MTG Salvation

Quote from JohnBell »

Quote from moondemon88 »

How do we beat gifts storm that mains both storm spells?

Just killing they creatures...
Without creatures Storm is very slow.

Alright thanks. I'm still getting used to the deck so figured it was better to ask.

I play a 3/3 split of Fulminator and Faerie because of storm lol Faerie is your best card for them. They often rely heavily on a gifts pile of PiF, Grapeshot, X, Y. You put the grapeshot and PiF in the yard, if they cast anything before PiF you just remove PiF and Grapeshot, if they cast PiF first you hit Gifts and Grapeshot. I've never lost to Storm when I've had Macabres in hand.

SB you bring in Leyline of the Void if you play it, without the GY they cant usually storm for 20 so they have to peck you down slowly... never a good strategy against us lol. They typically play 0-3 Remand so you shouldn't have an issue resolving LE if you EOT cascade, untap and cascade. Or suspend LE.

Quote from kodieyost »

I play a 3/3 split of Fulminator and Faerie because of storm lol Faerie is your best card for them. They often rely heavily on a gifts pile of PiF, Grapeshot, X, Y. You put the grapeshot and PiF in the yard, if they cast anything before PiF you just remove PiF and Grapeshot, if they cast PiF first you hit Gifts and Grapeshot. I've never lost to Storm when I've had Macabres in hand.

SB you bring in Leyline of the Void if you play it, without the GY they cant usually storm for 20 so they have to peck you down slowly... never a good strategy against us lol. They typically play 0-3 Remand so you shouldn't have an issue resolving LE if you EOT cascade, untap and cascade. Or suspend LE.

Much appreciated for all the info

I play UR storm as well so I'm intimately familiar with the MU. They're expecting Leylines (b/w) out of the board so they're bringing in Wipe Away/Echoing Truths for their crucial turn.

They're also potentially packing in some Swan Songs for LE, so be wary if they're intentially leaving up U mana. And don't forget, R mana turns into U if they have Manamorphose!

Playtested against dredge and storm and got wins against them regularly. Dredge seems to be easy when you let your opponent get a board them wipe it out. Storm was awkward for the first few games. Doing well though.

Dredge is anything but easy. Their Bloodghasts and Amalgams come back no matter how many times you LE. If it was easy for you, you were playing a very poor opponent.

The best thing you can do vs them is Leyline of the Void and pray it sticks.

What exactly were your opponents doing?? Those are both pretty poor MUs for us.

Piloted Living End to 3rd out of 34 with X-1 record Tuesday.

Round 1: Affinity

G1 I knew what he was on going into the game, he's a pretty good player with Affinity foiled out and masterpieced. Been on the deck for a long time. I keep a hand with Copperline, Outburst, 4 R cyclers and a Beast Within. 2nd land doesn't come til t3 after cycling, t4 I miss on land and scoop it up to lethal on board.

OUT: 4 Street Wraith 1 Architect
IN: 2 Krosan Grip 3 Ingot Chewer

G2 I keep a strong hand that's got Chewer, Grip, 3 cyclers, 2 fastland. He mulls to 6, puts 3 memnite inkmoth spring leaf and overseer into play and I cycle Ceradon EOT. Hit my land drop kill Overseer and ship it back. He jams down two signal pest and a ravager, puts me down to 11. EOT I just cycled, untap and draw another fast land, ship it his way. He attacks me down to 7, I grip the Ravager before damage.

I untap and cascade in Main phase to knock him down to just 2 inkmoth for mana (drums aren't worth much now). Put Faerie macabre into play to get rid of the Memnite and Chewer hits a Drum (1 left). He untaps and puts memnite and Master of Ethereum into play. Plays a mox and passes.

I swing out with Ceradon Faerie Chewer and Horror, he blasts Ceradon and takes 9. Passes it back. A few combat phases later he has a 7/7 Master, 2 memnites, and I've got a Fulminator Mage in play. Here he does some blocking that would have blown me out if I didn't have Grip in hand for Master before putting Fulminator to work on an animated Inkmoth. MP2 I cascade and double macabre him for GG.

G3 he mulls to 5 on the play, scry to bottom, puts 3 Ornithopter and a Mox into play. I have 3 fast lands, blackcleave -> Chewer on Mox. He tanks for a few turns before I close it out. He kept a Ravager in hand, scry was 2nd mox to bottom. Could've worked out better for him to not play the first mox, oh well!

2-1, 1-0

Round 2: Elves

Again, I know my opponent pretty well - we've traveled all over the country playing magic together, so I'm intimately familiar with his list (even helped him strategize to beat LE). Thankfully, it's hard to determine which of my 4 decks I'm piloting on any given night, so his t3 36 power of Elves was just a cute sight running into my Outburst bringing back 2 Horror and 1 Architect.

