MTG Salvation

Hey Guys, what do you think about the new Ajani, "Ajani,Adversary of Tyrants"? 4 manas, he´s white, and the second ability is "[-2] Return target creature card with converted mana cost 2 or less from you graveyard to the battlefield".

There is an article about the deck on channel fireball that was in April 2018 and I think that is where I started looking on martyr proc Allen Wu does the deck justice going over how underrated the deck can be when built correctly. I’m going to take his view point on it and take it for a spin in a pptq especially with the new angel coming in core 19 it plays extremely well with Wu’s list. The nice thing is if it gets bolted emeria brings it back for late game finishes

This article is pretty good indeed!

I really like the avacyn in the sideboard.
Im also gonna try a similar list, just with a touch of green for renegade rallier!

Let me know how it plays out. I’m taking out two thraben inspectors for two Resplendent Angels just to try her out. I’m also replacing rest in piece with the new spirit that is coming in the core set

How does this deck stack up against control decks like Jeskai Control? I'm thinking of dusting off my old Martyr-proc deck and giving it a go at my next FNM.

Quote from traderjoe »

How does this deck stack up against control decks like Jeskai Control? I'm thinking of dusting off my old Martyr-proc deck and giving it a go at my next FNM.

It depends pretty heavily on the build and how many Planeswalker answers you have, but it can be 50/50. Field and Ghost Quarter answer Colonnade neatly and they don't pressure our life totals, so we can get under them. They typically get their game-ending state online quicker and faster than us, though. I find the BW list does the best, as it has a hard to deal with threat in Blood Baron of Vizkopa and more main deck answers.

Gonna play tomorrow in a small tournament as preperation on GP Barcelona:)
Not 100% sure about the sideboard yet
How good are Runed Halo and Nevermore?

Side

• 1x Archangel Avacyn
  
• 1x Blessed Alliance
  
• 3x Damping Sphere
  
• 1x Day of Judgment
  
• 1x Hex Parasite
  
• 1x Qasali Pridemage
  
• 1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
  
• 1x Sorcerous Spyglass
  
• 2x Stony Silence
  
• 3x Surgical Extraction
  

Not sure that Nevermore will be necessary to play it.
Runed Halo will be great against Valakut decks and Liliana.

I went 2-2-1 in the tournament. The deck felt pretty good to me.


First match vs Grixis pyromancer with griselbrand/goryos. Draw 1-1
Game 1: had to mulligan to 5 and couldn't pressure enough. Griselbrand wins the game.
Game 2: Surgical on both lingering souls and griselbrand helped out a lot. Won the game with Sigarda.
Not enough time to finish game 3, I think its pretty favoured for us after boarding.

Second match vs KCI. Loss 0-2
Game 1 feels like autoloss. Game 2 I had a surgical and a sorcerous spyglass (named inventors fair)
Couldn't really interrupt the combo and was killed by aetherflux resevoir.
I feel I need a 3rd Stony Silence here. Didn't draw the damping spheres but I assume they are also pretty good here.

Third match vs Mono green Tron Win 2-0
This is were the ralliers really shined with ghost quarters and field of ruins.
Game 2 a stony silence and sorcerous spyglass on ugin buys me enough time to finish the game.

Fourth Match vs Bring to Light Scapeshift. Loss 2-0
Game 1 I lost pretty fast to the combo.
Didnt had that much in sideboard for this match next to surgical but didnt draw it.
Had to mulligan both games and couldnt gain enough life with martyr/serra.
I feel if you get a turn 2 serra online here you can get enough life to be safe

Fifth Match vs Affinity. Win 2-1
First game I stabilize at 8 life but opponent has 2 galvanic blast.
Game 2 I get stuck on 2 lands but stony silence and squadron hawk buys me enough time to find the 4th land to cast day of judgment.
Game 3 was fairly easy because I had a martyr in starting hand with again stony silence and wrath of god.

Overall thoughts:

The renegade rallier performed really good. Fetching on turn 3 to get the fetch back feels great. This also makes sure you hit your 4th and 5th land way more often. Vs tron this card is just amazing and I feel this matchup is a lot better now. He also can get back a lot of the sideboard cards.

4 thraben inspectors feels real nice. It makes sure you keep the pace against the more midrange/control decks.

The surgicals and stony silences in the sideboard were pretty strong.
I feel like adding another stony silences and maybe something like 2 runed halo.
The runed halos can help out vs valakut decks/storm/.
I might cut the sorcerous spyglass and the Hex parasite to make up some room.

too bad you did not face jeskai control I think that match up needs to be re looked at. If they bring in surgicals we are screwed. surgical extract martyr or ascendant and the deck falls apart.

This weekend I will be playing in GP Barcelona.

So enough matches to test!

Quote from Jiskel »

In the Jeskai matchup I usually bring in my own surgicals or some form of GY hate (Rip/Relic). But in those matchups with things like path it can be pretty problematic so i don't always keep my serras in and I throw in my bigger more problematic threats and planeswalkers. You can surgical your own serra in the GY in response to your ops surgical and simply fail to find the other serras, this removes it as a target in your GY. Likewise to targeting yourself with relic and removing the targeted card and same thing for mistveil plains, only time it really becomes an issue when they extirpate your card because of split second.

But Surgical Extraction states that you search that players GY, hand and library and exile that card from them all. So there is no "fail to find".

