MTG Salvation

Agree. Splashing for Lingering Souls, Path to Exile, and sideboard cards leaves this deck basically the same. Splashing for Lightning Bolt is a different deck.

I'm testing out Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth as my 25th (!) land. My thought is that it will help with Smallpox and Raven's Crime, but also give me an out if I'm super low on life and want to tap fetches for mana. It's just a thought.

I've been really big on Blackcleave Cliffs in the past, and have run 3 for a long while. I'm down to 2 right now, so we'll see if losing some percentage on pain-free turn 1 black and red is worth gaining Urborg's strengths.

The standard build as of now includes a bunch of Squee, Goblin Nabob, and Conflagrate. Lingering Souls goes into most of these.

To me, the fatty reanimator plan seems awkward, and I think that sort of thing is best left to 4c Gifts Ungiven.

The core of the deck is the expensive part: the lands are going to run you $300, sets of Bloodghast and Life from the Loam will be $100 total. Any instant speed removal is up to you. The rest of the deck is pretty cheap, really. Squees and Vengeful Pharaohs are a couple bucks each, but stuff like Raven's Crime, Smallpox, Faithless Looting, Lingering Souls, Conflagrate, Golgari Brownscale, Darkblast, Zombie Infestation, Molten Vortex, Flame Jab, are cheap.

I view the maindeck as a core of about 44 cards, with the rest being flex slots that will depend on what you want the deck to do and what you expect to play against. My 75 is really more like 85 or 90, as I've cycled through a bunch of things looking for the build I like best. I'm toying with the idea of playing Worm Harvest, for god's sake. So it's sort of up to you.

If blue-based, Ancestral Visions based control becomes big in the format, I think controlling number of lands rather than individual land threats like Eye of Ugin or the Tron pieces becomes more important. Tectonic Edge kills Celestial Colonnade better than Ghost Quarter does. The UW, UWR, and Esper lists are going to run sets of Celestial Colonnade, and Tec Edge recursion shuts down that win condition. Abrupt Decay stops the Thopter Sword combo, too. So those seem like important cards, if the unbanning has the effect on format I think it will.

I could cut a Blackcleave Cliffs to add a Godless Shrine or Temple Garden, then cut the Squees perhaps to add in 2x Lingering Souls.

Conflagrate seems utterly brutal against Junk, if Junk becomes the BGx midrange deck of choice.

I'm thinking of a build that would look something like this:



I'm not saying this is a good list, but it's a few changes I've considered if my local meta shifts more toward blue decks. This seems like it would crush them. I'm really curious to see how the meta is going to shake out, and interested to see what happens with the Modern scene locally.

I want to cast Hymn to Tourach but I also don't want to play Legacy.

What would a grindier list look like? I'm playing 3x Smallpox and 2x Raven's Crime in the main. Maybe 24 lands, including 2x Ghost Quarter and 2x Tectonic Edge. Maelstrom Pulse seems good if there's a Thopter deck that takes off. I've even toyed with playing some number of Thoughtseize / Inquisition in the mainboard, if the meta gets to that point. At that point we're a very grindy Jund / BGrw deck that also attacks lands and relies on recursion rather than raw power of cards.

My store's meta is heavy on aggro swarm, which is terrible for this deck, so I think that 3x Conflagrate and some number of Squee is necessary for my list until there is a change. I hope there is. I'd love to play against less aggro.

Do we start playing Tectonic Edge over Ghost Quarters now? Maybe a 2/2 split? Tectonic Edge recursion wrecks decks that go long. Ancestral Visions is difficult for us, because even if we can empty their hand with Raven's Crime ahead of time, they still go up 3. So maybe the way to keep them down would be to go after their lands. Smallpox and Tectonic Edge seem like the best ways to do it.

As far as counterspells, we'll see. Getting Loam countered isn't a huge deal. Getting Infestation countered stings pretty badly, though.

Might be time to cut back on the Squee / Conflagrate plan and focus more on attrition with Smallpox, Raven's Crime, Abrupt Decay. Maybe Maelstrom Pulse. We'll see how much the format slows down.

Just 22 lands? Seems awfully light, especially with 5 that tap for colorless by themselves. I think most here run 23 with 4 colorless. I'm at 24 with 4 colorless, but I play with Smallpox.

I like the Rally the Peasants tech, but a combat trick loses effectiveness if they can see it in your yard. Still, they might not be able to do anything about it.

Always sweet seeing someone else's take on the deck.

Quote from Esperino »

Also, playing Bridge is an empty turn and I don't enjoy it when my opponents can cast Time Walk for 0 mana in Modern, I'm just weird like that.