G2 I overboarded badly, he gamed me hard by making a show of adding 9 cards (last week it was an easy 2-0 for me) but he just took 5 right back out. 2 RiP and 2 Relic was all he brought.

OUT: 4 Architects of Will, 2 Fulminator Mage
IN: 2 Krosan Grip, 3 Ingot Chewer, and 1 Anger of the Gods.

My opening hand G2 was great but my first 2 cyclers were the only two I ever saw. Despite that, I managed to beat him down to 4 with 2 macabres and a simian spirit guide after my initial board wipe on t3. His scooze are both of my cyclers off a Chord, so I just tried to beat him down. Eventually I needed to chain 5 cyclers + cascade in order to win, only got 3 and conceded the game.

OUT: 3 Ingot Chewer
IN: 3 Architects of Will

On the play I'd rather have the churn 'n burn of the cyclers, and I didn't see any artifact-based hate G2 but I saw a RiP in his top 3 at one point. I keep a 7-card hand of 2 cascade spells, 1 blackcleave, 2 cyclers, 1 SSG, and 1 Beast Within on the play. Lead with land, he plays heritage Druid, I cycle ceradon, untap -> cycle Horror to find land, play my second land. He untaps and goes off, outs 22 power with an ezuri into play. I cycle, untap, land, cycle ceradon, and cascade MP off SSG for the concession.

4-2, 2-0

Round 3: Gifts Storm

This is a guy I haven't seen before, but I saw him playing during 2nd round. I don't have much of anything in the board for the MU because it usually isn't present at locals (me and 1 other guy have the deck, he wasn't even there) so I just shuffle up and hope he stumbles. T6 I missed my crucial 6th land drop/SSG draw to have double outburst up for killing his dude, he had Remand for it the first time and proceeded to Grapeshot Remand Grapeshot for exact 19.

OUT: 4 Architects of Will
IN: 2 Leyline of the Void 2 Ricochet Trap

I open with a t3 hand, he opens with the remand into t3 of his own. That's all she wrote here!

4-4, 2-1

Round 4: Jeskai Queller

This guy came with the Storm player, they played earlier so I knew his approximate list. I won the roll and lead with a fetch-> shock, pass and he verbally puts me on GDS. He plays a Colonnade tapped and ships it to me, I cycle Horror and untap into a fast land -> SSG -> Fulminator his Colonnade. He keeps hitting land drops but my t3 Fulminator followed by t4 cycle -> cascade -> nuke another land and keep a FulMage up drew the concession.

OUT: 4 Architects of Will, 1 Simian Spirit Guide 3 Street Wraith
IN: 2 Ricochet Trap, 2 Krosan Grip, 3 Ingot Chewers, 1 Bow of Nylea

Going into G2 I know his hate is more likely to be Relic than RiP because he plays 4 snap and his best bet for victory is a bolt-snap-bolt sequence with remand backup and a Relic to maintain.

He keeps a 7 and opens with sacred foundry shock -> Relic, I have a Grip, a land and 4 cyclers in my 6. I play my fetch land, cycle, ship it, he misses the land drop and ships back. He trimmed my fetch out of the yard with RoP, I untap and cycle MP for my 2nd fetch land, crack it to keep my cycler safe from being whittled away, at the end of his turn I cycle horror and untap into my 3rd land. I MP a Grip on the Relic and he just proceeds to scoop, he was going to EOT crack to draw a card searching for the 2nd land. I was going to cascade the next turn for 14 power on board.

6-4, 3-1

Overall the deck feels so powerful in the current meta. No match feels like it's unwinnable, the 2nd MB Beast Within has been a blessing. I'm planning to move a 3rd to the MB once it comes in the mail, it's my only out to Cotv on 0 in G1 and that's just too rampant at my locals. I'm anxious to see how the deck performs as the meta continues to slow down and favor the consistency we bring to the table.

if the meta continues to slow down, control decks will pop up which is terrifying for living end in general.
we can remedy that to some degree by jamming up playset of fulminator mage and 3 blood moon into main deck.
for storm matchup it seems leyline of sanctity is better than leyline of the void. moving forward i dont think we will see many storm deck, the deck is played because opt has just reprinted and everybody wants to play with them.

I completely disagree with that. Caleb scherer top 16'd 3 SCG Opens in 6 weeks before Opt was even legal. The deck has been around all summer and even in the spring.

Leyline of sanctity is a trap against storm, they just let you sit behind it feeling safe until their combo turn. They find a bounce spell that they always side in and proceed to kill you despite Leyline on T0. They can't build up critical mass of resources without their GY however.

