MTG Salvation

Day 1:
R1 vs Breanna on Jeskai control
G1 I mull to 6 on the play with a simian t1 arbiter. I then draw Thalia and had copter into displacer to get there.
G2 I board out 3 dismember for karn, spyglass, and cast out. Mull to 6 with a gemstone. I go t1 Thalia into t2 arbiter+gq. She paths arbiter the following turn. I draw arbiter and then go cavern into tks. The last turn she tries to snap path smasher and I say trigger and point at it. She says ok and goes to block without discarding not realizing what happened. I lethal her.
2-0

R2 vs Isaiah on Jeskai
G1 my opponent likes to be fancy with snap and block and then play the card after combat. He does this with arbiter and lets the bolt sit there. I tks for the blowout. The same thing happens with path and then I chalice into tks.
G2 I kept a clunker with gemstone. I need it up not lotus petalling it and he resolves teferi where I drawn in cards. The boarding is the same except g3 I sb out a gemstone for a rip. G3 is close where we both run low on cards. I smasher him to 3. He taps out for snap wrath. I have copter out and no cards in hand, but top another smasher.
2-1

R3 Fadel on Jund
I'm on the draw both games. I believe my opponent mulls to 6 both times too. Oh and I luckstoned both times ;). G1 I luckstone and he takes my thicc Thalia leaving displacer, simian, and dismember with some lands (the cavern exiled my second displacer) he follows it up with a bolt, but then his draw was pretty anemic and mine was full of squidbois.
G2 I bring in 2 rip 1 karn 1 cast out for 4 chalices. I run out t1 arbiter which he kills. I go t2 simian, karn. I proceed to then run away with the game while my opponent stumbled.
2-0

R4 vs Brian? On Mardu pyro
G1 I'm on the play with 2x TGoT, tks, temple, and some lands. He t1 thoughtseizes and has to take tks. I drew pretty well, but ultimately the taxes got me there.
I go -2 copter, -1 displacer, -1 tks, -1 dismember and-1? for cast out, karn, 2 rips, and 2 Dec in stone. On the play the? Become gemstone.
G2 he had a lili last hope plus souls draw and gets my awkward start despite my luckstone.
G3 I keep a slight clunker, but OP mulls to 5. He manages to deal with 2x smashers. He almost grinds me out, but after some canopies I rip tks to take his last card, looting. Tks went the distance.
Note: OP says he should only have moon vs me on the play because it's slow
R5 vs Elliot on WU miracles control
G1 t1 chalice stomp.
G2 we have a grindy match and he barely gets there with collonade.
G3 another crazy one. I Dec in stoned his entreat angels and get out karn which gets d sphered. I eventually get there with a tks and Thalia.
Out 3 dismember and in cast out, karn, and spyglass. G3 out 1 gemstones in 1 Dec in stone.
2-1

R6 vs D...? On merfolk
He runs me over g1 and I do that to him g2.
G3 I resolve a worship and a chalice on 2. He kept playing so I thought he had another out. The board was insane and I apparently missed multiple ways I could have won.
I brought in nearly the whole board -stony and rip.
We draw. 1-1-1.

R7 vs V... on Jeskai.
I mull to 5 and then a weak 6 G1 and 2 and lose.

R8 last shot at a win and in vs Megan on humans
G1 I'm on the play with a D&T kinda hand. She goes t1 hierarch into t2 mantis rider. I have no removal and scoop showing only Thalia.
The sb comes in and I mull to worship. I barely live resolving it with only smasher. She scoops. G3 I go to 5 with 2x dismember and triple land with a gemstone. I get it and decapitate her dork and then rider. I proceed to draw tocatli into displacer into worship. She names worship with mage and I draw Dec in stone. I got lucky here, but I got there! I boarded in 3 tocatli, 2 worship, 2 Dec in stone, cast out, and spyglass. On the play it's gemstone, 4 Thalia 4 arbiter. On the draw it's +1gemstone -1 chalice. I might have gone -1 more chalice for a Thalia, but I can't recall.
2-1
Note: I boarded pretty much the same vs merfolk.

