MTG Salvation

Quote from Golgari4Life »

Hey, so I figured I'd put a word in because honestly I've been playing BG/x decks since I was 12. I'm 30 now and haven't been super impressed with the three color combinations. So first off lets discuss the biggest controversial cards in Abzan which I honestly do agree with a lot of people regarding the view of Voice versus Grim Flayer. I consider myself a bit of an expert with BG/X decks and have been playing this game for quite awhile. I have Day 2'ed several GPs with BG/x variants and was a huge fan of Macy Rock back in the days of Extended.

1. Grim Flayer versus Voice of Resurgence

So with the increase in fatal push and other spells I like Voice of Resurgence more in the current metagame. I also still think Dark Confidant is an amazing card and a lot of people are not giving it the credit it deserves. I believe the key to winning grindy matchups and control is card advantage. Both Voice of Resurgence and BoB give you that. I also don't fully agree with these results I'm seeing. The Abzan decks are getting pretty solid draws considering I don't see how Flayer is better in the current metagame. It seems like something that has an immediate target on its head. I can't say I've tested him but based on what I have seen and have heard I'm not impressed. Voice of Resurgence has a decent place with a metagame that involves Abzan, Grixis Delver, Jund, Affinity. Neither card is good against Anger of the Gods and fails that test. The one thing is Voice replaces itself once it dies whereas Flayer must connect to actually get value. If it dies you are stuck.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

http://onthedraw.weebly.com

What do you guys think of him playing the 4x Flayers and opting for 2 main Gideons?

I have to say, Gideon himself is so fantastic, I think he may be better than people think. Turn 3 LOTV into turn 4 Gideon is so brutal. I sold my Flayers on mtgo (have the paper cards though) so I'm curious to try this deck build

The guy already conceited that Stony Silence is going to be mandatory.

I don't like his SB, but I did stick relatively close with it, opting for the 2nd copy of Thragtusk to be Elspeth, putting 3x Stony Silence, and 1x Damnation.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I had a fantastic night tonight and went undefeated.

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Land (24) 4x Blooming Marsh 3x Verdant Catacombs 3x Marsh Flats 3x Windswept Heath 1x Overgrown Tomb 1x Godless Shrine 1x Temple Garden 2x Swamp 1x Plains 1x Forest 3x Shambling Vent 1x Gavony Township Creatures (13) 4x Tarmogoyf 2x Scavenging Ooze 2x Voice of Resurgence 3x Siege Rhino 2x Tasigur, The Golden Fang	Spells (23) 3x Inquisition of Kozilek 3x Thoughtseize 3x Path to Exile 3x Fatal Push 1x Collective Brutality 2x Abrupt Decay 1x Maelstrom Pulse 4x Lingering Souls 3x Liliana of the Veil	Sideboard 1x Collective Brutality 1x Golgari Charm 3x Fulminator Mage 3x Stony Silence 1x Damnation 1x Engineered Explosives 2x Surgical Extraction 1x Liliana, the Last Hope 1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar 1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion

Played that stupid ass Cheerios deck and dismantled him with a 3/4 Goyf from 20 life. Discard into Stony silence with fatal push was just too gg. He quit the tournament after the first loss, it was a serious beating

Had one of the greatest feelings in all of modern, LOTV with a Bring to Light player topdecking and me surgical extracting their Scapeshift.

Sultai is a legit deck, it was the only game I didn't steamroll tonight.

I originally had a 2nd Gideon in Elsepths spot, but I figured midrange was so popular that a super bomb was a nice option. Gideon and Elspeth were so backbreaking in fair games.

Never saw Voice tonight except against Scapeshift

The deck curved out very well, every hand was leaning towards proactive aggression with a sprinkle of answers, and I kept slow ass, over the top hands against fair decks. I was immensely satisfied with the creature curve, basically felt like I had 6x Goyfs, and backbreaking planeswalkers for games 2 and 3. Had multiple games where I dropped LOTV followed by Gideon and locked the opponent out of the game.

Junk now feels significantly more powerful than Jund, I've HATED Junk previously in comparison to Jund. Outside of bolting to the face, I'm not sure Jund is doing anything better now.

I don't miss Flayer at all, now I don't have to worry whether I'm getting a boltable 2/2 drop or not, who is sometimes stuck as a 2/2, especially in matchups where you don't like sorcery speed stuff. Voice is still being tested, but the creatures feel so powerful with having 6 1 drop answers.

Had better topdecks, the only time I had a bad topdeck was when I was mana-flooded. No crappy Nobles to waste space, or put myself in situations where Flayer was bad, just fat Siege Rhinos and Tasigurs.

