MTG Salvation

I went 3-1 playing a fairly standard deck list. After a round 1 loss (0-2) I went (2-0, 2-0, 2-0) the rest of the night.

My 4th Chalice finally arrived, it made a huge difference in all the games. I previously only had 3 which really made them less effective. A newly added Sea Gate Wreckage also won me 2 games, especially the long drawn out second game against UW Control.

Match 1: Jund
Both matches I drew poorly and got Junded. Chalice was the only card that did anything for me, stopped bolts and discard spells.

Match 2: Bant Melira Combo
Game 1 I beat down with 2 Thought-Knots with Chalice active on 1, using dismember to kill 2 creatures.
Game 2 I beat down with 2 Reality Smashers with Chalice active on 1, using dismember to kill 2 creatures.

Match 3: Jund
Game 1 I had 2 Reality Smashers and a Thought-Knot Seer beating down. After getting Inquisitioned on turn 1 Chalice on 1 shut him down. Thought-Knot got Terminate.
Game 2 ended up in a board stall. I finally drew a Dismember killing a Sylvan Advocate then a Conduit of Ruin to fetch an Ulamog. Endbringer and Sea Gate Wreckage did the job in that match giving me card advantage until I dropped an Ulamog and then smashed in with Batterskull, Endbringer, Conduit of Ruin, 2 Smashers and a Matter Reshaper. Batterskull kept me in that game until I drew out of the mess.

Match 4: UW Control
Game 1: I got Chalice on 1 and 2 stopping his card draw and he couldn't find lands. I had natural tron and dropped a Conduit into an Ulamog into a second Ulamog and he scooped.
Game 2: Was very long and grindy. My Endbringers were getting targeted by Paths and I didn't have any Chalices but he let a Expedition Map resolve so I grabbed a Sea Gate Wreckage and started drawing an extra card a turn until I grabbed an Ugin, and Ulamog and 3 Smashers to finish him off through a flurry of counterspells and removal. I wished I had a Cavern of Souls there.

Here's my list for those interested:

Eldrazi Tron is now being counted separately on Modern Nexus' metagame breakdown:

http://modernnexus.com/modern-metagame-breakdown-dec-16/

We are at 1.6%, apparently having taken some of Bants share.

I have 3 Chalices already, they are in my sideboard.

Ill try them again mainboard soon.

Quote from BASEDGOD »

In other news I went 4-0 at my FNM running my usual list, beating merfolk, rg tron, jeskai flash control and grixis control.

Heh BASEDGOD,

Glad you 4-0'd. One of my hardest matchups with this deck is Merfolk - the guy that plays it locally has 6 spreading seas effects mainboard and 2 more in the side. What are some strategies you'd recommend playing against Merfolk?

The combination of going wide, aether vial and spreading seas is causing me headaches.

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

My advice (if it were me) is just run Chalice in the main 60. It shuts SO much down out there that the loss of 4 Maps can be tolerated. Go a full +4Chalice, go +1 more SSG for a full set of 4 for more consistency, and probably -3 Hedron Crawler, -1 Crusher and either -1 Skite or Mimic. Keep Walking Ballista in mind too as I mentioned in my last post. Good luck and let us know what you go with.

I've tried it and tried it and it's too much of a non-bo for me and lost me 2 matches recently. In my meta I can afford to just run the 3 in the sideboard.

Quote from Reya01 »

Since your not playing Deceiver of Form to turn your Hedron Crawlers into larger threats, would it not just make more sense to play Mind Stone so that your ramp is not easily removed? It would also give you a cantrip later when it is no longer necessary.

If you're also going for a very ramp centered build, doesn't Eldrazi Mimic seem a bit out of place? Wouldn't a 4th Simian Spirt Guide and perhaps a 4th Mind Stone make more sense?

Actually I am playing Deceiver of Form, I forgot to include it in the list. If I have the mana and 1-4 of the 2CMC creatures I like to bring in Deceiver AND THEN Conduit of Ruin and put Ulamog's Crusher on the top of my library. Then all the little non-threats are all 8/8 Annihilator 2s.