That a 6-1-1 record. Yeaaah boi. I should be 7-1 with the tie punts, but at the end of the day I did it and I'm super stoked.

Day 2:
R1 vs Bobby on humans.
He runs me over g1. I bring in the board and mull to a 6 with removal and displacer and decide to keep. I almost stabilized, but never drew a hate effect I needed over 7 turns and died.
0-2

R2 vs Cody on infect
G1 I mull to 5 and go t1 chalice. He eventually finds a skite and agent. I find thalias and smasher. He echoing truths chalice, but forgets about Thalia to hit me to 9 poison before dying on the crackback. G2 I draw a 2nd dismember to go t1 take out the work t2 take out the agent into chalice on 1.
2-0


R3 vs Patrick on humans
G1 his start is a little slow and I fight with copter and displacer, but lose. G2 I kill with copter while I hide behind worship.
G3 I keep 7 with 2 plains, Worship, dismember, displacer, tks, and smasher. I rip tocatli for t2 tocatli t3 worship. He was tilted because he didn't see tocatli and the worship answered the booter.
2-1

R4 vs Taylor on Jund
I mull to 6 and get junded out g1.
G2 I keep a slow drazi heavy hand and he keeps a pretty slow out. I cast out lili and tks into tks +rip into smasher to win.
G3 I keep a 2x canopy temple hand with thicc Thalia, dismember, and simian. He ioks the Thalia, but then I draw tks and he has only bbe which hits bolt. I draw more drazi and win.
2-1

R5 vs Tyler on Mardu pyro.
I play g1, but he tears my hands to shreds while I flood. I try to race with smasher with tks om blocks vs pyro and friends. If I had hit 1 more thing I think I woulda had it.
G2 I go t1 arbiter and get him. He accidentally cracks a fetch and loses from there.
G3 was nuts. I kept a double simian 2x chalice, gq, cast put, and Dec in stone hand. My opponent takes the Dec in stone so I chalice him. We both miss land drops until he finds young pizzy who still gets tokens off 1 drops even if they're countered. I'm forced to gq myself to land a big Thalia and an arbiter. We still are stuck on 2 mana each (I drew 1 more after the gq] until he draws a terminate to finish me off.
1-2
Note: Mardu might be my closest MU in the meta. I'm not really scared at all of any of the other top decks. This one might be a coin flip.

R6 vs Ophel? On GB tron
G1 I mull to 5, but have a good start. He has natty tron so I lose. G2 and 3 I mull to 6, but have a hate piece t1 into displacer t2 hate piece t3 for ggs. -2 copter -1 gemstone(on the play)/1 cavern of souls on the draw -3 dismember for 2 Dec in stone 3 stony 1 spyglass.
2-1
Note: for whatever reason any of the splash tron lists feel much easier than mono G.

R7 vs?? On humans
G1 we both have suboptimal starts and it is a bit of a fight, but he gets there. G2 I keep a displacer removal 6 and rip a tocatli at the right time and eventually kill with tks while protecting myself with displacer.
G3 I keep a 7 with dismember, lands, simian, tocatli, and some drazi (hello there displacer). He goes t2 mage name tocatli and I dismember it into t2 tocatli. He's clearly unhappy. I rip a worship for land simian worship. Next turn it's displacer and I take the game over. I ended up drawing 2nd displacer and tocatli eventually. Also spyglass on izzet staticaster and chalice on 1 for whatever bizzarro stuff he might have. He refuses to scoop saying he has an answer. So I eventually draw tks and keep up 1 displacer activation and mull him out. What an end to the GP!

How to SB???

How do I sideboard against all these decks? Everyone's been saying D&T is a metadeck, but what does that mean?

Lately we've seen the rise of and .


Yet we still have to fight all these other decks. Feeling overwhelmed?

Perhaps.

Perhaps, you think you can manage it?