I know some of you guys have been very on the fence against either running 4x Marsh Blooms, or disliking the 3/3/3 drop, but my color fixing was smooth. I never thought, "if only I could search for that 2nd Overgrown Tomb". I never needed it, I was never short on green or black.



There's a pre-trial GP Sunday, gonna take this list to the store. Pretty open to changing 1 or 2 cards in the sideboard. I wouldn't mind either a 2nd collective Brutality or a Blessed Alliance, but I don't know yet.

Quote from FlyingDelver »

@KorDiamonds, I see your points but the way I see it, is that Big Mana decks are the big winners of these bannings and the push print. I think by cutting Flayer you loose the ability to race them to a meaningful degree. Ramping into something big is in my opinion a better way to beat Tron than going for a more durable game.

Of course there are many Midrange decks also present, but I think Tron is the biggest problem. I can see running durable threats is important, but what do we do about Tron? I really really don't think Fulminator + Surgical is the answer.

If you don't face Tron that often then I am completely for all the changes, but I fear Tron will be too present right now. What do you think?

Quote from FlyingDelver »

Quote from Pe7er89 »

I dont see the decrease of threat density here since I play the same amount of creatures, just bigger ones. The logic of being able to kill goyf with push resulting in needing more 2 drops for push to hit just goes past me.

Flayer does nothing against any midrange deck. GBx, Eldrazi and grixis. These are the decks that are to be expected next to Tron and burn and some control.

How can you claim noble junk to be more preferable already in this half a week old meta?

My biggest reason to run Noble Junk is actually due to turn 2 Lingering SOuls or LoTV possibility, I think thats amazing.

Quote from KoDiamonds »

Quote from FlyingDelver »

I am actually with KorDiamonds here, and this is the reason why Noble Junk is more preferrable right now I think. You just have more creatures which will more like'ly turn on delirium and more creatures will be leftover if others will get pushed.

Yeah, I am going to have to take back what I said about the Hierarch+Flayer plan. I said I'll stick with that build until I start losing... and I went 0-3 last night. My matchups were Narset Esper control, Jund, and Grixis Control.

Vs. Narset Control: I won game 1, but game 2 & 3 I got stone-rolled by Elspeth Sun's Champion.
Vs. Jund: I lost game 1 due to a 1 land Hierarch hand. Hierarch got bolted and couldn't recooperate. Game 3 my opponent was hellbent with an active ravine and I died with 1 Maelstrom Pulse and 2 Lillys in hand.
Vs. Grixis Control: I mulliganed to 4 and clawed all the way back. A top decked Siege Rhino would have won me the game but he didn't come crashing.

Overall, Grim Flayer felt miserable last night. He died to Bolt, Push, etc. etc. I really wish he was a Tasigur just to at least gain card advantage (He gets Terminated, I mill and bring a card back). He literally died to everything. I know this is one night but when a card feels bad every round, something has got to change.

Why are giving up that fast just because you lost one Tournament? I think that does not automatically mean that Nobles are bad. I mean, there are days where I crush Tron and this still doesn't mean Tron is a good MU. Things can go bad at times. But like you said, Exalted is amazing, Turn 2 Lili/Souls or Turn 3 Rhino are equally amazing, I can't see why this is not worth playing anymore.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I feel like Junk will want more than 2, for sure.

I'm totally cutting the nobles unless the next major tournament feels Nobles are still the way to go

You're right that push doesn't go to the face, and it will be very dead against combo

But---bro, it can hit things bolt can't. Pathing is awful the first 2 turns. Are you guys trying to run a more creature dense junk shell?

I think 3 is the correct number, not going to play 4 copies.

Quote from Disgruntled92 »

Long time pilot of the deck here. Mostly just play local game nights but recently have started grinding out IQ's. I have two top 8's in the last month. One pre-AER and one post AER. I can tell you the difference with push added is like night and day. That and along with the new creature selection I am running has just felt much more powerful.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/555181#online

This is the one from last weekend. Having one mana interaction with creatures that doesn't ramp the opponent really helps. My pre push creature base was 4xGoyf 4xBob 2xSiege rhino 2xScooze. The new one is 4xGoyf 3xRhino 2xTasigur 2xScooze and 2xVoice of Resurgence.

The Voice of resurgence really impressed me. I was trying to make the deck as resilient to push as possible. I was never a fan of grim flayer or even hierarch for that matter. Playing a mana dork that isn't DRS goes against the principle of the deck.

I was on the fence about the 3rd Siege rhino , but there has never been a time where I have castes one and felt anything less than impressed. It could be possible to cut one for another creature, but I'm not sure what it would be.

