MTG Salvation

I've won a bunch of games with it (time sieve) where I already had the combo, but if I let my opponent have another turn, I would lose (due to Creeping Corrosion, etc)

I made some trades and acquired 2 Liliana of the Veil. Is there any consensus as to what she replaces in Tezz lists? I know I've seen her in the more control-heavy variants, but I can't see a lot of her in Turbo lists.

To try to answer your Liliana of the Veil question, I've been playing the turbo list with 3 maindeck LotV, and the card I've replaced her for is Tezz (moved Tezz to the SB). I think, all around, she's a more useful planeswalker - I'd rather have her against burn, Death's shadow, UW control and versus combo decks like storm or ad nauseum. I like Tezz as a clock against decks we need to race, like valakut or tron, and particularly SB against cards like stony, rip, and needle.

I've been having a string of success with esper "tezz"(really esper thopters) on MTGO, with my last several competitive leagues going:

4-1
4-1
3-2
4-1
5-0
4-1

Going heavy on discard, with 6 discard sorceries and 3 LotV has really helped the early turns. The lack of big-mana decks has meant that pretty much every matchup has been at least a coinflip. The online meta is definitely soft right now for Tezz.

@the nobodys

LotV + Thopters =
I agree with Krenko that Whir might just be opposed to LotV. Mana requirements if nothing else. I heavily recommend Crane alongside LotV because:
* 1U is a much easier mana requirement
* the body blocks for her
* replacing itself with another card helps with her +1

IF you turn Whir into Crane, then...:
* you probably want to turn 2 IoK into Bridges 3+4. LotV and Bridge go very well together.
* Lingering Souls' job is kinda covered by Crane, so that can become an artifact
* Baubles can become higher impact artifacts

@Reedy: Fair question. I tend to keep going all in on Thopters even if it means I'm engaging in a strong-arm with my opponent; assuming he's playing fair OR I got, say two turns to get there, I am going to come out on top.

The second part of my reasoning is that IF he draws into an answer within those two turns, well then I'll still be grippin' onto more must-answer threats (Tezz) to follow his counterplay. So I think it's best to make him have it.

@bosskrenko Being able to have two lands on turn one with a draw is an incredible way to do all of the broken things the deck aims to do every game. I get that it's a leap from the normal lists on here and that's not for everyone, but I'm surprised at how many people want to talk about how bad of an idea the turbo build is in theory without taking time to look at it.

It's working exceptionally well for me.

Quote from LadenniferJadaniston »

@the nobodys

LotV + Thopters =
I agree with Krenko that Whir might just be opposed to LotV. Mana requirements if nothing else. I heavily recommend Crane alongside LotV because:
* 1U is a much easier mana requirement
* the body blocks for her
* replacing itself with another card helps with her +1

IF you turn Whir into Crane, then...:
* you probably want to turn 2 IoK into Bridges 3+4. LotV and Bridge go very well together.
* Lingering Souls' job is kinda covered by Crane, so that can become an artifact
* Baubles can become higher impact artifacts

I appreciate the suggestions, but whir is pretty much the best card in the deck. I've tested crane, and he is OK, but I'd rather have whir. And Lili and whir do provide mana constraints, but that is why I run no colorless sources. It's not hard to fetch based on your hand, and the two cards aren't as a-synergystic as you might expect. Just give them a try. After banging out another 4-1 online, I'm liking lili more and more. I might turn one taisgur into a crane, however.

I played the UB liliana version for a long time before moving on to the turbo version. Although I did 3 tez 3 lili most of the time. I really liked that liliana was an answer to problem permanents as well as a cute combo with echoing truth to quickly dispose of things like stony silence. I usually played 2-3 whirs and the manabase got progressively more awkward with the darksteel citadels and trying to cast lili+whir on time. But all in all it was a solid deck.

That being said the turbo version feels way smoother with 4 serum 4 whir. You get some free wins off of whirring for maindeck cage/needle and better access to the combo and time sieve. The only time I really miss liliana is the times I could stick her versus a control deck and shred their hand, sometimes fighing through logic knots negates and snapcasters is just downright impossible with the turbo version as if you can't stick a foundry/tez you pretty much can't actually win the game. Academy ruins helps but is still pretty slow.

What is the requirement for it to be the turbo version? I play 4 whir, 4 serum visions, 4 bauble, 4 IoK, and 3 liliana. I was the guy months ago saying play 4 serum visions. Why is liliana mutually exclusive with those other cards? The way the games go, she gets played only after the combo or if I don't have combo in hand. The number of times I haven't activated an ability of hers because of depleting my own hand are vey few and far between, usually when we're both at 1 card exactly in hand and I'm holding a whir that will resolve next turn.

