MTG Salvation

Quote from Billiondegree »

im pretty sure we lose to a chalice of the void set to "2" but the card isnt played enough for this to matter

we would need to side in our artifact hate to deal with it as echoing truth wont cut it

You can beat Chalice on 2 if you have active Ascension before it comes down, but otherwise you are screwed.

Quote from Slovenhjelm »

playing modern FNM at local shop and i'm thinking of making a budget build since i have a lot of the cards already. i see the builds without fetches run looting over thought scour, is there a reason for this? and also, what is the general opinion on think twice and the two for-mentioned spells?

thank you in advance

I don't know why lists without fetches would be running Faithless Looting over Thought Scour. I only have a couple fetches, but I still strongly prefer Thought Scour. Think Twice doesn't really work for this deck since it costs a bunch of mana and doesn't really do anything. The great thing about Manamorphose and Gitaxian Probe is that they effectively cost 0 mana, replace themselves, and give you small benefits as well. Think Twice just doesn't do anything for us. If you want something that you can do at instant speed and has flashback, Desperate Ravings is WAY better.

Quote from DXI-Edge

Thoughts on replacing Desperate Ravings with Peer Through Depths?

I realise Ravings having flashback is good in some cases, however in other cases, being able to splice Ritual onto Peer can actually be relevant at times....something to consider?

I didn't really like Ravings for a long time and played Peer and Faithless Looting at various times, but I eventually came around on Ravings, along with Thought Scour, and I have to say it has served me very well so far. Having a draw effect that costs only red mana is really important in case you can't find a Manamorphose but have plenty of other rituals.

Played this as usual at Modern night at my LGS. Went 4-0 beating Melira Pod, UWR, 8-Rack, and UWR again. I can post more detailed results if anyone wants to see them. My list is the same one that I have been running for a while. Basically a stock list with 4 Scour, 2 Ravings, and not enough fetches.

Quote from tadiou

Quote from DTrain

Overall I was very happy with the way the deck performed, and I think it is well positioned in my local metagame, at least for the time being. One UWR player joked about adding 4 Rule of Law to his sideboard, which would obviously just ruin me completely, but I don't think that is a realistic possibility since they can't really afford to dedicate 4 sideboard slots to a card that's only really good against Storm.

It's actually good vs living end, ad nauseum and at times, other control decks (like Scapeshift).

Well there are no commonly seen Living End or Ad Nauseam decks in my metagame, and I can't really see it being that great against other control decks (It shuts off Snapcaster for both sides) so I really doubt it would come to that.

Quote from izzetmage

You should side out Thought Scour against control instead. Scour is 1 for 1; Ravings is 1 for 2 when you factor in flashback. It's slower, true, but then again control decks aren't going to kill you on turn 4 either.

Speaking of that, it's also a good reason for going 3/3 instead of 4/2. If you need to cut 3 cards, a 3/3 split still leaves PA working at full efficiency (0/3), whereas with 4/2 you end up with an awkward 1/2 split if you need to keep in Ravings.

I don't know if you've seen this article by Finkel; he included a SBing guide. For control his plan is:
-4 Thought Scour
-1 Grapeshot
-2 Past in Flames

+3 Blood Moon
+1 Defense Grid
+3 Empty the Warrens

I was thinking that Ravings would be a better card to leave in than Thought Scour, but it would have been awkward with the 4 / 2 split to side them out and still have the highest possible chance to turn on Ascension. I guess with the 3 / 3 split I could side out the 3 Scours, 1 PiF, and 1 Grapeshot for the 2 Blood Moons and 3 Empty the Warrens. My sideboard right now is a little different than Finkel's. I cut the one Defense Grid, one Blood Moon, and one Shatterstorm for a second Echoing Truth and a pair of Torpor Orbs since Twin decks are pretty popular in my meta. The Echoing Truth are too great at any one thing, and I like Shrout's idea of switching them to Wear // Tear, but I definitely like having the Torpor Orbs. Has anyone considered running a Breeding Pool and sideboarding Nature's Claim? The 4 life seems pretty irrelevant most of the time, and green seems like the most convenient color to splash to me since we can still cast our Manamorphoses off a Breeding Pool, and Manamorphose can also make green mana if necessary to cast a Nature's Claim. Claim seems awesome since it kills almost every hate card that we would have to worry about for one mana, and it shouldn't be too hard to cast it between the 7 fetches, Pool itself, and 4 Manamorphose.

