MTG Salvation

Quote from jespermakkinje

Desecration Demon or anything black is an issue for the winning list.(Firefist got around that, Tho i found 3 Dark Betrayal in the board fixes this)
It's also more susceptible to sweepers then what i was running before. (I ran MD Boon of Erebos, Keeping 1 of your guys and adding a haste creature next turn helps against control a lot)
Also lifegain is annoying as for every aggro deck (sd should have something against that)

The "winning list"? You mean the santiago one?
1. Desecration Demon? This deck runs 4 madcap skills.
Its like the weakest thing they could do. Turn 4 D.D. is way to slow, and we're black, and multicolored. So we have the cackler rule (protection from esper) working for us dodging most popular removal.
Lets be honest... pack-rat is a more threatening thing vs the plan this deck is on.

2. Sweepers. Its the necromancer. Post siding: Thoughtsieze.

3. Finally as far as far as lifegain: There were 2 Erebos in the side. Though really what SPECIFIC lifegain is the worry?
I ask that because revelation only saves them if you've already lost... but mostly it doesn't save them.
Unflinching courage is decent, but that means they're playing ... GW. The white "hate pally" might be a thing, but unless I'm playing against Craig Wescoe, white weenie is simply a deck that doesn't excel.

The thing I ask when I look at this deck is...

What is its matchup vs Black Devotion.
What is its matchup vs Esper

Black is arguably the most powerful deck.
Esper... people aren't going to stop playing it. Some people just want to play the deck that has answers.

Whats the matchups like there where it matters?

Quote from Mango733

Another benefit to going mono B is access to Corrupt, which I personally have been playing 2 of in my mainboard with much success. It will just win a game outright if you do it late game for 5-9 or whatever which is pretty huge. It is one of the cards that when you are digging for gas late game you really want to see, like Gray Merchant. It's ability to serve as removal while sill gaining you life is also pretty damn tits and it will work as a closer often as well if not just stabilize you. I almost even want to cut my 2 MB temples for this reason. It is good in the mirror and I couple it with 2 Lilliana MB who's ability to thin the deck and get bigger is already pretty useful when your digging with underworld or whatever. I assume we will get something to do with #of swamps and/or other lands in this block also which could make mono decks that much more effective.

I can actually get behind that pretty well actually, corrupt as gary's number 5 or 6 depending on how you end up working it.

Also I watch the video "the other guy" mentioned over on youtube and here's the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9JSR6TJGDs#t=1105

It's pretty lopsided, but mirrors my own thoughts about that match up. I just want to basically cast drain life over and over again, and black has a legacy of doing just that. So I think it might be best to just focus on that plan with little variance. There might be a card that forces something different eventually but whatever it is, it certainly isn't there yet.

After spending all day yesterday and this morning testing the B/G version with vraska and golgari charm out of the side... I'm gonna have to say that the mana does kinda hurt.
Also... I think it'd far better to just kill them out right than to bother with assembling. I mean, maybe red offers more with slaughter games or something, but even at that so very often I just was wanting to just cast grey merchant for the win.
Lot of the time I kiinda mana piddled for a long time in a lot of games. I tried the exact b/g list at the front of this primer, and while it had LolTroll instead of P.rat I can't help but thing that Ben should never have been moved out of the deck. Shrug. Thats not to say people shouldn't TEST the other colors, but that my test was less that amazing.

This whole splash thing being discussed reminds me of something someone was saying last season at my FLGS, it turned into a huge discussion over several weeks. Basically...

"All roads lead to Jund"

The argument was... Anytime players people start splashing for answers in B, B/G, B/R control style decks, and the mana allows the deck slowly turns into jund.

Why? Well much like this standard as mentioned above people start doing things like "Gunning for your deck" ala' naya control.
So the evolution ends up with a deck that has all the answers and no direct weakness. Typically. Jund.

Devotion with a bevy of multicolored spells, along with thoughtsieze and underworld connections isn't necessary. It might become better and better as the season goes on though.

Right NOW however... MBD is the deck to beat. People keep saying over and over "WHAT DO THEY DO ABOUT..." and I don't think you can just ignore the shifting meta gunning for you. Right now everyone's favorite answer seems to be Assemble so having an answer to it isn't a bad plan.

