MTG Salvation

Revoker also sometimes names Helm of Obedience against Miracles, but people are not playing that card very often anymore. Still, I don't think you're making a big enough deal out of how much that deck relies on the cards that Revoker deals with. Revoker is probably the best card in the deck against Miracles, and that is true even if you're not playing D&T (Painter, Maverick, and MUD are all getting wise to the power of this card as well).

Sooooo ... I know that discussing a color splash is somewhat frowned upon in this thread, because so much of the strength of the traditional mono-white control deck is the stable mana base and the 8 colorless disruption lands, but I just made top 8 at a tournament with a blue/white variation on this deck and I thought it was possible that people could be interested. Here's the link to my report in the "Developing" forum: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/535505-uw-taxes?comment=11

Pros of the UW version:
-True-Name Nemesis and Stoneforge play very well together and TNN gives us a lot of game against Jund and other Goyf/removal decks that we sometimes struggle against
-Vendilion Clique and Spirit of the Labyrinth play very well together and Clique/Karakas is a genuinely absurd interaction
-Meddling Mage is every bit as hateful of a bear as anything mono-white can bring to the table, if it is used correctly
-1-mana countermagic (Pierce/Fluster) out of the board gives us interaction on turn 1 against combo

Cons:
-The mana base can't support Port
-We can get Wasted out of a game more easily
-There are some matchups where Flickerwisp would be better than Clique

I'd recommend bringing discussion on this topic to the thread in the link above, since I really don't think the deck I'm working on is truly "Death and Taxes" and I'd rather not derail the discussion here, but I just wanted to alert people to it, since I saw pretty immediate success at the first sanctioned event I brought it to.

More tweaks and a top 8 tournament report! I dropped a Meddling Mage for a 24th land, evened out the mana base, and altered the sideboard to be closer to traditional D&T boards (read: took out FOW). I think these were all strong choices (although I still don't like the Hallowed Fountain and I'm not sure what the 24th land should be, I just know I want it), and the tournament result seemed to support me on this. I took the above list to a 43-man 1k store credit tournament at Alternate Universes in Bluebell PA, and went 4-0-2 into top 8, losing in the first round of top 8 due almost entirely to poor play and wishful thinking.

Round 1 vs Miracles: This matchup feels really strong to me from square one, but my opponent was playing a list with a few spicy singletons that I couldn't anticipate. After naming both Swords to Plowshares and Terminus with my Meddling Mages and naming Sensei's Top with Revoker in game 1, I got stonewalled by a Moat and blown out by a Supreme Verdict. Oh well, game 2. He got mana screwed and was forced into playing into on-board Karakas/Clique with a miracle Terminus. I bottomed his miracle and he died to beats quickly. In game 3 I amassed a huge force of hate bears, Meddling Terminus, Revoking Top, and nerfing Brainstorm and Jace with Spirit and Mom. He has the Moat, though, so it's only a matter of time before he finds the Supreme Verdict that will crush me. I peel Venser to bounce the Moat at his EOT and it gets Forced. He shows me a blank on top of his deck with Counterbalance before Forcing, though, so when I rip Clique on my turn and mainphase it, he is cold and dies to a flying Sword of Fire and Ice the next turn. This was a nailbiter of a match, because my opponent knew what he was doing and had a less predictable list than what I'm used to seeing. As an aside, Miracles was 25% of the field at this particular tournament for some reason, so even though I only played against it this one time all day, it felt like it was everywhere and I just felt good about my deck choice all day.

Round 2 I played against another metagaming wizard ... he brought UG 12Post to the Miracles tournament (and was battling in top 4 when I left, having only lost to me). This match was not close, though. I Revoked Sensei's Top and Candelabra of Tawnos in game 1, Wasted his Tabernacle, and saw a hand I couldn't lose to when I Cliqued him. He kept those cards and it did him no good. Next game, I protected Meddling Mage naming Emrakul with Mother of Runes, Cliqued him to see cards I couldn't lose to again, and just beat him down easily. He resolved a Show and Tell for Emrakul the turn before he died and I just didn't care. This felt like a bye even though his list was clearly strong enough to beat everyone else he played against.

