MTG Salvation

Ok guys so I have been following this thread from its initiation and havent chimed in til just now. I am preparing for GP Charlotte and am dedicated to playing the best version of collected company that exists. I wanted to do a lot of testing with different builds, different options, and do some real math. I love math. So lets revisit some important math.

How often are you hitting 0, 1, or 2 creatures with your CC? These stats have been posted before but I remade it just to show both probabilities at once.



This is assuming you magically cast CC on a 60 card deck, with different numbers of viable targets. I have also done this for a realistically scaled down library and it makes a negligible difference. That is, if we have a 60 card library with 30 creatures, the probability of hitting 2 is 90.3%. Compare that to a 40 card library with 20 creatures, the probability of hitting 2 is 90.9%. Obviously real scenarios will change based on what you know you have bottomed with CC or searched with Chord, etc., but these numbers are generally solid information throughout the game.

I will come back to this important graph in a second, but lets take a look at one most people have not seen yet. Imagine your opponent just cascaded into their living end, with 4-5 beaters in the yard. You have a finks and melira on board, but no sac outlet. Do you pull the trigger on CC? If you hit, you win. If you miss, you might have thrown away your chance at establishing any board. What are you odds on hitting that seer?



Im sure you can imagine and have experienced other situations where you have to decide to pull the trigger on CC to either find the combo, or just that finks to stay alive, or one of your silver bullets that you cant chord at the moment. It is always a risk, and we have all at one point or another done a complete whiff. But you should know the odds of whatever play you are attempting.

So lets take a typical list I see:
23 lands
4 collected company
3 chord
2 removal (path or abrupt)
6 mana dorks
4 finks
3 sac outlets
4 anafenza/melira split
1 redcap
6 value creatures (usually voice and eternal witness, could be brimaz or grim haruspex or big anafenza)
4 silver bullets (spellskite, pridemage, ooze, pontiff, etc)

Now lets understand some of how that math really applies to this build, our sequencing, and our chord decisions. On the surface we have 28 creatures, which looks great for CC probabilities, right? Well, minus 1 because redcap is too big. But 27 isnt bad, sitting at 85.0% chance to hit 2. But that is still deceptive. 6 of our creatures are mana dorks. Now I know a bird is still better than nothing, and we all have games weve won off 3 birds getting loaded up with gavony counters. But there isnt one of us sleeving up CC getting excited about the value of putting mana dorks into play. When you look at our chances of hitting something we WANT, we have really only 21 targets of impact, giving a 69.3% hit for 2. That is way too close to 1/3 of the time missing on value for my taste and what I want my deck to do.

Hold that thought in your mind as we look at sequencing. What does a mana dork on 1 enable us to do? Finks on 2, ooze or pridemage on 2 with activation up (corner case but not necessarily irrelevant), play a 2 drop and another dork? Then you can CC on turn 3, but for this to be the win, it has to hit 2 of your missing combo pieces. Most of the time I want to lead with Voice or Spellskite as soon as I can, and a dork doesnt make that happen sooner. Compare this to Little Kid Abzan. They run 8 mana dorks for a reason. Their sequence is T1 dork, T2 smiter, T3 wilt leaf, smash face. Their goldfish can kill on turn 4, and even have room to cast a path while doing it. Ive tested with Brimaz and big Anafenza as powerful 3 drops to hit on turn 2, and Ive definitely seen games they have taken over. But by and large they got outclassed on the ground quickly, or didnt have enough of a clock to matter to other combo decks, so it was really about assembling my combo anyways. Is a mana dork on turn 1 REALLY that much better than viscera seer on 1? What does your sequence look like and how different is your board state on turn 4?

I completely disagree with the notion of going midrange, with a possibility of combo. This is the worst midrange clock possible. Do one thing well, and have a back up if the world goes to hell. Little Kid is dropping massive monsters and flying legions, and normal junk is tearing apart the enemy with inquisition and abrupt decay while beating with super undercosted tarmogoyf and tasigur. We cannot afford such disruption without diluting the CC odds. But look at every winning list, they almost all have 8-10 turn 1 plays. You cant afford to do nothing. My solution: drop the hierarchs for a full playset of 4 viscera seer. Ive never looked back.