Maindeck would be unchanged except for +1 Breeding Pool, Sideboard would be something like this:



I've also considered changing the numbers on Lightning Bolt. It's an awesome card in the right matchups, but I have been finding myself not bringing it in very much lately, so I thought maybe we could trim one off to get another slot for something else.

Quote from nwrobinson

i started playing storm after gp richmond, and i have the john finkels list except for the fetches, so i was wondering what mana base would be the most balanced. im running

4 shivan reefs
4 steam vents
1 sulfur falls
5 islands
2 mountains

i went 3-1 in a modern fnm with it. i know sulfur falls isnt very good, but i wanted a 9th dual land without the fetches. any thoughts?

I'd go -1 Mountain, +1 Island. An opening hand with just mountains is the worst thing ever and is basically always a mulligan, so you really want to avoid that as much as possible. The main reason for playing the one-of mountain is because it's fetchable, so without any fetches, you want to be playing as few Mountains as possible. One is probably fine, but I would stay away from playing two if at all possible. Having more Islands also works very well if you are running Blood Moon in your sideboard, since it will allow you to still have enough blue mana when the Moon is on the field.

--

Played at my LGS Modern event on Thursday. The deck performed very well and I was really close to being 4-0, expect for a game against 8-rack where I stormed up to around 30 and saw 3/4 of my deck without finding any of my 3 Grapeshots and putting myself to 1 life from digging.

Matchups were:

UWR Control (2-0)
8-Rack (1-2)
BUG Control (2-0)
Esper Gifts (2-1)

I didn't side anything against 8-rack since I don't really have any sideboard cards for that matchup. I guess I could try Empty the Warrens, but he has Bile Blight and Engineered Explosives. He's also running white for Rest in Peace and Silence out of the sideboard, along with Grafdigger's Cage, so this match is really hard no matter what. It's only one deck in my group, so I think the best plan is just to try to dodge it.

Against the three control decks, I just used my standard control matchup sideboard of:

-2 Desperate Ravings
-2 Grapeshot
-1 Past in Flames

+3 Empty the Warrens
+2 Blood Moon

The Blood Moons wrecked people all night, and Empty was good enough to get the wins when I needed it to. I always leave at least one Grapeshot in for the situation that I need to kill the opponent that turn, and having two different win conditions post board gives me a way to beat Runed Halo and similar cards, which would be otherwise very difficult to deal with.

Overall I was very happy with the way the deck performed, and I think it is well positioned in my local metagame, at least for the time being. One UWR player joked about adding 4 Rule of Law to his sideboard, which would obviously just ruin me completely, but I don't think that is a realistic possibility since they can't really afford to dedicate 4 sideboard slots to a card that's only really good against Storm.

--

On a slightly different note, has anyone looked at Andrew Shrout's list from GP Richmond? It's not too different from the PT Valencia list, but he included a Hallowed Fountain in place of the fourth Steam Vents to allow him to cast Wear // Tear out of the sideboard. This is a possibility I had talked about with a friend of mine, but I don't really have the fetches to support it, so I'm interested to see someone else putting it into action.

Quote from the humanity

I think Remand as a one or two of may not be a terrible idea. Active Pyromancer Ascension, Manamorphose, and Remand is a combo that lets you get an arbitrarily large storm count. And that is on top of the Grapeshot tricks and reloading cards of Past in Flames into your hand. I have to actually get some better games in, but I'm considering running a lone Remand to just help the deck attack in a different way.

Just FYI, you actually need two active Ascensions to pull off the combo, so it is very hard to actually do consistently, and will almost always be a win-more situation.

Played a modern tournament at my LGS today. We ended up getting 21 people and played four rounds with cut to top 8. My matches were:

Round 1: Melira Pod 2-1 (1-0)
Round 2: UWR Control 2-0 (2-0)
Round 3: Big Red 0-2 (2-1)
Round 4: Affinity 1-2 (2-2)

First round against Pod, he mulls to five in the first game, but gets an amazing five and beats me down while killing my Ascension with Qasali Pridemage. I draw better and he draws worse in games 2 and 3, and my Bolts out of the sideboard are very helpful as a win the match. Round two against UWR, I won the die roll (the only time out of seven matches) and stuck a turn two Ascension, which allowed me to win through his countermagic. Game two he is able to stop me before I can go off, but not before I land a Blood Moon, which shuts down his mana and allows me to get there with Goblin tokens. The third round was against an interesting Big Red brew with Boros Reckoner, Skred, Thundermaw Hellkite, and Blood Moon. I expect I should be heavily favored in such a matchup, but I drew horribly in this match, hitting way too many lands, and fizzled both games. The Affinity match in round 4 was extremely close, but he narrowly beat me. Not drawing my sideboard hate certainly didn't help, and he drew the nuts game 3, which I couldn't beat. At this point I figured I was done, but I ended up being the one person with 6 points to make the top 8, which I guess is reasonable since my losses both ended up 3-0-1, the UWR player was 3-1, and Melira was 2-2.

