MTG Salvation

Took the deck to two modern tournaments one on Tuesday and the other today. I’m not normally a Burn fan, but while I finish up my Modern and EDH decks I like to borrow a swift Naya list from a friend.

Modern Event Aug 29th: 4-0

Round 1: Death’s Shadow 2-0
Round 2: Storm 2-0
Round 3: Scapeshift 2-1
Round 4: Bant Spirits 2-0

Modern FNM: 3-1, 1st due to breakers

Round 1: Affinity 2-0
Round 2: Soul Sisters 2-1
Round 3: Living End 2-1
Round 4: Bant Eldrazi 1-2

Safe to say best in the format? Maybe, but its definitely getting there.

@fitz

I still gotta assume Clique is better than Obstructionist here but neither seem aggressive enough outside of the sideboard where they both have their applications. Stifle is a unique effect that’s very powerful but is a little too narrow for modern at three mana. It’s essentially a more expensive squelch when cycled and is probably too expensive when just hardcast. If you’re bringing it in to hate out something specific it could make sense but game 1 there are too many matchups where it’s just a 3/1 for 3.

Remand is awesome...but you don’t want to be stuck with a hand full of Remands against fast decks like Burn because you won’t get many chances to cast it where they won’t just recast the spell right away and there are quite a few decks it’s bad against. Additionally there are simply spells that we can’t let resolve as our removal sucks so that means Mana Leak in some number is essential here. Remand can complement it as a 1 of which I have done in the past but you primarily have to lean on leak. Against decks like Tron, KCI, Valakut decks, etc Remand is awesome as it provides you the tempo of a hard counter but replaces itself to help you find more interaction. Combined with snapcaster Mage getting a player to tap out two turns in a row to get time walked twice is brutal. This is a true tempo deck and remand is absolutely playable here but I wouldn’t run it over another counterspell, I would run it in the slot of a cantrip because that’s what it is. It just costs two mana with the upside of being a time walk.

Deprive is certainly better then Knot here as we rarely have extra grave fuel to spare but I would only run 3-4 two mana counters in the main at the very most and the rest in the sideboard. Fast decks are hoping game 1 you get clogged up with counterspells as they dump their hand.

4 spirebluff is far too many I would max out at two to give you more basics in order to run Blood Moon in the board, I really wouldn’t play the deck without it.

Those are the situations where I've exhausted their removal and end up doing a lot of damage with a late Lavamancer. I've had it run away with a game against a Grixis Control deck and a Jund deck, with the Grixis player telling me they didn't expect to see it. I think Grim Lavamancer is too absurdly powerful to not play, honestly. It might be worth cutting against Jeskai because they're the most removal heavy deck around (if I'm remembering right).

Edit: also, maybe I'm biased because Torment foils are beautiful. I do think that Lavamancer is a stupidly powerful card, though.

That certainly makes sense. They could create something within that design space, but it would bust Bogles open and probably be too good in Limited as well.

It's hard to find something that can replace Ethereal Armor, Rancor, Daybreak Coronet, Spider Umbra, or Hyena Umbra. I always felt an odd tension between the number of Hyena Umbra and Cartouche of Solidarity. Obviously the Hyena Umbra is better in many situations, like sweepers and a possibly trade of Totem Aura for Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, but the creature can also be solid and is good vs. sacrifice effects, which have gone down admittedly. I still don't know what the right number is - I think it's 3 Hyena and 1 Cartouche, but I've been doing 2/2.

I have to admit that Madcap Skills was pretty sick in the Naya Hexproof in Standard. I enjoyed that deck as well and that card was probably the best Aura for the deck at the time. I actually didn't know that there was a Red Unstable Mutation.

Like Joban8, I wish there was more done for splashing Blue. I know I should put my money where my mouth is, but I really don't feel like dipping into that myself, despite owning all the cards.

Quote from Joban8 »

I'm all for trying out non-traditonal lists, but even when you consider auras/enchantments of any color that have been printed since RTR, the short list of playable cards is pathetic. Especially considering there was an entire 3-set block built around enchantments during that time span. Regardless, Bant is an interesting option that has always seemed like it'd have potential; I'd like to see someone tap into it and put up some tournament results.

I don't agree with this, there have been plenty of Auras printed. In our own colors we have Gryff's Boon and Cartouche of Solidarity that are good enough to see play, and several other cards like Forced Adaption, Glaring Aegis and Cartouche of Strength that aren't that far from playability. Looking at blue we have Aqueous Form, Arcane Flight, Curious Obsession and Cartouche of Knowledge as possibilities. White and blue have gotten enough auras that UW Aura decks have been standard viable even without hexproof creatures: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/standard-uw-auras#online, https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/standard-w-u-auras#online

Red has gotten Consuming Fervor and Madcap Skills and the two remaining Cartouches and all 5 Ordeals are also borderline playable, but those colors aren't really serious contenders for our deck.