If not, that's quite alright. That's what we're here to talk about it. Because the thing is, no two sideboards like exactly the same. I always rant about how we're a metadeck. That means we attack the most played (top tier) decks in the format. Now we try to have decent matchups against every deck either through the main deck or sideboard (like any competitive deck). I'm a strong believer in looking at every card in your deck and thinking about what MUs the card shines in. If it's not enough MUs, then you have to strongly considering cutting the card. There are some cards like spellskite that might go MD or SB depending on your list. Having cards like these MD means that you free up room in your SB. These kinds of cards should be put main deck if they're good against a lot of decks and would otherwise come in from your board a lot. However, sometimes mirran crusader might just go main deck because you expect to see a lot of GBx decks at your next tournament. If that's the case and you end up being correct, then it's likely that your gamble will pay off, but it is a risk because there's no real way to be completely confident in your assumptions. Making decisions like these can really help your chances against the field. A great place to start is looking at different decks percentages in meta. Perhaps your just sick of losing game 1 to Jund. It's not that unreasonable to include some MD mirran crusaders if that's the case since he's still a 2/2 double strike even if your opponent isn't on GBx. But be careful not to dilute your gameplan or overdo it with cards that are great in the board, but simply wouldn't be worth it in other MUs.

But some decks are just hard to beat game one with some things that just run over you. These kind of decks demand silver bullets. Now you can just jam 4 of both of those cards in your board, but then other MUS might become much harder. That's why it can be wise to do one of two things:
1. you can put less powerful but more well versatile cards. The classic example of burrenton forge-tender vs kor firewalker comes to mind.
2. Make your mainboard better against these kinds of decks so you don't need 4 ofs in your board. Perhaps you're running BW and you have 2 basic swamp slots. It might be wise to take one out and put in a bojuka bog. Additionally, you can put cards that are pretty good well rounded answers in your deck. For instance, it turns out blade splicer can help you fight off those prized amalgams. I alluded to this earlier with spellskite as that card has a lot of game against a lot of decks. It's difficult to find something else that can be that good against burn, jund, and infect all at the same time. Because otherwise you may find yourself going overboard for certain matchups and sacrificing your game for others. You might beat dredge every time if you had 4 rips, but maybe you had to take out all those burn slots and burn is beating you silly. If you feel confident enough for a matchup that you don't think you need anything for it, then that's a good realization, but I will warn you to think long and hard about this and test it to make sure that you can still beat your opponent even after they board in cards meant to beat you and you just don't have anything to bring in for them. This is an exaggerated version of how your SB works though. Every time you cut one card for another you change how you fight against certain decks and probably, consequentially, your win percentages.

A place that I like to start it is to have ~3 slots that you can bring in against any deck that you feel you are likely to run into.
Let's try something like this:
3 anti graveyard slots
3 anti burn slots,
3 anti artifact/enchantment slots (I'm really talking about affinity here),
3 anti combo slots,
3 anti control (the grindy matches) slots,
and some good catch alls or +1s for the harder MUs.

The catch all slots might be something like engineered explosives, ratchet bomb, or surgical extraction. I really like a lot of these kind of slots because they hit multiple matchups and they really are the "maybe not the best card per deck, but hits a lot of decks" kind of slots and this whole mentality is something I live by and consequentially complicates how we make our sideboards since they can help fill other slots. For instance, EE can hit an aggro deck decently hard, can hit affinity, and tokens. Surgical might hit a tron land, a combo piece, or a control deck trying to flash something back with snapcaster mage, or hit those prized amalgams. You can also put stuff here that are just the acknowledgement of brew decks. It's why I like hibernation and echoing truth when I play WU.

* For anti burn, the only real slot I'd recommend moving to the main is spellskite. It turns out we can have decent game against them with our mana denial. Your real options otherwise include burrenton forge-tender and kor firewalker. The former along with sun lance and mark of asylum win the *hit multiple decks* award while firewalker really is the silver bullet here.

* For aggro, we have ghostly prison, worship, sunlance, and dismember among others. A lot of these slots can be pretty flexible. For instance, catmix feels good enough with his BW list to run ghostly as his anti affinity slot too because his main has enough tools where he feels comfortable without stony silence. Aggro is a broad thing so it's hard to have a silver bullet, but lots of these cards can hit multiple decks. A card to try main if you're on BW might be orzhov pontiff or wasteland strangler. For WU reflector mage can be surprisingly good. Otherwise you're stuck with blade splicer or kitchen finks.
NOTE: As mentioned before, engineered explosives and ratchet bomb can come in. A good to card an all-in creature you couldn't otherwise kill can also be blessed alliance.

