's Bauble, I was far too critical of it. In this particular build, it's pretty darn useful. More often than not there is no turn one play, and this way I pop down an egg I can crack later to get a Rampant Growth. At 3 mana for 1 land later on in the game it's not too atrocious either. It would still suck in a faster green deck, mind you, but it's good here due to how slow we are.

Feel free to drop a link to the web archive of the old primer for all else to see as well :3

This is the obligatory Ensnaring Bridge post, carry on, carry on.

I have regrown ramp spells and have been happy with it. However, my deck is all about the huge mana, so every bit of ramp counts. You cut Boundless Realms recently so you're not all about the huge mana to the extent that I am, so I see your point.

You NEED Regrowth. You will always have something interesting to grab with this.

I meant the X spells, yes. You seem to have a bunch of them. Playtest this thing heavily on Cockatrice before you pull the trigger for paper, it'll help you not make decisions you'd regret.

You seem to want to make big mana plays with all the X things, you do run a few rocks/doublers. Still, do you feel you're getting enough mileage out of the big hitters?

Also, how do you recoup after a wrath? Not trying to bring you down or anything, just curious - most of my white brews just folded to wraths and this doesn't look all that wrath-proof to an outsider's gaze either.

Minute change, but still a change nevertheless!



Genesis has been on my mind for a while now, ever since I started writing this thing. There's a finite number of engines we run, and a finite number of recursion tools available to get them back if they get poofed. Increasing the number of engines is out of the equation, Soul of Zendikar is the only sensible one not in here. Running Genesis himself is out of the equation as well as there's no reliable way to get him into the graveyard... cue Reito Lantern, a card so weird it may actually work here. We have more tutors than we can shake a stick at, so this can put Ant Queen back where we can reach it. Perfect! Becomes obviously bonkers if we land Planar Portal.

If not acting as an endless recursion engine, we can use the Lantern to hate out other graveyards a bit if so desired. The enemy Genesis gets to live on the bottom of its owner's library, if we can't have it nobody can! Could lead to some hilarious shenanigans against a number of graveyard-utilising generals in an obvious way. We have the mana to support it.

So now, what to cut for it to make room... I did break my previous balance of spells when I cut Sprout Swarm, so I eyed ramp for something to off. The closest to going were Harrow and Khalni Heart Expedition - the former because of its potential 2-for-1 if disturbed, the latter because of its slowness. Beastmaster Ascension was considered for the axe too, as Coat of Arms is considerably more potent. In the end, all those stay for now, and Centaur Glade gets the axe.

But why a token engine?! The best P/T one as well?! It's the worst at swarming the board and responding to pump fuel, making for less effective lethal swings. There's no static -X/-X running around my meta at this time either. As such, the Glade's moved to the sidelines for now, but may obviously come back. Additionally, the Glade responds to the same tutoring as the lantern - the powerhouse artifact one. As such, now I can grab the lantern and have an undisrupted flow of token engines from my graveyard.

(In other news, constant primer pampering - you may notice images scattered as attachments to my first X posts here. That's because they're now hosted on this site and are in accordance to image leeching regulations. Sorry if this bothers you)

Still an issue. I edit the post, press "save", Pacman flaps his mouth for a bit and nothing happens and I have to repeat this a number of times.

Staff's for sac outlet + Kiki/Krenko.

The nice thing about Needle is that it can adapt. It stopped a Lilliana. It slowed a Twin (you see whichever dude they play first and you just bought yourself a few more turns to try and off them). Haven't played a Pod with it yet, but that would also help there.

My deck's pretty linear really. The sideboard's a bit wonky, still ironing out the details. I actually have 2 Bow of Nylea in there, but I'm yet to actually want to use them.

Been screwing around with this a bit more on Cockatrice. Maybe I just got better at Magic, or my draws are luckier, or the meta is more in this deck's favour, but it's been faring quite well. I'm really liking Prey Upon instead of Dismember, the sorcery speed is yet to come back and bite me on the ass.

I'm not sure how good Creeping Corrosion is here, to be fair. Isn't 4 mana too slow to try and counteract robots? On the other hand, Pithing Needle has been really pulling its weight. Such a versatile piece of sideboard tech.

One of those recent result lists, the weird one, runs Predator Ooze. Was that ever tested here? It looks interesting. Not necessarily good, but interesting.

Quote from nightwyrm »

Play platinum angel and/or platinum emperion.

Does bounce count as removal?

OH GOD YES

Hello,

I started fleshing out a write-up on one of my decks, and saving the post has become nigh impossible. I have to mash the "save changes" button, waiting for the pacman face to disappear between each press, until at some point it magically instantly connects and the save is there.

I'm not sure what's up, but it's a bit annoying. Figured I'd let you know.