MTG Salvation

My playgroups are generally fine with infinite free mulls because if someone plays a deck that's against the spirit of the format, we gang up on them.

MU seems the most tenable and sustainable option, to me; it's larger, Mafia-dedicated playerbase with no shortage of activity. I'm sure arrangements could be made with the local staff to accommodate the integration of a community as specialized as our own.

No longer my decision to make, but my $0.02.

This is the end of the road for me, everybody. It has been an honor playing with all of you. Thank you all for the memories and for allowing me a chance to grow as a person through our games together. Plan accordingly for this shutdown as you will, and best of luck in your future endeavors, my friends.

If you would like to keep in touch, I am Iso#5336 on Discord. I will be leaving the MTGS Mafia Discord once the site is shut down.

With regards to maintaining the community, I believe migration to a different Mafia site altogether is the most tenable option. I may pop in here and there to make a cameo in the rare, occasional game when I catch the itch, but aside from that, I'm putting Mafia behind me. I hope you all find what you're looking for.

Ilharg in Legacy Sneak & Breach absolutely crushes Swords to Plowshares decks. They just can't outpace the lifegain from Swords by the time he hits the board, again.

Alrighty, my Ilhargs came just in time for Legacy last week. Here's what happened:





I decided to go 3 Ilharg/3 Breach/3 Worldspine/2 Emrakul/2 Wurmcoil. I haven't been playing Sandstone Needles recently due to the prevalence of Wasteland decks in my meta, but I've been seeing less of them, recently, so maybe I'll go back up to 2. I've come to accept that most decks don't have a set, definitive list, and that they're breathing entities that flow with your meta. With this in mind, I have a number of flex/sideboard cards for most of my decks, and will keep things updated to acclimate to my meta as best as I can. Bit of a tangent; sorry.

Anyway: 3 Ilharg/3 Breach opens up some flexibility in the type of Sneak effects I can run (4 Sneak Attack is always a must, though), and can vary in effectiveness dependent upon my access to red mana. Ilharg, in itself, is also an effective hardcast, taking the place of Inferno Titan (who also requires double red, but makes us less mana-intensive, overall). More Ilharg makes us more vulnerable to Karakas, so I upped the number of Worldspines and Wurmcoils to 3 and 2, respectively, as both cards are threats that need to be answered immediately in this format. Increasing the quantity of our other nonlegendary creatures also allows us some breathing room with the increased density of Sneak effects, as it gives us less chance of running into multiple Griselbrands/Emrakuls as our only options for Sneaking in multiple creatures in a turn, and gives us some solid gains off of hardcasting creature options. I'm finding Wurmcoil to be more essential for the longer games, where you Breach in a Griselbrand, draw 14, and completely whiff, as well as the fact that it eats Anglers and Batterskulls for breakfast, even outpacing the latter in terms of lifegain. Even the tokens Wurmcoil generates need to be dealt with reasonably quickly, and the lack of need for red mana for it means that even if you only have sol lands, you still have a board presence. I kept Emrakul at 2, because, while a 3rd is tempting, she often doesn't close out games if you get her, and only her, early on; we don't want too many Legends/dependencies on Sneak effects if we can help it for the aforementioned reasons; and she's the most cuttable Sneak fatty for us on multiple levels. Goldfishing with her at 3 felt like I saw her far too often when I wanted to be seeing more Wurms (of either variety), so that's why they won the numbers game on that level.

Anyway, without further ado, tournament report:

R1:

0-2 against Miracles.

G1, he had the opening hand FoW (of course) and I couldn't keep out or resolve anything after he landed a JTMS.
G2, I didn't draw any of the 9 cards I sided in against him, and the one Chalice I did manage to land, his Teferi noped away pretty hard. I got 5 dead draws in a row, and was just totally hosed.

R2:

Got the bye. No test data.

R3:

1-2 against Dack Fires.

G1, I got the kill so quickly I had no idea what he was on.
G2, I misplayed by Breaching in Ilharg instead of Griselbrand because I was excited to test the new card out and wasn't considering the possibility of an Edict. He dropped Liliana's Triumph and I lost my Ilharg, and he controlled the rest of the game with Dack Fires. I checked to see what I was going to draw with Griselbrand, compared it to what he had, and the game would have been mine if not for that mistake.
G3, he Thoughtseized my Sneaks and Breaches, and stole my Wurmcoil with Punishing Fires because I forgot he had a Dack emblem. Whoops.

R4:

1-2 against Stoneblade.

G1, I landed an Ilharg, and he kept using StP on my Ilharg, but I kept casting Ilharg after drawing him back, again, who then smashed through anything else he had. He could not outpace the lifegain he was giving me by Swordsing Ilharg, and I was able to get out a Griselbrand and draw 21 off of him because of it, which was more than enough to wrap up the game.
G2, I only drew lands and sideboard cards. Nothing to impact the gamestate with.
G3, I landed Sneak Attack, then went to use Sneak Attack on the next turn with 1 red mana open. He flashed in Containment Priest in response, and [i]I forgot I could respond to the cast to Sneak in Emrakul[i]. I was tired and haven't played the deck in a few months, so, mistakes were bound to happen.