* For your grindy matches, it can really depend. The main two kinds of decks I'll focus on here are RUx and GBx. As mentioned burrenton forge-tender and mark of asylum can both be good if you're worried about your creatures being burned dead. mirran crusader can be good here. Also some GY hate may find its way here. If you want to keep stuff in your hand you might consider leyline of sanctity or you can try loxodon smiter if you're in GW. Some popular options otherwise are swords of X/Y or walkers as both of these can provide a lot of value. Some main deck cards to consider here are ways to get you CA. I don't leave home without at least 2 horizon canopy (bonus points for EE!). You can also give sea gate wreckage a shot. UW gets moorland haunt. GW gets gavony township. BW gets vault of the archangel. RW gets slayers' stronghold. All of these kinds of lands have unique pros, but tend to keep you in the game longer and can turn otherwise dead or useless creatures into something more. manlands also help make your topdecks better as they still produce mana early on, but can help you out later and turn into a threat. Essentially, you want value cards here (Some of you might be hurt if I didn't include lingering souls here). I'd also like to note that celestial purge tends to hit most of these decks troublesome permanents. Also, cards that are hard to kill/ bring lots of value are worth considering putting in your deck if these guys are giving you trouble. Some good value cards might include courser of kruphix and collected company in GW, Pia and Kiran Nalaar in RW, and Ephara, God of the Polis in UW.

* For your GY decks, it's pretty straightforward. Our options are: rest in peace, relic of progenitus, and surgical extraction. Rip is obviously the strongest of these and I'm fairly well convinced that most versions of our deck out to run at least 2 somewhere unless you have something real going on with your yard. If so you might try relic. Otherwise, I'd recommend rip. It just shuts down something like dredge so well and even comes in against something like Jund and junk. That's too many decks to ignore. Surgical is versatile as I mentioned before. Some main deck cards you could try are bojuka bog (in BW), scavenging ooze (in GW), or Jötun Grunt. Relic has also seen play in some of our lists and its cantrip can be quite useful. Plus it fuels those wasteland stranglers if that's your prerogative.

* For affinity our most common choices are stony silence and kataki, war's wage. Both of these do a pretty good job. Stony hits harder, but kataki has legs. It depends what you need. BW probably has the most game preboard here since they have access to extra removal. Some cards to note here are lingering souls (it can block everything they have and usually profitably so), phyrexian revoker (shutting down the right piece of their deck can be brutal), and even fiend hunter. Some more well rounded but perhaps not strong enough removal pieces here might be disenchant or sundering growth. These both hit enchantments too though. That's worth considering if you're having trouble with those.
NOTE: As mentioned before, engineered explosives and ratchet bomb can come in.

* Combo decks come in a lot of shapes and sizes. Depending on how you cut it, tron and valakut decks might both be combo. Infect might be too. Oh and don't forget about ad nauseam or storm. How could I forget about Lantern? Well that's a heck of a list to all be lumped together and that's probably not even all of them... You might want your paths real bad, but then again you might not. What do they have in common? Well, again, we want spellskite and it turns out Thalia, guardian of thraben hits em all decently well. That and discard. But you might want to try different 1 drops to deal with them accordingly. Icatian Javelineers might suit your fancy since it shoots their dorks before they go off. Or perhaps Dryad Militant is needed to exile their spells. Then again judge's familiar could keep your hate piece alive long enough to matter. Or different still, you might not want a 1 drop. Since it's so broad, this category kind of ends up being lumped with the miscellaneous one, but if you're seeing a lot of these decks, you probably want those main deck skites, 4 thalias (or other Thalia might help too!), and if you're feeling adventurous, you could try vryn wingmare to double up on your taxes, or eidolon of rhetoric if you're having a real hard time, or perhaps magus of the moon if you're on RW.

