MTG Salvation

Caleb Durward recently picked up the deck to some moderate success (more on stream than in that video series) He is playing a slower version than I have been advocating for (more lands, thirst over anticipate etc) but the decks are quite similar otherwise. Nice to know I'm not crazy in thinking that Stirrings is the best 1 mana cantrip in the format.


Also BUMP

Hi Guys. I'm pretty new to the deck and am looking for some feedback. I know that opinions differ a lot on card choices and such, but I'm looking for structural feedback. For example, I'm playing 12 plains. Is that too many basics? Am I not playing enough lands in general? I don't see anybody mainboarding relic. Should I not be doing this? Other feedback/opinions on my list are also appreciated.

So far I'm quite impressed with the deck. Just about the only problems I'm having is there being only 4 vials and paths in the deck

Thanks in advance.

Usually 4 vials is better because the 2nd vial is not dead. It frees up more lands to be used for cantrips and makes both combo pieces uncounterable. The third one probably is, but I'd rather draw 1-2 than 0-1. The faster draws are pretty important for this deck because most Legacy decks have many ways to interact with us (in the main), so giving them time to do that is inadvisable.

About people thinking you are one deck or the "fair" plain, playing against stoneblade decks is not so different than playing against us. Force and STP are still good etc. Once we play a vial, fetch Shuko with SFM etc the jig is up and we still need to resolve stuff. Counting on the opponent to misplay against you not a gameplan. You are getting percentage points from people you can be beating through sheer skill. Think of what happens if you play this deck against the same person again, or if you do well with it locally. Obscurity should not be a big reason to play a deck.

The main reason I would not play SFM in this deck is that Shuko sucks. One of the best parts about this combo is that after both pieces are on board the opponent should have no way to stop the win. We mill at instant speed, and then have 2ish chances to destroy their hand before casting Dread Return. Shuko solves a problem we do not have. We are pinched not on the Nomad piece of the combo as we can play more than 4 of those already, but at the Illusionist piece of the combo. Only 4 of those exist. So we now have easy access to a card that is worse than Nomad.

We also can't play a reasonable "fair" game preboard. The opponent's fair deck is full of fair card while ours has fair cards and then nonsense like nacromoeba. If they are drawing Abrupt decays and we are trying to beat them fairly with that quality of topdecks we don't stand a chance. Unless of course we are playing against other combo decks where our disruption is what carries us and we can just win with lame 1/1s.

The transformational SB plan is the best reason to play SFM but I've yet to see a good enough transformational SB.

I can post my list if y'all want. It has a wish board and some tops to minimize inconsistency and find answers. Also the kill is a little bit tighter than the others kills I've seen.

Wouldn't the zero mana cantrip be better for speed?

Guys Ive been advocating for Ancient Stirrings for like 7 months now. Why the sudden open mindedness?



Well either way, welcome to the land of 1 mana impulses and t4 average wins.

The deck sometimes gets keepable hands that end up not getting anywhere, so I don't wanna be that guy.. but Kokusho, this deck should not be losing consistently to random beatdown.

It is near impossible to get hard numbers on this deck, but I playtest against affinity all the time and game 1 is just mostly a coin toss. I once tested for a whole day where we both drew nothing but t3 wins over and over.

what is going wrong in your games that it is your opponent t4ing you rather than the other way around?



About "Eggsendancy":

It seems really interesting. 4x inky might not be enough creatures tho.

Also, playing an OTV in the tron version also means you never fizzle. I think I've fizzled once from a decent OTV and that involved blanking on 40+ draws.

The two paragraphs under the dashes are spot on. They summarize things I've been trying to say quite well.

As for Serum Visions, I choose not to play it not because it is hard to cast, but because it doesn't pull it's weight. I have about 12 (from a 'maximum' of 14) colored artifact sources. One blue mana costs a little under 2 colorless a lot of the time. Serum visions isn't worth it at 2 mana.

The only time I'm not able to generate enough colored mana is when I've been aggressively cycling eggs to find action for a few turns now and draw an OTV. This might change with 8 1 mana colored spells. but I don't imagine it will be too different.

Stony Silence is kind of a bad example, as it is the single strongest card against us. Even so, post-board I have 4 lands that produce the colors needed to get rid of it.