Quote from zemanjaski

Scrylands are great, they should all be scrylands.

Cannot tell if sarcasm

This is the deck that I'm on right now.
I admit that its R/g but ultimately its still rdw. I Started with it last season and twinked starting with saito's old list. I find it works really well for me, and I only add it to the conversation because there's a lot of talk about "Master of waves" and this deck goes Under/Through that card.
Madcap skills tends to obviate early blockers along with Rampager (who also helps you finish) and out of the side I run seismic stomp... which.. I'd love to be better, heck it could be gruul charm except that I'm skimping on lands so... yeah.

This version of the deck just wants to get through, and it actually does it pretty handily, most of the time.

I should likely prolly do the right thing and drop 1 chain-walker and add 1 mutavault or something... I don't know. All in all though I really enjoy it and it gets there more often than not.

Madcap skills is a card that really should be run right now I think. Despite the fact that some people are playing removal.dec It really obviates the turn they play their "Blocker" and can turn thinks like firedrinker statyr into world class threats. Especially when paired with emissary, I'm been away from my red bros' for a while in isolation so I might be working backwards... I don't know.
Thoughts?

Quote from McNasty

and this excerpt from Frank Lepore's recent article is making me really consider pack rat now:



Granted, he was playing a junk deck with only 6 viable removal spells to our decks, but still...

I've been Lepore has since Ptq Scotland theros. . . since then I've played 10 games a day and 80 percent of those matches has been against some flavor of devotion. RDW, and Esper, being the other main decks.

I seriously found it weird when I was facing down more monoblack than monored, more mono u than esper.
I'd love to see that mechanic just removed but Its too spread out amongst the colors.

The black one actually feels like old school necro in a way sometimes.

None the less I feel pretty good about B/G. It just has soo much removal, and things that are totally relevant right now.

Sylvan Caryatid can help with that if you don't want to run islands. Tricky part would be what to cut. I'd probably pull two Skylashers and a Demon, myself.

Alternately, you can run some Watery Graves or Temple of Deceits in lieu of some swamps. Careful how many you add though, you'll open yourself up to Burning Earth.

I'm going to go with the watery graves I think maybe a temple or 2. I'm not particularly afraid of burning earth, between golgari charm and having a more aggro bent I think, its a manageable concern. I will get back to you guys on it though.

U missed B/W midrange and B/W/x midrange in your matchups

Also..

R/G in my testing is way better vs G/W game 1, than your letting on, I think.

They also go big much more quickly than we do. Selesnya Charm is definitely our strongest card here.

I agree and the creature they back the most is a
Flying haste Pro-white dragon.
Its a real problem for when it resolves to be honest.

B/W midrange is also unfavorable in my opinion.

Thoughtsize ~ removal Demon ~ Bloodbaron ~ removal Obzedat. . . is a real thing
But also they're backing whip of erebos as well and thats probbably a problem.

Hmm... thinking

Okay, also there is the Rock which is a real deck, but what you've missed that is more important I think is the other devotion decks.

Mono black devotion, and Mono Red devotion. They can be pretty gnarly matchups honestly.

and I like g/w tokens quite a bit, so I don't mean to sound needlessly negative, yet...
You might need to broaden your testing to include:
B/W midrange (a must include)
The Rock (at least some variant of a thoughtsieze/desecration demon.dec)
Devotion Red (kills via fanatic of mogis and stormbreath, its NOT RDW)
and
Devotion Black. Which may or may not be the best deck in the format, but its at least equal to M.U.Devotion.

So far though I dare say I don't like what I'm seeing. Tokens being weak vs G/R MONSTERS! as well as the devotional lists.

Well thats my 2c good luck and happy testing.

Quote from Jury2011

Mellissa Detora write an article on beating monoblack, featuring a G/B midrange deck to beat it. Here's the link

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=11454

I started with a similar list, and ... I never posted it because I felt like it was an aggro deck, so I didn't want to really bog you guys down.
Though it slowly became something more like a rock deck I think.

If I might share what I've been running?



