MTG Salvation

Quote from Ragnawar »

Went 3-1 today playing mono-green (eldrazi) tron. Just a list I put together after watching scg VS series. I can't report it here, right?

Sure man, go ahead, would be interested in seeing that list.

The #1 thing that separates our deck from most of the decks that we face is our lack of card draw and filtering. It just seems like whatever deck we are playing, they have the answers when they need it more often than not. For us, we are usually in the mode of hoping for great draws the hoping to topdeck what we need.

I will almost always chump with a Reshaper if I can, just to see another card. Getting a free land onto the battlefield ahead of curve is worth it IMHO. Endbringer can get us cards, but it's slow. Seagate is nice but it's only a factor in really grindy games, which doesn't happen that often (especially in this meta).

I was playing with Bottled Cloister for a while, and it was great when it worked out. But I found myself always siding it out game 2 for fear of artifact hate, so it kind of felt like a wasted spot a lot of times. I might try it again after my tournament.

I just really feel like what we need to get a leg up on the competition is better early card draw/filtering.

Quote from sicsmoo »

@CaeselessHunger I like the Tec Edge/Crucible plan against control. I've used that in the past to great success. Maindeck Crucible might be a bit ambitious but could work. Going that slim on graveyard hate is bold too. You know as soon as we all let our guard down like that Dredge is gonna surge back up I have been seeing the Hollow One deck a fair bit, fwiw.

I thought about squeezing in a Grafdigger's. I've actually been running 4 Relic for a while, just dropped down to 3.

I may move Crucible to the side; that's more of a MTGO call. I probably will have it in the side in paper.

I feel like against Dredge, this removal-heavy version will still have some game, and 3x Relic isn't terrible.

I'm also seeing a some Hollow One decks, and not just Vengevine. I just lost to a black/red variant I had not seen before, ran a lot of Gurmags, no green... kind of odd, but it was effective.

Some random thoughts from playing a lot of leagues recently. Your thoughts welcome.

• UW Control is now playing Crucible of Worlds. Played a game recently where I was reduced to two lands by double Tectonic Edge. Brutal. I'm making room in my 75 for a Crucible again with U/W playing it and that deck being so common in competitive leagues.
• Seeing a lot more Ensnaring Bridge. This is one of the hardest cards for us to deal with. We basically have Karn, Ulamog, or a reeeaalllly slow Ratchet Bomb. Hard to beat down with just Ballista pings.
• The Humans matchup is rough even with a deck tuned toward fighting it. It really feels like All Is Dust-Or-Bust. I think Kitesail Freebooter has elevated the deck a notch because it takes a card and enables perfect Meddling Mages.
• A deck tuned for fighting Humans is even better vs Elves.
• TitanShift is using Prismatic Omen, seems better equipped to win without Scapeshift when Valakut triggers itself.
• Jeskai match feels very favorable lately. None of the variants scare me, especially Queller.
• Dismember seems really good now as I'm seeing a ton of Gideons, Colonnades, Gurmag Anglers, etc. Life loss hurts, but it's the equivalent of one beat from said creatures. I might consider adding a 3rd.
• A recurring theme seems to be our inability to reliably remove artifacts and enchantments. You could say it's our Achilles heel. Thinking about trying O Stones again.
• Still very much agree with sicsmoo that Chalice is sideboard material right now. Great card, but the meta has evolved. I still like it when its relevant, even it just just forces your opponent to take it with their T1 Thoughtseize.

Overall I feel like the meta has gotten away from us a bit. Wins are harder to come by. Our deck hasn't really evolved; it's the same deck from like 8 months ago. I'm playing in my first big paper tournament (SCG Classic) in quite a while this month, not sure which direction I want to go with tuning the deck.

Quote from Ragnawar »

Hey guys, I'm trying to figure out a list to play in a medium event tomorrow. I'm expecting a lot of Valakut/Titan based decks like Titanbreach, Btl Valakut, etc.. Some Burn and some midrange. Of course I'm confident agains midrange but I'm worried about the Valakut decks. Should I mainboard warping wails and extractions? What are your thoughts?

Yes, those are going to be your best cards. I also love Witchbane Orb in this matchup. All Is Dust is ok because it can get rid of their enchantments and Titans.

Yeah, I'm not feeling the lists that just add an Ulamog and hope it works out.

Last night I beat TitanShift 2-1 in a match. In game 3, I had Tron on turn 3 and played Conduit of Ruin, tutored Ulamog. Then I played him on turn 4 for 8 mana, and they conceded the match. There's a difference between adding him and hoping for the best and having a proactive strategy for getting him into play regularly.