Ensnaring Bridge is timewalking yourself? You play Bridge and stop a Tarmogoyf, Tasigur, etc from killing you pretty easily. With a little work, which your deck is doing anyway, it stops everything except Ornithopter and Noble Hierarch from attacking you. It affects the board because it makes their creatures useless. At times it's effectively a 3 mana wrath.

I also want to express again that your tone is insufferable and makes this thread worse, not better.

I looked at Flourishing Defenses while putting the deck together. My big problem is that I've got so many effects that give one damage onto everything, like Pestilence and Withering Wisps, along with lots of effects that give -1/-1 globally, like Night of Souls' Betrayal, that I feel like I'd be wiping out my elf army before I had a chance to do anything with it.

Agenty of Erebos and Thoughtrender Lamia seem excellent and I'll find room for them. You're right: Elemental Bond is pretty iffy, and it's on the chopping block.

What would make this deck good? Seedborn Muse would be sweet with Vhati. Obviously Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Worldy Tutor would help a good deal. But besides those obvious cards, what is there?

I found a copy of Vhati il-Dal in a box of old cards at a pawnshop last summer and it's sort of been my project commander ever since. My main deck is Memnarch, and it's very good. This is way less good, but it's also totally unique and I value being able to take something unique to the table.

I play with two different groups. One is lots of black-based decks, and the other is much more diverse and probably a bit more competitive, though we tend to play Kingdoms with that group.

The idea behind the deck is to abuse Vhati's ability. To that end, I've got several untappers: Instill Energy, Nature's Chosen, Quest for Renewal, Jandor's Saddlebags, Puppet Strings, Thousand-Year Elixer, and Thornbite Staff, which can clear a whole board if there's an effect giving one damage or -1/-1 to everything. There are a few others that I don't have currently, like Magewright's Stone and Illusionist's Bracers, that will find their way in eventually.

For ramp and draw, I've decided to focus on enchantments rather than one-shot spells or artifacts. Part of this was a desire to do something different than my Memnarch deck, which is full of artifacts. It does open me up to blowouts of enchantment sweepers, but my main group sees almost none of those. I've got the enchantress package of Enchantress's Presence, Verduran Enchantress, and Eidolon of Blossoms. No Argothian Enchantress, because of the bad synergy of the Pestilence effects.

Several creatures are there for utility and filler reasons: Acidic Slime, Grim Guardian, Kothophed, Ob Nixilis, Pharika's Mender, and Phyrexian Swarmlord. Some of these will be taken out when better things get suggested.

The best cards in deck are Pestilence and Withering Wisps. They can give everything one damage for Vhati to kill, can clear the board, and if I've gained some life, can act as win conditions.

Most of the enchantments are there for particular and obvious reasons, but some are just for value: Rites of Flourishing, Lifegift, Retreat to Kazandu, Palace Siege. Many give life to offset the losses I'm going to have with the Pestilence effects, and Retreat can negate any -1/-1 counters my creatures have.

I've thought about changing the creature base to include lots of infect as a possible win condition, but many of the creatures are too small to survive Pestilence effects.

Here's the deck. Fielding suggestions for cards to add and cut. The whole deck is under $100 as of now, but I'm not opposed to purchasing $20 cards or anything. It's just that so many of the cards that work with Vhati are bulk anyway.

But when you have to play a way off the beaten track rogue deck like 8Rack or Lantern to have a positive percentage, and the one mainstream deck with a 'good matchup' still leaves you 50/50 and basically loses to grave hate, that's a problem. You can beat it, but you have to give up tons in other matchups, and even then it only really gets you to 50/50. That's bad.

I don't see how anyone can say that a 40% metagame share with basically 80% of pros playing the deck at events is fine. It's by far the most warped the Modern meta has ever been.

I've played Eldrazi precisely once, and I won, even through a Eye > Mimic > Mimic opening. I changed my sideboard a bit if I was expecting the deck at my FNMs. I'm fine with all that. But I can also zoom out and look at the big picture, which is that there is a core of 30ish cards played by 40% of meta at large, and that sucks and needs to be fixed.

If you're playing without Bridge, aren't you also playing with Smallpox? A 4cmc spell in a Smallpox shell seems really rough. In Loam Pox, the most expensive spell I regularly cast is flashing back a Faithless Looting, and that's in a deck that's built to work around Smallpox's symmetry.

If you're not playing Bridge and also not playing Smallpox, I guess I could see it. Probably you'd need 23 lands rather than 22. Seems like you'd want to run a lot of removal with it, though, and that cuts into the discard plan. I could see it as a 2-3-of, probably replacing Nyxathid in the Rats / Nyxathid build, but then I've hated Nyxathid for a long time and am not the best person to look at that objectively.