MTG Salvation

Quote from Potdindt »

So has Looting become a necessary part of the deck now? I am assuming it is a replacement for thought scour?

Also, when you say Jund them, I am assuming you want the deck to basically become a GR midrange beats deck

Also, lastly, Bomat Courier...why is he good. I cannot see how he will be anything than a 1/1 that dies to literally everything...what am I missing? Is he good enough to lower Delver flipping chance?

Faithless Looting a necessity? I don't know about that. But I do know that I've hated Thought Scour for a long time because you get no selection. Looting gives you plenty of selection, and once you adapt to playing around the card disadvantage, it's just awesome. I love how if you need a Bolt, it can find you one at the cost of one mana and pitching cards not relevant to the matchup, game, or boardstate. And yeah, it replaces Scour insofar as it fills the yard for Hooting Mandrills and Tarmogoyf, while at the same time letting us see more of our deck per game. I'll be playing Looting until they ban it.

As far as Jund them: https://youtu.be/2VlGmtRbbOU?t=10m36s
The subtext is you trade resources until you start drawing bombs off the top, like Huntmaster and Hazoret, in this case, which beats any cards Humans plays in terms of raw quality.

As far as Bomat being good, Jordan's (ashtonkutcher) article explains it well:

The one-power Bomat Courier doesn’t pressure via damage, but via card advantage. Leaving the Construct unchecked results in us drawing multiple cards for a low mana investment, a mechanic that has historically broken tempo decks. Unlike a niche combat keyword like deathtouch, every opponent cares to some degree about card advantage from our deck, since we’ve got everything in there: reach, permission, and of course, more threats. So they’re all incentivized to remove Courier.

I've only been on this build for a week, but I've been way happier with Bomat than I have been with other threats I've played in this deck beyond Delver, Goyf, and Hooter. I've got a strong dislike for Young Pyromancer because it dies to everything and is secretly a 3 drop, at least. I love Snapcaster, but it's also a 3 drop, really, and moreover relies on the graveyard, which sucks. I've played a one-of Savage Knuckleblades before, but it's a hard 3 drop, and sucks to lose it to Fatal Push. Now Bomat dies to everything, but it's not graveyard reliant, goes nicely with Faithless Looting to empty your hand, grows Goyf twice, and attacks right now. Yeah, it's not super hard hitting, but it hits in for chip damage and being able to draw a card or three off it in the midgame feels huge. I like it quite a bit more than any of the other threats I've tried except Snapcaster Mage, but I've been blown out by Rest in Piece enough to want something like 6 or 8 threats that don't fold to gravehate, especially with the coming uptick due to the Vengevine deck.

Quote from ashtonkutcher »

I find Delver terrible in this matchup. Usually not too tough to seed a couple cards under Bomat, and the draws are great after siding. We basically just want to Jund them. You're crazy for cutting Muta IMO; it gives you free hits and sometimes removal with Bomat, and kills Phantasmal Image for nothing. Critical to blow up their Vials when given the chance or Humans will outpace you. For my plan, see pic attached.

Super interesting. I guess I have to get used to cutting Delvers sometimes in Modern. When I play UR Delver in Pauper, I do it all the time, but for some reason in this format, I'm reluctant to do it.

Thanks for attaching the pic. Interesting to see that your board has changed a little: two Surgicals replace one each of the 4 drops, and one Sphere replaces a Moon. No surprise: your list a few weeks ago seemed a little short for the combo matchups running around these days, and maybe a little overboard for the Path to Exile or Thoughtseize decks. I find my matchup with the UW and UWR control decks pretty fine, and pretty much the only Rock decks I'm seeing are Mardu, which I feel favored against, especially postboard. My current configuration is pretty similar, except I've given up Sphere entirely in favor of 3 Moons -- the theory being that it just wins some matchups on its own, where Sphere only slows things down a little -- and my gravehate is one Surgical and one Cage, due to Cage also shutting down Collected Company, which decks I seem to play against often. But if I were to see a rise in Hollow One or Vengevine locally, I think I'd cut the Cage for another Surgical, as you do.

With luck, I'll play against Humans again on Monday, and we'll see how a Delverless configuration goes.

For what it's worth, I'm on a 2-2 split of Denial and Pierce right now, too. I could see playing a different split pretty easily, or even going with a set of Denials.

I'm on Jordan's Bomat list, and have found myself grudgingly liking 19 lands, but I am no fan of basic Mountain. I might make it an 11th fetch, or possibly a 2nd Spirebluff.