Anywho, IQ write up:

Round 1: some sort of 4 color control(2-0)

Not really much to say about these games. He was running cruel ultimatums and sphinx'S revs. Both games I thoughtseized his only interaction spells and beat face with gotta. He died with 6 cards in hand.

Round 2: Burn (1-2)

My only loss during the Swiss. Managed to steal game 1 on the back of some early blockers with voice and souls tokens followed up by Rhinos. I felt pretty good post sideboard with blessed alliances and timely. Games 2 and 3 were really close, but he managed to resolv eidilons(spelling?) so every blessed alliance to gain 4 life would only net me 2. Game 3 he was at 2 with no creatures on board and with me at 3. He top decks bolt. Spoiler:I get my revenge and beat him in the quarter finals.

round 3: Burn ...again (2-0)

So this was an odd one. He was on the nactl version, it looked very creature heavy. I took the play, inquisitioned his Nactl and then followed up with a goyf. I landed a collective brutality to strip his Boros charm and gain 2. Swung in with Goyf then ripped more discard and made him empty his hand before he could cast most of his spells.
This is where things get weird. Mid-sidebording we get deck checked. Judges came back and pulled my opponent aside. He ended up recieving a game loss for having some of his cards facing different ways. Which was odd because we were in the middle of sideboarding and shuffling. I kept hearing complaints about the officiating crew for that event. This would not be the last weird call they make. Anyway 2-1 going into round 4

Round 4:Grixis control (2-0)

This matchup is almost an auto win. I don't think I've even dropped a game in the matchup. Game one he answered all my threats and manages to outgrind me with an active tasigur and multiple snapcasters. I top deck a couple lingering souls and a voice of resurgence and it's was lights out for him.
Game 2 I keep a reasonable hand with a lili, 3 lands, souls, goyf, and a path. I manage to get a couple goyfs down and beat face. I path his tasigur and continue to smash in. He IoK's my souls before I can play it and surgicals it. I Thoughtseize him back only to have it cryptic'd. I thought that was odd, must have something good in his hand...turn out it was 3 surgicals and he didn't want to give the info away. Bringing in 4 surgicals on his side definitely was wrong, but whatever. 3-1

Round 5: 2-1 infect
I hate playing against this deck. I feel like about to die every turn and it's extremely nail biting. I lose game 1 on turn 3 to the nuts through a removal spell. Game 2 I managed to grind out his threats with horde of lingering souls blockers on top of lili tearing his hand apart. The game got weird at the end because of the threat of him killing me with damage from a dryad arbor. Tasigur giving me back a few cards helped. I barely inch out a win. Game 3 I hit him with a few discard spells and then he manages to top deck an ink moth that I can't really answer. He follows that up with a spellskite that I knew about. He realizes that I've definitely got some lingering souls tokens on the way so he attempts to put me at 9 infect with a become immense. Blessed Alliance blows him out. This is my new favorite sideboard card, it works great in a bunch of match ups, especially infect. 4-1

Round 6: Goroyo'S Vengeance 2-0
I was hoping to draw into top 8 but opponent and I were ranked 8th and 7th in the standings and we could potentially get knocked out by 9th place. He was kind of cocky and insisted we play. Both games were not really games. Game one he land flooded and I tore apart his hand with IoK's. Knowing he is bringing in blood moons I keep a hand of swamp swamp forest plains lili thoughtseize path. Turn 1 I thoughtseize him. He had blood moon, 2xcathartic reunion, worldspine worm, and lands. I take a reunion. The look on his face was priceless. He was so tilted by that play that he didn't even play it turn threes. I control his hand with lili after he drops his blood moon. I ultimate lili and make him either keep 3 "mountains" and a blood moon or 2 swamps. He chose 2 swamps. I proceed to kill him. 5-1

Quarterfinals: burn rematch 2-1
Game one was the weirdest game I've ever played against Burn. He only drew creatures for around 5 turns. On top of his opening hand having 4 of them. Basically my army stared at his for a while until I could start trampling him with rhinos. He blows me out my boros charming his nactl to trade with a rhino(on top of multiple blockers). Game 2 he just destroys me turn 3 or 4. Game 3 we both mulligan to 6. My 6 was 2 blooming marsh, 1 marsh flats, fatal push, goyf, timely reinforcements with voice on top. Gas.
On to semi finals.