As seen above, I once counted decks like valakut and tron as combo decks and while I don't think that's wrong, I've decided to add a new section:
Big Mana Decks.
Here, I will be including Tron (all splashes), Eldrazi Tron, Valakut (both primeval titan through the breach and scapeshift variants), and Bant Eldrazi.
The number one best maindeck card I've found to be here is Thalia, heretic cathar. The earlier she comes down, the better. Cards like Leonin arbiter and or thalia, guardian of thraben can do some serious work here, depending on which deck you're facing, but Big Thalia seems to do her work very well across the board (yes amulet of vigor and or removal can get around her, but that's about it). She enables us to beat face while our opponents plays are significantly slowed. All of these decks run lots of nonbasic lands and try to cheat out their unfair cards with it when you're not ready. Even an early Thought-knot seer can be back-breaking. We should be a more prepared deck to deal with these at their root (at their mana) since we have lots of mana denial tactics in our deck, but it's not always that easy. That's why some people will push these parts of their decks by running cards like MD Big Thalia or even renegade rallier in GW to reoccur more LD. WU gets some interesting SB options like ceremonious rejection which hits about half of the above mentioned big mana decks hard. WR gets the obvious choice of magus of the moon because blood mooning these decks can often prove to just end the game. BW gets hand disruption and the possible unfair permanent removal in the form of the WOMBO-COMBO. All of these decks can bring in cards like crucible of worlds if they feel they have enough time for it to work, or the possible gotcha play with surgical extraction + valakut or a tron piece. Some other options, depending on which deck you're facing might be stony silence (to shut off those early expedition maps or even those later batterskulls) or Worship which prevents Bant Eldrazi from winning period (they often have no way around it outside of TKSing it out of your hand).
There are also a lot of plays which just have to be done to win against these decks which might not be obvious when one first puts their hands on the deck. I'm talking about stuff like flickerwisping away a tron piece at the end of your turn, or aggressively taking bant eldrazi off a color (or colorless!), or how Thalia stops tron from player karn on T3 even if they have natural tron. BASIC CHECK PEOPLE OFTEN (many decks only run three or so basics and some run less!).
Finally, one thing to look at is, how do these decks beat us when we stop them from getting their unfair mana so quickly? Well, they do what any reasonable deck in that position would do, they try to sweep our board. For these reasons, selfless spirit can actually be a bit of a sleeper here.

I'd like to note that it can be a bit difficult to define certain decks as well as certain cards as being in one category or the other. I'm aware there's a lot of overlap here in the sense that say lantern only really beats you with one card even though it does grind you ought. Equally, burn and affinity are both aggro decks, but they earned their own slots since siding for one or the other can be quite different than it might be for say zoo. Don't be afraid to correct me if you disagree with my assessment. We can give more decks their own categories if people would like to add/ correct information they think is missing/ wrong here.

All in all, I'd say, try to make your mainboard hate out those top tier decks without diluting your deck. Make sure you have enough hate slots for the decks that give you trouble, but try not to overdo it! Yes dredge and affinity are the boogeymen out there in the night, but we CAN beat them with a little help from our friends. It's all about the balance.

I hope this write up was helpful! As always, if you guys have any questions, comments, or anything, feel free to hit me up. Get out there and get taxing!


EDIT: formatting is haaard

Spider, I'm just going to let this one go. Obviously, you're entitled to build your manabase however you want and I'm not going to stop you. I'm just trying to stop the lurkers from feeling obligated to run 23 lands with 4 Canopies in Mono-white D&T.

Quote from Soladoc »

There is an interesting article on Thraben university for mana bases with vial taken into consideration. There is also source code for a small programm. http://www.thrabenuniversity.com/?page_id=1288
Maybe this will help settle your argument.

Unfortunately, it won't. Both Spider and I have access to pretty comprehensive probability distribution tables for this deck, and I have additional access to a Monte Carlo simulator for figuring out everything else (e.g., "what are the odds I draw a Hierarch, Arbiter, Ghost Quarter, and WG source in my opening hand?"). Both Spider and I know the math, although I'm more of a purist about it (as you can probably tell).