The bigger reason why Serum Visions doesn't see play and the deck has trouble with matching hate cards with answers is the need for a high critical mass of artifacts. Basically instead of having card selection like Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand we have cantripping artifacts and allows us to draw 2-3 cards per turn for a long time.

While I do not play Serum Visions, I am currently trying a 2-of Telling Time. 1 more colorless mana is not much to ask from a deck that is very good at making lots of it, and the effect is something that the deck needs.


The real reason for me to use tronlands tho is that they are a different axis of interaction. They let you play stuff like alternate win cons in the board which are almost completely unaffected by common hate.

You're right, I don't necessarily need to have win cons besides Arc Trailing people to death. Call of the Herd and Rolling Temblor are still not great cards tho.

I tried the Naya list out a bit. I agree that countermagic is a problem. Most games that I won against Blue tron involved landing a 3drop on turn 2. The deck has so much concentrated at 3 that I think you would want more than 4 birds. If I were to try it again I would play 3ish arbor elves. that should also help against counters in that you'd be able to cast more than one spell per turn. The deck also had problems casting Seismic Assault with all those non-red sources so a mana dork or more filterlands would be pretty good.

I think that Burning Vengeance is a pretty sweet card. Worse in a vacuum than Seismic Assault, but muuch more castable. Tho I really do not like raven's crime or other discard in a meta filled with treasure cruise. Here is a rough draft of what I intend to play next time I get the chance.



Call of the Herd and Rolling Temblor are the cards I'm least happy with and might later be replaced by a more legit win con. I don't wanna play goyf or snapcaster because I have some hope of the deck functioning with a RIP/relic out.

Depends on what you mean by "has a place". Can it win games, yes. Are there decks in the format that do just about the same thing except better? yes.

Compare it to Sneak & Show. they are a 2 card combo deck of about the same speed and protection density. Except they blank more hate (most removal, grave hate, etc) and they have up to 8 of each combo piece.

BTW, you do not want to play Restoration Angel or Treasure Cruise in this deck because it will lose you lots of games.

Boil is modern legal. I don't know if it is better than choke in this deck, but it can do a lot against Scapeshift

Is Treetop Village better than Stirring Wildwood in that build? It probably isn't a huge difference, but reach and the extra point of toughness can be relevant.

I have not been able to test much do to a) being busy b) playing a ton of legacy. The only thing that recent testing has showed me is that we can cast anything needing just 1 colored mana. So colors aren't much of a restriction.

Seal of Primordium: probably as good as anything else we use. Doesn't require keeping up mana. This is slightly better against pod.

Golem's Heart: UR delver and burn look to be two of the top decks in modern atm. (Both decks are weak to pyroclasm btw). Golem's Heart can gain us an average of 2-3 life a turn which is hard to keep up with.

Riddlesmith: I might have mentioned him before. Removal light decks do exist in this format and untapping with this guy will let us see 2-3 extra cards per turn.



Edit

Highlight of today: Opponent has a tapped sigarda and an untapped restoration angel and 17 life. Opponent tells me I need to play 3 Emrakuls to win. Banefire is in my graveyard. I draw all but 6 cards in my deck. Cast an Emrakul. Draw the rest of my deck as a consequence of using wellsprings and such to cast a second emrakul. One of the Emrakuls causes my graveyard to shuffle into my (empty) library. I take my first extra turn and draw into a banefire (With enough on board to draw the rest of the deck).

What do you mean by the second part of that?

I agree that having probe and plunge overtax our life total a bit, but the cards do very different things for the deck.

I've found probes to be pretty good for information and speed purposes... but it might be the case that the deck can only play one or the other.

I've also kind of been wanting to shave at least 1 OTV card. I want to be drawing 1 every game but almost never more than 1, and the worst kinds of hands that this deck gets in my experience have like 3-4 cards with cmc > 3.

For plunge, I haven't done anything greater than x=5 yet. I'm thinking the worst case scenario is that we see 3ish OTVs or all 3 win cons or something like that but I think the chances are low. The only cards it really hurts to exile are multiple KCI OTV or win cons I guess, but we can always save the most important one of those.

Also, plunge helps us to dig to our sideboard cards.