Semifinals. Affinity 0-2
So not going to name names, but the head judge's officiating was questionable at best. I'm still pretty salty about this. I go to swing with my 3 goyfs. He is at 5 and he only blocks 2. My dice shows goyf as 4/5 when actually he was a 5/6. My opponent caught this after blocks and called the judge over. The judge said because my dice said 4/5 he has to deal damage as a 4/5. This is almost completely incorrect as goyf p/t is a state based effect. Affinity player swings back for lethal. Game 2 I'm pretty salty about judge's horrible call. I keep a subpar hand and don't draw lands. My opponent felt horrible about the whole thing. I called the judge out for basically giving opponent a free win and took my money and left.


I plan on attending more events in the coming future. I'm unsure about the sideboard Thrun and painful truths. I foresee the metagame being heavy aggro(bant eldrazi, affinity, Burn, zoo, and infect) as well as tron. Im pretty happy main board but if anyone has sideboard suggestions let me know.

Quote from Pe7er89 »

Quote from KoDiamonds »

[quote from="FlyingDelver »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/tier-2-modern/511600-abzan-midrange-junk-bgw-souls-bg-rock?comment=4456"]
I really like your list as a starting point Pe7er, but I am still not sold on Coursers. Can you elaborate on how he performs vs. midrange and control? Does he really provide that pseudo card advantage on the board? Is he durable? Can he actually get aggressive and swing in for damage in practice?

Sorry to hear about your night.

About courser. He did give me card advantage in two ways: one- playing lands from the top means next draw step isn't that land. Two- because of the lifegain you can fetch more aggressively to topdeck nonland cards. In addition it just gives some life advantage too.
Every game I played it, it stayed for quite long. Push or path are used on the big beasts if at all. If not, you still got your big beast in play.
It is not at all an aggressive card. It can swing against control and aggro probably, but you have enough beaters otherwise.
On a side note, it is an enchantment so goyfs can grow too. But that didn't matter much.

However. It is probably needed to start adding the 4th LotV. It is good against all midrange, control, Tron and burn decks. You might switch courser for it, but maybe brutality is not that interesting anymore in the main (except for burn).

Quote from FlyingDelver »

I am actually with KorDiamonds here, and this is the reason why Noble Junk is more preferrable right now I think. You just have more creatures which will more like'ly turn on delirium and more creatures will be leftover if others will get pushed.

Quote from Pe7er89 »

I dont see the decrease of threat density here since I play the same amount of creatures, just bigger ones. The logic of being able to kill goyf with push resulting in needing more 2 drops for push to hit just goes past me.

Flayer does nothing against any midrange deck. GBx, Eldrazi and grixis. These are the decks that are to be expected next to Tron and burn and some control.

How can you claim noble junk to be more preferable already in this half a week old meta?

Quote from Pe7er89 »

Hi guys, haven't posted here for a while, but I've still been playing Junk the entire time.
There's alot of discussion going on about Nobles, Flayers, Pushes. So i thought i would post my thoughts and recent results here.

I've been playing Grim Flayer as a three-of the whole time during this aggressive Meta and i loved it. I played without Nobles since i just think it really is a bad card to play in this deck. See below for my pre-ban list (sideboard changed abit over time). With this deck i won a PPTQ and ended up 17th out of 73 at the RPTQ.

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Lands (24) 2x Swamp 1x Forest 1x Plains 2x Overgrown Tomb 1x Temple Garden 1x Godless Shrine 4x Verdant Catacombs 3x Marsh Flats 2x Windswept Heath 3x Stirring Wildwood 2x Blooming Marsh 1x Twilight Mire 1x Ghost Quarter Spells (23) 4x Path to Exile 2x Abrupt Decay 1x Nameless Inversion	3x Inquisition of Kozilek 3x Thoughtseize 1x Collective Brutality 1x Maelstrom Pulse 4x Lingering Souls 3x Liliana of the Veil 1x Liliana, The Last Hope Creatures (13) 4x Tarmogoyf 3x Grim Flayer 2x Scavenging Ooze 1x Anafenza, the Foremost 3x Siege Rhino	SideBoard (15) 2x Kitchen Finks 1x Liliana, the Last Hope 1x Gideo, Ally of Zendikar 1x Collective Brutality 1x Painful Truths 1x Flaying tendrils 1x Damnation 1x Maelstrom Pulse 2x Stony Silence 1x Engineered Explosives 2x Nihil Spellbomb 1x Golgari Charm

So immidately after the bans there was an Open series, for which i changed my deck.
I expected that the aggressive meta would change to a more midrange, slower meta.
So now there is Fatal Push, which is actually great for our deck! The deck was so warped with Flayers and bad Delerium triggers to counter the aggressiveness, and it worked.
Now that Push is here i think we have a better base against Aggro, and are no longer in need of Grim Flayer. And actually, i thought the same about new Lili.
I always boarded out Flayers against control decks, and would've done the same for GBx if i needed to side out more cards next to the discard spells.
This means that our creature base can be more mid/late game based to be stronger against the slower Meta.

