MTG Salvation

Quote from unkyunk

The differencec aint got nothing do with playskill. The guys in my area that run R/G Tron are often making a Top8 out of 30+ people with the vast majority of the rest of the field running tier1/1.5 decks. My meta has literally ever competative deck in it and often in multiples. Hell, it would take me less time to list off the number of people not playing good decks than it would to list the ones that are. That being said...

Just be super agressive with your answers and mulligans. All of thier threats need the Tron lands to come down or approximatly 5-7 turns without Tron lands.

I don't really want to talk about playskill- I was using it as a term to describe the differerent strategic choices players make within the context of a particular matchup. Certainly nothing to do with the quality of decks a player runs or how well they do in tournaments. Sorry for the confusion.

I do want to say in response to DrWorm that I am one of those players who has not run mask of memory, so perhaps he has something to do with it as suggested. I am also a bit light on tec edges, using mutavault in some edge slots, and generally have a higher man count.
Mask is probably better in this sort of matchup than it is vs jund or URW delver builds, where the danger is they kill the threats leaving the men they can block. And its likely that I have tweaked my deck towards an improved matchup vs those decks at the expense of a more middling RG tron matchup. I will look towards including the mask, however- I probably have a couple of slots to play with.

Quote from DrWorm

Yea, I tested snow/sheets last year. I was a huge advocate of it for a while, but it never really helped much at all, so I dropped it. Most of the time it did nothing, and when I did tap SS the results rarely helped me. We already have a lot of colorless lands, so adding more can make casting stuff aggressively hard at times. It is not all that often, but when the you are not really getting anything from exchange it seems like a needless risk. You are just better off with Horizon Canopy.

Skyfisher is not horrible at all, but if I want that effect I would rather run the gargoyle.

Agree on both points. The flash, stats and graveyard removal make the gargoyle a better option if you really want that bounce effect. SS just fails on so many levels- its grey in a very white deck which runs lots of grey lands. And the card advantage it yields is minimal and erratic. You would have to bend the deck a lot to get real value.

I think the variety of responses regarding tron can be explained in several ways. There seems to be unanimous agreement uw tron. There are a lot of disagreements over red green- and the variables here are the playskill of BOTH players and the builds of BOTH players. Now we can not talk about playskill beyond the basic ideas like when to pop land destruction. But I suspect that the sheer variety of cards we can include means we get different results. I for one am more likely to try and make my deck so that I get improved results vs uwr delver, even if my match up suffers a tad vs tron. Its a shame we do not have silver bullet answers to tron the way we do for say storm.

I think the variety of responses regarding tron can be explained in several ways. There seems to be unanimous agreement uw tron. There are a lot of disagreements over red green- and the variables here are the playskill of BOTH players and the builds of BOTH players. Now we can not talk about playskill beyond the basic ideas like when to pop land destruction. But I suspect that the sheer variety of cards we can include means we get different results. I for one am more likely to try and make my deck so that I get improved results vs uwr delver, even if my match up suffers a tad vs tron. Its a shame we do not have silver bullet answers to tron the way we do for say, storm. But I feel the deck is well positioned overall.

Quote from Koopa

I built this today. Seems pretty good:

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures(12) 4x Blighted Agent 4x Ichorclaw Myr 4x Glistener Elf Spells(26) 4x Groundswell 4x Mutagenic Growth 4x Rancor 4x Vines of Vastwood 4x Wild Defiance 3x Apostle's Blessing 3x Gut Shot	Lands(22) 4x Cathedral of War 4x Forest 4x Inkmoth Nexus 4x Misty Rainforest 3x Verdant Catacombs 2x Breeding Pool 1x Pendelhaven

-12 Infectors + Inkmoth gives us plenty of bodies.
-12 Pump Spells + Defiance + Vines gives us plently of pump.
-7 Protection Spells
-3 Gut Shot is just a port from the Standard version. Not sure if it's wanted or not.
-22 Land with 7 Fetches and 9 "Spell Lands" helps mitigate flood.

