MTG Salvation

Dusted out the old mono-g stompy as a brief diversion from Tron and Lantern and went 3-1. Just replaced the balots with champions and a rhonas for a tusker.

Link to deck @ TappedOut.net

Match 1 Slivers
Game one had me at 17 and him at 4 after my aggressive start. Then he coco'd into a flying+lord and cracked back for lethal. Ouch.
2 and 3 went my way with double hexproof pump spells to seal it against a necrotic sliver.

Match 2 GW Value
Went 2-1, crushed through with rancor and aspect on the games I won, got buried in value behind courser, tracker, and KotR the game I lost.

Match 3 GW Value
Practically the same deck but aggressive ghost quartering himself made his KoTRs grow bigger than my stuff very quickly, could not setup profitable attacks. Beat him down G2 and G3 was more of the same with a path to exile in his hand (seen from courser a turn before) made attacking super awkward while he just built up a powerful board against me. More Courser, Tracker, KotR value that you really have to beat down quickly.

Match 4 5c Humans
2-0, Geists and Rancors blew him away. Champion of the Parish didn't get going fast enough to race my dudes and kicked vines pushed me through the finish line.

Fun night of beating folks down and dodging removal.decs. Steel Leaf Champion is the real deal. Strap a rancor on that dude and things get real serious real quick.

I still like treetop village despite all the ghost quarters I saw; it made the difference in one of my games against GW when they didn't have a quarter. Didn't see Rhonas all night but that's fine, I'm sure he'll be sweet when he lands. I kind of missed Nature's Way out of the side but dismembers are probably better. <shrug>

I don't know; I'm not that scared of BBE. We still can control the top of their library so the chance of it lucking them into a KCommand isn't high unless they side out all of their <3 CMC spells. Also, thoughtseize that shiet. I am probably going to swap an Opal for or a Jar tho.

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I'm excited to hear a bunch of people cry that Lantern's going to take over and needs something banned and then <crickets>.

Not to mention any deck playing maindeck pithing needles has its difficulty rating kicked up a notch just by virtue of that decision-tree.

I swear to god though, after having Eye of Ugin ban, then my brain in the jar rules-****ed, if they ban Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal I'm done with Modern. I'll save a singleton Karn, Opal, Ugin, Bridge for EDH and start drafting.

I've been killed on T3 by burn or Affinity more times than I can remember, but T3 Karn is a bridge too far for people?

I've only played 8 matches with the deck so far and haven't yet felt the need for an alternate win condition. But I did lose a match where if it ended up going to G3 it would definitely be nice.

Last night's outing was 2-2. Beat robots and bant druid company. Lost to abazan druid company due to drawing 4 mox opals in my first 9 cards G1 and misplaying pithing needle both games. Say it with me, Qasali Pride Mage. Learning I am. Lost to burn 2-1 because I lost the die roll and didn't aggressively mull for a leyline G3.

MD 1 of grafdigger's cage is a mutha****in MVP. And LOL at whir making bridge CMC 6 to dodge spell queller.

3-1 in my first outing with Whir-Lantern control. Man this deck is fun and engaging to play. Loss was to U/W control in a fun match of controlling the top decks and him getting down to like 10 cards with 3 cryptics left when I ran out of ways to stop his draws. Popped my last lantern to shuffle cryptic off the top (with ruins to bring it back next turn tho) and shuffled, cuts, draws cryptic, bounces bridge and wins. gg

Last match was brutal for my opponent. After me winning game one, he mulled to five, scry'd to the top and then played land go. I go land, shredder, mill Kataki off his library, then bauble, opal, thoughtseize.

My opponents varied in their salt levels but I had a blast. I've been a defender of Tron for years against claims that it's brainless....but compared to Lantern it is. It's a nice change and goes at the game from a completely new angle.

New card in HOU for big mana black is dope: Torment of Hailfire. The fact that they can't sacrifice lands is huge. Wiped a table with X=18, something Exsanguinate can't do, though an ex for 18 isn't bad either.

It definitely doesn't feel favored but if their gameplan ends up being a single titan and then top decking lands path to exile can buy you time to play ulamog/karn/worldbreaker to put it away. Wurmcoil engine isn't the worst either if you get it early and start gaining life. Warping wail counters scapeshift if they're playing it. Leyline is fine, though you really should be running 4 or just running Orbs of Warding for that effect. If you don't draw it in your opening hand WW is highly unlikely early enough for it to matter. Orbs at least can be found with an ancient stirrings and helps against swarm decks as well as giving you hexproof.

Silly sidenote, I brought in a singleton Boil against my Round 1 Titan Shift opponent who was playing Prismatic Omen and one-sided Armageddon'd him in response to a valakhut trigger game 3 last week.

Unlike the Theros gods, the Amonkhet gods are always creatures. Damage/destroy effects don't work, but they don't work on other indestructible creatures either. -X/-X, lots of -1/-1 counters, creature bounce, creature exile, creature theft... they all work, all the time, whereas doing the same thing to Theros gods required waiting for your opponent to hit sufficient devotion, which almost never happens for some decks.

It's the same problem posed by someone running Sliver Hivelord, Sapling of Colfenor, Tajic, Blade of the Legion, Avacyn, Angel of Hope, or either Ulamog as their commander (and a few others like Yahenni, Undying Partisan who almost-always have indestructible). AKH/HOD have introduced 8 more commanders in the category, but it's a category that has existed for a long time.