MTG Salvation

I could use some input/insight as well. I've been playing a lot of T2/T3 nonsense, such as UR Through the Breach, UR kiki, Blue Moon,and now I'm on Grixis Kiki. I've been looking at two separate decks that I can pick up and are within ~$40 of each other, so that's not a huge issue. One is the sultai reclamation deck, and the other is Tom Medvec's Goryo's As Foretold Kiki deck.

Sultai Pros:
My favorite color wedge.
The spell toolbox gameplay is a lot of fun, and Blue Sun's Zenith-ing someone for 45 rarely gets old.
Buying into this deck also gets me a few Misty fetches and some landbase cards that should hold value or at least be worthwhile moving into the future.

Cons:
Playing in paper will require lots of time management (slow deck, lots of shuffling, which I hate)
Deck is very skill-intensive (and I scrub at FNM quite a bit, sometimes going 3-1, usually 2-2)
The shell isn't 100% yet, and flooding out or durdling around unitl T7 or 8 and dying has happened quite a few times online.

Goryo's Pros:
Super fun deck, right up my alley with kiki, plus my other all-time favorite legendary, Grizzy.
Less known deck, so can earn a few percentage points from people not prepared.
Can win T2 some amount of the time(t1 faithless looting, kiki+exarch into bin, t2 electrodominance+ LE ) so it's at least quicker than the build I'm running now.
Can easily shift to UR living end (Nassif's list) to try other builds.

Cons:
It's a graveyard deck. Maindeck surgical is becoming quite common with phoenix, of which there is plenty at my LGS.
It's also a complex deck with many lines, and again, not a high-tier player.
Very few resources on this deck, even from Medvec, there are only a handful of videos and most are 12+ months out of date (not utilizing the Electrodominance).
Only Medve'cs 11th place finish, no other results that I've seen.

General thoughts:
With horizons on the horizon (hyuck), the metagame could drastically change in the coming months, and either deck could be a bad investment OR could be a "Glad I bought that when I did" moment. (especially in regards to land cards)
I will be playing this pretty much solely at FNM, so it obviously doesn't need to be top tier, but I will take it to Open's and GP's when they're in town.
The biggest factor here is that I have money burning a hole in my pocket. I've been set for 3 weeks or so on buying sultai, so the "buy a new deck" is really hard to turn off now. Even if waiting until horizons is a better option, I dunno if I wanna do that. I can't really even pinpoint why I started getting turned off sultai and onto Goryo's, probably too many durdle-until-I-die games on modo.

Anyways, I know that these kind of situations are impossible to predict or to tell people what the actual "best" option is, but I'm just hoping for some input and to bounce ideas around. My wife couldn't really care less and my IRL friends quit magic years ago, so forums and discord are all I have as an outlet for my thoughts.

As it stands now, I'm planning on jamming both lists on modo all weekend and make a decision by Sunday *crossing fingers prices dont' keep skyrocketing.....*

*edit* For reference, Sultai would get me 2x Misty's, 1x verdant, and 3-4 shocks. Goryo's would get me 3x blackcleave cliffs.

Thanks peeps.

If you think you're going to see a lot of Surgical Extractions, I would put less faith in Goryo's Vengeance, especially if you don't have Through the Breach as a backup.

Sultai Reclamation seems ******* sweet! I don't know how good it is, but I'm trying to get the Nexus of Fate and X Wilderness Reclamation so I cna run it myself. Looks fun as hell!

My impression of the Teachings deck is that it's basically Temur/BTL Scapeshift with a new coat of paint. You have the same elements: 2 mana ramp, Remands, Cryptics, tutors, high density of 4+ CMC spells, and a lack of cheap removal compared to other fair decks. The difference is Teachings plays at instant speed while Scapeshift has the auto-win button.

I don't recommend playing these ramp/control decks when it's an aggro meta out there. But if you want a non-combo deck, go ahead and pick it up.

I ended up pulling the trigger on Goryo's. I played tons of games on modo throughout the weekend and it just felt way better to be proactive vs sitting back and hoping I draw the right answers. Should get my cards this week and I'll run it at FNM this Friday!

