MTG Salvation

V sorry, will grab it now, totally forgot- snowed at work and with card sales/trades...........



There are a couple of minor nonbos in the deck- suppression field interacts poorly with cast out's cycling, and heliod/luminarch. That said it does a lot of slowing down and whilst it does not slow Tron down enough to be effective game one, it slows a lot of other stuff down, inhibiting some combos, pws, equip costs, sac abilities and fetchlands. Post Obliterate the S field is rude as hell. You tend to be in control of when SF gets played, too. It is quite an easy deck to play, apart from learning sequences and when to drop situational cards. Once you learn the matches and don't screw yourself by playing the cards in the wrong order it works well. Laying Starfield can be terrible against a deck with mass sweepers with its bits locked down, for example.

The manabase is a tad awkward to get used to, being too gredy and using karoo lands to get extra scrys is not always right, under pressure you can't keep cutting yourself off mana wise with CIP tapped.
RIP and Starfield are opposed in one sense, although Starfield does operate in two modes and it is the opalescence mode is what is used the most- when you have a Tron deck under a sphere or b moon witha stony back up quite often laying the Opalesence and swinging.

The basic package eats critter decks with careful play, tending to enjoy moderately positive matches vs. humans, death's shadow and very positive matcches against any other critter decks still lurking out there that can't generate lots of mana like elves. Spirits is harder as it has more disruption than humans in the 75. Regular Tron is v hard game 1, hybrid elda tron fine. Affinity is decent game one, v favoured g2. Storm is a bye if you know what you are doing and often if you don't. Matches like UW depend on if you get to cast Obliterate or not and if your opponent counters certain innocuous looking cards like Greater Auramancy, a good UW player is favoured. Amulet and scapeshift over the match are close, boggles is pretty easy if you draw runed halo and get a big tax down. Elves is not good.

Deck has a fair few free wins, overall it tends to draw too much, and it does much, much better if you know what your opponent is on.

Sorry to miss this.....
I have to say that as long as you are not mono W then all the splashes have something
R/U/G are for me better than B.

R is best if you expect tron. The deck can maindeck RIP too, unlike most decks.

The lists have gained little these past couple of years. Some run the unlife solemnity combo, which is great v aggro. Seal away and the diversified O ring options have helped a bit.
Other than that lists are basically stuck with the same cards, as per the primer.

I will post my list tomorrow, but really if you know your meta well you are better off taking the core and running with it.

Quote from TheBullwark »

Im big fan of the tax/and whittle away of the brown version vs the blowout plan of the white, Is there an updated list or is white just better? I might buy myself some mox diamonds for Christmas If I can get a good deal. I have everything else other than only having 3 Cities. Any input would be much appreciated

Brown is probably better than W in honesty. It has fewer nonbo issues and is more consistent, as cards like Tanglewire can buy time if deployed early or can put the pressure on with Ports at their side and a stack in place.........

There are few players of the deck- IIRC Michael Coyle?? runs a all in serum powder version and does well. Charlie in the mox has basically run the same Sphere of resistance deck for years online, and updated with new tech like Inventor's f. Those are the two lists from which to start for my money. For W I would say tehre are so few lists out there you might as well start with the two above W lists, but you can see both W lists in this thread are lot less White than the old dutch stax lists.

Quote from Franx13 »

Hey drmarkb, I remember you from the RW lockdown modern thread, we seem to have similar tastes in decks:). Anyways, I reviewed your decks and read your posts I like them for the most part. I don't have humility or moat so that combo is out of the question. I have edited my list with your advice.

To answer your questions I want a geddon white stax, but I have found that mud stax maybe better. But white offers more protection in my eyes and I feel is stronger for my meta.

Here's my current list

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Mono White Stax Lands (23) 3x Mishra's Factory 1x Mutavault 4x City of Traitors 3x Plains 3x Inventors' Fair 3x Wasteland 1x Ghost Quarter 4x Ancient Tomb 1x Buried Ruin	Artifacts 4x Mox Diamond 4x Trinisphere 4x Chalice of the Void 1x Ensnaring Bridge 3x Crucible of Worlds 3x Tangle Wire 3x Smokestack 2x Sorcerous Spyglass	Other 3x Armageddon 4x Karn, Scion of Urza 3x Oblivion Ring 2x Ghostly Prison 1x Ugin, The Spirit Dragon

I found the in between list to be more consistant for my meta

It looks a very good list.