twelve men and 4 nexi is sixteen out of sixty- over three draws you have ten cards to win with, but you only see seven at the start, and one man hands need mulliganing vs unknown decks. The maths makes one or two creatures at most per opener on average. Now play vs jund with 4 bolts and one casting cost hand destruction spells. Assume you always get hand disrupted by them turn one, and count the number of times you win from there. I do not think you get that many from my tests. The same can be done with uwr- which has eight one drop kill spells. Simply put I think the deck needs more than sixteen unless it wants to be a glass cannon that sweeps to removal heavy decks. And waiting till later to protect a dude seems risky.

Quote from CorrodedTemplar

So the land destruction matchup has issues vs Affinity, did you come across any other poor matchups?

It sounds like the poor matchups Land destruction faces is shored up by Life and Taxes.

No, just did preliminary testing. I run thalia in white d and t and found I really prefered to limit taxes to the usual suspects- the most effective card in the ld was ghostly prison- which is available in white anyway, even if its in the board. The extra tax was not helping enough vs uwr to tip the match to seventy-thirty and so I gave up and went back to white. There may be a deck there, I gave up early. No deck goes fifty fifty or better against all the top decks so I felt my time would be more effective trying to shore up the mono white list to improve its slightly dodgy matches, few of which are terrible post board.

I tried land destruction using boom, flagstones and rider. I could just about live with the Thalia and spell tension and arbiter flagstone tension. But darksteel lands and nox opals chewed the deck. Game two shatterstorm was available but game one was a wash out. The tron deck was obv good but the barely boros and delver decks no better than regular. Gave up then- just seemed like it could be a win more deck that preyed on expensive decks. But I never tested further as it never passed my initial gauntlet and I did not have the time. On the subject of grunt I want to say that it seems to be meta dependent. I also like fiend hunter in the right meta- tricks aside with the stack it feels like an option in the seventy five that is often ignored due to the chunky three slot. But it does work well for me- thalia means it has to be removed for two or three mana and sometimes just sticks long enough Have also found those javalineers and vaults to be good in the same build.

Quote from Bazinga

i actually just played mono-w d&t saturday for the first modern event my lgs had, i got 5th/6th out of 28 players i forget which, but i love the deck i went 3-1 going into top 8 and lost in top eight, got overwhelmed by merfolk(funny cause i run legacy fish)

anyway i like the deck and his idea of going with blue splash, however, if we went a blue/white version wouldnt the best answer to the geist, be our own geist, legend rule. or we can eot vial one in and swing and get up tempo? just and idea, i plan on sticking mono-w and fixing the bad match-ups.

just wondering if geist can be our answer to geist even in a mono-w build just vial him in??

Sounds good- vial + EOT geist is strong tempo wise. I just wish I had the time to build through this idea- to splash U into D and T without going all fae.
I am sure there is a deck there somewhere- the D and T core is so strong.

Sadly the end of my ridiculously long 7.5 week holiday is approaching, so I won't be able to work on it too much as I am still very much working on mono white version of D and T and two other decks, which is pretty much as much constructed as I can handle. At least the work I put in to this format won't be out of date next month (week?) like it is in standard.

I like the idea of metamorph vs geist, but I am pretty sure that URW can be made into a close match with the right list even without metamorph.

Quote from DrWorm

That is a brutal deck. I find that the win is hard faught but can be done with some skill (Note: not skill I have all that often, just stuff I see when reviewing results). The ttwo main areas of difficulty are:

1) Removal. We have the cards in the deck to answer most of the deck, but it is hard to keep them in play. For instance Arbiter, even without ever drawing GQ, seriously hoses Lynx beats, and also stops the transformative SB that I am seeing often. Thalia, as well, slows them down a bunch, but when the removal hits her the tempo swing is brutal of you cannot drop another post-haste.