Now lets talk about our value slots. My plan is to combo. Therefore I am not looking for generic beaters or mild inconveniences. I want every creature that is NOT a piece of the combo to have a bright red target on its back by either being a shield or making life miserable for the opponent. Voice of Resurgence is an automatic 4. If I could run 8 I would. Next is Spellskite. We all understand what he does here, but I see so many lists with just 1. Why? He is best when dropped immediately, not chorded out. I wouldnt go below 2, and I really am tempted to stay at 3. Being able to go off with impunity is a big deal. There was still one problem I was facing when testing vs my more skilled friends with any blue heavy deck. Voice would meet a spell snare or an early path, then spellskite and anafenza or melira would stick. But after that my finks and collected would meet mana leak into remand into cryptic into snapcaster, while my mediocre beats were ignored until they had locked everything up through card advantage and bricked my ground attack. It wasnt every game, and there were plenty of ways to fight, but it still happened enough to be worried. UB faeries is also very much a real entity, and you can laugh it off til you face down a wall of counterspells and faerie tokens. If only I could run more voice of resurgence. That is when I started testing Grand Abolisher. The mana needs to be good enough to cast Anafenza anyways, so he doesnt stretch (and you can move around 1-2 lands if you are having issues). While he doesnt stall the ground as well as spellskite does, he adds a whole different layer of protection. Your opponent MUST kill him on sight. Is that scavenging ooze keeping you from going off? I found scooze is so prevalent that I wanted a maindeck answer to him that didnt rely on me drawing the 1-2 removal spells naturally. Besides, they could always draw 2 and then you are boned. Is that relic of progenitus just waiting for you to commit? Abolisher lets you do everything you need. He either eats a removal asap, or you probably get to go off. The time where he is worst is against zoo and affinity, where he is a poor chump blocker and they dont want to do tricks, just smash. Eternal Witness still earns a place for sheer consistency and putting the pieces back together, assembling that combo, or just value chaining CC. I dont know if 2 is proper, but at least 1 for sure.

Now on to the most controversial part of the deck. Removal and silver bullets. Here is where I am most at odds with a great deal I see. Look at a junk list. Look at a jund list. Look at delver. Do you see many 1 ofs? No. Why? Because they identify their best cards and jam as many as can be effective before getting diminished returns. Why are we so different to have 4 different singletons? But chord of calling! No! Too slow! In what situation are you chording for x is 3 and it isnt just the final piece to combo? It sure isnt early. You are never going to chord for eidolon of rhetoric before storm goes for it. You probably wont have time to chord that Kataki in time for it to make a difference to affinity. Im not saying silver bullets are bad. But they have to be BETTER than finding a piece of your combo, which usually is saying: yhis card took me from losing this game to now winning this game. So I looked at scavenging ooze, and kept track of how he saw play, his impact, when I chorded for him, etc. And in game 1, the only match I ever actually wanted him was for the mirror and for gifts ungiven reanimator. That was it. So I shipped him to the board. Note that I did test big anafenza vs ooze for the mirror. While anafenza does just statically shut off the combo, ooze can be chorded in response to the sac and eat it, while anafenza can only come in and say: go no further until you find an answer.

Qasali pridemage earns his slot in the main because sometimes a cranial plating is too big to deal with, and also because maindeck blood moon is a real thing. He is better than rec sage because you dont have to hold him back, you can just slam him down to help with beats and chord convoke. He can also kill a torpor orb.

For the sideboard, I did have a bunch of bullets, but found it very inconsistent. I do not claim to have the side figured out, and still need a lot of testing, but I am very much on the plan of having mostly multiples. Singletons seem ok if they are redundant (like 3 thoughtseizes and 1 sin collector, 1 tidehollow sculler) or can be chorded easily to make an impact (burrenton forge-tender) or solve a very specific problem (phyrexian revoker in response to an ugin or o-stone coming down). Stop thinking about good cards and start thinking about NECESSARY cards.

Also, do not blind yourself into thinking some matchups are better than they really are. Yes, twin is nice if you get an early spellskite, but they can just ignore so much of your normal attacks, and they dont scoop to infinite life. Burn may look good on paper because you have 4 finks, but if thats all it took to make them fold we would have seen burn crumble long long ago. They have the tools to keep the combo from coming together while still eating your life total rapidly. Even wilted-leaf junk has a brutally fast clock, with room to get in a removal or two without really slowing down.

So with all that said and done, my main point is to emphasize consistency and redundancy, with a game 1 plan that maximizes our combo, while still having a sensible strategy to grind out. This is where I am currently at:



If my thoughts were not clear, a bit more explanation. I went to more Anafenza/Melira count because this is the most fragile part of the combo. People talk about how cartel can go off through a piece of removal. No. The just lightning bolt Melira and that is game over. Or if it is with Anafenza they can just bolt him, or even bolt the finks in response to the bolster trigger. This part of your combo eats the removal because they pretty much cant kill a finks with either one of them out. One corner case that you should also be aware of. If you have Melira and Anafenza in play but no sac outlet, you can play redcap and have it kill itself, doing the same trick to make your entire team arbitrarily large. The biggest controversial thing is that I have eschewed all my removal, believing my game A plan to be better than anyone elses game A plan (that would be disrupted by a path or decay). This may prove false, and I would cut a melira and another card for 2 paths. But as it is, I have 30 creatures, with a true count of 25 live targets for CC, which is a much more comfortable number for me.