Round 3 I played against RUG Delver and he did not have the kind of draws that would allow his deck to compete. I resolved Aether Vial on turn 1 (on the draw!) both games, and Vialed in 1 True-Name in g1 (it was enough) and 2 in g2 (it was more than enough). He never actually played a Delver, which I think makes the difference between this matchup being even and it being easy for me to win, so I'm not sure if this round actually is representative of the matchup, but having 4x Mom/Thalia/Vial/TNN/Swords and 3 Clique after boards feels pretty good.

Round 4 I played against a rogue Bant list that was running the usual Geist/TNN/Stoneforge/Hierarch package but also had Thopter/Sword(?) and RIP/Helm(???) to go with its midrange plan of mana dork -> 3-drop -> Elspeth. I played very sloppily in this match, almost punting game 1 by misplaying a combat step against active Thopter Foundry, but I drew my 4th land to bounce his nonblue blocker with Venser, and Mom pushed lethal through the turn before he would've stabilized with Thopters. Game 2 I lost to him removing my Revoker, which was the only thing holding his Elspeth in check, and an endless stream of Soldiers made my army of 3x Spirit of the Labyrinth look very bad. Game 3 came down to a race between my 2x TNN swinging Jitte and SoFI, vs his Batterskull token also swinging Jitte and SoFI, and I almost managed to punt again by outright missing a Jitte trigger and giving him a turn to live that he should not have gotten, but I drew Wasteland at the last possible moment for his Karakas, so I could play my Thalia and use my Karakas to blank lifelink and Jitte's trigger for a combat step. This one was also a nailbiter and I would have probably been pretty tilted to lose it, but I got lucky enough to pull through despite playing sloppy.

I intentionally drew rounds 5 and 6, finishing in 2nd after the Swiss. The top 8 consisted of 1 BUG Delver, 1 Epic Storm, 1 UG Cloudpost, 1 Deathblade, 1 Death and Taxes, 1 Miracles, 1 Jund, and me. I ended up facing the Death and Taxes pseudo-mirror in top 8. Game 1 was depressingly straightforward ... I kept a hand with a Vial and 2x TNN on the play, and lost a race to his Vial + 2x Serra Avenger. I punted game 2 at several different points, allowing him to successfully use Manriki-Gusari when I could have Revoked it and taken over the game with a Jitte, and then later Vialing in a totally unnecessary Thalia during my own upkeep before ticking it to 3 counters, and then topdecking the True-Name that would've absolutely won the game if my Vial had been untapped when I drew it. I would've had to break serve for the third game and my opponent definitely knew his deck well and probably had a raw advantage based on our respective lists, so I can't say that I outright punted the match when I lost 2-0 and only really should have won one of those games, but it still felt like I let my deck down by piloting it very poorly when it came down to the wire.

Anyway, the list felt great, since I could easily switch roles after boards between a hate-bears control deck that spell-based decks hate to play against, and a TNN/Blade deck that creature decks hate to see. I'd gladly play the same list again at another tournament tomorrow if I could. I think this is a very real option in the current meta, and I'd definitely recommend it.

Tweaked my list from my above post and did some testing. Results appear positive! This deck has strong game against midrange decks due to Stoneforge + True-Name Nemesis, it has a pretty strongly positive matchup against Miracles due to the very high density of cards that directly disrupt their plan, and it has both Forces and hate-bears against combo (in addition to 3x Karakas main against Reanimator and Show and Tell). It's pretty bad against Loam/Punishing Fire decks unless you get aggro with Nemesis and an equipment, and it really doesn't like to see Grim Lavamancer, Golgari Charm or Zealous Persecution, but those weaknesses aside I think it's very well positioned right now and I'd definitely play it in its current form at basically any Legacy tournament. I'm excited to see good results from this experiment and I'm going to keep working on it.