2) Fliers. Delver is not the worst culprit here, that title goes to Geist. It is hard to get rid of, and lays down repeated flying beats that we cannot answer with most of the current builds. At one point we were running 6 fliers pretty typically, but that is less frequent. I am not sure I have a good answer for this problem that is not really convoluted. Hexproof is really brutal us to deal with.

I agree- its a hard deck. Skill seems important, and knowing this matchup backwards is essential. They can afford to make more mistakes- they have a removal suite to make up for bad calls.

I have been experimenting with suggestions on this forum specifically against UWR as the top deck in my gauntlet. Javalineers main deck I have found to be quite good against this deck- the off the lynx, unflipped delvers, lavmancers if they run any, and snappies, and provide more play options for flickerwisp. If one is down t1 they have to bolt it before laying steppe lynx. They have to respect the possibility of flashed flickerwisps making delver a humble 1 toughness guy again.

Best thing against geist is to kill it on the deck in combat, obv. Thalia and golem tokens first strike the geist, and finks vs geist is sort of even. They will remove the first couple of these cards, but removing thalia requires two mana, slowing the game down.

The UWR deck does not run out of gas so D and T must not run out either to compete.
Those horizon canopies, even in mono W, are good at increasing the gas in the deck, as are running mutavaults over a couple of edges.

The best route to victory seems to be get the aether vial T1 and go first- rendering counters less relevant and enabling flash to kill geist eventually. Golem token manufacture is a key aim- they have no blockers for it. Thalia t2 brings a more even game all round even on the draw if the t1 has had a vial dropped. I also run a slightly higher flyer quotient that helps, and a solitary stonecloaker still resides in amongst them,and that can help vs snappy as well as saving a dude destined for removal.

I am looking at the idea of ghostly prison in the board for this deck. If it resolves its strong, forcing them to tap out mana main phase.

Quote from unkyunk

I have never had any trouble with any variation of Tron. Sure they, GR Tron players, have pyroclasm, but past that thier sweepers are not that efficient.

As long as you don't overextend you should be fine.

Cards that make for good hands against RG tron:
1) Thalia
2) Ghost Qaurter
3) Mangara
4) Flickerwisp (vialed during thier upkeep)

I agree their sweepers other than 4 pyroclasm are not stellar.

I presume the rest of the hand is vial and land + another land or threat?
(otherwise vialing in flikerwisp is going to be pretty hard, and the quarter will prob get popped quickly to hurt a tron piece)
Assume you are going second- its game two.

T1:
They play a land and a star/sphere or map etc t1,
you play a land and a vial
T2
They play a search t2- either sylvan/stirrings via star or map.
You play an arbiter or a thalia OR you pop a GQ.

If you have played the arbiter they probably have the tron t3, and you are facing a wurmcoil (4 most lists), and you better had drawn a path or hope that mangara sticks. The maths on the tron RG decks is pretty simple- unfettered they hit the tron about 75% of the time t3. They have 4 wurmcoil post board.

If you popped the GQ then they have 2 parts of the tron, and you have one land and a vial with one counter with nothing to flicker yet, not that you would anyway as your next drop must be an arbiter or thalia, and they probably have a pyroclasm in hand with your mangara needing to be flashed in EOT to avoid pyro, but not yet as our vial is on just one.

I do not like those odds from there. On the play, sure we can have em under the cosh whatever they draw. But pyroclasm kills every card in the deck bar finks and golem tokens, and they have 4 pyroclasm, so we need to respect that.
Playing a "don't over extend" game is all very well but what about their t3 wurmcoil? you did not mention a path in the opening hand. mangara is not going to live to deal with a wurmcoil, and all of this assumes our vial survives any nature's claim board shenanigans.
Mangara is not a card I run now- its very slow- and certainly not one I want to play with vs tron post board.:(
Some tron decks are resorting to combust as well for restoration angels- giving additional board power.:(

The best defense I have found is indeed to play slightly conservatively regarding commiting men, using vial to circumvent sorcery speed removal, and to beat em to death with splicer golems or flyers. Golems they cannot pyro away and they beat up wurmcoils.:D
So really I want an opening hand of

vial
land
GQ
splicer
wisp
path
thalia.
I am not saying RG tron is impossible- far from it- just not the cake walk that UW tron is or melira pod.
Playing 1st post board is still hard for tron.