Sideboard is pretty standard. Fulminator against scapeshift, tron, amulet. I have been taking notes on my thoughtseizes and almost never taking creatures. I will keep tabs on this, but it seems duress is only better, and even allows me to side into it against burn (which may free up another slot for something else). The tidehollow is because it gets anything while still being a creature. I have on one occasion chorded it in during opponent tron players draw step, taking his freshly drawn ugin, and winning on beats 2 turns later. So what if it eats a removal? Thats what all my cards do, and you still went 1 for 1, and are safer to combo.

If you got this far, thanks for reading, and even if you disagree with my conclusions, I hope this helps you tweak your CC list that much closer to the best it can be.

Trying to post a large write up and analysis for deck creation. Won't let me. Please help.

You're right, I think I misreported that. The creatures I saw were young pyromancer, TNN, tasigur, snapcaster, and creeping tarpit.

I just played in a 58 man IQ today in Dalton, GA running the following list:



Round 1 vs BUG Delver
This is everything I ever wanted. Despite losing the die roll, lead off with judge's familiar after this deathrite, then swords and ghost quarter him and he has no basics to find. A wasteland and leonin arbiter put the game away just like that. He tried to force of will the arbiter but birdie sacrificed himself to make it stick. Game 2 I keep a hand with 2 swords and a path to exile, hitting deathrite, tarmogoyf, tarmogoyf. Eventually he lands a TNN but is losing the race to my small dudes and has to golgari charm the whole board. I vial to restock faster than he can with his limited mana and quickly clean up.
2-0 games, 1-0 matches

Round 2 vs UW Stoneblade
He wins the die roll and drops basic island pass. Not even a brainstorm at eot, then basic island pass again. I thought he was on high tide because I knew someone at this event was, and played revoker naming candelabra. The safer bet would have been sensei's top, but it apparently wouldn't have mattered. An arbiter slowed his mana down, but didn't stop it entirely and unfortunately I drew only wastelands instead of ghost quarters while he fetched plenty of basics. He lands back to back TNN's to race my serra avenger with a jitte, while double rishadan only mildly kept his plentiful lands from casting everything he wanted. I made 2 critical misplays this game. The first was when he cast his own jitte, I had a vial on 2 with a revoker in hand. The proper play was to vial in the revoker right then and prevent it from even equipping. For some reason I thought I would "get" him by making him waste the mana to equip but not be able to do anything. This played into my second massive misplay. I only had the serra avenger able to attack, and drew the aven mindcensor with him at 5 life. Instead of porting both of his white sources as I was doing each turn, I only ported 1 so I could flash in the aven. This allowed him to drop a 2nd white and cast his maindeck supreme verdict. This wouldn't have spelled disaster, except this now left him with an active naked jitte, preventing me from doing anything with the mindcensor or thalia in hand. Game 2 he forces my vial, then casts TNN on 3, then jitte and equip on 4. Lights out in no time. I asked him after and he has all 3 TNN in the main. It's a brutal match I think.
2-2 games, 1-1 matches

Round 3 vs Elves
I win the die roll and slam judge's familiar into thalia into revoker, and wasteland 2 of his sources. Judge's familiar saves the day as he manages 5 mana to cast natural order, but bird puts it 1 out of range of resolving. This buys me enough time to find the leonin arbiter, and a serra avenger takes it home. In game 2 I get another nutty draw. Turn 1 mom, turn 2 canonist, turn 3 containment priest. This shut him off pretty hard, and thalia and mindcensor whittle him away with his options closed off. Between leonin arbiter and containment priest, elves feels like a positive match up now instead of a highly negative one.
4-2 games, 2-1 matches

