MTG Salvation

It seems like it's be a decent choice for a budget list if someone can't afford jitte or something of that sort, but it would just be a bit too slow for a minimal effect. It's a bit of a dead card against a fair bit of decks.

It's cute though. I just think it needs flicker effects to be truly abused hahaha.

I'm glad you like the additions Bardo! You see what I was trying to say now Hahaha.

The reason ornithopter is good in this deck is for the explosive start you can have to the deck with minimal investment. It allows you to get out your mistblade/deep hours on turn two and it scales into later game with the other equipment since jitte doesn't get counters from it since it deals no combat damage. It's a good card, but I think based off of the fact you're not running Mistblade in a large amount it's not as good.

But when the opponent plays a creature t2 and you bounce it, having the ornithopter out early is a time walk. It also allows you to have mana open for Spell snare or whatever options you're using.

I am looking to replace it in my build though because as you say this deck hits late game often and it does become a dead card without Fire and Ice or WaP. I might do as Turbo said and add Zephyr sprite in instead, but I'm not sure.


Also, Yeahhh. I get what you're saying with the pact Sean. But in the B/U version it hurts a lot to hit that off of bob. (Though it's the only card in the deck that does hurt lol.)

As a counter point, I'm going to say that you're making a lot of assumptions. The list I'm running doesn't mean I nessecarily have only used that list. That was the mono u list, but I'm running a U/B list. I already told you that. You're just not listening.


I'm also thinking about dropping ornithopter in favour of Cursecatcher and possibly getting rid of FoW for something that doesn't hurt as much with bob. I've thought about Pact of Negation but I'm not sure.

Aether vial is good in goblins because they run a ridiculous amount of creatures, it allows them to use their mana for burn spells and they have creatures that fan out from 1-5 very easily. It's a solid pick for their deck. It works for merfolk for almost the same reason.

My arguement was and has been, ornithopter is active turn two, can for NO mana can swing and hit with ninja of the deep hours or mistblade. If you have a cloud of fae, you can just play it, than untap and than play your spells. It's fine being what it is. Signal pest is good because it buffs all your creatures and you want to be playing as many creatures as possible. The objective of this deck to play many threats, lock out your opponents key spells with counters and establish a board state before they can handle you. You than use the ninjitsu lock with Standstill and make their board state worse.

The issue with running less creatures is the format is drenched with creature removal if they are playing any kind of aggro deck. We run very weak creatures that are fragile to almost any kind of burn, infest, elesh norn or whatever the opponent is playing. The issue with what you're saying is, you can once a turn play a cloud of faeries after your attack phase to give you two extra lands. It's cute, but you're building around an effect that isn't worth building around. That was always my point. You're using 4 slots for something that doesn't come active until turn 3 and it gives you two mana to play with. That is NOT a strong effect. I don't care what you say.


The fact that you're saying this deck plays like Landstill isn't good. Landstill isn't even considered a deck anymore because it's horrible in the current format. I get what you're going for, but if we're trying to make this deck competitive basing it off of a deck that isn't good, is going to mean your deck is going to be bad.


No idea if he'll see this because he ignored me, but seriously? Keep it classy. Calling me an idiot for having a different opinion than you based around playtesting a card in MANY decks, makes you look like a jerk.

IMO: Aether vial is slow and provides minimal benefit to the deck. You have very few manindeck threats without signal pest or Ornithopter. If that picture is accurate, you're running 12 creatures, 2 factories three equipment. Those numbers just seem very, very wonky. Especially when you consider you're running 2 aether vials. I think you're going to find when you play against any other deck in the format that has any aggro game, you're going to lose very hard. When you counter 3 creatures from Maverick, they will more than likely draw another within the next couple turns. Statistically you're not looking like you're going to be drawing very many creatures and you're running a ton of stuff that works in aggro decks.

Also, ornithopter and signal pest are ridiculous because they work so well together. As well, mistblade being gone from the deck doesn't make sense to me. It is slow, yeah but it's our only card that deals with resolved threats and it's very agressively costed.

My list Mono u list looked like this:




It has 22 maindeck creatures and 4 mutavaults. (IMO Factory is just as good.) I'm still in favour of Black splash though, it just works well with the rest of the deck.

I quote from the primer in reference to Aether Vial:

"Doesn't feel needed. So many of our creatures play through Standstill as is that it's barely needed. The ability to untap two lands with Cloud of Faeries or counter a spell (Spellstutter Sprite) would be nice, but the deck needs every threat it can land. More useful in the splashes."

