MTG Salvation

I really liked the idea of this deck for more casual playgroups as it is slow but still gets to use a lot of powerful cards. so I tested it on mtgo for a couple days made some changes and took it for a spin with some more casual guys on mtgo liked it enough that assembled the cards in paper was tons of fun. Here is where I have it now.

Traditional Esper Control

If you check out my YouTube channel I actually play paradox engine storm with pull from tomorrow in standard.

Quote from benjameenbear »

Yeah, the new Grixis Commander seems really good, even if it only gives a single card flashback for the turn.

I'd also like to chime in here and support Paradox Engine. It makes mana rocks absurdly good and turns Isochron Scepter into an infinite combo piece with too many cards. My favorite one that I discovered so far was Isochron Scepter, with Reality shift imprinted on it, Paradox Engine, and a Mana Vault. I didn't actually activate it to deck my wife in the game where this came up, because I'm a smart man, but it was gratifying to know that the Scepter has increased in value substantially with the Engine being in the deck.

I don't think it's better than jeleva I'll be covering my opinions in a video. I love engine it's in a LOT of my decks now however I still didn't like it more than MoM here and I don't want/need both. You could change the deck so it uses more mana rocks and engine might be better but that's not how I play it. You can play however you want though. I know a lot do people who picked up storm and hate cards I think are incredible like past in flames for example. So if you want to play kess it's not a horrible card but I don't think it's better than Jeleva. As far as storm in casual the entire nature of storm playing your deck in one long turn is not something casual players tend to like but I have a horobi deck that's essentially a black control deck that storm kills the table with quite often the paradox engine in later turns and no one seems to mind that as I have tweaked it to win about when they do. I would suggest you just match the kill turn with decks alredy in your PG.

The deck itself seems fine but if i had been tasked to control players to koz could stomp them I would be tempted to just play mono blue/sonic/bug and dedicate myself to that cause. As for this deck ...Splashing red and not playing wheel just feels wrong. If it's 80 life 2hg just make as nauseam control as in 80 life you can build a full on broken ad naus deck cast it tapped out at 5 and just win which is beyond silly. While this deck has no bad cards I think it's trying to poke into to many directions and your greed isn't nessarily a good thing here. Play test it and you will figure it out. The curve here however is amazing so many 1-2 drops don't chalice me bro

No problem that's great. I personally like glimmer way more than illumination despite getting another 1 drop for grafstone lines the fact it can dig up to 4 cards made it a much stronger combo card and card in general even if your not using energy. As with anything test it first my current stack looks nothing like what it started at and there is no good substitution for play testing. Looking at your list the main issue I see is trying to use comit / memory and illusion over glimmer and max pull. I would just test it to make sure it works. Without harness some number of essence scatter in the side is a good idea.

I'll use both because why not? One is more balenced one let's me make more broken vintage plays win win. Mtgo needs more choices would love the ability to host games with custom ban lists and rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIcaTf3KnU some gameplay I recorded just now

Yea I can see that your more control . Personally I've found control mirror like games super easy post board with dispel and negates they haven't been a problem at all. I went 5-1 in the tournament practice room today though I think I dropped a game in every win but 1 where the guy scooped after g1 for whatever reason. I played a sweet grinder vs mono black zombies. I've found it only takes 1-2 control plays to buy time for a turn 5-6 kill. However many times it is indeed an ok plan to just stabilize. I did beat a snake deck today which is great the harness was great. I got stomped by blue white spirits but I don't see that deck often. Spell queller is just a huge pain in the ass and mausoleum wanderer turn 1 is really annoying.

So I ended up completely changing the deck after tons of testing. Now I'm winning way more games than I'm losing and nothing feels like an auto loss anymore. I realized that caravan was horrible because it cost 3 I started playing pyramid instead because its was better for both going off and playing control and gave the deck a real card to play turn 1. full anticipate dropped all the prisms they were just too slow and not good enough cards on their own anticipate is way better. harnessed lighting in the extra cantrip slots lets me shore up the problem the deck had with creatures game 1 drawing even one buys the deck another turn against creature damage decks all the time. Glimmer digs better than reverse did by 1 card and cost less is instant makes harness even better. The cards better at both control and combo it was a strict upgrade. Sb changes the englufs never worked the way I needed them too and are unplayable with the red splash anyway and now that I have that splash I can put in some magma sprays for more 1 drops agsint fast creature decks alongside a playset of scatters for these kinds of decks where I need to trade multiple times with creatures to get the time the deck needs. 4 negates and 3 and a disallow let us play a mean game against control and lets us beat them at their own game or push through our combo. having lots of different counterspell options lets me pick the absolute best counters for game 2 without over side boarding in some MUS and lets me board in mass spell based or creature based hate in others. On a side not having way more fun in this format than I ever thought I would.