Lets try this:
I am somewaht unsatisfied with my current decks (UW Control, Wildernes Reclamation, Mono white Pillowfort, Bogles), so help me finding a new one. I really prefere non-meta decks, but also no budget decks.
Oh and I never cast a lightning bolt and I do not indent to do so.

Cards you already own: I own almost every card that sees at least some play and modern and is not red.

Colors you like to play: I like Bant and Esper, everything containg blue and no red.

Style you like to play : I really like rogue decks, control and combo

Level you want to play at, or aim to build up to: FNM level

Thanks for your help

Knightfall may be up that alley, though its not really Blue, though you can add some. Oddly the reason I always put it down is because of the lack of Bolt.

Quote from sevento »

Lets try this:
I am somewaht unsatisfied with my current decks (UW Control, Wildernes Reclamation, Mono white Pillowfort, Bogles), so help me finding a new one. I really prefere non-meta decks, but also no budget decks.
Oh and I never cast a lightning bolt and I do not indent to do so.

Cards you already own: I own almost every card that sees at least some play and modern and is not red.

Colors you like to play: I like Bant and Esper, everything containg blue and no red.

Style you like to play : I really like rogue decks, control and combo

Level you want to play at, or aim to build up to: FNM level

Thanks for your help

Whir prison with thopter sword combo can be a great way to enjoy an esper list without committing to full control.

There are controlling elements of the deck and you can get an engine online with sword of the meek and thopter foundry few decks can fight effectively once you have all your prison pieces.

If you want to be grindy control that is great against midrange or control strategies straight esper control can scratch that itch. There is also a good thread in established control with varying builds.

Really it depends on your meta and how much you care about winning in that meta vs just playing for the aspects of play that certain decks will allow you to experience.

Thanks you two for the suggestions. To answer the questions my local meta at the moment are mostly creature tribal/combo or toolbox decks (Humans, Spirits, elves, Toolbox) and some burn mixed in. I do not care that much about winning, but finishing with no wins at all would be depressing.

I'm just getting back into modern after a couple years off. Have just been busy, but find myself needing this outlet. I have lots of cards, have bought a bunch to catch up. My decks I have are Dredge, Abzan Devoted Company, Boros Burn, BW Tokens, UR Control, Grixis Death Shadow. Dredge was my daughter's deck but she no longer plays. The others I used to rotate through. Have also built in past Stompy, Soul Sisters, Blue Moon, Martyr Proc, Kiki Evolution, UR Delver, Jeskai Tempo, etc.. Which should I focus on? I did one Tuesday modern with BW Tokens and got harmed. Amulet Titan, Eggs, ...

Quote from falchion72 »

I'm just getting back into modern after a couple years off. Have just been busy, but find myself needing this outlet. I have lots of cards, have bought a bunch to catch up. My decks I have are Dredge, Abzan Devoted Company, Boros Burn, BW Tokens, UR Control, Grixis Death Shadow. Dredge was my daughter's deck but she no longer plays. The others I used to rotate through. Have also built in past Stompy, Soul Sisters, Blue Moon, Martyr Proc, Kiki Evolution, UR Delver, Jeskai Tempo, etc.. Which should I focus on? I did one Tuesday modern with BW Tokens and got harmed. Amulet Titan, Eggs, ...

Why not run Dredge? It's a damn good deck, especially in this meta.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Quote from falchion72 »

I'm just getting back into modern after a couple years off. Have just been busy, but find myself needing this outlet. I have lots of cards, have bought a bunch to catch up. My decks I have are Dredge, Abzan Devoted Company, Boros Burn, BW Tokens, UR Control, Grixis Death Shadow. Dredge was my daughter's deck but she no longer plays. The others I used to rotate through. Have also built in past Stompy, Soul Sisters, Blue Moon, Martyr Proc, Kiki Evolution, UR Delver, Jeskai Tempo, etc.. Which should I focus on? I did one Tuesday modern with BW Tokens and got harmed. Amulet Titan, Eggs, ...

Why not run Dredge? It's a damn good deck, especially in this meta.