It is true you can untap two lands, but are you going to play this, wait two turns and than use it for an interaction in which you can untap two lands to play a spellstutter? Maybe on your turn play it after you've Deep hour's one back?

That seems like you're building around something very, very weak.


Secondly, Bitterblossom is absolutely insane. If you play that turn two, you can beat out so many decks it's ridiculous. You have Jitte to counter the loss of life it is gets to be an issue and I just straight up disagree about it killing you. I have never lost a game to loss of life from bitterblossom. I have no idea where you got that idea from. With the fact that you're playing standstill, being able to develop a board state without playing spells is very important. Bitterblossom allows you to do this for minimal investment. If you resolve jitte and bitterblossom, there are VERY few decks that handle that unless they have an immediate counter. Which is basically Pridemage in the format right now. Or if they resolve their own jitte to counter yours.


I find that this deck has most of it's issues dealing with decks like Zoo or Maverick. The reason being is that they put out just as many threats as you, but they have more powerful threats such as goyf and such. Post board you start running into issues with thrun and etc.

I think going with green is just building around something that doesn't benefit you as much as you're saying. Krosan Grip is particularly slow and for this deck, if something is such an issue that you're going to need to deal with it, you have the OH **** card of FoW or the number of counters you'll run into. If you're going to run Sylvan library, you could always just run Top instead, which I've tested sucessfully as a 1-2 of. (I cut it because it ended up being more trouble than it's worth sometimes.)



Also, the two drop comment is disagree with. You usually will be playing ornithopter first turn, using mistblade to deal with any early threats and at 2 mana, you can cloud of faeries into Bob super easily. Which is really good for sure. The only issue I have with Bob is basically that you have to cut blue cards and this deck runs a lot of non-blue cards with Ornithopter and Signal pest. So adding in another 6-8 can be a big deal.

Mishra's factory is good, but as you say I think it's the same deal as mutavault. Unless you're facing tribal like merfolk, it just seem not very useful. The only thing I can see being decent is when you swing with one, than ninjitsu it and use it as a free creature.

That would make sense. It still seems like a weak choice in this deck imo though.

IMO: Aether vial is way too slow for this deck. You want to put out as many threats as possible and you can win counter wars.


Also, the life loss is equated by the fact that you can win earlier than it matters, since you're getting pressure from Bitterblossom and Bob just wins games. You have Jitte if you're losing too much life. I just think he's too good not to run if that is the venue you're going down. The only time it usually matters is in the burn matchup anyways, where you can easily side them out for elemental blasts if it's a problem.

I think being able to draw the extra 0 drops or 1 drops which this deck is oozing in is fine for me. I have done extremely well in my testing. If you don't believe me, test it out.


EDIT: Why are you running duals in your mono list? I don't understand.

Basically my U/B list was the best I've ever seen this deck perform. It loses mutavaults, which does hit us hard but with Bitterblossom it was fine. I pretty much tried to keep the list almost the same as yours. I basically just lowered the amount of cards minimally, to keep the deck intact. I pretty much just took out 2 cloud of faeries, I took out 4 spell snare and I ran 3 Bitterblossom and 3 Dark Confidant. The only card I fear is FoW with Bob, but with Jitte it's not too bad.


I added Bitterblossom and Dark Confidant basically. It worked out extremely well whenever I played it, but I don't own paper FoW so until I get those, I won't be playing this deck very much though it is one of my favourites to play.

Not really a fan of either of them, but if I had to choose, I'd pick distortion because it's two times you use it and you'll be speeding your clock up a bit.

Yeah prison decks aren't a good matchup for us. You essentially just need to hold counters and only play them on cards that will stop you. You can't goof up and counter something for tempo with that matchup.

The testing deck I'm using is this one:




But the traditional list I'm using is this:

It's still a 1 cmc counter which is what the previous poster was asking about. But as I said, I'm more in favour in Clique in the slot because I like the reccuring effect.

Basically what he said. Stuff like Force Spike or whatever isn't too bad either. Anything that's 1 cmc isn't too bad. I know a lot of people have been using Vendillion Clique in the slot as well in favor of the recurring annoyance of it. As well, it's just an insane card on it's own though.

Myself I think this deck needs something more to be viable atm, so I'm thinking of just splashing black for Bitterblossom, because in testing it worked really well. I did that pre-mistep though, so I'll have to try it and see now.