MTG Salvation

I feel like EDF has its place in the deck. The ability to interact with your opponent's mana gives us another avenue to attack decks that don't care as much about board presence, and the only card that does that in the current list is Thought-Knot. In all of the matchups that you want to take out Drowner because it feels too slow and not impactful enough, Deep-Fiend functions just fine and is often just actively good. I do feel that Drowner is generally better, but I also feel Deep-Fiend has a place in the deck by diversifying the disruption available to Bant Eldrazi. After all, this whole deck is founded on the idea of blending disruption and aggro to create unwinnable board states for your opponents.

Quote from GustavitoHouses »

Quote from thepopeofgrope »

On the note of spellskite, what would you guys run in place of it if you expected 0 infect in your meta? It seems kind of weak in almost any other matchup, and since I'm the only infect player in my area at the moment, I can go into locals with about 95% certainty that I won't be facing the deck.

Eldrazi Mimic and 1 extra Bird or Skyspawner depending on your meta and configuration of deck.

Also Wall of Omens is nice along Displacer.

I ran two mimics the other night and it worked out pretty well. They seem to make the most sense as a replacement. I'll see if I can't dig some skyspawners out of my draft piles later tonight. Wall of omens is a half decent idea as well since it's just a better blocker than spellskite vs all the zoo decks.

On the note of spellskite, what would you guys run in place of it if you expected 0 infect in your meta? It seems kind of weak in almost any other matchup, and since I'm the only infect player in my area at the moment, I can go into locals with about 95% certainty that I won't be facing the deck.

With Daze poised to plummet in price, does this deck benefit from running it? The extra protection could be big game, but I honestly don't know enough about the deck to determine whether it's not currently being used because it's too expensive or because it actually isn't what the deck wants.

Quote from Grand Superior »

I was wondering how we felt about the deck's apparent vulnerability to Blood Moon. With the way the lists are currently built, a Blood Moon would lock us out of our best creatures (including Drowner, as we usually run zero basic Island) and we don't have enough fetches to reliably fetch the basics we do play before a Moon comes down or a cheap way to deal with Moon after it resolves (we do have World Breaker at 7 mana).

I've been looking into this myself, and the cards that caught my eye most were celestial purge and natural state. Natural state seems like it can take care of just about any problem artifact/enchantment, because I can't think of any common 4+ mana ones that affect this deck's gameplan. We also have green mana available very often to help cast it from floated mana or even after a resolved moon. Celestial purge's usefulness against red and black permanents seems okay, but I don't really know what matchups we really want that effect in. It kills bob, lili, and Kalitas which is okay, and I guess it can kill burn/zoo creatures too.

I was also pretty intrigued by all the pros running this deck last weekend, so I decided to cash in some credit to pick up the missing pieces (this deck is super cheap if you just skimp on the caverns!) and try this thing out last night. Mulliganing isn't as straightforward as it looks like it would be on paper. There are a lot of hands where you have to weigh the odds of drawing into a land in x turns or hoping your mana dork doesn't get bolted so that you can ensure a powerful enough curve to take over the game.

I found myself terrified of blood moon in the two matches where it mattered, and my fears were confirmed when it locked me out of just about every spell in the deck. There are 0 colorless sources once you get mooned out, and the only way you can access any colored mana is if you draw one of the 7-8 sources that can become basics / have a dork alive. How do you guys feel about playing against blood moon? I'm considering throwing 1 or 2 Celestial Purge, Krosan Grip, Disenchant etc in the side as a retroactive answer for that and as something that could come in handy against some other decks. It just felt so bad being afraid to tap low to play a non-TKS threat against a deck running moons maindeck since the only answers in the current list are negates and a singleton worldbreaker. Also, has anybody tried Pascal's (?) version with the 1/1 Eldrazi Mimic split between the main and side in place of a BoP? It seemed like having access to a lower curve could be really beneficial against decks that put up less on-board resistance like Ad Nauseam or Storm.