@BossKrenko: we're in agreement. You just phrased it and fleshed it out better than me

@The_Nobodys: Turbo version started with 4x Baubles and 3x Mox Opals that's it. The rest is history. SVs and targeted discard seem to have been widely adopted.

I'll just say that I've been back on the Lilli train (3x) for the last while and really enjoyed it. Otherwise a contemporary turbo list. I haven't been having a hard time casting her, 2 islands and two off-color shocks are the only lands that cannot cast her plus I run 4 prisms and 2 opals. 22 black sources. She serves as a great tertiary win condition and all around powerful card in a deck that still feels like it has a bit too much air. The conversation on win-conditions that didn't fold to stony silence or Rest In Peace a few weeks back caused me to reexamine her.

Quote from stu20 »

@systrill thanks for the new video from today versus shadow

I like the way your sideboard worked and your plan versus them. I think that in game three you could have sacked at least the opal to foundry since opp is at six (and you have another in your hand). you missed a couple of attacks that could have made a difference.
The first game was ridiculous and a prime example on why the grixis shadow is the best deck.

Thanks for watching and commenting!

I was trying really hard to remember when Molz7 said about sideboarding in here when I was sideboarding. I would have been really hesitant to take out the prisms before, but it's been working really well vs Shadow. Hopefully my entire league run isn't just vs Shadow, though the practice is nice

Sideboarding well is one of the big things I'm trying to get better at. I feel like the decklist is very solid, and it's really mainly the sideboard I need to figure out, and work on getting better at using.

So the gist of the UB Liliana vs the Turbo list is largely artifact count vs disruption. When I was running UB I would play a lower artifact count (propped up by questionable darksteel citadels) and more inquisition/push. I've certainly wondered myself if the two can't be blended - so I'm going to try what Schryder describes above - just take the turbo list shave 2-3 cards and put liliana in and call it a day. One easy swap is executioner's capsule which I've been running as a way to deal with norn/emperion and to remove problems like scooze. Unlike fatal push it always does something even if its just powering a whir or bauble and then turning into a thopter. I feel like lists are mostly converging anyways but here's where I'm at



The change to my normal maindeck to make room for lilis was just -1 capsule -1 brutality which seems fine. I shaved one prism for a talisman because there are corner cases where you want to whir for a mana rock and already have an opal out. Needing a mana source to get to 5 for sieve or activate inventor's fair is not that uncommon. I could see adding a third spire of industry, not sure which land I'd cut - probably a fetch. Academy ruins remains sketchy - I want it to be good vs control but they pretty much always just ghost quarter it.


I'm not really happy with the sideboard but the cards are pretty normal. I find you really have to pound out a lot of games with the same maindeck before you can really get the board right - determine what matches need the most help, then what cards cross the msot of those matches with the highest impact. We all know stony silence is our biggest problem but the number of outs to it varies by list - I have 5, 6 if you count herald as an "out".

I've found herald sketchy because people don't actually board out all of their removal due to tezzeret -1. I don't think any deck with path to exile would actually board out all of their paths as they would fear darksteel citadel. So if I don't bring him in versus path decks, he isn't really a stony silence beater - just a weird angle of attack against uh, midrange decks I guess?

Trinisphere hasn't felt very flexible. I actually resolved one turn 2 vs affinity on the play and still nearly lost in a ridiculously long slog of a game. It may be good against storm and that's it? If so I guess you have to ask if something else wouldn't be more effective - canonist is more asymmetrical and possibly broader in effect.

Torpor Orb seems so-so. It overlaps with Cage vs coco/chord type decks but does do some unique work vs hatbears which is a tough match I find. When I play it I pretty much try to sit on it until I establish thopter/sword/sieve then sac it and go infinite.

Quote from BadMcFadden »

I played the UB liliana version for a long time before moving on to the turbo version. Although I did 3 tez 3 lili most of the time. I really liked that liliana was an answer to problem permanents as well as a cute combo with echoing truth to quickly dispose of things like stony silence. I usually played 2-3 whirs and the manabase got progressively more awkward with the darksteel citadels and trying to cast lili+whir on time. But all in all it was a solid deck.

That being said the turbo version feels way smoother with 4 serum 4 whir. You get some free wins off of whirring for maindeck cage/needle and better access to the combo and time sieve. The only time I really miss liliana is the times I could stick her versus a control deck and shred their hand, sometimes fighing through logic knots negates and snapcasters is just downright impossible with the turbo version as if you can't stick a foundry/tez you pretty much can't actually win the game. Academy ruins helps but is still pretty slow.

It's tech time! Maybe Scepter of Fugue could help you as a Liliana replacement.

