MTG Salvation

imo it seems like this deck is just a one-hit wonder. It works in this particular tournament due to the player's analysis of the meta.

Went 3-0 at FNM with this list.

Beat UBw solar flare/reanimator/control , UWGb Pod and UR delver.

Match 1 : UBw
g1: 3 doomed travellers and a mirran crusader together with 1 honor of the pure get there. t2 grand abolisher totally swung the tempo in my favour. Costing him 2 life to dismember and ensuring my crusader came down safe on t3. A late timely reinforcements couldnt save him.

g2: 2 back to back despise took all my gas away. I was drawing dead until he had a sphinx and grave titan on board. Angelic Destinies were pretty useless here.

g3: Doomed traveler showed its worth once again. BSZ the 1st time left me with 2 spirits. I then played a hero. My creatures were able to get it once with battle cry for 8 damage leaving him at 5. he then hit me with another bsz, leaving me with a 0/1 hero courtesy of a tap land. In with the 0/1 hero bringing him down to 1 and playing the geist i just drew. He scoops it up.

sideboarding: brought out 2 gideon's lawkeeper and 1 fiend hunter for 3 negates.

Match 2: UWGb pod.

g1 : 2 honored doomed travelers and a mirran crusader got me there just fine on t5. After O-ringing a pod.

g2 : was more even although my hand was pretty beast with 2 leonin arbiters. she was forced to trade 2 creatures to remove my 1st arbiter only for me to play my 2nd post combat. After that we traded fiend hunters/ metamorphs and O-rings for me to finally swing for game with a hero.

sideboarding : brought out 2 lawkeepers and 2 Angelic destiny for 1 fiend hunter and 3 leonin arbiter.

Match 3: UR delver.

g1: Sword of war and peace on mirran crusader wins me the race. Just barely, after running him out of burn and counters for my early champions,abolishers and fiend hunters.

g2: He rides an early delver and 2 stromkirk nobles to victory by burning out or bouncing all my plays together with some snapcaster shenanigans.

g3: He mulls to 5 and doesn't draw answers. He just scoops after I fiend hunter his delver on t4.

sideboarding : brought out 2 angelic destiny for 1 o-ring and 1 fiend hunter.

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Some thoughts: Fiend hunter never went wrong for me all day. Especially against UR delver. Hunting a noble or a delver is such a great tempo play even if they burn out the hunter. The noble and delver comes back down as just a 1/1. Not threatening at all. Also with a honor of the pure out. It gets really hard for them to remove.

The control matchup is pretty good, but it could turn problematic if players start running despise. It was brutal imo.

Pod is pretty ok as long as u save your o-rings for the pods. Leonin arbiter slowed the pod deck down by like 2 turns for me. The pod player could never get a chain going.

I run this as a 2-of in the main and 1 more in the side alongside 3 mainboard O-rings. It hasn't disappointed me at all.

It's a great tempo play, especially if you have a champion on the field, even if the Fiend Hunter is removed. It does things like resetting flip creatures back to the 'day' side. Resetting stromkirk nobles(which the deck has some trouble with).

It definitely has to be used carefully though.

This is magic though, different matchups require different approaches.

I feel that as an aggro deck, our main objective would be to maximise our damage output as much as possible. The line of play I described does exactly that.

But we are basically theorycrafting here.

Let's say it is game 1. You are on the play. You have no idea what your opponent is playing. I feel that my line of play would be the best. Since most of the time you won't know enough from 1 land drop of your opponent to know what he is playing. In such a situation. Playing to maximise your damage is the right play IMHO.

HOWEVER, after knowing what you are facing. Your mindset may change and maybe not playing balls-to-the-wall aggro may not be such a good plan, so you may want to play more conservatively.

There is really no clear cut right or wrong answer as to which is the best play to make.

I would always go creature 1st before anthem assuming turn 2. In this case.

T1 champion
T2 Paladin swing 2.
T3 HoTP swing 8

you'll get less damage on t2 but way more on t3

I run 3 Heroes. I see them often enough, and they very rarely clog my hand.

Hero has won me just as many games as Angelic Destiny. I think 3 is definitely the right number.

why would u change the target of the aura instead of the target of the burn/kill spell to spellskite ?

Quote from Brox42

The biggest problem with Geist of Saint Traft is that he's a two two with no evasion. Without an Angelic Destiny he's easily chumped by an Emissary, Crusader, Sad Robot, etc.

It's an amazing card but I'm not sold on being all in on him. Mirran Crusader on the other hand is just an absolute house, especially with the abundance of black removal running around.

Yea that was kind of the point of my post. I, like you am also not totally satisfied with what geist brings to the table. And to start a discussion and hear some opinions about the relevance about Geist + AD in the deck

Quote from Mubutu

Grand Abolisher is easily better against the field, he's superb against control and Red and he isn't terrible against most other decks either. Accorder Paladin, contrarily, dies do Geistflame and Wring Flesh and doesn't actively interfere with your opponents.

I also can't stress enough how important Geist of Saint Traft is. He's an absolute house against Red and UB control and putting Angelic Destiny on him virtually always wins you the game, no matter who your opponent is. I think 4 is absolutely correct and I would NEVER play less than 3.

The no GoST no Angelic Destiny build won a 32-man Last chance trial @ GP hiroshima so it obviously has game against the big decks of the field. I wouldn't write it off.

And honestly GoST is a good card. But I would argue that Mirran Crusader is currently the most important card against the rest of the field. And the crusader is much more relevant without an Angelic Destiny.

GoST is definitely a powerful card, his shortcomings are obvious. And honestly GoST + AD combo is not that hard to disrupt. Grand Abolisher helps a ton yes. But no sane player will let an abolisher stay on the field for more than a turn unless he really has no answer to it.

The combo is really really strong against Wolf-run green and RDW but that's about it.

It might be worth it to reconsider the combo's importance depending on what the players in your meta are running.

definitely abolisher.

Paladin just doesn't bring enough to the table unless you already have a bunch of creatures out and ready to attack.

1 toughness doesn't help at all either. There's loads of creatures/early plays out there that trade with it and come out ahead. eg. viridian emisary, mortarpod.

Quote from whalesong

any chance you could get the definite decklists?

Alright.

It's on the mothership but here goes.

There are 2 Wu aggro lists in the GP hiroshima LCT winning decks that are very very different from each other.

Might warrant some looking at.

The 1st is a pretty standard list, 3 copies of GoST with 3 copies of angelic destiny. Also 3 copies of Hero.

The 2nd has no angelic destiny or GoST. Only non-creature spells are Honor and Mana leak. Runs a full set of Hero and fiend hunter as well as 1 geist-honored monk. Looks like a much much more aggressive build.

Other than that the creature base is pretty much the same.

4x champion
4x elite vanguard
4x doomed traveller
4x grand abolisher
4x mirran crusader

won on upkeep before drawing with 0 cards left in the deck

Sometimes in magic, you just luck out.

Although it is easy for us the viewers to see the right play cos we have so much more info available to us than the players.

So sable misplayed, doesn't mean he automatically forfeits his right to win.

cackling counterpart - Put a token onto the battlefield that's a copy of target creature you control.

And 4 angelic overseer is really tough on the mana