Quote from sicsmoo »

Quote from The Ceaseless Hunger »

Quote from sicsmoo »

I dunno about Orb. I've been running 1 in my online list lately, and was running 2 before, and it's never really blown me away. Trying to decide whether to use one tomorrow for a PPTQ, or just go up to a 3rd Warping Wail, a card that's also good against Titan Shift and Storm, while helping with Affinity, Counters Company, Hatebears, etc as well.

It's working for me. I like that once I get it down, it's there, no need to hold mana up. If the opponent doesn't have artifact hate in the deck, they gg on the spot. I've seen it happen twice. I also run two Warping Wail; it's not either/or. Having more options increases the chance of drawing something impactful.

But it's not GG though. Titan shift can still play titan and mow down all your threats and buy time to find artifact removal or just kill you with the titan itself, and Storm can still just kill you with Empty. Not saying it's not a fine card in general, but it's only situationally good.

Any type of hate is only situationally good. I'm ok with making them win with Titan, at least it's a game, and I like my chances. I also run Wail, so I'm really giving up cards like Pithing Needle and Grafdigger's Cage by running Witchbane Orb. Right now I'm liking the trade-off, but of course these things are subject to change, and I am firmly in testing mode. I've changing it up every 2-3 leagues, just having fun trying different cards and seeing what works for me and the meta I'm seeing.

Congrats on your PPTQ finish and sorry to see you just miss Top8.

Well, if we can make some colored Eldrazi colorless, I'll take Displacer, please.

Quote from rcwraspy »

Quote from The Ceaseless Hunger »

Quote from rcwraspy »

I think you just need to hit Temple, not Shadow. Part of the reason Shadow is this popular is because of its matchup with E-Tron. Take away one of its prey and a lot of the rest of the meta can bring down Shadow's numbers.

What a bunch of nonsense. ET is Shadow's prey? Do you really believe that? That matchup is close to 50/50, and I actually feel slightly favored tbh. Not sure why you'd post about things like this when you have no idea what you are talking about.

"Your post doesn't comport with my own anecdotal personal experience so you must have no idea what you're talking about." ROFL.

Go ask on the ET forum if ET is prey to GDS. Seriously.

gkourou just because you scream the loudest and most frequently doesn't mean you're right. You can shout down anyone that posts something that disagrees with your feeling Blue/control should have answers for everything and anything "non-interactive" or "linear" tier 1 deck is unhealthy. Also, your incessant personal crusade against Eldrazi Temple, which isn't even putting up big results, is definitely getting old.

Quote from gkourou »

Also, out of the next 16 Starcity games events, 13 of them contain Modern in some form: 8 out of them are straight Modern events and 5 contain Modern as a Std/Mod or as a Team Constructed Event.

Which is great, shows how popular is the format at the moment. Standard is thriving with Energy mirrors, and it's diversity is at its worst.

They said multiple times during coverage that they consider Modern to be the best format. It has also produced the most interesting gameplay throughout this event.

Legacy was all about lands, land mirrors, T1-2 Kills and some form of delver.
Standard was almost all about energy.
Modern had some diversity and we saw a lot of things happening, DS, burn, company decks, grixis control, eltradzi tron, jeskai, jund. A lot of interaction, combo was still there, aggro decks were still there (burn and affinity). Modern looked the best out of the three formats in this event.

Yeah, not to spam the thread but I can definitely vouch for GB Tron being good right now. I've been having tons of success with it over the past few weeks.

Just take a look at these results from the last Modern challenge: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/modern-challenge-10970617#online

That's such a good meta for Tron; you can see why it came in first. Humans isn't great, but it's not bad at all if you're playing lots of MD removal. TONS of control there to prey on, and very few bad matchups there like Storm, Burn, Titan Shift, Ad Naus, etc.

And there's 0 Eldrazi Tron lists in that top 32!

Also, just for future reference, in Magic jargon, U is used to represent blue, while B stands for black, because black is selfish and stole the B for itself.

Its too bad Culling Scales wasn't 2 cmc instead of 3 cmc. It could be a decent sideboard card vs. the 5 color Humans with an ability to take out a Champion, Hierarch or Vial on turn 3. As it stands you have to wait until upkeep of turn 4 and it might be too late by then. Gotta keep searching.

I think everyone just needs to follow my gut checks on this format and agree with me, since I've been right without science to back it

#kiddingnotkidding

Quote from genini2 »

Quote from spawnofhastur »

Thing is, we do know what the best decks in the three major competitive formats are, even if they're hiding the data. Temur Energy in Standard, Storm (or possibly E-Tron) in Modern, and Grixis Delver in Legacy.

