MTG Salvation

4cc doesn't scare me, TNN scares me. Punishing Fire scares me. Snapcaster and redundant removal are easy enough to work through.

Any game I've ever played against 4cc I have felt favors me unless they land an early TNN, then it heavily favors them.

Don't forget Terminus immunity too. Not an insignificant part of why he has become such a staple in sideboards so quickly.

I really don't see anything that this Gideon offers to us and the Legacy landscape is indeed a bit rough to him in general. I think he has a lot more application in Modern against things like Death's Shadow (known for having a single, huge creature), Ad Nauseam (no way to interact with him), and Affinity/Burn (life matters), but I don't know of any deck that would really want to be sitting around hiding behind a Gideon in that meta either. Maybe some sort of Gideon token brew like moctzal mentioned?

So I'm still having the same TNN problem. Was looking through resources online and came across http://www.thrabenuniversity.com/?page_id=776 that article again which reminded me of the spell Blessed Alliance and that has lead to me having 2 current competing lists.





The 1st deck shaves on Plains to make room for 2 Flooded Strand and a Scrubland and slots Orzhov Pontiff in as my 26th creature, giving me a way to wipe a board full of TNNs and/or Noble Hierarchs assuming I can both actually put Pontiff into play through some means and they aren't wearing any equipment that gives them more than 1 toughness. Pontiff also gives incidental gains against things like Mentor/YP tokens, the mirror, and Elves (not that it really matters there), as well as being a general combat trick providing +1/+1 to me or -1/-1 to my opponents boards as needed. I've used him in all these scenarios and he feels fine, if not a bit clunky as would obviously be the case.

The second deck moves back to the mono-white build with 10 plains which is one of the biggest advantages of playing D&T in the first place - being immune to things like Blood Moon and stocks up on 2 Blessed Alliance in the SB while maintaining a 1-of Path to Exile and sticking Palace Jailer back in the main, giving access to 10 pieces of removal in MUs where heavy removal is preferable.

I haven't felt like one is more suited to the current meta or like I'm doing better with either, so any thoughts from the hive mind are much appreciated.

Just had to post it -

Went to the local weekly and round 1 I was against Miracles. Got an early SoFaI and SoWaP into play before my SFM got terminus'd away. The next turn, I top decked a Prelate, threw it down on 6 and suited her up with the SoWaP - The only out from this bad situation would be to play a Jace the very next turn and bounce the Prelate back to my hand, but he also needed a 4th land. Opponent found the land, but didn't have a Jace handy, so I suited Prelate up with the SoFaI and we went to game 2 immediately. That's gotta be some sort of achievement.

Otherwise, the night was mediocre with me going 2-1, losing to that brewy Judge's Familiar Stoneblade deck.

Played a GPT today and did fairly well with the SoWaP in the main and Batterskull in the side. I made the swap because I saw a lot of burn before we started and it worked well enough throughout the tournament.

I punted round 1 against omnishow (which is not nearly as good a MU as sneak and show). But after that my only other round losses were all to a singular card - True-Name Nemesis. I'm feeling like it's a common enough threat to warrant something like another councils judgment (one in the main?) or holy light or something, maybe Orzhov Pontiff and a 3rd Cavern or scrubland?

Definitely looking for thoughts on the topic as I consider updating my list.

In other news, I'm moving back toward a more beater oriented list to fight the new BUG menace head-on:



Back to Cataclysms in the side and bringing Spirit, Crusader, and Thalia 2.0 into the MD as 1-ofs since they all seem fairly relevant in the meta today and all can be recruited for as needed.

I talked about cutting to 3 SFM when CN2 came out and was quickly shut down due to the importance of turn 3 batterskull or turn 4 jitte in many of the more aggressive MUs. That along with the fact that SFM is one of the few inherent card advantage pieces we play in the deck, I backed off the idea quickly because I couldn't deny the rational. That said, I don't mind cutting down to 3, 2, or often 0 SFMs in a given MU if I feel that what they're doing is irrelevant or I anticipate a grindy game and I want more business than just fetching an equipment and then dying or whatever. As far as recruiter, I rarely WANT to recruit for SFM, I'd rather go all in on flickerwisps, and having the 4th SFM helps give me the freedom to do exactly that.

D&T is a bit different from most other decks that play Surgical in the sense that we neither have a regular way to destroy targets to remove from the game (outside of wasteland) nor do we pack discard to target threats directly from our opponents hand. So Surgical is almost exclusively graveyard hate rather than the typical all-around "remove target problem from the game completely" card that many other decks manage to turn it into. For that reason, I prefer Faerie Macabre over Surgical. You also get some other benefits like being able to target 2 things in the GY rather than just 1, it's a creature, so worst case scenario, we can just vial it in for beats and it's not a spell so it gets past things like chancellor.