Compare this with the number of cards other linear decks have gotten and there's not a huge difference, most decks have only gotten a couple of potentials in the last 5 years. Bogles has a bit of a problem because the viable pool is reduced to such a huge extent, with the only thing we care about is the highly contested 1-2 mana GW creature aura slot. It's really hard to create fair but viable cards in that extremely small design space.

Momsie/FitzRolf, since this comment kinda blends your two questions together.

I don't have a sideboard guide for two reasons. The first and main reason is that there are too many decks in the field, too many different sideboard cards for Affinity, and too much of a changing metagame to be able to make a sideboard guide that stays relevant for more than a few months. It's just not worth the effort to try to construct it. The second reason is that I think sideboard guides generally do too much telling and not enough teaching. The key to sideboarding properly is to understand how each side of the matchup typically wins the game in that specific matchup. It is insufficient to say that "X is a key part of deck Y, so when I play against deck Y I will bring in hate against X", because it could be the case where X is a key part of deck Y in most matchups, but is actually quite minor and unimportant in the matchup that you are playing.

If you guessed that the example I just gave was talking about the graveyard in GDS against Affinity, you would be correct. When you play Affinity against GDS, there's generally two ways you're going to lose. The first is the most common: the GDS player plays discard and removal spells to strip away your resources until you have nothing, and then finds some way to kill you before you draw a threat that can stick on the board. The second it that you get into a race, and then on the turn before they die they attack with a gigantic Death's Shadow and cast Temur Battle Rage on it. The ways you win are either you are much more explosive than they are and are able to deploy threats much faster than they are able to answer them, possibly because they are wasting time with Serum Visions and Thought Scours. The second main way you win is by sticking something that they can't answer - Etched Champion or Blood Moon, and making basically everything else that's going on in the game irrelevant. You'll notice that in none of those descriptions of how you win or lose did I ever really mention the graveyard, delve threats, or Snapcaster Mage. Sure, sometimes the thing that clocks you before you find an answer is a delve threat, and sometimes the thing that disrupts you just enough was a snapped push - but just as often the graveyard doesn't matter at all. The times you're dying to a delve threat, it's not the delve threat that won the game - it was the IoK into Push into Kommand. The delve threats were just as much of a formality as the Jace that the UW control deck plays after they Verdict away everything you had.

Going into why I sideboard like I do:
Thoughtseize lets you take a key component of their disruption and know exactly what answers they are working with, allowing you to find all the best lines to minimize the impact of their cards, making your plan A much better.
Blood Moon and Etched Champion can just steal the game flat.
Memnite goes out because it's easily blocked and low impact.
Galvanic Blast is not great most of the time - it's often better to have another threat because you can basically only go face with it, which makes it only good later in the game. The exception is if they have Staticaster, which does need a Blast to kill it.
Rest in Peace doesn't come in because you generally don't care about the delve threats, and if you draw a card that does nothing but prevent snap from getting a card of value you're just doing their work for them.

Artificer's Assistant

Quote from CthuluHoops »

Quote from CTonyJab »

I officially finished foiling out my Affinity deck today

Would love to see some pictures of the fully foiled deck--I'm currently trying to decide between pimping Affinity or Mono W Death and Taxes as my post-graduation "Holy crap I have a real job now" present to myself.

I'll have to upload some pics soon. I bet Death & Taxes looks sweet foiled out

People are over evaluating the legendary jace. This is an aggressive creature format. Jace is horrible in that.

Bbelf is good, but shouldnt have been banned. It was deathrite that carried legendary jund days of yore.

Both cards will find homes and do their jobs. The meta will still be healthy and settle long term. The sky didnt fall.

They did it.
Those crazy bastards...
They actually did it.

Went 4-0 again tonight, bumping total record to 24-4 at LGS. Posting brief version of tournament report. Won first again.

R1: Grixis Goryo Breach

I know he usually plays breach/goryo decks when we sit down so I need to be fast.

G1 on the play I keep double drum ornithopter memnite opal Ravager Pest. Hand is risky but I keep it. Put my things in play, he serum visions. Topdeck blinkmoth, play Ravager, attack for 3. He opts plays a land and passes. I play citadel, animate nexus, attack for 7, before damage sac a drum. His life is now 7, he’s fetched a couple times. I kill him next turn.

Sideboard: I bring in 2x discard 2x Rest In Peace I take out 3 Champion 1 Mountain. Normally I’d count my colored spells here but it’s so much better to have Master than Champion in a combo race that I think it’s worth it.

G2 I open with a really slow hand of Thoughtseize rip spire citadel mox overseer ravager (realized after opening this hand I should’ve kept land over 1 Ravager). Keep, draw a Pest, t1 Thoughtseize him Pest go. He plays a cantrip has nothing but breach and lands after I ripped his second serum. T2 I play overseer skirge. T3 I play Ravager rip. T4 he concedes to my second Thoughtseize taking his breach.