I think the days of Dutch Stax etc are gone. What happens with nearly all my old lists is I never had enough flexibility to deal with Miracles/random fast combo/Lands/fair dnt/ show n tell decks et al. This is a huge, huge issue for W. Look at Geddon - it is awfully bad if the opponent has aboard state and we have no attack tax, and even if there is one, two lands and they are away. So for many years I tried a lot of moat type cards, or bottled cloister/bridge or whatever- but the issues were always there. WW casting cost etc. would hold me back on powerful PWs and ultimately the deck was not good in an environ with DRS. Often the best non Chalice/3sphere cards in the deck over time were not Humility or Geddon, but Trading Post, which could draw cards or gain life etc., and O rings or such. Flexibility and consistency, not card power, is what gives Miracles its edge. Nonbos used to be a part of W stax, the Humility and a some dudes type nonbo being obvious.
Post ban things have moved on.
No DRS means lands in the bin stay there often, until I can recur them. This makes Ghost Quarter and Wasteland better, alongside Riftstone Portal and the geddon effects themselves. You can geddon a bit more freely, even to get a small edge.

Secondly, Walking ballista answers Teeg, and can shoot delvers, infectors et al. Win con, control card, all in one. A countered up Ballista is still big under Humility even.
Thought knot is similar- a creature with discard, effectively. This is why I only use 1 humility main nowadays, not two or more. We actually have good critters available that aid the plan.

Finally, utility lands are better- in both Inventors Fair and Geir Reach sanitarium we see card tutoring and life or simple card selection.

Other little things like Karn< scion being more flexible than a Bottled Cloister,say or being easier or cast than Elspeth have subtly weighed in.

This for me makes Stax better today than it has been since 2012. I won a small FNM tonight with it.

As for versions, in brown there are two ways to go about it- Sphere of R or 3 sphere and serum powder, with Ports etc. The version posted looks like a cousin of the S powder list, and is definitely a mono B list that splashes W rather than a W list. It looks good, although I would put a trading post in, as the card does everything we want- life gain of normally worthless cards, sacing artifacts to draw or to escape an echoing truth on a chalice, bringing stuff back etc. I can even make 1/1 goats with Humility down, although you won't be doing that....)

Alara was a terrible draft environment. In retrospect the EDH and flavour communities grew to love it, but its draft was awful.

Mechanically the set did not feel to have much of a theme, and any set with 3 colour faction/shards/guilds is going to have a massive issue. If the fixing is too good and sextant/mana washer-esque, you end up in four or five col good stuff. If it is three col and linked by a 3 cc artifact that fixes the shard, the person who goes T1land/T2land - cheap 2 col dude-/ T3 3 mana rock/ T4 4cc or more likely 5cc common in 3 cols just flat out wins when the opponent goes land/no spell because they don't have the right two cols/no rock and still no spell because they are still missing a col.
In short you hit 3 cols and a half decent curve you win if the opponent doesn't, which is MTG but which also will happen more often. The fixes to this are easy but thematically hard to pull off. 1 and 2 cc dudes that are playable in single cols, scry or similar, morph, alternate costs, hybrid mana, not many as many multi mana cards or a very slow environ with lots of single cc removal and modal cards. Trouble is many of these have been done elsewhere and would engender complaints that it does not feel like Alara. I would be happy if they just did the set and made it full of Scry, but even then I would wager many would say that does not feel like Alara.

Perhaps the best place to visit Alara would be in a supplemental product, that way EDH fans would get their 3 col monstrosities and they would not have to change the mechanical feel too much, enabling more Cascaders etc.

I use Humility, just one E Bridge sideboard for the cheat decks. My cheat a dude in matches are not that bad, I have o rings etc. to ride show n tell, and two karakas, 1 maze main plus additional in the board.

Trading post is a real swiss army knife. It can sac a smokestack after opponent upkeeps, make dudes that become 1/1s with humility, bring back key pieces, sac spares, stop echoing truth etc., gain life vs burn etc.

I keep to a maximum ten 4cc cards- Karn would be nice in the main but I find it is only useful in grindy matches, the elves, dnt etc all eat it too quickly. I used to use bottled cloister in the deck when it had 3 e bridges, but it is no karn and a lot more risky.

I have the deck in foil, for comp REL can swap it but do not want to play it comp rel, its a great deck but it is much better when you know what they are on, which is less likely at comp rel bigger events. In these events I tend to Pox, keeping W stax and Parfait for local FNMs with 20-30 players.

Ratchet bomb or an extra t wire occasionally get slipped in over a 3rd o ring effect.I would like to try Inventor's fair, it would mean dropping a Karakas to the board. I am on the minimum number of Mishra's. Simply put they are not quite as good as they were, relying on them in a geddon deck is not stellar, they work a lot better in the brown version which is a harder lockout version.
Sometimes I use Zuran Orb for metas with lots of price of progress.

Just to update my list - April 19 - I now use an Elspeth in the board and a main deck Karn, with one of the O ring effects moved to the board Mindcensor has dropped from the list completely.

My brown stax list is below. It looks more like yours than my w

I still run Stax. In fact I have two, in paper. One is mono brown, with Spheres of Resistance, Ports, Golems, similar to Charlie in the Mox's online deck rather than the drck by Iirc Michael Coyle who runs Trinispheres and Serum Powders.


