MTG Salvation

Here is the deck I threw together.



I didn't get a chance to fully put this deck through it's paces, because my local shop was doing sealed tonight for FNM, but I did play some casual games of standard and it seemed to work fairly well. Here are some thoughts, observations, and explanations:
- You can almost always reach devotion for Nylea, only a handful of permanents aren't green.
- I tested Xenagos, the Reveler and found that I'd pretty much rather have anything but him in my hand every time I drew him. Frontier Siege gives more mana early game, and late game I'd rather just draw a Sabertooth or Soul
- Purphoros and Polukranos are in my sideboard for testing.
- The Scry lands work pretty well late game in filtering the top of my library so the manifested cards were more creatures than lands.
- I only have two hornet nests so I just put them in with 2 of the Heir.
- Another direction Naya could easily to go in this deck is using deathtouch creatures + Arcbond as a cheap board wipe.
- I might test out Jeering Instigator in the deck as a way of getting around an opponent who is running deathtouch on his side of the board.
- Outpost Siege actually works in this better than the Shamans, my opponents hate seeing it come out since a board wipe now means at least 6 damage to their face and also I can use it to one shot their elvish mystics away whenever I use the sabertooth's ability to bounce something to my hand.
- The Shamans do work fine, but are only relevant late game.

I know it's in your consideration pile, but let me throw some love the way of Survival of the Fittest. The repeatability of it turned out to make it the MVP of my all permanent Yisan, the Wanderer Bard EDH deck I built when M15 came out. 99 permanents and one Primal Surge that I never got to cast. Yisan and Survival pretty much gave me enough tutoring so that I had an answer to every threat with a library of splashy ETB effects, but this is only if you see yourself relying on creatures to answer the vast majority of the problems coming at you.

Also you might consider Storm Cauldron for emergencies as a way to slow down people that get a faster draw engine going. It's not for everyone, I admit, but it also can be useful if you play against a lot of mass land destruction like Armageddon. Just tap all your lands and return them to your hand rather than letting them hit the graveyard.

The thing about the Master of Pearls vs Soul of Theros is that the Master of Pearls is only better than the soul when he's been manifested onto the battlefield and the +2/+2 to all your creatures for 1W only really matters early game and this isn't an early game deck. Also as a morphed creature his ability only costs one less to activate than the Soul's and you can only ever do it once without needing to bounce him to your hand and then recast as a morph. However, you can activate Soul's ability as many times as you can afford to when he's on the battlefield and once even when he's in the graveyard. Also Soul not only grants lifelink, but first strike as well which effectively means that every creature your opponent wants to use as a blocker must be able to survive taking at least 4 first strike damage from your manifested horde before he or she even hopes to trade 1 for 1 when blocking. Not to mention that the Soul is a huge 6/6 with vigilance.

And let me add after a play test, this deck isn't fast, it's just really hard for any opponent to take you out once you're past the 5th turn and you've manifested this crazy board state that no amount of spot removal can make a dent in. By the time you get to the point when your manifested army of big enough to overrun your opponent's battlefield you have so much land and mana producing creatures out (not to mention the GG Frontier Siege dumps into you pool each of your main phases) that you can nearly pay for the Soul's acitivated ability twice over.

I really like the deck lists posted in here. They have me it itching to try manifest out. I was wondering if anyone has tried manifest with Naya colors?

Specifically I'm thinking of Shaman of the Great Hunt, and maybe the dragons side of Outpost Siege. I think the shaman has the potential to replace Shamanic Revalation and his ability of putting counters on your manifested creatures opens up control options like Elite Scaleguard as well as taking your guys that get through out of the reach of Drown in Sorrow which is really big in my meta right now. (Not to mention maybe enabling experimentation with cards like Ainok Bond-Kin, Abzan Falconer, and maybe even Abzan Battle Priest)

While Outpost Siege offers mid-game card advantage and late game mass removal hate (not to mention the fact that you can ping something for 1 damage every time you use the Sabertooth's ability).

I posted a little earlier about some misprints concerning the hologram at the bottom of some Khans of Tarkir mythic rares and now have a picture of the cards in question. I know that cards missing the hologram all together seem to be not that unusual with the new set, the thing is the cards I opened still have the hologram, it is just miss-cut in a way that is similar to the shape of a crescent moon. Anyone also come across something like this in their packs?

I'm curious because, while I'd like to use Sarkhan, The Dragonspeaker in a deck, I'm not that big of a collector of misprints and would be willing to trade him for a normal Sarkhan and maybe another card or two if indeed this misprint gives the card an above average value to collectors.

I've noticed that a few of the mythic rares (including Sarkhan) I've opened from a Khans booster box have a miss-cut/miss-printed hologram at the bottom (I'm not sure which category it falls into). Instead of the hologram being it's normal oval shape, it's in the shape that reminds me of a crescent moon. There are no other miss-prints on these cards and I was wondering if this is a common issue in the new set or unusual enough that I should refrain from trading them at their normal market value. I am particularly interested in finding out if it ups the value of Sarkhan, The Dragonspeaker.

I really like the look of this idea as I'm a control player at heart in MTG and by pure chance I nearly have all the key cards for a top control modern deck. I just need to track down more Ensnaring Bridges and some Mox Opals (got plenty of Chrome Moxes, but I don't think Wizards will ever allow them in the Modern format).

I haven't yet had the time to go through all 48 pages of this thread so forgive me if this has already been asked, I was wondering if anyone has tried playing with Doran, the Siege Tower as an alternate win condition? He can attack through the bridge lock and also make attackers out of your Spellskites. Or will he not work because the battlefield has way too many blockers in most games to make Doran a viable win condition?

One more question, has anyone playtested this with Terminus? Is drawing it in an opening hand too risky to make it worthwhile? Would putting their creatures back into their library negatively effect the top control strategy?

I'll be sure to check back in with my decklist as soon as I get the pieces together and playtest it a bit.