MTG Salvation

Hi, what do you guys think about going UW Tempo with the synergy provided by Torpor Orb + Hushwing Gryff, resilience with Kira, Great Glass-Spinner + Monastery Siege and the all star ETB team: Hunted Phantasm, Dust Elemental, Hunted Lammasu and Sky Swallower.


The deck plan is having a good MU against Abzan and Twin, which are the decks that dominate the metagame. How do we get a good MU against them? We neutralize Rhino with the Orb and the Gryff, which we can protect with Siege and Kira (Only gryff), while being able to beat down really fast with phantasm/elemental/lamasu; also, our creatures can stand any threat they land and kill them. Against Twin, if we get to resolve a Torpor Orb they can't combo, only Command can save them game 1. Game 2 you should expect Ancient Grudge, but still those are 3/4 cards out of 75, while we have 7 copies of the same effect and we can also protect them with remand/snare plus siege/kira.


The sideboard plan is to go more control oriented against combo/aggro/affinity, which also helps fight against their sideboard plan which will most likely include removal/ways to deal with your not-such-a-combo pieces.


This is still under testing, yet it has promising results against the top tier decks of the moment.


What do you guys say? Yay or nay?

I am curios how well the abzan match up is because lilly can kill a single threat and abrupt decay is a busted card, I would would recomend Trickbind because they might feel safe passing the turn with abrupt decay mana up and then bam! end of turn dust elemental trickbind the trigger. maybe as a 2 of since you would need 6 mana, also protects againist lilly.

Also maybe Spell Pierce to protect the combo from toughtsieze and Inquisition also good v lilly

I like the direction and think this is playable.

My observations:
You need two or three more lands main deck. You have casting cost cards you want to be able to cast, 23/24 is the magic number.
I thought that there were some cheaper cards with nasty come into battlefield abilities. Maybe an artifact creature...
I'm not a fan of Hunted Laamasu, not only is it hard to spell, but it's not that big a bang being a four mana 5/5 flyer. I think Dust Elemental is better.
Monastery Seige seems more like a sideboard card, all matchups don't have a ton of removal. I realize getting a Gryff killed is very very bad for this deck, but the tempo loss on Seige that barely affects the board is tough. If it effectively takes cards out of their hand because they can't afford to cast them then it's doing tempo help too, but it's not that big a speed bump. I'd try to get cheaper creatures and rely on your counterspells suite more.

Treacherous Pit-Dweller and Hunted Horror were the two that I saw with a quick look. (I was probably thinking of some older cards that aren't in Modern) Leveler I was thinking about but he costs 5 and is only a generic 10/10. Of course they are in black. With Black you could easily have turn one discard spells, like Thoughtseize to clear the path. Turn two Torpor Orb. Turn three second discard spell and Hunted Horror. Maybe run Pack Rats in case you get stuck with too many discard spells. Splash White for the Hushwing Gryff. You might also put Lightning Greaves in that setup.

But if your huge creatures cost less mana, you'll have mana open to do more reactive things to keep them alive.

[spoiler=Decklist]

I like the idea of combining this with some manifest. They're both trying to do the same thing: cheat around negative ETB effects.