Quote from Ulfendar »

Quote from traderjoe »

Quote from Jiskel »

In the Jeskai matchup I usually bring in my own surgicals or some form of GY hate (Rip/Relic). But in those matchups with things like path it can be pretty problematic so i don't always keep my serras in and I throw in my bigger more problematic threats and planeswalkers. You can surgical your own serra in the GY in response to your ops surgical and simply fail to find the other serras, this removes it as a target in your GY. Likewise to targeting yourself with relic and removing the targeted card and same thing for mistveil plains, only time it really becomes an issue when they extirpate your card because of split second.

But Surgical Extraction states that you search that players GY, hand and library and exile that card from them all. So there is no "fail to find".

Your posts inspired me to figure out how it works, it's a pretty clever interaction and I think it could potentially win games hence I'm sharing it(since i'm pretty new to modern and someone else could maaybe find it useful):

First the card text:

Choose target card in a graveyard other than a basic land card. Search its owner's graveyard, hand, and library for any number of cards with the same name as that card and exile them. Then that player shuffles their library.

Any can be zero, so you don't have to remove any more than the copy in the graveyard to make the opponents fizzle.

Also:

701.14b If a player is searching a hidden zone for cards with a stated quality, such as a card with a certain card type or color, that player isn’t required to find some or all of those cards even if they’re present in that zone.

You don't even have to look for them, you just exile the copy in your graveyard and declare a fail to find, and procede to shuffle (Is it mandatory to shuffle if you didn't look? I would say 90% yes because the card says so, but I could be wrong.)

The tl:dr is you can respond to a surgical with a surgical, just exile the copy in the grave, and his will fizzle(as pointed out by Jiskel)

Sorry if it's not entirely in topic, but it might turn out useful for the less experienced players like me, first time poster long time lurker.

There is an other question I have, what do you guys think of Resplendent Angel from core19? Is it too fragile? is it playable?

PS:Good luck Kastellan! Hope to see you on the stream!

That's brilliant! Thanks for explaining. Details like these always trip me up in this game.

Hi everyone. I generally play Soul Sisters but wanted to convert it to Proc build. Have about 3 different lifegain decks now. This is what i am currently going to make. Still have not got all of the cards. I may add Surgical Extraction like a lot have talked about, but currently out of my reach until i get more $$ almost all of the expensive cards like Flagstones of Trokair i already own.

I think that Ixalan's binding is a great card over o ring. I am going to try it in my build. I am working a build that can handle the tron match up with the new angel. I think that angel is the key to that match up. Once you get a fast serra ascendent and drop a resplendant angel you can put so much pressure on tron it is not even funny. I would play surgicals and crucible in that match to screw their mana. Binding does wonders in that game because if they do land a laate game Karn or ugin you can binding them and play stony silence to shut up O Stone. Forgive me if I am pointing out the obvious. I am new to the deck. And i only have two months to build and prepare for a modern pptq and tron is popular in our area unfortunately. That is at least that is what I keep hearing.

Quote from Infect2011 »

I think that Ixalan's binding is a great card over o ring. I am going to try it in my build. I am working a build that can handle the tron match up with the new angel. I think that angel is the key to that match up. Once you get a fast serra ascendent and drop a resplendant angel you can put so much pressure on tron it is not even funny. I would play surgicals and crucible in that match to screw their mana. Binding does wonders in that game because if they do land a laate game Karn or ugin you can binding them and play stony silence to shut up O Stone. Forgive me if I am pointing out the obvious. I am new to the deck. And i only have two months to build and prepare for a modern pptq and tron is popular in our area unfortunately. That is at least that is what I keep hearing.

In my completed build i will prob have surgical in the side. Just missing the budget for it since i just ordered the Layline and others.

I agree on Ixalan's Binding it can possibly stop other things coming so might be better than a few. Cast Out Vs Ixalan's Binding is a tough choice though since Cast Out does have flash so testing is prob needed

In my opinion, Cast Out is much better than Ixalan's Binding: Flash and Cycling is far superior to a narrow upside (stoping casting spells with the same name)

Quote from tumorbr »

In my opinion, Cast Out is much better than Ixalan's Binding: Flash and Cycling is far superior to a narrow upside (stoping casting spells with the same name)

I like both cards but testing is definitely needed. Have you played with both?

Quote from Jiskel »

I've played with both and tbh, cast out has always been on top. The flash side and cycling alone make it superior and allow you to interact with problematic cards at instant speed. My main use cases for it locally is that we have a few breach moon players, being able to snag an emrakul, the aeons torn that could be game breaking is pretty sweet.

Ixalans binding has it's uses but everything i wanted to effectively nevermore I will just use nevermore instead, I can't ixalans binding crytic command for example.

The problem i find with the tron example is that they have several ways to simple make us get rid of ixalans binding, karn, ugin, all is dust, o stone to name a few. I think it's good, but i don't think it suits martyr from testing with it.

Thank you. I have limited testing with both. Was looking at O-Ring also since i really want to use Sun Titan as at least a 1 of. How is O-Ring vs Cast out. The Flash I am sure makes a big difference, but O-Ring can come out earlier

Did you see the 7-1 PTQ Gobo's list?

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1175991#paper

It looks sweet. My list is almost identical, the only differences are Runed Halo, Gideon Ally, Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Relic of Progenitus (I use Surgical).
I really like Walking Ballista and kinda want hear his opinion on Walking Ballista. If someone knows him...

His list does not have Ghostly Prison, Cavern of Souls and Surgical Extraction.