This is where my current list is on this deck, slight refined after just one 5 round tournament. Many apologies if this is out of price range, but it is a UGxx poison deck.



The first thing to say is that the deck runs one more land [a swamp] than similar successful listings. This is to accomodate the plan B [main deck phyrexian crusader], and also to help get value when path to exiled and the game goes long (t4/5/6). It also allows a fetch that costs just one rather than 3 life, which can be relevant in keeping out of bolt range and in some situations involving mutagenic growth. I spent ages testing the land base and its about right for this particular dude base.

Extensive mulliganing is reduced significantly by the one extra land too.

I am assuming everyone knows the basic combinations allowing full poison t2/3 kills. Most of the time a t2 that leaves them on nine poison is nearly always enough if there is both an inkmoth and a regular dude down.

The other notable thing about this list is the man count is MUCH higher than expected- 16, plus 4 inkmoths in effectively 58 cards. The fewer the number of men run, the more the deck becomes "all in" and glass cannon-y, and the more mulliganing occurs too. By having more men its as explosive almost but also more robust.

Probe is vital to the deck. My original version I ran in a tournament ran one, with one in the board for certain matches. This was simply as incorrect as it sounds. The information is sometimes gamewinning there and then, and often informs the play. I never pay mana for it even if I have no t1 play. Just knowing what the enemy deck is can inform the use of spirit guides.

Why plan B?
This deck obvoiusly has strong matches against combo based decks that simply put are often a turn too slow. RG Tron is particuarly vulnerable as well. The deck is also strong against anyone unfamiliar with it who taps out on t2 for a man when u have a man down. This is extremely unlikely in a
PTQ say, unless that man reads spellskite. The crusader obviously has no synergy with assault strobe, but a remarkable number of men in the format are red or white, and those that are not don't like 4/2 infect first strikers with trample.

The weakness of the deck as most know is that it has problems with decks with full removal suites- jund and URW in particular being cases in point, aggro loam is a similar sort of deck too. If they run just bolts then wild defiance is rather good, but path to exile or terminates makes the deck vulnerable when played "all in".

I have found that this deck presents the user with more decisions than the 12 + 4 inkmoth versions, and has a greater robustness, due to plan B, which basically reads "get a t2 or 3 phyrexian crusader, pump and win over 1-2 turns. UWR and Jund have almost no removal that is not white and red- maelstrom pulse essentially in the latter case. Blockers in UWR than can block it are snapcaster mages, and in jund goyfs and bob, but not finks, bloodbraids etc. Few live to tell much of a tale. Helps that the meta is a bit more white and red than most.

I think this deck is not the sort that can be picked up and played, even though the t2/3 kills are easy to learn. I do not play standard at all almost now compared to modern and this deck will reward those intensely familiar with modern lists.

A couple of notes on how I play other matches-
fae- I never walk into spellstutter with a main phase pump t2 unless I have probed- nothing worse than casting might and them getting a 2 for 1. I will nibble with 1/1s and force them to to flash it in and block (they often do if they think you are man light). Pendlehaven shines here in this match with mistbind, as does the spirit guide. The game goes horribly for fae normally when the slaughter pacts and dismembers come in, and its not too hot for them game 1.

melira pod. Unless I can kill them there and then (often the case) I find its better to not leave them mid range poison wise and to save resources back. If they can get melira via search you will not always lose (unless the rest of the combo is there). I have once or twice dealt twenty damage in testing the turn after melira has been searched for. Redcap being red and finks white makes that crusader better than expected, esp with rancor.