The changes i've made were simple:
-3x Grim Flayer, -1x Anafenza, -1x Liliana, the Last Hope, -1x Nameless Inversion, -1x Path
for
+2x Tasigur, +1x Courser, +1x Scooze, +3x Push

Tasigurs because of late game and Push resistance,
Courser because of late game and Burn hate. (expected a lot of burn too)
Ooze instead of Anafenza because i didn't expect much Dredge and Ooze is better.
I chose a 3/3 Path/Push split in case the Meta did not really adjust yet, it's probably going to 4/2, or maybe cut something to go 4/3.

So the deck played out really well and ended up 4th place out of 134, although i've dodged quite some midrange.
Full decklist and result are here: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=14526&d=287109&f=MO

I lost the first round against Sultai Control, unfortunately i couldn't find an answer to Grim Flayer game 1, and game 2 i had to mull to 4 because of lands.
Then i won in this order: Infect, RG Tron, Burn, Affinitty, Burn, Junk Mirror and ID into top 8.
In the Junk Mirror i have to say that he was definitely the better player, i know his records. But i deffinitely had a better maindeck. Courser was in both games and was great, I basically killed him both times with Siege Rhino casts. He played Flayers, no Nobles, but those really didn't do much here.

So in the Quarter Finals i played against Ponza, which is a really bad match up.
I was lucky to be able to start with discard in both games and having answers for anything he could play. But i honestly was quite lucky for at some point he flooded game 1 and had land shortage game 2.
In the Semifinals i played against Bant Knightfall, which is also horrible. Game 1 i was ahead, but i made a grave mistake attacking at some point. Game 2 he was really ahead, i started to grab some removal but he spell quellered all of them. I feel like with or without play errors i was helpless in this matchup.

Anyway, i really like the decklist and wouldn't change much. I loved Fatal Push.
* There will be coming some horrible matchups for us later on. Tron, Ponza and Kinghtfall are quite bad. Furthermore, any Geist of Saint Traft deck might become viable now and probably is so-so for us.
* I think Coco decks might become more viable now, which is not great either. The matchup has become better now since we can finally Bolt the Birds. Khalitas is also usable now that we have more non-exile removal. Down side is that it also is a good target for Push itself. I also might consider Hallowed Moonlight for these matchups.
* I couldn't prove my resistance to midrange/control much, but i have definitely found that the deck works against the leftover Aggro!
* As said i will probably add the 4th Path again somehow.
* I also might ditch Twilight Mire for a 2nd Ghost Quarter.
* I'm still not sure about the whole sideboard, but i probably would change Thrun for Sigarda and Gideon for Elspeth if the Meta goes even slower.
* Kitchen Finks is probably really good in a meta with a lot of Push.

Quote from FlyingDelver »

@KorDiamonds I agree that ramping into Siege Rhino on turn 3 or into Lingering Souls turn 2 with Nobles seems really good. Nobles just seem like somewhat a bad topdeck later in the game I fear. How often did that happen to you KorDiamonds?

Quote from Ayiluss »

My point is exactly that Noble Hierach is a bad top deck and I would much rather top deck a threat or removal for opponent's threat than Hierarch. Another thing is that it becomes awkward when you have both Hierach and discard in the opening hand since you can't play both on turn 1 and both get worse after that. I admit that I haven't played much with Noble Hierach and not at all after Grim Flayer came out but I feel given what I said that Junk is not the deck for Noble Hierarch.

Quote from FlyingDelver »

Wow we just got Tier 2, seems odd given the fact that Azban is more played than Jund right now, according to MTGgoldfish. I think this will change in the next few weeks.

Quote from Ayiluss »

KoDiamonds: you said that you think that you can't play Grim Flayer without noble Hierarch since they go well together. What would you do if you don't run Noble Hierach? I mean I don't like her in Junk at all but Bob seems a bit too risky with Tasigur who will definitely see lots of play in the future due to Fatal Push. Would you still play Grim Flayer or not? I think you can play him without Hierach and it shouldn't be a problem but would like to hear your opinion since you're more familiar with Junk than me. To the side note: as you probably know (if you read my posts) I don't like Flayer as a card very much but with Tasigur I'm afraid that I can't play Bob-with one Tasigur is still fine probably but if I'll go up to two, which is very possible if Fatal Push will be as played as expected, then I think Bob is no go.