I never actually played it, just watched my daughter (and others) play it against me. But why not indeed? Learning other decks I find also helps you play against them.

Quote from falchion72 »

I'm just getting back into modern after a couple years off. Have just been busy, but find myself needing this outlet. I have lots of cards, have bought a bunch to catch up. My decks I have are Dredge, Abzan Devoted Company, Boros Burn, BW Tokens, UR Control, Grixis Death Shadow. Dredge was my daughter's deck but she no longer plays. The others I used to rotate through. Have also built in past Stompy, Soul Sisters, Blue Moon, Martyr Proc, Kiki Evolution, UR Delver, Jeskai Tempo, etc.. Which should I focus on? I did one Tuesday modern with BW Tokens and got harmed. Amulet Titan, Eggs, ...

Grixis Death's Shadow is also fairly well positioned right now if dredge isn't up your alley. I would say either of those two decks if you really want to be competitive.

Cards you already own: don't have much cards as I recently restarted played on paper... but I don't plan entering a tournament tomorrow, so it's ok to buy the cards little by little.

Colors you like to play: As colors I always favored mostly White and Green but I'm really ok playing other colors too

Style you like to play: creature based combo, aggro, midrange, tempo, ramp and rogue... but mostly midrange and rogue (I prefer playing something more unique then a top tier deck)

Level you want to play at, or aim to build up to: mostly casual, fnm or small local tournament (city with population of 40.000)

Thank you so much in advance for your answers... I'm struggling so much to find a deck I like to play but it's still good

Modern has been around long enough that barely anything is rogue anymore. It might be uncommon, but last month I was able to watch a match and place a guy on tooth and nail combo.

The thing with midrange is that it is expensive. The cards you need are powerhouses like snapcaster, tarmogoyf, liliana, kolaghan's command and dark confidant. Still, I'm learning grixis shadow and enjoying it. GB midrange is also an option.

If you want to start with something budget oriented then build it up, consider bogles. The premise is that you play a hexproof creature turn one and continue to tack on enchantment auras. It is based in green and white, so if you grab the GW checklands and shocklands that are standard legal you could gradually build it up. The deck was also almost reprinted in its entirety in Ultimate Masters, so even a lot of the $5-10 cards a year ago have been cut in half.

If Rogue isn't a thing anymore could you advise me some uncommon decks?

I know Bogles as it's played also in pauper, but I never tried it myself

So, I kinda want to make a deck that wins with Emrakul the Promised End and was thinking either Bant or Sultai Reclamation (Growth Spiral and some ramp/control, some of the older lists even play the turns cards), Tron or that through the breach titan deck. My meta is kinda all over the place right now with a few people on each of the top decks.

Going back and forth between getting into a new Modern deck or just waiting for Modern Horizons. What are other people doing?

I would say I'm a bit of a Vorthos/Johnny and I'm liking decks that build on a Green ramp base, so I've been looking at something like the Bant or Sultai Reclamation, or a Valakut build, or maybe there's something to be done with Green Devotion with some of the War of the Sparks cards (Kiora). I also like the Bant Knightfall because Knight of the Reliquary is one of my favorite cards.

As someone who tends to prefer Green, I'm curious what people would say the best deck is for:

Mono-Green that's not Tron

Selesnya
Gruul
Simic

Bant
Sultai
Temur

GW - Druid Counters
RG - RG Eldrazi?
UG - There's a fun aggro build you could do here.
Bant - Knightfall for sure.
Sultai - Not sure.
Temur - Monkey Grow

You could play mono-green CoCo elves, though most lists are splashing black for Shaman of the Pack and select sideboard cards. It's a very light splash, for literally Shaman and to be able to cast Surgical Extraction from your sb in most cases. That's probably your most viable mono-green list, though there are various aggro or Nykthos lists you could play. Mono-Green Stompy has stolen some wins at various SCG IQs recently too.