Top 8: Big Red (Again) 2-0 (3-2)
Top 4: UWR Control (Again) 1-2 (3-3)
3rd Place Match: RUG Twin 2-0 (4-3)

The top 8 I was paired against the same Big Red deck, and this time my deck decided to be nicer, and I got a fairly easy 2-0 victory. Top 4 was the same UWR Control player from earlier. He beat me game one after I made a bad keep and had to damage myself way too much to get my lands online. Game 2 I landed the turn 2 Blood Moon, which kept him off his colors and allowed me to safely make a bunch of Goblins and finish him off. The third game I again had an early Blood Moon, but he opened with two basic Islands, and I had a slow draw, so he was able to play around it, stopping me from building a lethal Grapeshot and forcing me to use it just to kill his Snapcaster Mage to stay out of burn range. Eventually I was able to draw into a couple of Rituals and make 12 Goblins through countermagic and threaten lethal, but he flashed in Vendilion Clique at end of turn, swung me down to 2, and finished me with a Bolt. Since the prizes were different for 3rd vs 4th, we played it out for third. The match was against RUG Twin. Game 1 I was able to get an Ascension down quickly, and his Scavenging Ooze couldn't eat enough stuff out of my graveyard to stop me from going off. I boarded in Torpor Orb and played it turn 3 in the second game, which ended up being big because he was sitting on 3 Snapcaster Mages. I stuck an Ascension but he had Grafdigger's Cage to shut down my Past in Flames. Luckily I had Echoing Truth, which I was able to save for my combo turn and then bounce the Cage to go off and kill him.

My overall record doesn't look that good, but 3rd place out of 21 people sounds much better, and I'm happy to be taking home a playset of pack foil Wild Nacatls, even if I don't have a use for them at the moment.

Here is the final list I ended up playing:

Quote from TrappedUnderIce

Quote from DTrain

Does anyone know enough statistics to tell me what the likelihood of drawing two copies of a single card is when considering a 3-3 split as opposed to a 4-2 split? I'm trying to decide how I want to split Thought Scour and Desperate Ravings, and I'm not a big fan of Finkel using only 2 Grapeshots, which means I need to cut either 1 Scour or 1 Ravings, and I would prefer to maximize my chances of turning on Ascension as quickly as possible. Both cards have their benefits, so I was thinking the 3-3 split might be best, with Scour filling up your graveyard and only costing one mana, but Ravings gives more card advantage, and can be cast with red mana, which can be a big deal if we don't draw enough copies of Manamorphose. Even if you don't know the math, which have you guys been going with?

Also, my metagame has become infested with a ton of UWR Midrange and URx Twin decks lately. Would you guys suggest any sideboard changes to compensate? Here's what I'm playing right now:

DTrain's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
3 Blood Moon 2 Echoing Truth 3 Empty the Warrens 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Shatterstorm

Torpor Orb stops Twin's combo. I'd cut a Shatterstorm and an Echoing Truth. If you could find maindeck room for 2-4 Lightning Bolts, then the spots for Orb would open right up.

Torpor Orb actually does seem like a really good answer against Twin, although I know at least the RUG versions are running Ancient Grudge. The thing is though, Echoing Truth is also good against Twin, and helps us beat some cards that we can't really beat otherwise, like Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace. I don't really like maindecking Lightning Bolt since it reduces our ability to combo, but it would be nice to free up a couple more slots in the sideboard. I know Finkel only ran one Echoing Truth, but it just seems like a very valuable card in a lot of different matchups. I don't have a third Blood Moon in my possession yet, so I think this is what I'm going to be running at my local tournament on Saturday:

Does anyone know enough statistics to tell me what the likelihood of drawing two copies of a single card is when considering a 3-3 split as opposed to a 4-2 split? I'm trying to decide how I want to split Thought Scour and Desperate Ravings, and I'm not a big fan of Finkel using only 2 Grapeshots, which means I need to cut either 1 Scour or 1 Ravings, and I would prefer to maximize my chances of turning on Ascension as quickly as possible. Both cards have their benefits, so I was thinking the 3-3 split might be best, with Scour filling up your graveyard and only costing one mana, but Ravings gives more card advantage, and can be cast with red mana, which can be a big deal if we don't draw enough copies of Manamorphose. Even if you don't know the math, which have you guys been going with?