I also play Gifts Storm, I'm pretty familiar with the deck. Faerie macabre being in the deck makes it significantly better MU for us

Edit: and two of those were back to back top 8 finishes

Caleb always tries to play storm in any tournament (dude have a scg storm token in his name, duh)
what i mean is storm is not a popular deck until opt was reprinted in ixalan, before that only a handful of player play storm.

i usually have both leyline in my sideboard given my local meta (many burn and WGB abzan counter player or other graveyard shenanigan deck ) and always maindecked 2 or 3 faerie macabre.

i am more concerned with control matchup, we only have a handful of cards to combat counterspell.
for control matchup mostly i just duke it out until i can hardcast the cyclers and wait until there is a window to successfully cast living end.
game 2 is always dire even with the sideboards.

any new tech against control decks?

Maybe it's jut my meta, but Storm Top 8'd every Modern PPTQ I played in (3) and won the two I didn't. All before Opt was legal.

Storm has remained pretty popular throughout moderns history. There was Pyromancer Ascension storm before Baral was printed, but ever since he was printed the current iteration has remained pretty popular.

I honestly don't have a problem with Control, once you know how to pilot the MU its pretty straightforward. Overload their counterspells with a suspended LE T4 and start hardcasting dudes T5, cast it T7 and if they counter it - cast more dudes.

Don't get too greedy with cycling, you only need 4-5 dudes to come back. Once you've got that, start hard casting. I've went all the way with SSG and Macabre against control that was too concerned with fighting over LE to realize I was using double violent outburst during Main Phase to put him to 0.

Our deck operates on three axes:

1. We have a combo that our opponent must either proactively prevent (GY hate) or counter

2. We play anywhere from 1-7 land destruction spells in our deck (1-3 Beast Within, 0-4 Fulminator Mage).

This is especially crucial against control, because they aren't well-equipped to deal with this.

3. We play a critical mass of game-ending creatures, which lines up well against an opponent who can't out-gun us and so must try to bait us into overextending. 1-2 dudes on the table at all times and you'll take it home.

Quote from kodieyost »

Leyline of sanctity is a trap against storm, they just let you sit behind it feeling safe until their combo turn. They find a bounce spell that they always side in and proceed to kill you despite Leyline on T0. They can't build up critical mass of resources without their GY however.

That's why the board plan should never just be white leyline, it should be leyline + faerie macabre + lost legacy (or similar effect). The white leyline is a massive speedbump that buys time for us to dig to one our other hate pieces or just race in damage. It's not a silver bullet in the sense that resolving it is instant GG

I completely agree. Faerie is actually strongest card we have against them, they can't interact with it and it isn't something they play around.

Lost legacy on Grapeshot is meh, I think it's the best card to call but I don't think we necessarily have the right opportunities. On their T2 they should be leaving Remand up for our t3 (assuming we lost G1) cascade into LE.

Lost Legacy for Gifts might be correct. It's essentially 4 Demonic Tutors.

And I completely agree on Faeries. They are essentially impossible to play around, and now that Deadshot Minotaur isn't a stock 4of, playing 4 in the 75 has to be correct.

Storm sides out some number of Gifts for Pieces of the Puzzle whenever they feel the GY isn't reliable post-board. Also any storm pilot who is familiar with our deck is at least aware that 8 Leylines can sometimes occupy our SB (I'm a big fan of this configuration myself, although not practical for my LGS), which means Gifts can't be cast profitably almost every single game (8 cards that T0 merk it)

I play 3 mb Faerie and a 4th in the SB, it's great for control, Midrange, and GY based decks. It also has application against Affinity when they try to ravager everything off inresp to LE.

Quote from kodieyost »

Lost legacy on Grapeshot is meh, I think it's the best card to call but I don't think we necessarily have the right opportunities. On their T2 they should be leaving Remand up for our t3 (assuming we lost G1) cascade into LE.

Resolving a lost legacy on grapeshot is instant GG, there is basically nothing they can do after that. That's what living should be shooting for on T3, not a cascade.

What they can do is Empty for X and back it up with one of the remands they play. Grapeshot is only 50% of the kill post-board.

has anyone here tested empty the pits as alternative win con?
seems viable for control matchup if the game drags on and as long as opponent didn't remove our graveyard.
i know its a lot of if but maybe it worth a shot.

honesty at this point there is nothing to discuss on this deck other than minor card selection and strategies against certain matchup.

The alternative win-con is hardcasted fatties. If your GY is destroyed, Delve does nothing. If you can resolve this spell, you could be resolving a Living End.

I do agree with your assessment though. Unless something changes, the deck has a stock ~53 cards with ~7 flex spots.