As a player who hasn’t played modern since extended which I played TEPS during those times and have played standard since then I built BG rock and bought the abzan and jund toolbox cards. At this time I’m playing Jund and even though it might not be the best deck I’m having decent results and enjoying it more then the other variants

With that said if I was to go back in time I would probably build deaths shadow, I’m still considering spending the 400-500$ to buy the pieces to convert to deaths shadow. But until then I’ll keep on junding

I pretty much exclusively play legacy these days and would like to at least have something modern sleeved up so I can swing by FNM periodically.

I primarily play ANT in legacy; and I know Modern storm is pretty poorly positioned right now; and modern Ad Naus seems like a middling deck at best; so I'm not necessarily looking to replicate the experience.

Keys I'm looking for that do mirror ANT:
- Deck I can focus on long term, generally going to have some degree of viability (even if it ebbs and flows a bit)
- Deck that rewards focus and dedication, rather than metagaming. I'm too old and dont get to play paper often enough to aggressively metagame anymore

Any thoughts?

Quote from idSurge »

GW - Druid Counters
RG - RG Eldrazi?
UG - There's a fun aggro build you could do here.
Bant - Knightfall for sure.
Sultai - Not sure.
Temur - Monkey Grow

Valakut has been putting up a decent showing recently, why not it for RG?

Quote from Raven094 »

Cards you already own: don't have much cards as I recently restarted played on paper... but I don't plan entering a tournament tomorrow, so it's ok to buy the cards little by little.

Colors you like to play: As colors I always favored mostly White and Green but I'm really ok playing other colors too

Style you like to play: creature based combo, aggro, midrange, tempo, ramp and rogue... but mostly midrange and rogue (I prefer playing something more unique then a top tier deck)

Level you want to play at, or aim to build up to: mostly casual, fnm or small local tournament (city with population of 40.000)

Thank you so much in advance for your answers... I'm struggling so much to find a deck I like to play but it's still good

Not to plug my own deck or anything but I think you would like RGx AssaultLoam. It's a midrange deck that is rogue that I have been putting up solid results with. It has good matchups against most of the modern metagame right now, especially Phoenix due to its recurring disruption. You can find out more information about it on the primer on here, though it's pretty out of date.

Hey all,

My meta is basically control decks and burn (occasionally there's some big mana players). There's a split of 60-40 between competitive players and casual players. Decks I own are: Jeskai Control, GBx, Amulet, Tron, and Hardened Scales.

What deck should I pick up?

Quote from Sephlink_ »

Hey all,

My meta is basically control decks and burn (occasionally there's some big mana players). There's a split of 60-40 between competitive players and casual players. Decks I own are: Jeskai Control, GBx, Amulet, Tron, and Hardened Scales.

What deck should I pick up?

from the decks you own? honestly none of those sound inordinately poorly positioned against that field. GBx maybe not so much lest you consistently get out muscled by control and big mana; it has game against either to be sure but i could see it being a set up for strings of hard-fought yet frustrating losses. if the big mana decks are tron, that is probably enough to pass over jeskai unless you really wanna tune your deck/SB for it (or just move to straight UW).

i know a lot of people will say that 'all decks are equally fun!' or something similar regarding subjectivity. honestly though, if there are casuals involved and all other things being equal, id personally not bring tron to the table. if you are attached to the gameplay of the deck and find it that much more enjoyable than the other options; then you do you :P. that said, burn lurking around aint the best, so there's that.

im usually unimpressed by hardened scales whenever i see it played since it relies so much on the namesake enchantment to do its explosive stuff. it does pretty good for itself in tournament standings despite my misgivings, and the london mulligan helps with having that copy of scales in your opener so...

in my personal biased opinion though, if i owned those decks id be playing/learning amulet. my snapcasters and bolts will always be near and dear to me, but amulet always seems like an insanely strong deck whenever i see it in action. the intricacy and seeming ability to adapt to any matchup coupled with its top end potential (fast combo kills) makes it a great looking deck for the long haul.

if you were looking for recommendation for decks you dont own then UR phoenix, humans, or GDS would be my short list. proactive, each has a good amount of play, and the raw power as evidence by their tournament pedigrees speaks well of their longevity as archetypes moving forward. really though id advise against making new deck choices until things settle down after horizons (if this is the case).