How do you know those are the best decks?

he just knows ok

1 copy of Pithing Needle or Spyglass to name Elder is good, especially if you end up blanking multiples in their hand. Ballista can ping Elder to prevent it from chump blocking before they sac it, which speeds up our clock. A chalice on X=4 can really hurt BTL version, use cavern to cast TKS through it. Maindeck Wails and being surgicals post board, I run 2 wails main 2 side so post board against titan decks I'm up to 4 wails.

I'm gonna enjoy crushing the various Timmys dreams when I Essence Scatter/Walk the Plank this.

Quote from Lord Seth »

Has anyone played against the Humans deck? Is the matchup good? Bad? Equal?

I've played against it a bit. It's not terrible, but it's not good either. The deck really thrives on the back of several strong hatebears (Thalias, Meddling Mage, Freebooter) backed by strong threats (Lieutenant, Champion). You need 2-3 fast interactive spells (Push, CB, Clasm, etc), or you just get run over. If you have fast interaction you generally win (and if you don't, you lose). If you have 6-8 of those spells, the MU's slightly above average, otherwise it's kind of bad.

If you live to O-Stone/Ugin, you generally win on the spot (especially the latter). The games kind of shape around whose draws are more efficient.

I'll play Devil's advocate here and give some explanation/reasoning to why Ulamog is a good inclusion. The reason I like the card main deck is because it adds to what this deck does really really well; win game 1's and bully mid-range and control. This deck also performs really really well on the play (particularly with Eldrazi Temple or Tron early in the game), and winning game 1 means we are guaranteed to be on the play one of the post-board games. I want this to happen a lot and I want to maximize the odds of this happening. Both the chalice inclusion and Ulamog + Sanctum inevitability inclusion are key components to this.

Lets look at some numbers regarding one copy of Ulamog in a main deck as well as the Sanctum + Tron mana numbers. All of these are estimated using 60 and 53 population sizes in a calculator like this one. To me they provide a close enough idea of the percentages I'm interested in, however they obviously do not include factors such as drawing extra cards, deck thinning via searching for a card from the library, and the tron mana calculations are strictly regarding the 3 tron lands themselves and not factoring in getting to enough mana to cast Ulamog outside of assembling tron; whether that be multiple Eldrazi temples, or Path or Reshaper ramp. These percentages are rough but still get a decent enough approximation IMO. This was also done in like 20 minutes so if anyone is an actual statistics person go ahead and fix my mistakes.

Let's say you want to know the odds of seeing your 1-of Ulamog in your first 12-15-17 cards of the game, including opening 7 that would be 5-8-10 turnsish. A pretty average length of a modern game. If you shorten that average length it only makes these percentages smaller, meaning you'll see Ulamog before you want him even less likely. The odds of seeing your 1 Ulamog in the first 12 cards of the game are 20%, 15cards = 25%, 17 cards = 28.3%. These numbers are not very appealing.

However in only 11.7% of opening 7's will you see an Ulamog. Let's assume you start the game without Ulamog in hand. So make the population size 53 and the number of cards seen 5-8-10, to reflect the number of draws/turns after the opening hand. 5cards = 9.4%, 8cards = 15.1%, and 10 cards= 18.9%. These numbers to me don't seem to terrible in terms of having an uncastable Ulamog stuck in hand, being a dead card. Less than 1/10 games played will you see it by the 5th card if you do not have it in the opening hand, and that percentage gets even lower if you were to lose on turn 3 or 4. I see these percentages as the downside to running Ulamog, and having most games decided before I have even a 10% chance of seeing this card makes me think it's not causing that many game losses. It also can't be assumed the dead Ulamog in hand was the exact reason for the loss, or that the loss could have been avoided if that Ulamog was a different card (many have Wurmcoil in his stead, would that have got there instead or would this card have been just as dead due to shortness of mana or the fact that the opponent is storming or Ad Nauseating or Devoted Druiding). These numbers of 9.4%, 15.1%, and 18.9% are really worst case scenario in my opinion. The card has very little downside as a 1-of. And by turns 8-10, maybe Ulamog is a prime topdeck and you're soon approaching 25% to naturally draw into it.

Sanctum is how we get Ulamog to hand to cast it when we get the mana before we get the titan. And we also happen to run 5 copies of it while only taking 1 land slot, thanks to Expedition Map. Obviously if you use an opening hand map to assemble tron or get a GQ/Temple/w.e, these percentages will be lower. This is a pretty rough estimate compared to the Ulamog numbers. Ill show the Sanctum numbers of population 60 and 53, and # cards 12,15,17 and 5,8,10, respectively. The success size is now 5 instead of 1, meaning if we draw a map we can use it to get Sanctum and use that to get Ulamog.