Updated list after more testing

Md changes
3x puzzle knot > 3x anticipate.

1 MD barals > 4th reverse engineering

1 magnifying glass > 1 negate

Sb
1 ulamog > 1 walking ballista
1 baral > 3rd engulf


Anticipate is nice its a little bit better of a cantrip in general and better supports the control lines helps turn on the 2 rock. barrels not as good with less prisms reverse just gets the job done even on only 4x prism many times I'm even down to 2x prism is still just always solid and bridges the draw card gap tp pulls. malking ballista is a better kill than ulamog for if I think they will try to strip reservoir or saw them do it in g2 for g3. negate is MD material only 1 for now but multiple decks I'm bringing in all 4 copies its really good. Decks feels pretty good worst MU seems to be snake combo its miserable on the draw they can grow past engulfs and can come down before essence scatter has a fast clock. I can beat control at their own game most times those mu's seems easy. marvel seems ok too with negates though their is a fair bit of variance their sometimes they do nothing problably ulamogs drawn. others times ulamogs on the stack t4 -t5 and your wrecked I did manage to disallow a hardcast ulamog trigger from a ramp deck that was hilarious. Best card in the deck is without a doubt pull 4x all MUs all times its gross.

I haven't had too much issue with vehicle hate on mtgo yet but it's very important that it makes colored mana so I can't see myself replacing those. I did in fact test paradoxical which if resolved mid combo was in fact good game every time I resolved it. However the only slot I can play it in is reverse /barals. Reverse is less exciting but much more reliable so far in my testing and your still making use of the cantrip rocks are in that they reduce its cost the way I intended whir too when I had it in but at an actually reasonable cost. My original Version used more barals no reverse and used outcomes but reverse is much better at grinding and much better before the combo turn and thus far sufficient at chaining up to pull on the combo turn. You could I guess MD another reverse or a singleton paradox and kick the the last Barals but it kind of acts like paradox in the use of bouncing cantrips and while it's not as good for combo turn as outcome it can buy you a turn when you don't have an engine on the field cast reservoir or archive at the same time. That being said I have tested this deck only 3 days I did get 40+ games in but many/most were not at my current configuarition this is where I'm at now and I'm just getting the hang of the format / just now feeling like this decks good enough to compete. I can see pull going up it's a very good card l.

After paying a ton of games I have completely rebuilt the deck and splashed red to play harness

Where is the decklist. @lithnbasics are not bad, basic mountain in 4cc " normally is. Most multicolor 4/5cc decks red is a splash and most it's best cards are not deep in red they have 1 symbol many having no RR cards in the entire deck. It's better to not be able to draw what is almost a colorless land in most cases I would be fine with my solemn not being able to fix to my splash if that means I never have to draw the card mountain. Things like back to basics are easily removed or sidestepped with artifact or creature mana sources like lotus signets bloom tender mox etc. I am not surprised when he mentions sad robot in fact it's exactly why I assumed he has a mountain based on his commander. I doubt however the number of times solemn searches mountain out weighs he number of times mountain is drawn and a land that could make red as well as black blue or white would be better. Basics are fine you should run some even in 4 color but basic mountain is by far the most useless in my experience.

Ah good catch its an artifact can't bin it free mull to 7 and remove the mountain after the game basic mountain in 4 color is gross XD.

Probably bin strix to the mox vamp turn 1 for time twister get a new 8 to play with turn 3 with 1 ramp play. If everyone else also made good ramp plays and twister seems bad you can still choose to vamp a crypt or ring and try to build back up with thirst + dig but it also depends a lot on how your deck plays and how your opponents decks play. Twister seems like the right play as your hand is just trying to find lands and has nothing broken going on.