MTG Salvation

I've been messing around with a UB version of zombies, and I keep finding that I could use some card draw in it. I was originally thinking about Ponder or Gitaxian Probe, but I didnt think the blue splash was large enough to add Ponder, and I didn't like just trading a card with Gitaxian Probe. As for Altar's Reap, the only reason I suggest it is because the deck has a few renewable creatures, Gravecrawler and Geralf's Messenger, so the drawback isn't as bad, and with spot removal prevalent, it could get some use out of an already dying creature. What do you think?

Quote from The Dork Knight

I'm stunned with how few people go the traditional R/U or R/U/b route.

I think thoughtcast and galvanic blast are both too good to ignore. Thats aside from the other spells those colours give you. If you're boarding in Blood Moon, you can just board out your thoughtcasts.

I think the reason people aren't running UR is because RW gets you better options. In UR you get Thoughtcast, and that's about it. In white you get Steelshaper's Gift, which works like Thoughtcast, as well as Dispatch and Ethersworn Canonist.

For Sam's build, is it worth tweaking the sideboard to make the WRR matchup better, or do you just assume it's hard as is and run with it?

The Phantasmal Image Lord is a 4/4 with the real one out, so total power is the same, and it's consistent turn 3-4, whereas spirits is turn 4-5.

Hi all. I've been following this thread for awhile now, and I was playing this deck since it was old school Illusions a few months ago. I guess my question is whether the old Illusions variant dead now, or can it still come back. And if it still can come back with a meta shift, what kind of meta do you look for to make Illusions a good deck to run?

Quote from Izor

Coffin Purge / Purify the Grave are the most prominent sb techs against Extraction, but they seems to be far from perfect for that role. Ground Seal is another tech, but it's unplayable below 15 lands. Most of the time you'll just have to play through them ('play around' would be misleading because you basically can't prevent that card from happening). What exactly you have to do in that situation I can't really tell you. That depends on what they Ectracted and what kind of ressources you've left. Usually you just try to do what you always do and hope their Extractions don't cripple you to a point where you can't win any more.

For tech against Surgical Extraction, Memory's Journey is better than Coffin Purge / Purify the Grave. And you can use it to recur dead Narcomoeba if need be.

So post bannings, with 12 post gone SplinterTwin decks not doing as hot, what is the better version of Affinity? I had assumed Mono-Red was run because the 5 Blood Moon effect side made the 12 post match up slightly better, but with that gone is it still worth running, or is UB Tezz better?

Thanks for the responses. Here's the list I was talking about earlier. It's trying to run both Bloodghast and Ichorid, and it seems to work ok, but I'm still on the fence about running both verses just Ichorid.


I have a few other questions about this. Is it worth running the Sphinx, or could I cut it with another dredger/discard dork for more consistency? Also, I dont have a full set of City of Brass, so I have 2 Gemstone Mines instead. I'm assuming the mine is inferior, but will I notice a difference by running them?

So I made a Dredge list recently based off another list I saw on the wizards forums, but a few questions popped up. The list is running both Ichorids and Bloodghasts, but I'm not sure if its worth splitting them up or just running one. The other thing was that it didn't run either Pimp or Tireless Tribe, which seems like it wouldn't have consistent discard. I personally like the idea of both Bloodghast and Ichorid in the deck, but is it worth losing your discard dorks for both of them?
Also is Nether Shadow worth running anymore, or did it fall out of favor when Ichorid and Bloodghast started being played more.