All in all, the deck feels strong. I would have gone 3-1 if not for my misplays, which is pretty good in a blue-heavy meta, which is basically the bane of Sneak & Breach decks. I'm going to try 4 Breach and 2 Ilharg, and 2 Breach and 4 Ilharg, and see how those do. I still don't have Nehebs, yet, so it's indeterminate as to how effective he will be when the time comes or when I'll be able to test him. As it is, I can currently only play Legacy every other week or so due to my work schedule.

Will report back with more data when I have it.

Have you considered playing decks that outpace the counter-heavy decks? There's a pretty quick but strong mono-green deck in Standard right now that can land a T2 5/4, which is pretty difficult for any deck to deal with. Carnage Tyrant can't be countered or hit by spot removal, and Rhythm of the Wild can also be landed on T2 in an RG build similar to the one I described above. You could also run Domri, Anarch of Bolas in said deck, which gives you 2 uncounterable effects with which to cast your creatures, both of which can be landed on T2. If you run them both as 4-ofs, you get some decent ramp and utility, and you have a 65% chance of drawing one of those cards in your opening hand. You won't always draw them, but I'd say 65% is good odds, and if you're running a fair number of mana dorks, you have definitely reasonable odds of being able to pull off the T2 drop. If you're on the play, well, there are exactly 3 counterspells in Standard that cost only 2 mana (one of which requires UW) that can hit non-creatures. While that puts them slightly in favor of having something to stop your nonsense, what are the odds that they're running all 3 cards as 4-ofs? (I guess there's also Lavinia, but eh.) Ultimately, you would have to build the deck and do testing to figure out what's best for your meta, but...just my $0.02.

Whoops! Guess you got lynched from the list.

Fixed.

So, I understand that people are excited about the Allosaurus Rider version of the deck, but has anybody been considering a list with Ilharg that more resembles a fusion of Legacy Sneak & Breach with Tin Fins? Something with red rituals, black removal, Goryo's, and Breach? Additionally, with Modern Horizons looming, a Sneak Attack reprint/variant is a very real possibility. Thoughts? Is this too slow? What would the manabase look like? I have Legacy Reanimator and Legacy Sneak & Breach built (including Ilhargs) and most good black/red removal cards, so if I could throw together a Modern deck with stuff I already have just lying around, I might be motivated to give the format a try.

Okay, so, I ordered my Ilhargs and I'm waiting for them to arrive. I don't foresee me being able to test Neheb for at least a few months while I tweak my build for Ilharg. I think Ilharg brings a whole new shake-up on a fundamental level to the deck, though, because it means Breach is no longer a mandatory 4-of. This allows for more flexibility in the build, as I feel Ilharg should be taking the Inferno Titan slot, which means we can possibly see an increase of the number of Worldspines/Emrakuls/Wurmcoils/Seething Songs we can run in the base list, which is exciting to me. The only reservation I have about it is that more Legends makes the deck more vulnerable to Karakas, but ideally, you'll either have out Blood Moon, or your increased number of Wurms will pay off overall, on average.

I'll post results as I have them, of course, but in the meantime, I have mixed feelings on the London mulligan for the deck. On one hand, it potentially incentivizes keeping greedy hands, as going all-in on the T1 kill can be crippling when your opponent has that FoW they kept because they knew you'd be trying to go off early. On the other hand, it feels like this dramatically increases the chances of the deck being able to win against decks that don't run FoW, so...it's a toss-up, for me, but I'm leaning towards it overall being a buff to the deck.

Thoughts?

I am unpinning this thread as we are now nearly halfway into 2019.

Update: Bur has taken care of it.

Edit: God, that looks so much cleaner, now.

Cool. If Bur doesn't get to it before I have time to do it, I'll take care of it.

I guess I forgot to add this but I'm kind of waiting on a response from the Council as to whether or not we're removing modkills/replacements from games over 3 years old.

Also, I move that we remove Ghosting/Nakamura from the Probation list. He's served his time, and he demonstrated a willingness to play by the rules and stay in his games when he was active here within the past 3 years.

So, uh, who's hyped for ILHARG?!?

Lately, I've felt like I need a 3rd Sneak effect/a 5-drop creature with comparably big impact to Inferno Titan to replace that slot, and this fits exactly that criteria. Our Sneak & Breach overlords at WotC have heard my prayers.

I'm going to be testing this as a 4-of, and I'll also be testing out the new Neheb to see how he works for the deck (though I imagine he's not the best-suited for the job, but how can I turn down at least trying out a 5/4 Trampler for 4 with looting and mana production as part of what the deck already wants to be doing?).