Anyone else struggle mightily against Humans? I feel pretty good against most other decks, like if I just mulligan, sideboard, and sequence intelligently, I'll stand a chance. But Humans feels daunting most games to me. I always board in sweepers, but over the last 8 months, I've tried boarding in extra creatures like Huntmaster, I've tried Blood Moons, I've tried Basilisk Collar when I was playing that, I've tried Abrade when I was playing that. I think this week, my plan will be to board out all 4 counters, all 4 Bomats, Mutagenic Growth, and maybe 1 Delver, to add in 1 Ancient Grudge, 1 Destructive Revelry, 1 Engineered Explosives, 2 Firespout, 3 Blood Moon, and 2 Huntmaster. I've never been big on boarding in answers to Vials, but I've also not been having success against the deck and am happy to try new things.

I played it because I love lands, but eventually cut it for a Karakas, which I pretty much only include for the sweet OG art and a few fringe interactions.

Quote from Lemonbuster »

Pretty similar to what I’ve run being fairly counter heavy game one but the sideboard is very flexible and I go without delver/pyro to bring in Anger quite often. I like that pyromancer gives us a proactive two threat that ignores grave hate, which has been my primary focus in tweaking as it’s always been a major flaw in the deck.

Faithless looting has been good and I’ve played it before but I’m not sure we can afford to be -1 cards that often. 4 is a lot, drawing two early can certainly feel like a mull to 5 that cost you mana as we have no cards that gain value from being pitched.

My problem with Pyromancer stems back to my playing UR Delver, and it just felt gutless as a threat. Plus, it's not really a 2 drop in that it dies to literally every removal spell, from Hero's Downfall all the way down to Flame Jab and Darkblast, with no value if you just slam it on turn 2, or as a topdeck. Goyf is at least difficult to kill, and Mandrills dodges much of the removal in the format. If there were more free spells in Modern, I'd like Pyromancer a lot more.

As I'm able to detail, perhaps the Bomat Couriers Jordan has suggested might be that missing threat that ignores the yard.

With regard to Faithless Looting, I'm loving it. It took some adjustment to my play style, but insofar as it digs for cards, it's awesome, and even casting it with one other card in hand seems fine to me much of the time. Think about how often you've got an extra land you don't need, or an Abrade in want of a target, or a counter against an Aether Vial deck turn 1. Plus, it digs as efficiently as anything in this format not named Ancient Stirrings for sideboard cards. I've become a huge fan, whereas I think Thought Scour is utter garbo, and would go to great lengths to exclude it from any future decklist unless I was playing Disrupting Shoal and needed another blue card.


Just back from Modern Monday. I was short 2 Baubles, but ended up playing 58 of Jordan's 60 tonight. Bomat felt awesome. The chip damage is real, and being able to reload 2 or 3 cards is real. Wasn't a huge fan of the Mutagenics, but I'll probably keep one in as a way to empty the hand. As it was, being able to dump irrelevant cards for potentially relevant ones felt very good.

I came in 3rd, going 2-1-1 tonight. Lost to Humans 2-1, beat Mardu Pyromancer 2-0, beat Bant Spirits 2-1, and went 1-1-1 in a really frustrating match against UW Spirits.

Here was something awesome that happened when I was down 0-1 against UW Spirits. My board is Island, Forest, 2 shocks, and a Blood Moon. His board is 2 Islands, two other lands, a tapped Vial on 2, and an untapped Vial on 3. His creatures include a just-cast Kira, a Spell Queller with a Huntmaster under it, two Mausoleum Wanderers, a Supreme Phantom giving all his stuff +1/+1, and a Phantasmal Image copying the Phantom. He's trying to get me to concede after attacking me down to 2, and I said I was going to play it out. So I untap, cast Vapor Snag on the Image, which he has to sac. He called a judge to make sure Kira didn't counteract that. Followed that up with a Firespout, getting his Kira, Phantom, and both Wanderers, with just the Queller left. I pass, he attacks me to 2 and passes. I untap, Bolt the Queller, get my Huntmaster back, go to 4, and with a Vapor Snag in hand was able to flip Huntmaster for my next turn and never looked back.

We ended up going to turns on turn 2 of the 3rd game. I kept a hand of all removal knowing that I was out of time and wasn't going to be able to kill him, so was playing for a draw, figuring he wouldn't have time to kill me, either. I killed much of his stuff and he pissed and moaned after the match was over, if only he had done X, he would've won game 2, and if only he'd done Y, he would've won game 3. Yes, but you did not. That's why we play the games. He's some Legacy hotshot from the area who fancies himself a great player and he came into our match upset because he was 1-2. He couldn't bear to give me credit for anything and said his misplays gave me the win, and I called him graceless and bailed. My god do I hate whiners.