In regards to Gavony Township, I tried adding it as the 4th Cavern of Souls replacement after maxing out the painlands. It only came up in one game, but it put me in a great position to win if my opponent didn't have a way to finish the game right away. This deck definitely comes off as one that would be interested in another mana sink. Too early for me to tell if it is relevant in enough games to warrant the slot over a ghost quarter or not though.

The flickerwisp package sounds pretty nice against tokens. I'm considering grabbing the extra few things I don't have so that I can swap into that for a night if I want to. Ghostly prison sounds like a great card to have in the board for a couple different matchups, and I already own one too. Not sure what to take out for it, but maybe stony silences won't be as necessary if the decks stay similar to what they've been. Or just stonecloaker

Kevincostner: Thanks for the thoughts. The storm guy actually did bring in lightning bolts for some reason, so I guess I'll just have to be careful in the future against him. I also think I had some rough draws as far as the tokens were concerned, but it seems more clear now on how we should be looking to play against them. I will probably be cutting a mortarpod for something in the future. Maybe another negate considering all of the decks I saw last night

I just got back from my first night playing with the deck, and it was quite the success with me going 2-1. This thing is crazy fun to play. I ended up cutting a Sun Titan from the list I posted back on the bottom of page 27. I don't want to type out a long report, but I have some questions about the deck and the match ups that I did play. You guys don't have to every answer every single one of these questions, but if you wanna chime in on a couple of them it would be really helpful.


Game 1 - U/R Storm 1-0
I won the first game due to some Lone Missionary pressure and him fizzling. The 2nd I won with some pressure and a Gideon to stop empty the warrens.

My questions here are general questions for playing against this deck. I found myself holding up counters for things like past in flames or pyromancer's ascension, but this meant I was often letting the initial ritual get cast. Does this seem generally correct or is it something that really has to be evaluated case by case? Also, what are ideal meddling mage targets?


Game 2 W/B Tokens 1-1
I lost the first game, and the only major misplay I saw here was trying to wait a turn on my wrath effect to get more value. The second game was awful; I had to mulligan a 0- and a 1-land hand before getting stuck with junk and being toughtquisition'd into a Lili ultimate.

I will definitely be siding in celestial purges for paths from now on, but how else do you approach this matchup? Do you bring in Surgical Extraction? Meddling Mages? Wall of Omens out? It feels like I have more dead cards than live ones against this deck even when it comes to counters like Ojutai's Command or Dispel.


Game 3 Jund 2-1
Does this usually fall in our favor? It seemed like I was in control for most of these two games. First game took forever, but I finally got to do crazy Emeria shenanigans at the end. The second game was a bit quicker, and I just sat back and rode my answers to victory.

This one doesn't bring up as many questions. Jund seems like a straightforward deck, and the sideboarding seems pretty easy as far as putting stuff in.



Again, the deck was a ton of fun. I'm definitely looking forward to playing some more modern with this (and maybe others) in the future!

Edit: Also, R.I.P. Exatraz' Decks Good luck with the insurance

Quote from FDL42 »

I could see you cutting a 2 drop. If you want to hold up Leaks, I'd let go of one Pod. They're both more somewhat situational answers that you don't really want to top deck late (in a lot of cases).

You're not really maximizing Gifts either, I think it could be reasonable to either cut it or cut one of your big threats (as Gifts can find your fatties once Emeria/Shepherd are on).

Ooh, I really like the idea of cutting Gifts here. The more I think about it, the more I realize how weak it can be in this setup when it comes to finding threats. It would still be fine to get answers, but the deck seems to have a pretty solid number of those already.

Hey all, I've been following this deck for a decent while now, and finally have the time to get into a constructed format after years of being a limited-only player. Apart from looking fun to play, it also seems like a great place to start with slowly acquiring staples. I'm starting with a list very close to Silberman's (what with the light-moderate amount of counterspells) and just noticed that I've got a 61 card deck. I'm here to ask for a cut suggestion from some of you who have played the deck more than I have. To me, it seems like the card that should be cut is one of these four:

-Sun Titan
-Gideon Jura
-Wrath of God
-Ojutai's Command

Here's the whole list



I'd love to hear your responses, and I can't wait to get this thing finished and into my LGS!