Hello All,

I tried going to a white splash but didn't really like it. The reasons were better removal (Path to Exile), Eldrazi Displacer and better sideboard options. I found even with 8 Plains it was too inconsistent and limiting so I decided to get back on a pure colorless list and deal with the substandard removal.

In addition to bad removal the second big issue I have with complete colorless is inconsistency. Green gets Ancient Stirrings and Sylvan Scying. Since I have Chalice in the sideboard to be swapped for Expedition Map that it no-bos with I wanted a 2 casting cost ramp creature or artifact. After much testing I settled on Hedron Crawler. This allows us to be more consistent, which lets us move of the CMC chain a little bit.

So my high-end package now consists of 3 Conduit of Ruin, 1 Endbringer, 1 Deceiver of Form, 1 Ulamog's Crusher (for Annihilation) and 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. The last 3 can be tutored with the Conduits. Deceiver makes the 0/1 Hedrons, 2/1 Mimics and 0/4 Spellskites potentially very dangerous if you hit Ulamog's Crusher. If not even Thought-Knot or Smasher gives you a great surprise option.

To help with the removal I finally got 2 Oblivion Stone main deck and have an assorted package of spot removal to help with faster decks.

For reference, here is my list:



I've had a lot more success with this list. Gemstone Caverns, Simian Spirit Guide, Expedition Map AND Hedron Crawler combined give this deck more a classic Tron redundancy. What are your thoughts? How can I tweak this even more?

Quote from purklefluff »

I was surprised when I saw hangarback walker in the deck tech. immediately I was worried how the deck would perform.

It'd be great to sit down with the guy and talk through the deck, honetly. I feel like maybe he should have crowd-sourced some of his reads on how the deck can be built.

btw i've rebuilt the deck myself and will be playing it tonight =)

How were your results?

I've modified my build and will be trying it tomorrow night. Using a few different cards, have 3 Chalice as my big upgrade.

I haven't noticed any real results with Colorless Eldrazi Tron lately and even Bant Eldrazi is having trouble in this ultra fast meta so I've been doing some tinkering lately.

I did some brainstorming on a version that would do well against decks like Infect, Dredge and Bant Spirits and decided a white splash was in order. It is my attempt to combine the Tron and Bant Eldrazi decks into one deck.

Here's what I've been testing:



Notes:

1. Land count needed to increase to 26 to fit in all the needed white sources. All specialty lands
2. Path to Exile is the best removal in Modern for a reason.
3. Eldrazi Displacer is a best with Tron lands active. It will win you many games.
4. Compared to Bant not having Ancient Stirrings is a pain but most of the time it is not needed.
5. I had to cut Endbringer and add in Endless One to get the mana curve working which was a huge blow.
6. I'm doing much better with this version than the previous colorless version.
7. The sideboard needs a bit more tweaking. I might change Relic of Progenitus for Grafdigger's Cage. As pointed out above Bant Spirits seems to be the shiny new toy so Cage works better against it.


What does everyone think? Can some of you try this version out and see if you get great results in your meta?

Quote from Goatslayer22 »

Why Relic of Progenitus over Grafdiggers Cage? Just because of matter reshaper?

Goatslayer,

I was running Relic because I had it already but with the rise of Bant Spirits (Collected Company) I'm going to be switching to Grafdiggers Cage.

Quote from Dragon_Chaser »

turn 1 on 1 counter? how do you do that? how do we produce two manas on turn 1 in this deck?

Hello Dragon_Chaser,

Many ways to do that. Gemstone Caverns and Simian Spirit Guide are the most common.

I played another WNM (Wednesday Night Modern) at my LGS.

Burn 2-0 win
RG Tron 2-0 win
Dredge 2-1 win
Storm 2-0 loss

Some notes:

1. The deck of the night was Dredge. It seems to be the big flavour of the week. I expect lots of them on Sunday. I modified my sideboard to include two Surgical Extraction in addition to my two Relics. Dredge can do damage FAST with their recurring creatures. Perilous Vault was the all-star in that matchup. I suggest people start swapping 1-2 Oblivion Stones out for it if Dredge stays beyond 'the flavour of the week'.
2. Storm is insane if you are not prepared for it. I hadn't practiced for it so was completely caught off guard. Plus it is really boring waiting for them to get through their turns. Have graveyard hate and Warping Wails ready against them. Does anyone else have any other ways for our decks to fight against storm?
3. Burn is generally an easy match-up now. In game 1 he got me down to 1 life but in the second match I could sub-in Basilisk Collars. The card that won both games for me... Endbringer. Without it I wouldn't want to face burn.
4. RG Tron has always given my BU Control deck fits so it is so satisfying to face it now. Game 1 I smashed him, no chance. Game 2 was Tron Land duel I won thanks to Ghost Quarter and eventually Ulamog. After the match he said he was switching to TronDrazi next week. He already was running main deck Worldbreakers.

I have 1 Sea Gate Wreckage, 4 Chalice and 4 Oblivion Stone on order but they won't be in by the weekend. So here's the lineup I'm running with. I'll try to do a detailed report after the tournament.



I'm thinking of switching Dismember from the mainboard for Basilisk Collar. It is probably not a good idea but the card was really helpful last night.

EDIT: As an add-on to the previous points it is really satisfying on the draw to play Gemstone Caverns and exile Eternal Scourge then play Eldrazi Temple on your first turn and bring the Scourge back into play!

I'm preparing to go in a fairly large tournament this weekend (F2F Games Toronto Open) so I've been doing my best to prepare my deck for the event. In particular I've been thinking about the current metagame shifts and where we fit in.

In a previous post someone was asking why we run Tron lands and sweepers like Oblivion Stone even though we run lots of creatures. That also got me thinking of a need to properly define this deck and place it in the current meta.

So What is Colorless EldraziTron?

CE is an aggressive mid-range deck using three different mana engines to 'cheat out' very efficient Eldrazi creatures such as Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher. The first mana 'engine' is Eldrazi Temple. The second is the Tron lands with Expedition Map in either the main or sideboard. And finally we have a combination of Gemstone Caverns and Simian Spirit Guide. It is the combination of these three engines that provide us with fast starts, consistency as well as the ability to go 'over the top' if the game stalls. Our main goal is to consistently keep putting down threat after threat as we curve out keeping our opponents on the defensive. While Thought-Knot Seers and Reality Smashers are usually enough to win we can fall back on Endbringers to provide reach and card advantage until we can cast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger to break open any stalemates and (hopefully) finish our opponents.

Youtube's Strictly Better Magic uses a 0-100 scale to rank decks. Here's where I would currently put us using that criteria:

RANKING (72)
Power 9
Speed 8
Synergy 7
Consistency 7
Versatility 5
Resiliency 6
Offence 8
Defence 6
Game-1 9
Post-Board 7
Total 72

The total of 72 I came up with puts us right below the cut-off point of being a truly competitive deck. Is this a fair score? Do you have any alternative rankings?

There was an interesting article on Modern Nexus that ranks the current top-tier decks in terms of proactivity, interactivity, and consistency. His main point was that all the Tier 1 decks did ok in all three categories and excelled in at least one whereas lower tier decks fell short in most of those areas.

Here's how he ranked the decks using that metric.

Very proactive: Tron, Infect, Burn, Affinity, Bant Eldrazi, Death's Shadow Zoo, Dredge
Relatively proactive: Jund, Merfolk
Minimally proactive: Jeskai Nahiri

Highly interactive: Jund, Jeskai Nahiri
Relatively interactive: Merfolk, Bant Eldrazi
Minimally interactive: Affinity, Infect, Burn, Dredge, Death's Shadow Zoo, Tron

Highly consistent: Burn, Jeskai Nahiri
Relatively consistent: Jund, Infect, Bant Eldrazi, Merfolk, Tron
Minimally consistent: Affinity, Dredge, Death's Shadow Zoo