That said, I still prefer running 2 RIP personally. Against everything that isn't BR Reanimator, it is my preferred GY hate to get into play. It has very wide application, including decks like Grixis Pyro, a match that turn 2 RIP single-handedly won for me last night (by turning his DRSs into 1/2 beat sticks and buying me time to actually do stuff rather than getting overrun with threats on turn 3). There are also other GY hate cards to consider. Grafdigger's Cage and Relic of Progenitus.

Relic has been touted as a mandatory SB 1-of by many D&T players. Not just for it's application against GY recursion, but also because it can just be cycled for a new card when the opportunity presents itself in a given game.

Grafdigger's Cage has the added benefit of hitting our bane of all MUs, Elves. Though really, if you're trying to fight elves, you might want to start with picking a different deck, that MU is terrible.

Anyway, if you're looking for specific answers to BR Reanimator, I'd go with Faerie Macabre. Otherwise, it's a very messy situation, just pick whatever you like best and think will hit the widest amount of issues for you.

If you're right about your legacy assumptions in Baltimore, and I think you are, then D&T will be well positioned for the event.

Have your Modern player take a look at Puresteel Paladin combo. It's the new hotness in Modern for the past 2 weeks, and I see posts saying it's already ban-worthy, so your team will want to consider either being on the deck or having a very meaningful answer to the deck (Chalice for 0, Stony Silence, lots of removal/discard are all fine). And Standard is Standard so...

Ran my "off in the woods" version at my LGS last night and did fairly well:




Round 1 was a bye, so I played against the judge with the D&T mirror. We managed to pump out 4 games and all of them were heavily one-sided in my favor. I beat him with everything from Jitte counters to batterskull, to a Revoker holding SoWaP. Equipment gets it done in that MU and I had equipment.

Round 2 was against this abomination of a deck: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/763600-the-shining-winter-maze-mini-primer
As best I can tell, the plan is to get winter orb + root maze into play and choke everyone out on mana, use land enchants + arbor elf to give yourself 6-8 mana as needed, and then NO your elf into Progenitus. While hilarious, it's not very good against D&T... Wastelands for his arbors, Swords for his elves, flickerwisps for his land enchants, and slow-but-steady beats for the win. That said, he did get Progenitus into play in G2 and I had no council's judgment so that was just game.

Round 3 was against dredge. After a slow game that ended with me getting hit by 10 zombies, I had the nut draw in G2 with both a RIP and Enlightened Tutor in my opening 7. He flipped over about half his deck, got a narcomoeba into play, and hit RIP with his Cabal Therapy, I responded by casting Enlightened Tutor and we moved to G3. G3 was again RIP in the opening 7, but that's not very optimal, especially when he Therapied it away again. I got Thalia into play and wasted his only land, cutting him off from spells for the rest of the game, but then proceeded to die to 8 zombies I couldn't handle.

All in all, I cashed in 4th place. Wish I would have found SOMETHING in that G3 vs Dredge, but you can't win 'em all. Definitely not unhappy with the state of D&T in the meta or my particular build for my particular area.

Swaped my 2 Serra Avengers for Aerial Responders and replaced my Cataclysms with a 2nd Gideon and COP:Red.

While I somehow managed to dodge both of the burn players in the room with 10 people, I did get a couple flat out laughs when I revealed or resolved an Aerial Responder in other MUs.

That said, the Responders never managed to actually hit my opponent in the face, so giggles aside, my opponents thought the card was worthy of removal every time he hit the battlefield.

I think I scared one of the burn players off burn for next week though. Might have to replace COP:Red with Absolute Law or go back to just ignoring the possibility of burn altogether.

Nice article, and I must say, Legacy is the only format that has made me bring my maybeboard with me to the LGS. I stuck all the D&T cards I don't play in a little yellow deckbox a couple weeks ago and while I have yet to actively do it yet, I definitely look around the room and consider the decks I'm likely to encounter and ask myself if I want to change any of my SB cards out 5 min before we kick the tourney off.

I guess its just because there are so many decks that attack from so many different angles, and the SB cards are actually powerful enough to handle SOME but not ALL of that at any given time, it's a consideration that is worth reviewing in Legacy where as I would typically just shrug and hope to dodge in Modern.

At any rate, nice compact lists and what I might want each card for. Thanks for the article!

Had a horrible run at my LGS this week.

Somehow managed to lose to Sneak and Show in R1. Only time I drew Karakas, he already had Sneak Attack in play and it didn't matter...

Bye in R2

Burn in R3. For the 2nd time in 2 weeks, burn beat up on me. To make matters worse, we have 2 players on the deck right now and I don't think they're moving off it. Should I be looking at adding Absolute Law to my SB next week?

SoBaM... Guess now we need to start talking about Holy Light as being a potential SB card again.