The second is Geddon Stax, with Ghostly Prisons, Geddons and some usual Stax cards. I have the deck minus RL cards in foil, so my list is pretty settled, I have about five cards that rotate in and out according to meta. They do print good new cards for the deck, but they are mercifully cheap.

My white one was informed by playing the Brown one. I struggled for years in the case of white Stax, primarily because death rite made establishing a lock really hard. I could often beat either fair or control or unfair decks, but rarely made a deck to cope with all three remotely well. W stax in particular simply had too many 4 drops to be consistent.

For me the question is why play white stax and brown stax?

Geddon Stax offers basically the same as Brown, by different routes.

I built white around Ghostly Prison, aiming squarely at fair decks, hoping the basic package of trinisphere, chalice, stacks and karakas/maze does enough game one against the unfair decks. I used o ring style utility effects and walking Ballista for flexibility.


White offers the orings, prisons, it offers Leyline sideboard, and a few special cards like Humility or Wrath. It is not always integral to the deck, and more so the way you have built it.

Brown offers Golems to tax and beat up, consistency in the Charlie in the mox versions at least with 2 drops like Sphere of resistance, and an ability to go all in, more often locking decks out from the off.

You seem to have a list in between.
Are you trying to reduce the number of spells the average opponent casts to 3/4 per game? Or are you trying to let the opponent play a bit more but be able to catch up? I must admit I am a little concerned about your mana, you seem short on W.


For me you gave a lot of tech I now run in one version of the deck or other.

I use riftstone portal in w stax, the old lands tech, in white. I find it invaluable niw that drs has gone. Taby or Maze tapping for mana is often useful.

I run 2 flagstones to combo with geddon effects. They often help me get basics down, esp with smokestack. Basics are important against current Miracles.

I use Geir r Sanitarium too. I can see why you don't, you have Karn. It helps me filter out those non bo effects.

I use Inventor's f in Brown stax only, where it works really well. Port too I only use there, they are super effective.


I use Walking Ballista, and am surprised you don't. It is bloody good at pw control and critter control against decks like infect. I know you have Mishra's in numbers, but they are not the same.


I am glad you have found Ghost Quarter, I find one invaluable.

I will post my lists below....

The set costs in the UK 250+ GBP cheapest (RRP is 350 odd), previous masters sets could be had for 150-160. We can't get it for US prices converted to gbp, unfortunately. That is a hell of a difference considering we can get most single cards much cheaper than the US. By and large the box toppers will determine the success of a box opening from the feel good/bad point of view, I would rather let others take the risk. Real shame that there are some real whiffers at the bottom end of the box toppers, but I can't risk a lavaclaw reaches box topper.
Price dips for scarce cards with some fringe play or sideboard cards, a good example of which is Runed Halo, will be deep and long, recovering to something closer to current prices (about 50-70%), maybe in two to three years, depending on how much get opened. Price dips for the Lilly, Snappy type cards will be shallow and recovery will be very swift. Price dips for Legacy only cards like Leovold will be hard.
The interesting thing will be what they replace the masters sets with.

The "perfect mana" of Legacy exists in a format with Wasteland. Fetches can be stifled, and playing just 6 real lands in the deck plus fetches/wastes can end up in manascrewville when the some of fringe parts of the format contains actual landkill cards like Cataclysm, Smallpox, Sinkhole, Port, Smokestack, Armageddon, Nethervoid and Ghost Quarter/Wasteland life from the loam or Crucible engines plus trinispheres to make all those spells cost 3.

The shocklands also get use in Death's Shadow UB, a very decent Legacy deck.

My lgs has bought the hype and is preordering.... At over three hundred pounds.
For those outside if the UK, that is over a hundred pounds more than previous masters sets. They think it is going to shift.

Players have left the hamster wheel that is Standard for the evergreen fields of Commander, largely as a result of several factors. The way in which Standard is solved, the finance surrounding it, and for old timers like me the design paradigm. The attempts to remove unfun stuff and leave only stuff newer and casual players like was disastrous, and gave a Standard that was pure icing and sickly sweet, not to mention broken.
Modern players by and large have their decks. I don't know about you but whenever I see a Modern player with a well tuned and well played Death's Shadow as their primary deck I pretty much know when they started Modern, and it was not six months ago.
Ditto humans, Spirits, Hollow one. The thing is that bans aside they will likely be playing the same decks in a couple of years. They won't be changing any time soon. I know Storm players who will always be Storm players, most were Storm players five years ago. People swap, but for many Modern is the number two format, always second favorite behind something else, so they swap less often than you would think.