A note on boarding:
the necropede and pod are there for those attritional they-kill-everything matchups where the game goes longer often. They are under testing.
I never board out spirit guides, no matter how tempting. Its amazing howoften they give an option on t3 or 4 that allows you to win by powering an inkmoth and hitting with a dude.

When spellskite is a worry -eg fae- then viridian corruptor is often worth bringing in over a 2cc flyer as the spellskite is lethal, despite the removal suite post board.

I did a tournament and it basically did well as a slightly less refined list.
It went 2-0 on the play vs an unprepared player who tapped out t2. No mulligans.
It went 2-1 on the draw vs D and taxes- crusader is a wrecker t2. No mulligans.
It went 2-0 on the draw vs RG tron. One mulligan. Easy match up.
It went 1-2 on the play vs URW- with sadly 3 mulligans in g1.
It went 1-2 Vs jund on the draw with one mulligan, although the jund deck had to draw 2 terminates in 4 cards to win the last game as wild defiance had resolved, and G2 a huge trampling crusader got him to 9 poison as he chumped with 2 goyfs.
Had it been on the play G1 vs jund the same cards would have given me the win I suspect.

I will use this deck again at some point.

Please use Deck and Card Tags. A description on how to use them is linked in the Modern Forum Rules t_C

Quote from DrWorm

Things I know about Cricket:
1) The phrase "wicked googlie" can come up.
2) There are two major versions, one that can last days, and one that is shorter, but old people complain about
3) In the brilliant film "Shaun of the Dead", one of the protaganists uses a cricket bat to kill Zombies.
4) They wear white.
5) The rules are utterly in comprehensible.
6) Five of these may be incorrect.


To be fair, I have not run it in quite a while due to room issues, but perhaps it is worth a re-look.

a) yes, all correct, although "wicked googlie" is a phrase you are more likely to hear from Australians. Googly is indeed a reall term though and there are actually 3 versions of cricket now.....)

b) More importantly yes I will definitely consider extraction G2 and 3- soemting for the inbox file. The fact that samuri of the pale curtain have been mentioned here makes me think that these may be effective against the chromatic sphere card draw aspect of the tron deck G1, making the game 1 safer. Together with thalia and the anti search and GQs, I am feeling relatively confident about G1. Extraction and pale curtain sounds rather weak though, but I guess there are ways round it.......

Also, have been testing with canopies, javalineers and mutavault variants mentioned here on this thread (still mono). Found the lands to be potentially quite useful at getting something extra out of the mana base, still at early stages in tests on these though, barely touching the gauntlet. The javalineers will have to wait and see but I am a huge fan of the card anyway- with so few decent one drops in the format it does so much to those that there are, and a few more beside. I have used them before in proto URW and they were effective in that- remarkably irritating to players with delvers, lavmancers, lillianas, bobs in hand and just as awkward for affinity. Now I am off to spend some time on 4 col poison I alluded to on other posts........................

Quote from DrWorm

I think perhaps you are being a little squeamish about about popping GQ without having a way to stop them from searching. It is not the best situation, but if you have Vial in play you can afford the land loss, and it is much more preferable for RG Tron to have a basic land over a tron piece. I run GQ in all of my decks, in one way or another, and I will pop it off to kill tron in a hot second. Finding room in the graveyard for Surgical Extraction after you have killed a tron piece should make them flounder hard.

Theres an old adage about cricket (apologies if you are unfamiliar with the game- but you do not need to be to follow my gist). It says if you win the toss on a batting wicket toss, bat first. If you win the toss on a bowling wicket, think about it and bat first.

I feel about GQ roughly the same way. If they can't search- pop GQ. If they can search, think about it and pop GQ anyway, basically for the reasons you say. In fact tron often fails to run basics anyway, making it better. [Incidentally I can see how you might think I may be holding back from what I said- I mentioned arbiter and GQ on the play being good. But arbiters primary job from my POV is to stop expedition map/sylvan scry- they can have basics if they run any]

I suspect the surgical extraction + GQ would swing the match tremendously, but I have not found room for enough extractions- its hard to justify the card
for that single match and gifts/melira pod which I expect to beat anyway. The modern PTQ in our country in march had 90 odd players, and despite the prevalence of RG tron at the time relatively few players ran tron.