It was refreshing to play against all creature decks tonight. Bomat felt especially great one game where I blocked, sacrificed it, pitched a land from my hand and drew a land, Delver, and Bolt. Blood Moon absolutely crapped on Bant Spirits in game 3 when he tapped out on turn 2 for a Supreme Phantom.

In other news, Reflector Mage is an absolute beating and while I finally won a game against Humans, I've still never won a match against the deck in 5 or 6 matches. Seems like you either have to flip 2 Delvers early and Bolt everything they play, or keep a hand of all removal and sweepers and play like a bad control deck. I'm sure this matchup is winnable, but I haven't figured it out yet. Mardu Pyromancer, on the other hand, feels like a bye.

One thing that bugs me about Humans is that it took a few different decks -- Death and Taxes, Hatebears, Merfolk -- and rendered them obsolete. There's no reason to play a fish-style aggro-control deck these days that isn't Humans. Grixis Shadow did the same thing to midrange for a while, and there was some metagame response to it. What's going to happen, or is already happening, in response to Humans?

Quote from ashtonkutcher »

1. I actually started with 18 lands, but found 19 was best for emptying hand with Courier, ensuring I hit early land drops, and enabling sideboard plans. Looting prevents flood.
2. FB for a 4th Denial I guess, but I don't miss mainboard Leaks at all. 6 permission post-side is plenty. Bomat also happens to be insane against linear combo since they skimp on removal and don't block.
3. Yes, often; against midrange and control.
4. I've played in I think a single Comp REL tournament since the Classic. I still go to weeklies at Pandemonium twice a week and play online a lot via free clients (still haven't figured out how to set up MODO on my Mac).

Thanks for the response. I watched a Legacy video of Mengucci playing Grixis Delver with Bomat to get a feel for it, and it seemed good, although it ate removal. But that's a fine thing in a deck trying to grow a big Goyf or power out a Mandrills.

1. Interesting consideration. I've hated Mountain in various forms of this deck since I started playing RUG a while ago, and it's such a feelbad to have it as your only land in an otherwise-keepable opener. Though being able to cast Bomat off any land probably makes it way more palatable.
2. Six permission seems a bit low against combo decks, but with as many cards as this deck sees, maybe it's fine. I'm particularly worried about this point because my local place is infested with Storm and Ironworks, so much so that I've been running 2 Damping Sphere out of the board to give those decks a speedbump.
3. The local area seems like on control here, and midrange seems really focused on Mardu and a splashing of Bant Eldrazi / Eldrazi Tron. The Mardu matchup feels great with the sweepers and Mandrills, and Huntmaster sucks with sweepers. I'm really excited to try out Hazoret here, but I might just forgo the Huntmasters because so often when I want them in, I also want sweepers.
4. The other big player locally is Burn. What's your plan against Burn with this configuration? I know you mentioned Revelry in the article, but that seems pretty loose if they're not on Bridge.
5. Just a thought, but Bomat might be a little better online because it's pretty easy to find out what's under it when you crack a fetch, whereas doing the same thing in paper would amount to slowplay. I guess if you were looking for something specific, like a Dismember or counter, you could figure it out quickly enough while you're grabbing your Island or whatever.
6. Dumb question for everyone, but has your paper deck got any cool editions? Foiled out, or Beta Bolts, Invocation Blood Moons?

Quote from JacobAddeo »

The cards of value I currently own are 3 bloodstained mire, 3 wooded foothills, 1 stomping ground, 1 ancient foundry, 4 goblin guide. Currently my only deck is 8-whack. I love the deck but I also would like to try something new. basically anything that’s not balls to the wall aggro. my first casual deck was a sultai self mill with an aristocrats subtheme. My roots lie in the graveyard and my favorite color combination has got to be b/g. I currently have about $400 to put into a deck with an extra $80 a month for upgrades. realistically I will mostly be playing at a fnm level but I also want to be able to hold my own own at a ptq level.

Play Mardu Pyromancer. Much of the core of the deck is pretty cheap, you've already got a chunk of the landbase, and the $200 set of Blackcleave Cliffs can be replaced with Dragonskull Summit for about $10 until the Cliffs get a reprint. The Lilianas don't seem super necessary at least at first. Here's an example, though this has Marsh Flats instead of Wooded Foothills: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1211793#paper

Quote from izzetmage »

It's not enough to have cards that can be casted/reanimated from the graveyard, you need cards that are literally better in your graveyard than your hand.

Disagree. It's nice to have the card selection, and lots of decks will give up card advantage to get it. Obviously you want some graveyard use, but the only other 1 mana Modern-legal card that digs two deep and gives you a choice is Sleight of Hand, and that's nowhere near as good as Looting in terms of being able to sculpt your hand.