Which is a deck that I originally created to destroy esper control, then Mono U devotion showed up and having 8 pro-blue guys and maindeck "Miser's Charm" aka "Golgari charm" ended being really good.

My current situation is that I want to splash U, with the simple intent of activating "Far/Away" both forms.

I felt like being able to switch into a deck that ran more sac effects mattered quite a bit but to be honest I'm still brewing.

Still it has what I feel is a huge amount of game vs anything with "U" in it as well as anything that wants "life check" you.

After I grew confident that Mistcutter Hydra was maindeckable I started doing so much more to win with the deck.

MUD - Thats perfect. Everyone knows what it is and it spells it out perfectly.
I'll refer to it as that from Now on. Well done!

:thumbsup:M.U.D.

Quote from Hammer

See, this is exactly the problem with blue right now. For as long as I have played, blue was known as the colour with the worst creatures by definition, while having the best non-creature spells in the game. Making blue creatures better than other colours and nerfing non-creature spells to heck just completely re-writes the colour pie. Is that the goal of Wizards?

I think the goal of wizards was "make all the colors roughly equal in terms of playability".
Also: Make Midrange a playable type standard.

Again: What the hell more could you give it? Revelation, Verdict and jace and aetherling, detention sphere...
I mean really?

As for metrics, I think using high level tournament results to determine the strength of a color in a given format at a given time is an excellent method. It takes the opinion out of the equation, because what actually works is what rises to the top.

Hmm... results based determination. I guess that makes sense. It doesn't mean thats ALWAYS going to be the case... in MTG however, I think that it IS always the case. So I'm going to say after reading 10 pages of this.
I'm going to disagree with Exodite. If were making a "Proof is in the pudding" argument he is so very wrong, I suppose.

2 things though.

1) Blue in standard. . . the "Its weak" crowd, after watching that mono u vs mono u match and still saying "Its weak" makes me think that what you're really saying is that DRAW-Go is weak. I mean am I mistaken?
If "U" is weak the argument boils down to "I want counterspell, JTMSand ponder!" then your need to re-evaulate "U" as a whole.
You have to be able to accept the change that U is NOT synonymous with draw go. You'll then realize how good it really is.

My question to you guys is this? What do you WANT it to have to make it "good enough" for your taste? Help me understand whats missing, cause I don't think it could get much better (within reason)

2. And MORE importantly to the thread. . .

... anyone. . . anyone! Please tell me what the hell G/W is supposed to be DOING if not playing creatures that deliver card advantage?!

I mean as a color they generally are denied the magic words: Draw A CARD.

Also they get a very limited amount of removal.

AND the non creature spells they get are generally pretty piss-poor, UNLESS its a spell that's a creature.

So for the people who have an issue w/GW~Pushed cards. . .

A:What do you expect them to have? Back to Craw worms?
B: Is it that you just feel its only right to win the match vs G/W with turn 4 wrath effect every time?

No, GW is where it needs to be to even ATTEMPT to be viable. . . in fact it would actually have to be a few cards better to really get there. So yeah, whats so wrong about Selesnya being "good"?

Quote from zaj56

Dude lie to yourself all you want. Whatever makes u feel better at night.
If your any good at magic you can master rdw. Its not hard. You ever hear the phrase You can'tpolish a turd? Well You cant write a paragraph about rdw and prove that its not a monkey deck. Its a monkey deck.

ALSO the op was about mtgo. So dont lecture me about expense bc u have no idea about the metagame on mtgo. Expense has everything to do with it.

anndd... you're sounding like an idiot.
Not that you are but, you obviously don't respect it as a deck. It sounds like you're actually just being ignorant, I"m not sure if its willful ignorance or genuine. Your assertion that its a monkey deck though is pretty telling of a lack of skill on your behalf... if you can't tell the difference between patrick sullivan or dave price playing red deck wins and random kid at your fhm then more the fool you. I imagine to you its all the same if you're getting burned out and losing. . . but its different.
Still this is too much like "arguing with fools" so I'm done talking to you about it.

Quote from SimonWhite

Well that was disappointing, I miss blightning...

Yeah I'm pretty bummed about not having a stronger general discard spell.

If we had one at least I'd feel okay about smiter.