These Masters sets are often bought by richer casuals, often casuals who dabble in Modern but are not committed to it, and as such represent one of the fee ways WOTC can mine the casual Commander players. Including a few reprints in Standard sets to help sell them can boost sales to casuals, but the Master's set is a beautiful example of mining casuals, leading to buyer's remorse more often than not.

People are gambling on the product being better than previous masters. I suspect that the box toppers might be a last minute addition to make it different, and the increased price a consequence. It may be they want to see the effect of box toppers on sales in order to correctly ascertain what gets people buying premium. WOTC have realised a huge run in and spoiler season leads to disappointment, because it always ends with Trees, Channel, and Comet Storms that should never be in a premium set because they are not and never have been premium. People can handle it when they get a 4, 6 or 8 dollar Shockland, Enlightened Tutor or other such usable cards that might grow, or even Mystical Tutors that are usable but won't grow, they can't when all they get is a two dollar card that has always been and always will be two dollars and has no use. In order to avoid this they have tried the box topper approach, which is potentially decent for Stores ripping and box buyers, or at least it would have been if it were not for a few Lavaclaw reach type cards. Box topping Eternal Witnesses might suck bext to Lilly, but they will have some value. The short run in has caught people unaware. I think it will be a bust for a fair few buying boxes to rip. It may be worth buying to sit on, the box toppers sealed in the box may make it worth it, but this is still a risk, we do not know how they will use up reprint equity in future. Cards like Emrakul are if limited demand and can't stand up to reprinting like Snappy et al, there will be significant tanking in price for them beyond the normal drop and recover slowly dynamic. There are enough good cards at the top end, we don't know the bottom beyond the small amounts of chaff spoiled.
I have made a lot of money off mtg, I have not bought sealed product for a while and sat on it, and I am reserving judgement till I see the list because I suspect it won't be the gift that keeps on giving.

Speaking of o ring, I am now running one blinding l, one oring and one cast out. Have been fir a while. Been jamming pox when out if town, Parfait more locally.

You can tell that show n tell is back in the meta.
I finally dropped solemnity unlife combo from the main to make room. It felt great against mono red dragon stompy or burn, and infect did not like solemnity either, but right now mountains seem unpopular.

Traditionally landkill eschewed moon, it switched on fetches as land sources when they often had nothing to fetch.
The reason landkill is less effective these days is simple, people run fewer fetches that get inhibited by SField. In fact SField has less impact in a few matches than it once did. It was always the dirty secret of the deck, the bit that stole matches.
The rise of fast lands really hurt the deck.
The deck has done well in fetch heavy environs, I can recall lending the deck to a player who top 8d a UK event with 100 odd players with it. I myself took it to a small wmcq semi.
If you are lucky enough to hit the right deck it is still good, but realistically it has hard times against uw control and sometimes even jund, and can be a bit slow against some explosive combos.



I will say thst Temple of triumph has always been the best land in the deck, play 4 for my money every time, over a foundry.

I don't see the need for Dragon's claw either, I think it is by and large redundant in what is a
decent match any way.

Dark dwellers is not so hot now, I would consider running dampening sphere in the board, or an Eidolon of Rhetoric, and Boil at two copies perhaps, cutting Rabblemaster that sucks with Magus.

Rip should be there too, despite the miserable nonbo with Flagstones.

If you are playing Standard you sign up for expense. If Standard gets too cheap via lottery ticket masterpieces you put people like me who draft it off drafting because draft is only worth the money if you can defray costs with the cards. Many limited players don't play Standard, if Standard with masterpiece cards was very profitable for WOTC they would have kept at it. They do lose some reprint equity with these cards but I doubt they lose enough to warrant stopping lottery packs. Whether you hurt WOTC partners like CFB is another matter; I doubt masterpieces hurt CFBs profits either way.

As for Terferi, the issue is more with Planeswalker ultimates. If they ultimate you generally lose in a couple of turns unless you have the win in hand, you can't grind past them. Planeswalkers should have been more like Saga cards, but they were not, and the relentless focus on them, alienated many like me. The conspicuous lack of punishment for playing them, such as Solemnity failing to hit walkers, and focus on story meant they were pushed to the point that many players would happily disembowl the designers in front of their families with a forklift if it meant they could end the Jace and Mates (TM) Mtg. The walkers also pushed creatures over spells as creatures became the default mode of dealing wuth them, making the game seem narrow to many from older times.

Teferi itself is fine, from a Legacy or Modern pov. Standard is just Standard, you know what you are signing up for, a potential six months to two years of a card or mechanic dominating. From what I can see it is not dominating Standard, and if you re read nearly every ultimate as "you win the game" you will feel better about planeswalkers, as most of them do that, they win the game. You are not supposed to beat an ultimate in Standard by out grinding, you are basically allowed a couple of turns to seal the deal before you get deluged in card disadvantage. The Mtg, such that it is, is played before the ultimate.