Either way, neither of us need additional resources on this topic. We've both played this game for a very long time. We both know this deck inside and out. We're arguing about performance information that's really on the margin of mainstream gameplay and not readily answerable using a goldfish simulator.[/quote]

1st variant:
Eldrazi And Taxes



Example list below is Joseph Freeman’s 9th place finish at the SCG Modern Dallas Open.

Currently the most popular (and most played) variant is Eldrazi And Taxes. This deck makes use of fast mana via Eldrazi Temple and its corresponding creatures: Eldrazi Displacer, Wasteland Strangler, Thought-Knot Seer, and Reality Smasher. Previously, Death And Taxes' variant decks struggled with having minuscule creatures, lack of hand disruption, and space for additional removal spells. Having access to these Eldrazi creatures fixes those issues that Death And Taxes innately had before while also fitting into the decks plan of deploying threats with disruptive elements. Combining all this with cards like Flickerwisp and Tidehollow Sculler makes it no surprise that the deck continues to perform well.

2nd variant:
G/W Death And Taxes



Example list below is SpiderSpace’s 5-0 finish on Magic Online: Modern Constructed League.

Not to be confused with Hatebears, GW Death And Taxes is another successful variant. While not as popular as sister variant, Eldrazi And Taxes, this deck is very powerful and more streamlined. GW Death And Taxes mimics much of the curve from Legacy but has a mana proficient one drop in the name of Noble Hierarch. Green gives the deck access to mana acceleration, exalted triggers, and tempo advantage via Collected Company & Eternal Witness. Also, green has been known to have phenomenal sideboard options as well. You may not have access to very much hand disruption but with such a clear focus on disruptive creatures and card advantage, your opponent most likely does not have the time to deploy game-breaking threats.

3rd variant:
Mono-White Death And Taxes



Example list below is muckymuck_dc5’s 5-0 finish on Magic Online: Modern Constructed League.

This build is commonly the starting point for most people entering the archetype. It is often returned to for its focused mana, streamlined creatures, and overall reliability. There are many pilots who will return to this deck to identify where their variant has deviated too far from the original in order to pull the major focus back in. Mono-White is also the deck able to take full advantage of the colorless mana resources. The deck does so by utilizing play sets of Tectonic Edge and Ghost Quarter. Some builds will then use the free slots to have access to more colorless lands such as: Sea Gate Wreckage, Mutavault, and/or Blinkmoth Nexus.

4th variant:
Red, Blue and Other Unconventional Death And Taxes



There are other versions which are piloted to success but are not represented nearly enough in order to give proper data or recommendations for currently. In the near future, it is very possible that red and blue builds find the required resources to become a major player in the format.

Variants In The Current Meta (Winter 2017):





Modern has continuously had meta shifts since early 2016. Death And Taxes has received scatterings of playables such as: Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Ramunap Excavator and Gideon of the Trials. However, it's the increasing power level of cards printed for other decks the seemingly positioned Death And Taxes to Tier 1 & 2 over the last year. Other decks increase in power but become more linear. This has made the match ups for Mono-White & Eldrazi And Taxes more favorable than they were in previous iterations.

PRIMERS:

• PRIMER V.1 BY TOM
• PRIMER V.2 BY SHEEPZ
• LEGACY PRIMER BY FINN

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UTILITIES:

• PHYREXIAN REVOKER PRIMER BY DEATHANDCATMIX
• COLOR MANA REQUIREMENTS BY FRANK KARSTEN (CFB)
• MANA BASES BY DSMONSTA
• MICROSPLASHES BY HAVREKJEX
• DEATH AND TAXES AS EXPLAINED BY BRIAN DEMARS (CFB)
• DEATH AND TAXES AS EXPLAINED BY OLAW(PUREMTGO)
• ELDRAZI AND TAXES ARTICLE BY CRAIG WESCOE (TCG)
• SIDEBOARD GUIDE BY SPIDERSPACE

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BREWS:

• AJANI AND TAXES BY DEATHANDCATMIX
• NO BANLIST MODERN BY RANDY BUEHLER(MBH)

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RECORDED FINISHES:

• QUICKLINKS FOR MTGTOP8 BY X1UO3YD
• MTGTOP 8
• MTGGOLDFISH (DEATH AND TAXES)
• TCDECKS