As an aside the one board card I have used to good effect in other decks vs tron's sweepers is burrenton forge tender- but thats in a deck that has ranger of eos, and I am not sure I could justify it here either.

I will look at extraction more closely for this match.............and continue to pop GQs on sight (although if they lead with two identical pieces of the tron or fail to get any I would hold back).

Quote from DrWorm

I have read this before, but the stragest thing is that should be one of our best matchups. If you are running a full compliment of Land Destruction you should be able to take care of Tron pretty competently. I have not had trouble in this matchup unless I got really screwed, though I also run Pridemage and Teeg in my SB and they really slow down Tron.

That is just a really good deck. If we can get Arbiter in play early, and can protect it with flicker effects, then we can shut down lynx pretty hard, and in my experience that is the biggest damage dealer. Geist is a little more difficult, but aggressive LD can make casting it hard. That said, that matchup has to be played very carefully and you need a bit of luck.

- RG TRON- the thing is it hits its tron pretty consistently without interference and runs pyroclasm post board, and worse sometimes in the main. I have found arbiter+ LD to be great at slowing it and enabling enough time to win G1, esp on the play, but on the draw with 4 pyroclasms in the deck it becomes harder, especially as their midrange fatties are wurmcoils, that keep the game going if they hit, which one will if they hit tron, even if they do so only for a turn. Pyroclasms take out arbiters or mindsensors the turn after they are down. There seems to be a one turn window where they get the tron that decides the game one way or another.

When aribiters turn up a bit late its curtains, basically. RG tron hits the tron t4 nearly all the time, T3 a lot, and has a significant number of card drawers (prisms, ancient stirrings, the chromatics) its not all search and search is not as key to the deck as many would think, certainly not compared to UW gifts tron. Its perhaps an over statement by me to say the match is v hard, but it certainly isn't as easy as it should be. Again it may be build dependent on both sides- I have seen tron decks packed with many eldrazi (3/4), whilst others are definitely slimline with the one emrakul to finish.

- URW - yeah, its a super deck and often those games are mistake dependent too. Win the roll, hit vial and arbiter and protect it is the route to winning.

@Nihils
Sounds reasonable.
Wildwood is surprisingly good in a lot of decks because it blocks flyers vs affinity and clique in fae whilst being relatively cheap to activate. Theoretically d and T is well placed for flyers of course, but one extra sneaked into the mana base may get value out......guess it needs testing.

I agree the hideaway lands are probably a win more - they are much better in other decks with spectral processions and their ilk (eg BW tokens or more aggressive martry proc variants), but I was also thinking of their ability to also put stuff on the bottom you do not want (eg vial 3) though, which is why I suggested one, although your version has more gas if it gets going with those canopies and masks.


Incidentally I like the mask vs most decks but its not so strong when all the men are dead due to decks running stacks of card advantage and kill. I am wondering to myself if its a win more card as well. It seems to do the job in matches I feel confident about anyway, and not those matches when I feel under pressure. I do find it gets boarded out sometimes against jund esque decks as I am lacking men.

May I also point out another board anti affinity option in W- fracturing gust. Yes it costs 5 [a stupid amount in modern] , but it has the same effect as creeping corrosion and shatterstorm and d and t can normally stall till 5 mana. It basically ends the game. In Its probably not for D and T but I have used it in other decks to great effect. It is MUCH better than kataki, which simply gets burnt, and as long as the deck can hold on by its fingertips till 5 mana the card is phenomenal against that single deck, solving the problem of etched champion and cranial plating when splicers refuse to turn up. At PTQs there tend to be a large number of players who play the affinity deck variants as they can be dirt cheap, so I am more likely to consider a dedicated narrow hate card for those events.