60 population: 12cards = 68.6%, 15cards = 77.6%, 17cards = 82.4%, these are the chances of seeing >= 1 of the 5 copies

53 population: 5cards = 40.3%, 8cards = 57.4%, 10cards = 66.5%, same thing >=1

I think these numbers are relevant regarding Ulamog but also regarding the general usefulness of Sanctum of Ugin as a utiliy land. Because we have 4x Expedition Map we have a huge incentive to fit as many 1-of utility lands as we can to maximize the value. (If I wasn't so keen on having multiple Caverns in certain matchups I would rather run a Buried Ruin rather than a third or fourth ghost quarter. I've seen multiple 5-0 competitive league lists that have included Buried Ruin.) Sanctum is pretty good in this deck, we can get a Smasher to hastey swing 5 for a possible beatdown victory, a Ballista for infinity mana to clear the board or ping for a billion, an Endbringer for it's many uses, Wurmcoil cuz its the mirror or shadow, or Ulamog if we have the mana. This cards says 'oh I've drawn 12 lands to 4 nonlands this game and I'm way behind? let's get sanctum and use Dust/Ballista/Chalice/Karn to trigger it and put a stop to that nonsense'. I don't know about you guys but I feel like my losses occur from streaks of drawing lands or no lands when the opposite is needed more than anything else, and while Mind Stone can alleviate that another alternative is having more outs to catching back up to the board state, and doing it quickly and with the right creature for the situation.

Now let's look at assembling Tron. In a game where our opening hand contains 2/3 of tron (two of: tower, plant, mine, map), we have a pretty damn good chance of completing tron and having the mana to cast Ulamog by turns 5, 8, and 10. And while I hadn't looked at these percentages until just now, I can guarantee due to the fact I know Ulamog is in my list and assembling tron is slightly more important for my deck than a non-Ulamog list, I've kept hands you guys would not have kept because they were 2/3 of tron. And seeing these percentages makes me feel quite confident in doing that. When we have 2/3 of tron we have EIGHT CARDS(4 copies of each of the other two cards we are missing; have tower and mine: need map and plant, etc.) that at any point if we draw them we get tron online.

53 population: 5cards = 57.4%, 8cards = 75.7%, 10cards = 83.6%, chances number of copies >=1

We are more likely than not to assemble tron and have 7+ mana on T5 if we start with 2/3 of it. The longer the game goes, the inevitability of assembling tron and fetching for a Sanctum goes higher and higher. The whole idea of running this package is saying to the opponent "the longer this game goes, the odds of me winning are getting better and better. I'm relying on topdecks less than you and I have an 'I win' button getting closer and closer the more cards we draw." Every pilot plays the deck differently, but I've been having the most success I've ever had in modern and with Eldrazi Tron since I swapped out Mind Stones for Warping Wails, and Put in Ulamog + Sanctum. I've had sustained success on MODO, and at weekly store credit tournaments and Top 4'd a 28 person tournament, going undefeated in swiss and the first round of top 8 and prize splitting with the other top 4 players.

My non-fnm Modern paper tournaments have gone as follows(all of this data, paper and mtgo, is with Wails replacing Mind Stone and with Ulamog maindeck):

4-0-2(ID's) - 4th/28 players
3-0-1(ID) - 2nd/13 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/18 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/13 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/18 players
3-1 - 3rd/13 players (This stretch has been my most absurd winning streak in paper magic since I've begun playing again in December 2015, 17 match wins in a row including FNM events not listed)

My FNM's have actually been worse than that, probably because I'm generally looser and I actively help my opponents if they make a mistake because I'd rather have fun and show them/teach them than be a shark over booster packs. My total paper record with this configuration is 31-6: 83.8% winrate.

On MODO since I've made the change my overall winrate is 53-36: 59.6%, and since I added in spyglass less than two weeks ago I've gone 19-10: 65.5%. The point of all of this is to show that long term this deck is not 'clunky' in this configuration, but rather takes slightly different piloting than a version that does not run Ulamog. Now, of course you can reply to all of this with 'yeah but new decks on the rise/aether vial/go wide RIP to us/etc. all of this means nothing with new meta', I'd say two things. Firstly, how favored are we to beat aether vial decks game 1 with our extra removal in the side and likely dead chalices in the main and overall slower gameplan? Is that less than 10% chance to see an Ulamog before we die going to cost you that many more game 1's? Secondly, the meta immediately after a larger tournament, especially one like this recent one where a new flavor of the month wins, and the top 8 in general is a bunch of go wide, of course the days and weeks following will see an uptick of those decks. Then we'll see a bunch of board wipes in mains and sides and jund/junk stuff packing removal and discard beat those decks and the cycle of modern continues. Until I see my winrates decline over many leagues or paper tournaments I'm confident continuing with the strategy that has been working for me for some months now.

Here is my current list with contortions in the side.