Round 4 vs UR Delver
I was rightly nervous sitting across Andrew Schneider, who has won 3 legacy opens with his deck and I have not nearly enough experience with mine. Despite winning the die roll, he pummels me in game 1. I led judge's familiar to his swiftspear. I play a spirit of the labyrinth, to which he just plays 2 more swiftspears. He waits til he has the mana to get around bird, bolts a path, then double gitaxian probes me and I get punched. Game 2 looked like it might be much more of the same with his double swiftspear opener, but I swords one and develop my own board presence with familiar, mom, thalia, canonist. He flips a delver and we get into an awkward race. He drops a sulfuric vortex, but I draw a jitte and wind up killing him with me at 3 life. Game 3 fortunately only opens up with goblin guide instead of the spear, and I take a few hits and lose a few creatures to bolts before setting up some defense. I had a familiar, vial, plains and 2 ghost quarters in play. His delver flips to the air, and he slams a sulfuric vortex down with his only 3 mana. I draw leonin arbiter, play my wasteland, and hit all 3 of his lands, leaving him with nothing, then swords the delver. From there I race him down but end the game at 5 life myself.
6-3 games, 3-1 matches

Round 5 vs Grixis Delver
I win the die roll and see a hand of 2x wasteland, 2 rishadan, vial, thalia, avenger, and snap keep. The vial meets a force of will, much to my sadness. Luckily he doesn't have an early threat, and it appears only 1 basic island in the deck, because he starts fetching volcanic and underground sea, both of which get wasted, while port keeps down his island. Despite my draw steps including a swords, 1 more thalia, and 2 more avengers, I don't feel bad about my position. Until he plays a swamp and casts his tasigur with just enough to delve it out. I go from 20 to 16 to 12 to 8. I finally draw a ghost quarter, hit my own rishadan to find a plains, and swords the tasigur. Only to have to run into another force. I go to 4 and rip a karakas, putting tasigur safely away, and start to crawl out of this position. Unfortunately, he draws enough lands to cast pyromancer and cantrip twice, then bolt, swinging in for exactly 1 more token than I have blockers. Game 2 goes much better, as I run judge's familiar out on 1 into a rest in peace on 2, nullifying not just tasigur, but the snapcasters and dig through times I saw. A TNN stalls me out as a blocker til I find council's judgment. What really wins the game is vial on 2 with thalia and karakas, which he can never manage to put together enough mana to cast 2 removal spells at once. Despite being in an unwinnable position (both TNN met both of my council's judgments), he didn't scoop and kept essentially fogging my thalia with removal while I drew lands. Eventually I take it and we start game 3 with 7 minutes left. We played very quickly and exchanged a lot of removal for creatures, snapcasters, pyromancers, but when turns were called I had an aven mindcensor in play with a jitte equipped and he had no red sources and no cards in hand. Despite him being dead on what would have been turn 6, he declines to concede (understandable) and we draw.
7-4-1 games, 3-1-1 matches

Round 6 vs Jeskai Stoneblade
With only 58 players, this 6th round was the last and I was in 10th place going in. Unfortunately, this was the most disappointing match of the evening. I win the die roll and have to mulligan to a hand of judge's familiar, jitte, swords, wasteland, plains, port. I lead bird into jitte, which he tries to force and birdie sacrifices himself to keep jitte alive. I draw another bird and try to suit up, but it meets a bolt. While I was able to wasteland and port, my next 4 draw steps were all plains, then port, port, waste, and he won by attacking me 7 times with a lone TNN. Game 2 was much of the same. Pithing needle on vial, swords my mom, swords thalia, play TNN on 4, immediately play and equip jitte. In game 1 I saw 2 of 26 creatures, and in game 2 I saw 3 of 24. The land flood never came from ghost quarters, ironically enough. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered, since this deck struggles to beat a resolved TNN so much anyways.
7-6-1 games, 3-2-1 matches

Overall I still had a great time and learned a lot. I need much more practice with the deck. My friend convinced me to run the judge's familiars, and I must say they really impressed me. Many games laying them on turn 1 allowed for the turn 2 arbiter or thalia to safely resolve through counter magic or removal. When it is good, it is VERY good, but when it is bad it is nigh useless, but it does wear a jitte quite nicely. It was critical to the UR delver match and is at its best against the unfair decks. The idea is that we can beat all the fair decks but denying them the ability to even cast their spells, and need the speed bump and protection for those pieces to resolve double ghostquarter turns on 3 or such. Since this list eschews the entire stoneforge package, I tried to be aware of any time I would have rather the leonin arbiter be stoneforge and I can't say I really did. I was always happy to see it, and it lead to some very strong blow outs. The concession is that if the stoneblade decks are running 3 TNN main and a lot of basics (I saw 5 basics from both matches), perhaps screwing them out is not viable and we have to play the longer game. As much as I loved judge's familiar, if TNN is our biggest problem, maybe a few stoneforges come back to find sword of fire/ice to try to race out. Spirit of the Labyrinth was my biggest underperformer the whole day. I never got to make a "gotcha" moment with vial, because all the draw spells were cast too early, and the late game draw is from dig. Compared to revoker, where people are often investing more mana into the thing that is getting vial tricked. I would look to cut the spirits for stoneforges before the familiars.