Interesting comparison with Herald and Lili - despite the discard I've never really considered them serving the same role. I use Herald primarily when I want to bring in a diverse set of win conditions in post board games against decks running white mostly - especially when a 5/5 flier could run away with a game. I probably should just decide whether going to Tezz/Herald/Ghirapur is my plan against hate or abrupt decay/maelstrom pulse is my plan. I tend to kind of go with a combination of both with specific pieces based on what seems good in the matchup and then side out some combination of brutality, relic, needle, lili, Tezz and trimming thopter sword pieces.

I agree Lili is probably best in game 1 because she's got game against a wide variety of decks and her floor is pretty high. Conversely game 1 Herald would just turn on all your opponents stranded removal. I have backed off the pedal a bit on the turbo from some - running only seven 0 drops and 2 one drop artifacts so maybe Herald is more reliable for you - but I don't find myself rushing him out much. I don't really think that there are one drops outside of needle and relic that justify main deck inclusion - but open to being convinced.

Ultimately being best in game one isn't a problem for me because I usually feel like I've got plenty to bring in if Lili is bad in a matchup.

Quote from crexalbo »

It's tech time! Maybe Scepter of Fugue could help you as a Liliana replacement.

I'm skeptical but there's a chance scepter is playable.

I would think in the vast, vast majority of scenarios liliana is just strictly better. On the play you could resolve scepter before they get remand/knot/leak up but you might also get spell snared. But then its just that paying 2 per turn is often going to cripple your board development (less mana to whir, choosing scepter or tez, not being able to drop prisms, etc.). And scepter goes down to stony where liliana isn't vulnerable to those hate cards and can actally get rid of a stony silence.

Also just wondering what people think of the overall advantage of this deck. I've been playing it a tonne and trying to work out an optimum build but I find I get increasingly depressed about how good it can actually be. If you want to join me on the sad side, read on for my current assessment:

1. Ensnaring Bridge doesn't win many games. People are ready for it because of decks like lantern control. Decks often just don't care. Eldrazi tron will just **** around and then ulamog it off the table when it matters.

2. Thopter/Sword doesn't win many games. People are either able to interact with it via detention sphere, scavenging ooze, abrupt decay etc or are just too fast or don't care about slowly building thopters. Time sieve does something about the latter, but now we're on a 3 card combo that requires 5 mana up to win the game, and is disruptable by artifact hate and graveyard hate.

3. We get swiped hard by all the affinity/lantern hate cards. Yes we have a plan vs stony silence, that doesn't make ancient grudge or shatterstorm any less painful, and wear-snap-wear doesn't feel very good either.

4. Attrition decks are a slog we struggle to win. Whether its grixis shadow spamming K-command or UW control bouncing foundries and knotting all foundry/tez - there are decks that don't even care if we get a bridge down as long as we don't combo or tez, because they can just wait until they draw their bridge answer and win the game, while we sit there drawing mana rocks.

As I think most have found this deck really just has 2 paths to victory: tezzeret and thopter/sword. We use bridge to buy time or lock up a game once we get either win condition. It works, but it doesn't feel powerful or consistent compared to what other decks in modern are doing, and it seems like there are very few decks we actually flat out beat with any of our "moves". I've lost to birds with wolf run, I've lost to ulamogs, I've lost to cryptic bouncing foundry, counter untap verdict tokens, I've lost to pridemage blowing up bridge. I've lost to skullcracks. I've lost to garbage necrotic ooze decks because I can't kill an x/3.

It feels like the deck should be better than this but in practice I just find nothing I do feels oppressive. People solve thopter/sword. They solve bridge. they solve tezzeret. And then we go to sideboard and I have to fight against affinity hate. I had a grixis opponent with needle on his win con, 2 jars, bridge, and a sword just looking for a foundry. He ******* shatterstorms me. Jesus.

Kind of misses the point. The deck blanks creature removal and requires artifact removal or an unconventional (non combat) win condition. Thats the advantage of playing ub tez - and to some extent the ability to tutor and dig for bullets with whir tez and serum.

The fundamental issue I find is too many decks can interact with our artifacts (even game one) and/or dont need combat to win. To the extent this is the case it strips ub tezz of its primary advantages in the format.

Compare to modern mill decks. Unless people are packing emrakuls everywhere mill is extremely hard to interact with game one, and few people have sideboard tech for games 2 and 3. Mill decks dont get hit by hate for some other tier one deck post board like tezz does. If you want to play something off radar you really dont want your opponent to be incidentally prepared for it.