I've even thinking about this for a few days and comparing notes with friends and we agree that a straightforward port of D&T is probably best. The core of Mom, Thalia, Stoneforge, Vial, Plows, and equips shouldn't go anywhere. All that you need to do is sub in blue creatures that provide different forms of interaction from traditional D&T, and make the mana work. The con is obviously a much worse mana base, which cannot support Ports and can be easily Wasted out, and an even greater weakness to -1/-1 effects like Golgari Charm and Zealous Persecution. The pro is the Clique/Karakas/Spirit lock, the ability to play TNN and Stoneforge in the same deck, and the ability to board in Force against combo. I think the deck becomes altogether more fragile, less forgiving, less consistent, and more powerful, and it will only be an overall advantage over traditional D&T in particular metagames, but it certainly warrants testing.
Off the top of my head, I'd probably try something like this:



Sideboard probably 4 Force, 1-2 Flusterstorm, 1 Meddling Mage, 2 Oblivion Ring, 1-2 True-Name Nemesis, 2 Ethersworn Canonist, 1 Sword of Light and Shadow, 1-2 Divert/Misdirection or something like that.

Amulet of Vigor is a thing again, doubled in price today and set to keep rising is Matthias Hunt keeps winning with it.

I'm kind of expecting it to be a Lorescale Coatl ability. Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature sounds like right where this would land power level wise and flavor wise. Make it a 5/6 with flash for 3UG that activates on devotion 7.

Buy ~70 copies of Phyrexian Revoker, wait 2 years.

Alternately, 15 Scavenging Oozes, or 6 Geist of St Traft.

It's possible that a playset of each would add up to 100, actually.

Losing the best 5-color fixer in the format means this card is not breaking modern anytime soon. It's nothing to worry about. Pick them up if you want to brew suboptimal durdle control decks in Modern but not if you want them to appreciate significantly.

Inkmoth has the same handicap as Stoneforge, Birthing Pod, and Green Suns Zenith ... There are way more of them out there than you would think due to Event Deck printings. I think they'd all be double their respective prices otherwise and I think their growth potential is similarly halved. It's a pretty meh spec in my opinion. Fulminator Mage this ain't.

Karn is the kind of absurd EDH card that really ought to be higher in foil than that, though. I'm calling it undervalued at anything less than 100 and I can easily imagine 150-175 before 2015. It's a pretty strong long call, I think.

Splinter Twin was 10-11 last tune I checked, now TCG has 4 copies below 14. This is likely due to the DRS ban and I can personally envision further increases if the deck does as well in Richmond as I expect it to.

I do think it's fair to at least consider waiting until Modern PTQ season before unloading them. I honestly don't have faith that the card will be a tier-1 4x-all-day PTQ crusher like Goyf, so I personally suspect that it will have a slightly underwhelming debut at the upcoming Pro Tour and then cool off and settle at 40ish until a reprint pushes it to 25-30 (which is where I think it probably belongs). But I could be wrong, and if I am, and Blossom fuels the nut high strategy to beat in the new format, then it could just be an 80$ card until MM2 ... and if MM2 has the same size print run as MM1, then it might not even cool off then. Basically, Bitterblossom needs to be basically the best thing you can do in Modern in order to retain its price point, but there's a nonzero (very very low in my opinion, but still nonzero) chance that it actually is.

Dregs of Sorrow is kind of a beating

I would try selling here on Salvation first, you won't get rid of more than 30% of it probably but it'll be easiest. Upward trending cards (Hierarchs, foil Stoneforge, Grove of the Burnwillows, etc) will do just fine on eBay and you'll probably walk away happy that you used it. Pretty much any single under 20$ will be a hassle to get rid of at anything more than buylist prices, though, so unless you want to sink time into waiting for people on Salvation to grab it or you want to gamble on an Ebay buyer being willing to pay close to market price (rather than getting your auction sniped at less than what you'd get from SCG and then having to pay fees to boot), you should keep that in consideration.