2-0, 1-0

R2 UR Kiki

G1 he plays two lands over five turns and conceded. I saw him win round one with Kiki so I know he’s on that

Sideboarding: for some reason I thought I saw white mana, I bring in 2 grids 2 discard 1 Champion — I take out 2 Overseer 1 Ravager 1 Pest 1 citadel. I’m expecting stony silence out of him (not sure why)

G2 starts with me playing very conservatively, not running out Champion for fear of k-return. On t5 I go to declare attackers with Pest memnite thopter skirge and the thopter has a plating, he deceiver exarch taps the thopter. I cast Thoughtseize take kreturn out of his hand and play Champion. The game is over shortly after this. I had a couple strong plays this game involving Ravager and it ended up getting the job done, I credit my sequencing to Zyrnak in this match because if I hadn’t played around Electrolyze and k return all game I would’ve lost hard

2-0, 2-0

R3 Jeskai Queller

G1 I play around his helixes and bolts by slow rolling, I run a plating out t2 into obvious logic knot so I can resolve Champion t3, with double Pest and a blinkmoth I ride it to GG quickly

Sideboarding: -2 Pest -2 Overseer -1 blast -1 citadel +2 Grid +2 discard +1 spell pierce (testing out b/c heavy Jeskai meta) +1 Champion

G2 starts with my hand being very slow to develop but very grindy. I don’t expose myself to any 2-4-1 scenarios until I have enough artifacts in play to save my Ravager, play around Electrolyze and helix this way, then start playing my pests and try to get him to Wrath me, go a couple times of attacking for 4-5, he taps me team down for a couple turns, on a crucial turn I attack, he casts cryptic, I spell pierce and then resolve a Champion too. He shocks down to 2 life, Has 5 mana, my turn I go in for lethal and he mis-sequences his bolt and helix to end the game (I also had 2 galv blast in hand and he was at 2, so it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things)

2-0, 3-0

R4 Mono-Green Tron

G1 I know what he’s on so I ship a decent but slow Ravager hand. I go for 2 poison with a Pest on t2 and he has the dismember, I put Overseer into play, he doesn’t have tron t3, I play Plating, get him down to 8, his turn he hits tron but can’t stop my flying GG machine.

Sideboarding: -3 Champion -1 blast -1 skirge -1 blinkmoth +2 blood moon +2 ancient grudge +2 discard

G2 I keep a slow hand with t1 discard t2 blood moon t3 Master as a 5/5 so I go for it. I have lots of drums and a mox and a few cheap guys. I took a nature’s claim, he has an o-stone, I have to hope to kill him before he gets to 5 mana, I force him to keep up 2 lands + field of ruins for a couple turns because I have Ravager + Inkmoth on field but I can’t get there fast enough. He oblivion stoned my board to 2 lands remaining then drops wurmcoil and I scoop it up.

I realize he’s probably not on chalices so I bring out grudges, bring back my land and skirge. I mull to 6 again and have a t3 Inkmoth for 8 available, I keep the threat of it present on board while I get in for 5 and 6 damage turns. I take his t1 map so he can’t find tron fast, the game gets extremely close and I played around a lot of different scenarios with my sequencing, even left up 1 mana for possibility of him Oblivion stone again so I could sac entire board to Ravager and put counters on Inkmoth for GG. I ended up killing him the turn before he would’ve gotten tron and crushed me out of the game with 12 mana.

2-1, 4-0

My list for reference

Creatures: 27
2 memnite
4 ornithopter
4 signal pest
4 vault skirge
4 arcbound Ravager
4 steel Overseer
3 Etched Champion
2 master of etherium

Instants: 3
3 galvanic blast

Artifacts: 13
4 springleaf drum
4 mox opal
4 Cranial Plating
1 welding jar

Lands: 17
4 Inkmoth nexus
4 blinkmoth nexus
4 spire of industry
4 darksteel citadel
1 Mountain

Sideboard: 15
2 ancient grudge
2 ghirapur aether Grid
2 blood moon
2 Rest In Peace
2 Thoughtseize
2 whipflare
1 Etched Champion
1 Spell pierce
1 rule of law

So far I’ve loved the list, the MB has been tweaked only slightly since I first picked up the deck (-1 Master -1 blast +1 Champion +1 Mountain), the SB has been totally reworked ever since I found Zyrnak’s content, originally I was playing 2 surgical 3 spell pierce 1 Thoughtseize 3 Shapers Sanctuary 2 aether Grid 2 ancient grudge 2 Champion. SB was awful but I still won the first event I played with it and 3-1 the next two before I found his guide. Only lost two matches since then so far! =)