Also, my metagame has become infested with a ton of UWR Midrange and URx Twin decks lately. Would you guys suggest any sideboard changes to compensate? Here's what I'm playing right now:

I listed Sulfur Falls as an option when I was writing out the different lands I had access to, but I don't include any in my list right now because it cannot produce mana on the first turn. I guess I could see cutting one of my two Mountains for a Sulfur Falls, since having a turn 1 Mountain isn't any better. I want to leave one in to be able to fetch in a pinch, but having two isn't so great since I don't want them in my opening hand.

So this is what I would have:

Quote from GrapeBolt13

I have not looked through the whole thread for the answer to this question, so I am sorry. By why has Peer Through Depths been completely cut from all lists? I love the card and although I know there are 4-6 cards that are flex-spots so you should play what you prefer, I have not seen it in a list at all in a while. Most people play Ravings or Lootings because they believe it fuels ascension, and its useful when going off; but what happens if you don't get there because you can only dig two cards? or you dig two and ship one randomly and its what you needed? I have played many a game where I have everything needed to go off but maybe like one more ritual or manamorphose, and peering five cards deep instead of two or three has got me there more then I could ever explain, especially with an active ascension (thus digging 10)... Iunno, I'm not a masterful player by any means, but I do consider myself a very above average understander of percentages and numbers, and 10 cards when going off, seems better to me then 4 when going off; and 5 when trying to get there, is a lot better then two. Open to any answer and do not mind people challenging my ideals lol

I guess the way I look at it is that it also costs an extra mana over most of the other options. I think we have to choose between Peer Through Depths and Desperate Ravings, and it seems that most lists pick Ravings because it generates card advantage, where Peer does not. With the lists I've seen lately, it basically seems like Ravings has become almost an auto include over Peer. It probably has better synergy with the deck overall with the flashback and the fact that we have a lot of ways to take advantage of the graveyard. I think running both Peer and Ravings makes us a little too reliant on drawing Electromancer, which is easily the most fragile card in the deck. Thus most decks go with 3 Ravings and the rest as either Faithless Looting or Thought Scour. I think the biggest argument in favor of Peer is that it's awesome at digging for sideboard cards, but if we start shifting towards playing more Blood Moons in the sideboard, Peer cannot hit those, making it a bit weaker than with an all spell sideboard.

Just wondering if you guys think I am doing the budget mana base properly. I know it can only be ideal with the seven fetchlands, but I just don't have any way to get them right now, or probably any time until they are reprinted. The lands I have access to are:

1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Arid Mesa
X Steam Vents
X Shivan Reef
X Sulfur Falls
X Island
X Mountain

and the manabase that I use currently is:

Quote from g_block

I'm not gonna lie, I did base my storm deck off of Finkel's original list last year. The main deck for Storm is almost set in stone anyways, it's the sideboard choices I'm more interested in.

That said, here's the deck list from the Pro Tour for those interested (like me)

Kai Budde, Jon Finkel and Richard Hoaen all ran the same list

DTrain's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
3 Island 3 Misty Rainforest 1 Mountain 4 Scalding Tarn 3 Shivan Reef 2 Steam Vents 4 Goblin Electromancer 3 Desperate Ravings 4 Desperate Ritual 4 Gitaxian Probe 2 Grapeshot 4 Manamorphose 3 Past in Flames 4 Pyretic Ritual 4 Pyromancer Ascension 4 Serum Visions 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Thought Scour	Sideboard 3 Blood Moon 1 Defense Grid 1 Echoing Truth 3 Empty the Warrens 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Shatterstorm

I believe Tom Martell played this same list as well. The idea of going down to only two Grapeshots seems questionable to me, since I have had a lot of games where I just draw two of them and kill the opponent without even needing Past in Flames. I do like the Thought Scours though and I was actually just starting to test them out before the Pro Tour, so having some additional reinforcement to my testing is always nice. I prefer this list over the one played by Fennell and Ari Lax, which only runs 3 Electromancer and has maindeck Lightning Bolts and 18 lands, which feels like too many.