MTG Salvation

As long as you have 2-3, you can still get into Strip Mine range, which is where you want to be. At that point, Field of Ruin stops the issue where you're sandbagging lands to always be able to fetch Ghost Quarter with Wayfarer. Too often, we can lose to slowing ourselves down by attacking their mana but they can still cast their nonsense when they get to six lands and if we're not ready to fight that, we lose.

When I used her, Hawks made awesome Sac fodder. Leaving up mana to sac a Serra and protect it from an exile effect was great, as well.

I agree. Blood Moon and Blood Sun are already terrible for us because Emeria is the way we win any non-aggro matchup. They're going to get it down in Game 2 once they see what we do or in Game 1 if they've ever played us before. It hurts us way worse on splash and 3-color builds, but it's an easy way to screw us out of the WW we need for Wrath in mono-colored builds. Less so with Blood Sun, obviously, as Emeria and Mistveil will still let us cast things. In reality, we want people to switch over to Blood Sun from the Blood Moons so badly.

Quote from lord_darkview »

From experience, this is less true for us than most decks. We've got Emeria, Mistveil Plains, GQ, FoR making about half our lands nonbasic right off the bat. To regularly have U by turn 3-4, you'd want roughly 10 sources in our roughly remaining 12 land slots. The upshot is that we may have enough Plains to play W, but there is a non-significant chance of Moon shutting us out of U.

The thing is, my (granted) limited testing says its fine. In most cases, I either use Flagstones to go get Farmland (or Mistveil and a Basic Island if I'm GQing my own Flagstones, which makes sense to do in so many matchups), or I can use Field of Ruin before they get Blood Moon down. I'll give you that my testing is very limited, but it hasn't been any sort of problem yet, as turn 3 is a dead turn if you don't have Ghostly Prison anyway, and that's usually the turn I'm using to Field of Ruin something of their's or fix my mana (With Flagstones and Ghost Quarter, I can do this while still casting Ghostly Prison and by then, I should know how badly I need to save my land destruction for them. In many cases, I don't really.)

Here's my mana based for reference

The thing is, they're going to kill the cat if they have removal anyway, though. At that point, another creature can pick up the Lens and continue to go to work getting in free damage. It's obviously not ideal, but if you're really interested in CA and don't want to splash colors, it's a plan. Though, I agree 100% that the best CA we'll get is Lingering Souls) or Squadron Hawk, and we don't really need CA to do what we do.

I think the light Blue splash feels amazing. Wrath is rarely better than a Verdict and D-Sphere is so much better than O-ring. With Fields and Flagstones, it's been remarkably easy to go find my 1-of Farmland or 1-of Basic Island.

A lot of great suggestions here. As a lot of people know, I've been mixing things up and going away from the traditional build for years, but upon playing the list I posted above, I'm finding the simple version has been the most effective. Field of Ruin is absolutely excellent and Wayfarer should be maindeck even if you're not on a multi-color build, as well. I've yet to hit scary matchups, but so far, I'm 7-0-1 and the only thing I didn't beat was a guy not scooping to me after I illustrated how he would lose. Wins are 2 Titan decks (which I could never beat in the past), A Token deck, a jank tank deck, two Death's Shadow, and Storm.

Your list is very much the mono-white list that should generate the most success in its consistency, so kudos to you on that. Glad we can help and welcome to the forum!

Someone brought up Mentor of the Meek, and I've never had much success with him. He doesn't do enough when he impacts the board. I've always imagined that an Infiltration Lens on a Pridemate makes for a good move. You're either giving him evasion or getting CA. Never tested it, though.

There's Survival Cache. That was definitely played in Standard and I play it in pauper now that it's a common.

Sorry for the double post, but I've started to have some serious fear about the possible dominance of Tron thanks to Blood Sun. I'd like to have access to more possibilities for land destruction (which I know seems counter-intutitve since Blood Sun would shut it off, anyway, but it's the option we have.) What do you guys think of this very light Blue splash?

Other than some sideboard stuff, those are the same lists. Interesting. A few people brought up Sunmare when it was first spoiled, but I think everyone decided we'd rather use Archangel. I'd like to know how Sunmare did for those players.

Hmmm. He's interesting but unlikely to do anything for us we can't get elsewhere. He'll always be able to untap, but will still just be a 3/3 body.

I would also agree about Gideon. If you want to add more ways to win than Serra, 3-drop is pretty much what the deck wants. It can stop combo instantly and still hit for 4 or play the control route by just blanking the decks that are trying to attack with just one creature.

In my list, I run 1 Sun Titan, 1 Big Elsbeth and a sideboard Blood Baron, for reference.

Quote from WickedApp »

My goldfishing yielded similar results. The deck hits at T3 sometimes if you have Quest in opening hand. I can not see how to keep a creature alive with out hexproof. Everything dies to push, bolt, path. Then there is the T4 board wipe or cyptic command. So unless you can kill on T2-3. There is no back up plan. The way he described the play he never mentioned swords as the first choice to grab, Instead it was the Armour.
I also ran into bad land draws which makes me question the 4 Ghost Quarters. The Equipment will never be equipped with out being pulled by Quest, so if you loss your dude while quest is on stack.
thraben inspector seems bad, yes it is a value card but one you can not use, judge's familiar seems better, as does thalia, guardian of thraben .
Maybe this is a casual deck? Or the meta just plays big stuff.

I am still going to try fiddling with this.

It's fun to fiddle with, but I'm running into the same Ghost Quarter problems. Like, I would never sleeve a Sisters deck without it (especially with Tron and UWkillyouwithColonade being the best decks in the format), but it seems awful here. Part of me wants to run more 0-drops, like Hangarback Walker, just to get the Quest trigger, but there are just too many games where I have to keep a Quest-free hand, and then I'm playing a very fragile Sisters deck that's a lock to manascrew me. *shrug*. It's a fun variety of the deck that costs practically nothing to audible into.

I'm like you I keep my list updated for my LGS and loan it out a lot, but it's the one deck I always suggest for newer players due to the fact it gives a good portion of white staples. Sadly even though I buy additional pieces for it I truthfully don't think I have used it in a tournament in maybe a year since I have been grinding Grixis control, Classic Jund, and now Living End. Soul sisters will always have a soft spot for me and is the deck im most well known for playing among the players who have been playing modern at my community for a long time. Still play it casually with friends though.

It also teaches you so much about high-level magic. Knowing when you're the beats. Understanding ETB triggers and tracking them. When it's okay to overextend. How to build a sideboard for the deck you choose.

In goldfishing, I'm ending turn 3 with an equipped Pridemate or Loaded Serra about 50 percent of the time. The other 50 percent are games I would likely lose due to one land or no board presence. Can't figure out how to feel about that. When it works, it's incredible, but the deck feels like that Cherrios deck without 8 of the effects you need. You really need Quest to do anything. No idea how this guy was doing well without the Cloak, but I guess the meta lets you get away with the two Swords to stop any removal?

My swaps were the big swords for Whispersilk Cloak. Shroud seems to be a lot better than the protection and Pridemate has been dying for unblockable. I think I'll sleeve this up for in between rounds. Seems like it would either be fantastic or just topple over.