Just ordered a few Couriers, two extra Baubles, and some Hazorets so I can try out probably 72 of your 75 next Monday.

A few questions:

1. With a curve this low, are 18 lands possible?
2. Seems really light on counters to me. If you were to include another maindeck counter, say in a combo-heavy meta, what might you cut?
3. Do you ever board in all four 4-drops?
4. The real question: are you taking this anywhere competitive, or is that still Colorless Eldrazi for you?

We talk about all kinds of cube design stuff, but as a player, what do you most like playing? I'm in a new state now and haven't found a group to draft with yet, so I'm itchy.

I know many of us love the artifact deck and Wildfire, but what about others?

My couple of off-the-beaten track favorites:

1. BW Mean Girls with Thalias and Braids. In my old playgroup where I used to live, everyone wanted to draft planeswalkers and Mystic Confluences and stuff, so the aggro 1-drops were always available, and the payoffs of the Mean Girls were plenty good to crush durdling decks.

2. GW Elfgeddon. Draft a white aggro deck with some elves, Lotus Cobra, and Ramunap Excavator to go with your Geddons and Strip Mine.

3. UB tempo: again, the aggro 1-drops were underdrafted in my old group, so I'd snatch up all the 2/2s for B and the "bad" permission spells. Bob is huge here, but the other payoffs are thin as neither black nor blue have great 4 mana finishers here. So you just crush them with Zombies and Remand all their garbage.

What about you? I've found that I very much prefer being the aggressor, which is something that happened naturally in response to my last group loving the durdling decks.

Hero of Oxid Ridge or Hellrider?

I cut Hero a while ago because it felt redundant, but with the rules change on Hellrider, I'm wondering if it's closer for any of you.

Contraptions are like a really confusing and aesthetically unpleasing Saga. Having to have a whole separate deck (I think?) seems ridiculous outside of its native format, which by all accounts was fun. But it's not for cube, where we can just play the elegant Sags instead if we want something like it.

Quote from mnesci »

@MikePemulis I didn't realize you were on 17 lands. I remember casting Huntmaster postboard with 17, but that was before Looting, and there were definitely times at which it was hard. With your build having fewer creatures and more counters, you might be best off just keeping the "protect the queen" plan going postboard. Blood Moon might be the best three mana haymaker.

After a rough 1-3 night, I'm considering tinkering with some stuff. I'm not sure the Traverse build is the best, although I've loved tutoring creatures late game. If I get rid of Traverse, I'll definitely go to 18 lands, which makes a Hazoret or Huntmaster or two in the board more reasonable.

For what it's worth, I lost in close games against Ironworks and Burn, beat Mardu Pyromancer, and got crushed by Bant Eldrazi. The Eldrazi player was exceptionally good and I doubt that's a very good matchup anyway, and that deck sort of rose and fell while I was away from Modern, so this was my first match against it. The Ironworks player is the one I beat 2-0 last week, and I lost 1-2 this week. Had a Damping Sphere and a Goyf out, he had already cast his first spell that turn, and so he paid 2 for Engineered Explosives "on 1" but it came down with two counters. Cool interaction. I got blown out after that. Against Burn, Eidolon wrecked me in both games I lost. In the game I won, I was at 4 and he was at 5 on my end step. I had a Tarfire and Bolt in hand and the mana to cast them, and he had two open mana. He went for the Boros Charm on my end step, and I responded. That's the sort of thing I would've misplayed on eight months ago, so that felt good. Deck felt real good against Pyromancer, but the player was bad and was doing dumb stuff like shocking himself to Bolt me on turn 1. He's new to the deck and a Burn player at heart. Grafdigger's Cage was a house here. I love that card, and it seems like I always have my 1-of whenever I board it in.

Quote from Chaughey »

3. @MikeP pretty basics. I always default to the Unhinged/Unglued but seeing yours reminds me there are other amazing basics sets I need to invest in. I remember getting packets of 5 special "Arena League" basics during Onslaught/Mirrorin block when I’d play FNM and JSS seemed like the pinnacle of my life’s purpose. I think I might switch it up now...

In my cube, I've got 35 of each basic, but they're singleton. So I play one of each Euro land, one of each Arena promo, a Beta cycle, one of each of the full-arts, etc. I love basics, and with these 2001 Arena foils with the Beta art, they only did Island and Forest and never completed the cycle. The Island is absolutely stunning, and the Forest is pretty good, too.

I'm just about to run out the door for Modern Monday, but took a quick picture of the deck. Spot the newly-arrived bling: