MTG Salvation

because of the printing of assassin's trophy, i feel like i can confidantly say that GB decks will see quite the resurgeance in terms of play. since this is obviously not great for us since they can easily out grind us, I say we drop all of the grind and go as aggressive as possible, leading me to a decklist looking like this:


I decided against push since bolt is at worst a burn spell, which should be good for us if we're going more agressive since it'll be easier to close games faster, and dismember helps us drop shadow faster while killing almost the same stuff as push.
One of the tasigurs could easily be a tombstalker, although i'm unsure if it would be any better.
lmk what y'all think.

Quote from gizlow »

I've built a BUG deck using Assassin's Trophy+Snapcaster Mage to try it out. I love it and think BUG will be a real contender going forwards in modern. That said, I've played many games with GDS against it, and so far, GDS has a very real upper hand. The fact that Trophy can be countered really does make it a lot worse against us. Honestly, I think the way forwards is to return to 4x stubs in the main, and perhaps 1-2 Spell Snare in the SB against BGx decks.

Our delve threats still blanks much of their removal (apart from Abzan, path+trophy will most likely still be very rough), meaning that we can still rely on them as long as we have counterspells available. Also, trophy doesn't exile, so Kolaghan's is going to be as good as ever.

I think the meta will shift quite a bit, the BUG deck I built actually wanted to go late against UW, since it could run them out of wincons pretty easily. So one of our worst MUs will most likely suffer some. Our BGx MUs should be relatively unchanged.

Just my $0.02.

I actually played with 2 spell snares in my sb for a while. Here's the matchups they usually came in for:

Afinity: counters pretty much all of their best cards.
BGx decks: counters a lot of strong cards like dark confidant and goyf, as well as terminate and scavenging ooze. usually felt the worst against abzan.
Humans: This may seem out of place, since humans has cavern and vial, but it's totally worth bringing in since it answers a ton of strong cards like phantasmal image, thalia, thalia's lieutenent, and kitesail freebooter. the risk of it being dead is totally worth the reward, especially if your playing looting anyways.
Burn: Counters most of the cards that are strong against us like eidolon, boros charm, and skullcrack post board when we have brutalities.
Storm: counters all of their rituals and their enablers, which can slow them down a ton.
Goryo's vengeance: counters their most important card, and a lot of their discard outlets, like collective brutality, cathartic reunion, or izzet charm.

that's about all i can recall off the top of my head

yea im not quite sure on a 4 of the new tutor without some # of looting and and architects, since its not really a card id want to draw without one of those. I also feel like playing 3-4 snap with it could be wrong since it is gonna be like a 3 drop for us a lot just like snap. since usually you wanna play something the same turn you tutor it. more on collective brutality, I think it's a great silver bullet for rougher matchups or just setting up the graveyard for secrets or discarding dead cards and getting value. even in matchups where the lifegain is irrelevant, having 2 more points of burn could be relevant. on other silver bullets, liliana of the veil could be solid, as could something like raven's crime or even a card quite similar to brutality in a few ways, funeral charm.

this card is really exciting but i feel like just trying to slap it in as a 4 of in place of already well established cards like bauble or serum visions (or even looting to an extent) is incorrect. the best way to put this card in the deck is to trim some of the numbers of other stuff, bonus points if it's searchable by it too.

idk though, we may never end up playing this card. only time will tell i suppose.

imo this will be our version of traverse.
here's a decklist i came up with:

I've been playing rakdos charm in my sideboard lately over abrade and have enjoyed how it plays, which is why it's there.
Architects is just a 5th-6th street wraith.
collective brutality in the main seemed reasonable as a card to search with secrets and is another way to put creatures into the yard.
no inquisitions were added because i figured that higher threat density could possibly warrant a little less 1 mana disruption.
it could be possible that an 18th land could be right in this decklist aswell but idk.

Quote from Jonny_Tempel »

The second option would be going more all in for a quicker kill, maybe by adding more potential threats like Kiln Fiend for clunky and grindy cards. Does this make the Jeskai/Humans MU better? Probably yes, probably no.

monastery swiftspear, enigma drake, delver of secrets or thing in the ice could be other options if we are trying to be more agressive. the main problem with delver and swiftspear is they die to bolt just like kiln fiend, thing is a complete nonbo with our delve creatures, and enigma drake is just a little bit too expensive for our deck.

then again, maybe the best way for us to be more aggressive would probably be to go up two 6-7 delve creatures and add a couple free spells like gut shot or mishra's bauble, and go up to 4 faithless looting or even tome scour to fill our yard enough to be able to have this many delve creatures.

or maybe our deck is just fine where it is now. I'm honestly not sure. I guess only time will tell.

Quote from Havrekjex »

@Endurrr Is the Marsh Flats over the third Tarn a budget thing, or is it a deliberate choice to even out the balance of lands fetching for Island vs. Swamp? Honest question from a potential newcomer, not trying to harp on budget stuff.

It's kinda both. I could buy the last tarn, but I've been content with the marsh flats so I would rather not spend the $70~ on another tarn. And if I want to fetch a basic against blood moon, I usually want my swamp first, which marsh flats is nice for. Otherwise it makes no real difference.

So with the recent praises of faithless looting, I was hoping for some advice on what to cut for it. Here's my list:

I was also hoping for some advice on my sideboard.
Thanks in advance.

Quote from gm_jack »

There have been scg articles advocating faithless looting in this deck to help with mitigating flood and wrong half syndrome. Being a huge fan of the grind and card advantage, I'm initially sceptical. Has anyone tried those lists yet, and what were your impressions of looting?

I haven't played any of those decks, but I've played other midrange decks with looting(rbx pyromancer) and it's pretty good in those so I could see it working here

I believe this is him

https://twitter.com/bmjmtgo

dont see any sb guide though.

Edit: a little late

I'm not currently playing souls, but my experience with it was bringing it vs creature decks like elves, taxes, humans and hollow one to help chump their dudes till I could stabilize. I would also occasionally bring it vs uw control, as it is hard for them to deal with, and you can just hold your threats and wait for them to wrath the tokens so you can start slamming delve creatures and shadows.

Lingering souls is impressive, but doesn't feel worth the 4-5ish sideboard slots it takes up. I might try souls in the main, and see how that plays out since I think it's good against a couple of our rougher matchups but putting them in the board takes up space for the cards that are good for us in other matchups like tron or titanshift or jund.

I would argue that souls is slightly more flexible, and therefore better, since you can bring it against creature decks like elves so you have more cards to break board stalls and block creatures. Also, on the godless shrine thing, while it does suck, it's still possible to cast souls because of flashback, it can just makes your future plays a little more awkward.

Quote from the_Khak »

Is Flaying Tendrils still worse out of the board than Kozilek's Return now that B/R Hollow One is one of the best decks? I feel like the exile clause is super relevant against them.

They're pretty much the same card against hollow one, the only difference being that tendrills exiles their flamewake phoenix.

Although at that point I'd rather just be playing anger of the gods.

So I was thinking about pulling the trigger on a jace but wanted some advice first.

If I pick up jace, what should I cut for him?
Is jace even any good to begin with?

So I decided I wanted to build this deck, here's the list I can come up with.


The lack of Scalding tarns and only two snapcasters are simply for budget reasons. Thoughts on this list?