MTG Salvation

Quote from DSlav

looking to build a new deck, I have played Affinity, Burn and Elfball in the past for modern. I played Burn, Maverick, High Tide, Goblins and Jund in legacy.

Favorite Play Style: Aggro, Combo, Midrange, Control, Tempo
Looking to be Competitive in Local events and PTQs and such
Favorite Colors: Black, Red
Budget: No budget
Staples Owned: Goyf, Bob, Thoughtseize, some fetches

Quote from Lormador

Lavamancer is great, it's not really to be compared with Keldon Marauders though. They serve very different purposes.

Lavamancer:

• Insurance against flooding out
• Kills a lot of dangerous stuff with little cost, like Mother of Runes / Stoneforge Mystic
• Great against Rishadan Port
• Useful against Jitte
• Good against Elves

Keldon Marauders:

• Good when Tarmogoyf wants to race
• High damage/card output, can help race combo
• Gets through Thalia's tax
• Attacks through Thalia
• Can come in off of Show and Tell for an extra point or two
• Food for Lavamancer when it vanishes

I really just don't like Sulfuric Vortex in the MD. When is this card really needed? In the lifegain matchups. Which decks have the most MD answers to this card? The lifegain matchups!

Quote from Lormador

Here's a link to the deck I was referring to. Josh Hendricks piloting the Caleb Durward Deadguy top 8 in November 2012.

There's an article by the deck's author around the Internet somewhere.

To really play this one you'll need Liliana of the Veil, but it doesn't run Wasteland.

Quote from Lormador

MD you'll be packing Umezawa's Jitte and Batterskull, but that's just par for the course.

I heard about someone experimenting with Ranger of Eos and Death's Shadow, but that might be too cute.

You might want to avoid Thoughtseize, 'cause the line of fetch -> shockland -> Thoughtseize is a 5 life investment that really might not help your chances if the next card you want to play is Dark Confidant (perhaps the opener was fetch, Plains, cards... a keeper). A mixture of Inquisition of Kozilek and Cabal Therapy could serve you well, making the Lingering Souls variant look like the one to go with. One other card you might consider is Isolated Chapel. Successful Deadguy lists have run it in the past: even SCG top 8 lists, though you'll have to look all the way back to November of last year to find that one. I've run it and it's quite functional, pretty much a Scrubland most of the time.

In the sideboard, you might want to go with the Enlightened Tutor plan and put in a single Circle of Protection: Red. There are some other options, like Warmth or Aegis of Honor, but I don't like them as much. The CoP can also help deal with Goblins and Progenitus, and Sulfuric Vortex can easily turn off Warmth.

A nod to Wasteland might also be in order. When your opponent sees that you're playing with shocks, it might cause them to Wasteland more aggressively, reasoning that such action not only weakens your colored mana source but might even force you to take additional damage from fetching shocklands. Consequently, I would value fetching basics even more highly than usual. With duals, I'm often happy to fetch them out if I'm a bit heavy on land, hoping my opponent will be tempted to go down a land drop and sacrifice development in the hopes of cutting my colors. That's a lot less appealing for me if I've got to pay 2 life to use a land I fetch immediately.

BW Stoneblade plays Deathrite Shaman anyway, but this will be even more important for you. You may wish to forgo playing Wasteland yourself, in order to better protect yourself from it. Fewer colorless lands in the deck will mean fewer mulligans.

Quote from patlienemann

I'm not sure what you mean by no one can get cockatrice. I use it almost daily. It's through woogerworks now not cockatrice.de
google it.
Free magic is free

Quote from Lormador

Depends on the variant. All Maverick variants struggle against all-in combo. Dark Maverick does decently well against a lot of combo decks. T1 discard, T2 hatebear is a solid line of play.


re: BW Stoneblade on shocklands, that is going to be a little rough. This deck runs 4 Dark Confidant and trades life for cards. One of the worst MUs is Burn, and shocklands will make that worse.

If you go this route, you might want to make some sideboard decisions with that in mind. It will work though.

re: Storm, the variant that seems to be doing the best is TES, partially because that's the variant Bryant Cook plays. I've seen ANT players do very well also. It's the pilot, not the variant, that I think is decisive here.

Quote from Cole McCool

I'm curious as to which people prefer and which cards make one more prevalent than the other. While there are better choices with additional color application, I'm only looking at which of these two specifically is triumphant at this point in time.

So far as I can tell, card weakness is as follows:

Doom Blade:
-Jund
-Junk

Go For the Throat:
-Affinity

Obviously there are more applications than just these. Any information to help narrow down the choice is appreciated in advance!

Quote from patlienemann

Not sure if troll or new to magic online...
Have you not heard of work station or cockatrice?

Quote from Slivortal

I don't know if this is true. G(r) Tron may be more popular among players who have access to both, but the MTGO scene is dominated by budget decks because players don't want to invest. If I had to guess, U Tron is more popular on MTGO than G(r) Tron, but I'd have to see statistics to be sure either way.

Also, mono-green Tron is a variant of RG Tron. For all intents and purposes, they are the same deck. The R in G(r) Tron is only for playing Pyroclasm/Firespout (and Slaughter Games/Combust), and often they're not even MD. There's a reason I generally refer to the deck as G(r) Tron.

EDIT: Also, the difficulty in playing U Tron is generally overexaggerated. There's more interaction with your opponent than G(r) Tron, but neither deck is overwhelmingly difficult to pilot (there are very few decks in Modern that are).

EDIT2: Also, judging by MTGS's threads (not necessarily the best indicator, but an available one), U Tron is FAR more popular, with twice as many posts (from multiple posters) in less than half the time.

Quote from Badd Business

The issue here is that all the cards you mentioned here are terrible maindeck choices. Unless you want to lose to the 90percent of the meta that isnt tron, you would be stupid to maindeck stone rain effects.

Tectonic edge is far from useless against tron. If you have a tec edge, you can set them back after their 4th land drop hits. This provides an opportunity to resolve karn, but t3 karn is counterable via remand, mana leak, or even spell pierce. This is assuming you even see t3 karn anyway, which may not even happen.

As for blood moon, no doubt its great, but it requires you to play red, and also requires you to warp your deck choices around it's inclusion solely to be good against tron.