Can we be weird?
I like considering all options, even if they seem ridiculous. TNN is real and is the public enemy number 1. No other card even felt problematic except this. Yes we have council's judgment, but that costs 3 and they will often have counter spells that late in the game, as well as access to more draw to find more TNN than you find judgment. Do you think Runed Halo is worth playing? It can be tutored up and dropped on turn 2, relegating TNNs to only ever be walls. Yes jeskai has wear//tear, but this at least stretches their targets between our equipment and RiP now too. I am going to test and see if it helps. Now to go even further. Some match ups still feel utterly miserable, such as Jund and even moreso Lands. With this build our own mana base is 25-26 lands, and if we can't effectively lock our opponent out of all action, can we instead do something with this mana? Instead of running more judgments and even cataclyms, what if we transformed with a sideboard that included 3 rest in peace, 2 enlightened tutor, and 2-3 Helm of Obedience? Many decks side out their counterspells against DnT, and it allows us to sidestep the battle over resolving and equipping and racing. Maybe it is asking too much, but it doesn't hurt to look at the option.

Hey guys, so there is a legacy IQ going on this Sunday, which I am preparing for. A friend of mine, who is admittedly much better at the format than I, has always been advocating Leonin Arbiter to me, but I've always found it too cute. When that last just won a big event, it made me reconsider. So we proxied it up and started testing, and here are my thoughts:

Is WW really that hard?
Looking at a typical list that runs 23 lands, we have 14 unconditional white sources, and 1 cavern, which is usually naming human, so let's disregard that for most WW casting costs. Odds of having WW on turn 3: 67.8% on the play, and 74.1% on the draw. For turn 4 those odds becomes 74.1% and 79.5% respectively. And we have deemed these odds good enough to run 4 Flickerwisps and sometimes even 4 Serra Avenger. Now look back at the Ghost Quarter list. In 26 lands, he had 13 white sources, and 1 cavern. For hitting turn 4 WW, the odds have only decreased to 69.6% on the play and 75.2% on the draw. Is this really so bad that we avoid WW spells? This also does not include the feels-bad-man-but-I'm-desperate play of Ghost Quartering your own land to hit that extra W to cast a crucial spell. If the odds need that extra bump, Cavern could even be cut. And this is only looking at casting WW on turn 4, which you might not be pressed to do. If you spend your first few turns wasting enemy lands, we found you have a bit more time to wait out that draw.

Is Stoneforge really necessary?
I know, I know, this is heresy. Everyone has countless games won by fetching up that right piece and slamming it down to take over. This list cut down to 2, but left all 3 pieces to fetch. Something I'd like to discuss is going even further. When testing with this list, I so often found Stoneforge clogging my hand. Yes, you can the issue of Arbiter on board and Stoneforge in hand, but that didn't feel so bad because if our annoying cat man is alive and well, things are going great. Instead, the total mana investment before return felt too great, spending 6 and having it possibly negated by a single removal. Yes, MoM can protect, but that is always the case. I often found myself having essentially wasted time with the Stoneforge when I wanted to be playing more denial cards like revoker to turn off mana dorks, labyrinth, aven, or activating port. It wasn't like before where running out stoneforge felt great, and resetting batterskull with flicker in case they had the removal. Drawing the equipments naturally, aside from jitte occasionally, felt pretty bad.

I tried moving into the Mangara lock plan, to double down on land hate, and found it sometimes very powerful, but sometimes also somewhat slow or stranded. That is, it seemed better to be wasting at every opportunity, and porting. Without vial and karakas both, he seems poor. I'm not sure I'd removal all of him for that power, but being able to always have vial on 2 safely in topdeck mode is appealing.

Can we go lower to the ground?
Judge's Familiar and Dryad Militant come to mind as proactive things to do on turn 1 that allow for effective turn 2 waste plays. Dryad saves against the first Punishing Fire, Loam lock, Past in Flames (which is almost always involved in storm's fastest kills), and severely limits the power of delve cards, which have often been how certain decks dig their way out. Familiar is just that extra speed bump to safely lay down our turn 2 inhibitor through daze or force at times, or waste against the crop rotation decks. I am not sure which is more effective in more scenarios, but I lean towards the bird. Either way, I'd focus on laying down something proactive, locking out lands, and ending as quickly and efficiently as possible.

So this is what I am currently testing with. I'd love some feedback on my thought processes.