I could be wrong but it feels like we're closing in on consensus type builds and cards and while the deck is good enough to beat many decks in the format you fight an uphill battle for the privilege, and get almost no free wins from being "rogue". I blame cards like kcommand, decay, relic, and ooze and the competitive decks that are vulnerable to those cards. Ub tezz is trying to exploit metagame space that just doesnt really exist.

Deck is still a hoot, but I think that ceiling is real and there will never be a metagame where ub tez is some kind of genius pick to exploit a hole.

Yeah sorry I was partly tiliting after a rough run of games. I should have just said that I had higher hopes for what ensnaring bridge would do and what thopter/sword would do.

My experience has been that bridge is like 20% useless, 70% buys time, 10% wins the game. Thopter sword is like - 60% wins the game, 40% gets dismantled before it does much or I lose anyways (combo decks, or just too far behind). Those are ok results, but not turn 2 blood moon or resolving scapeshift type impacts.

I think the fact our primary win condition is vulnerable to both artifact and graveyard hate is what puts a relatively tight ceiling on how good it can be. The lists I see these days do a fantastic job of mitigating those downsides, but as I said it is not trivial to play through the hate cards with this deck when they are so ubiquitous. I guess I would just like to get more free wins for playing an obscure creatureless deck than I currently do with UB tez

Quote from BadMcFadden »

Also just wondering what people think of the overall advantage of this deck. I've been playing it a tonne and trying to work out an optimum build but I find I get increasingly depressed about how good it can actually be. If you want to join me on the sad side, read on for my current assessment:

1. Ensnaring Bridge doesn't win many games. People are ready for it because of decks like lantern control. Decks often just don't care. Eldrazi tron will just **** around and then ulamog it off the table when it matters.

2. Thopter/Sword doesn't win many games. People are either able to interact with it via detention sphere, scavenging ooze, abrupt decay etc or are just too fast or don't care about slowly building thopters. Time sieve does something about the latter, but now we're on a 3 card combo that requires 5 mana up to win the game, and is disruptable by artifact hate and graveyard hate.

3. We get swiped hard by all the affinity/lantern hate cards. Yes we have a plan vs stony silence, that doesn't make ancient grudge or shatterstorm any less painful, and wear-snap-wear doesn't feel very good either.

4. Attrition decks are a slog we struggle to win. Whether its grixis shadow spamming K-command or UW control bouncing foundries and knotting all foundry/tez - there are decks that don't even care if we get a bridge down as long as we don't combo or tez, because they can just wait until they draw their bridge answer and win the game, while we sit there drawing mana rocks.

As I think most have found this deck really just has 2 paths to victory: tezzeret and thopter/sword. We use bridge to buy time or lock up a game once we get either win condition. It works, but it doesn't feel powerful or consistent compared to what other decks in modern are doing, and it seems like there are very few decks we actually flat out beat with any of our "moves". I've lost to birds with wolf run, I've lost to ulamogs, I've lost to cryptic bouncing foundry, counter untap verdict tokens, I've lost to pridemage blowing up bridge. I've lost to skullcracks. I've lost to garbage necrotic ooze decks because I can't kill an x/3.

It feels like the deck should be better than this but in practice I just find nothing I do feels oppressive. People solve thopter/sword. They solve bridge. they solve tezzeret. And then we go to sideboard and I have to fight against affinity hate. I had a grixis opponent with needle on his win con, 2 jars, bridge, and a sword just looking for a foundry. He ******* shatterstorms me. Jesus.

Part of what you're describing is just the powerful, diverse nature of Modern. Grind enough and you will loose to strange and janky things, it's a very open format. If you are looking to spike Eldatron and Grixis Death's Shadow are the consensus most powerful/consistent decks at the moment, but even these decks fall victim to other strategies in the meta that looks to expliot their prevalence (UW control for example.) This deck is unique and powerful, it's threats may not proactively take a game over which seems to be the underpinning of your issues. But it has serious potential to dominate and turn a game around, coupled with a lot of interesting decisions. I don't think it's strictly the best deck you can pick although it is certainly powerful enough to become a standing tiered presence imo. Also in hateful metas the "best" deck may not actually perform the best and decks like ours have a chance to shine as other decks become less optimized to attack the top dogs. If you can't handle hard hate this deck can for sure be frustrating, that is and always will be tezz's biggest obstacle

I also noticed a couple things rereading your comment and looking for a more positive takeaway. This deck may be more of a meta call for when sideboards swing towards GY hate, which affects us but not nearly as much. I think it has game to fight through incidental hate but perhaps not a sideboard more dedicated. And I can't remember if your current deck runs pithing needs mainboard but it would shut off almost all the things you mentioned that you lost too that weren't strict artifact hate. Look at some recent top 8s, 16s, 32s. This deck can go toe to toe with any of them and it's very tweakable for certain metas!