I think we are closest to Bant Eldrazi since we use many of the same cards. We have a very pro-active deck. We lack the green consistency cards of Gx Tron but I think having both the Tron lands and Gemstone Caverns/SSG as backups to Eldrazi Temple help us remain fairly consistent. The other area we need to improve on is interactivity. While we have access to board wipes via All is Dust, Oblivion Stone, Perilous Vault and Ratchet Bomb and spot removal in Dismember, Gut Shot, Warping Wail and Spatial Contortion finding the right mix for the meta seems to be difficult. Oblivion Stone / Perilous Vault are required for when the opponent has gone wide on us or has planeswalkers, enchantments or artifacts we can't deal with. Dismember is 1 cost removal to use against ultra fast aggro like Infect and Affinity. Being colorless limits us here so we make due as best as we can.

Besides Warping Wail and Ghost Quarters combo decks like Scapeshift are not easy for us to deal with. So our big weaknesses are ultra fast decks that can go under us and combo decks. What do you think? Where do we fit in those categories and how can we improve our weaknesses?

My final take -> Colorless EldraziTron: Very proactive, relatively interactive (exception combo decks?), relatively consistent.

Quote from Flipdipple »

I do like the idea of running SSG and a Gemstone Caverns, I think that is where the deck gets back to its brutal beginnings and will looking to pick up these for testing. My preferred sweeper right now is Oblivion Stone as it doesn't whiff on many things i.e. Indestructible and Regenerate. I am still on the Ugin plan out of the side as it has more reach than an All is Dust and Ratchet Bomb is another non-discriminating sweeper for faster decks.

I'm fully on board the Gemstone Caverns / Simian Spirit Guide train. It really helps our starts out.

At Wednesday Night Modern at my LGS I finally got some more serious testing done on my deck.

I played against Azbhan Company, Jund, Blue White Control and Infect. Here are some points I've learned.

1. Path to Exile! Ghost Quarters! Path to Exile! Path to Exile! Path to Exile! Ghost Quarters!
Wastes are a required card. I had a 3rd in my sideboard and I added it in every match except Jund.

2. Mimics are removal magnets. People really fear those in my LGS from the Eldrazi winter days. Too bad I'm dropping down to two of them to make room for other cards.

3. Gemstone Caverns and Simian Spirit Guides are real. The explosive starts I got from those two cards helped me to a 4-0 record in the first games of each match. Also playing on the draw is fine with those cards. I can't recommend them enough. I even exiled a copy of Gemstone Caverns to Gemstone Caverns once. I had 3 in my deck but I think I'll have to test 2 next, there were too many times when I had one on the board and one sitting useless in my hand. GC was never a target for Ghost Quarters even with the luck counter on it. Remember if Gemstone Caverns has a luck counter on it you can tap it for black or red mana for gut shot and dismember. Three times I forgot that on Dismember and lost 2 life I shouldn't have.

4. In the previous version of my deck I got into top deck mode too often when I couldn't finish them off quick enough. With all the removal I faced in 3 of the matches many of my creatures kept dying right away. To get around this I'm finally 'seeing the light' on including Sea Gate Wreckage and Endbringer in this deck. We really do need ways to generate card advantage in the mid-game for when we can't finish them off fast enough.

5. All the games I lost in the 4 matches were due to either top decking, mana flooding or my mistakes. Even the infect match after boarding seemed like I could have easily won it (and I did, game 1 he killed me turn 2 since my only removal was Ratchet Bomb. But after sideboarding I killed his creatures with Dismember and Gut Shot and stomped him. The only upgrade I'm adding for that match is the Ghost Quarters.)

6. Expedition Map was ok but not great during the match-up. I felt I never needed it.

7. The biggest problem I faced was all the removal. Long-term I'm thinking about swapping out my 4 maps for Chalices, I'd rather shut off lightining bolt and path to exile and protect my threats than look for a land. Then I'd put Maps in the Sideboard. Thoughts?

8. The Perilous Vault saved my butt a few times. Should I look at replacing it with Oblivion Stone? It worked well with an Eternal Scourge on the field but would clash with Ulamog.

Here's what I'm thinking my deck list should be in the future: