MTG Salvation

I'm thinking about running grafdigger's cages in my sideboard. With Eldritch evolution and all the different green creature tutors I feel the deck is slow enough that hatebears are a problem--something I haven't thought for a long time. Dunno where to fit them though.

I played a few games against BGx and am treating gearhulk a bit like a sixth ad nauseam for games where you don't have leyline in your opener but should keep/a good way to flash in and one-shot a liliana. It won be like 2 of 5 or so sideboard games in testing simply by being a topdeck.

On the flip side, I just purchased a playset of splinter twin so...whatever.

People that want SSG banned have no idea how to play modern, look at results, and generally just hate all combo. Ignore them.

Quote from AtomicMurphy »

I thought it was fine. The only thing I had trouble with was being able to cast Grave Titan at a reasonable time.

This has been my issue with grave titan too--especially where i want it most against BGx, fulminator is already good against us a lot of the time and 6 mana can be rough. Not too hard to keep us off it.

This is what conflagrate does at sorcery speed for a single mana cheaper--and I've never had one removed from the yard while trying to use it to win. Of course conflagrate also beats skite naturally which is why I liked it before and given the un-interactivity and speed of the format, going off on your own turn doesn't matter.

On the back up win con issue--I've liked grave titan the best across the board for all match ups it might come in against. I wouldn't bring it in against bant eldrazi, but certainly BGx and hatebear type lists. Grave titan likely isn't going to get removed, isn't a good blink target, is liliana proof, and often ends the game really fast.

The other thing I've been looking at messing around with is inverter of truth--but I'm going to have to find a way to make that work, no good way to execute that plan yet

I actually like the idea of legacy lost in our own deck...as a way to deal with liliana that's cheaper than memorocide. I had tried memorocide but found it a turn too slow most of the time. This thing is sweet.

I've considered spelltwine and sins of the past before myself--but this is guy having flash preserves the speed of the combo--and that body is NOT small.

What do you guys think of torrential gearhulk that just got spoiled today? You can use it combo at instant speed given an ad naus in the graveyard, and works as a back up win-con body as well short of artifact removal game 2/3.

Quote from artfranc007 »

I simply disagree. We have 12 non land mana producers. More often then not we have too much mana. We go off turn 4 so that means that a turn 1 can trip is not always crucial. But when all of our ad nauseams are toward the bottom, sleight of hand does little to move them toward the top. Depths let's look deeper but also pushes ad nauseam toward the top, which is relevant if you have to spoils. Also as I said before when side boarding we usually take out copies of soh, if your going to shave on card draw, which we basically have to do, you might as well have a card that gives you more bang for your buck.

it is the same principle in lantern, with ancient stirrings. no shuffle effects mean that every time you cast stirrings/peer even if you don't hit the card you still increase your chances of drawing what you are looking for.

If you're winding up with a surplus of mana--try mystical teachings over peer/spoils. Sleight is irreplaceable at this point (until ponder or preordain come off the BL) and I think you're seeing your positive results due to variance rather than an actual improvement to the deck.

Quote from Nealdrox »

I'm considering running a set of Brass instead of Gemstone mines. Am i 100% wrong in considering this?

The only time I regret gemstone is in super grindy games where you draw kinda poorly--or when you have to try and land a pentad prism through a remand/spell snare deck game 1. I often don't die from the COB pings--but I do prefer 4 gemstone FIRST and then occasionally use 1 or 2 COB after that. IDK if the straight swap is what you want to do, or is addressing the problem you're having? Why would you want to swap?

Also I'd love to hear about your matches and what you faced? When I day 2'd the only hard matches were double affinity and a misunderstanding of how my grixis twin opponent's deck was built.

@ killing through supression field: either you had patrician's scorn in anyway because you wanted it even without field against an opponent with leylines (or you kill with conflagrate on your own turn).

@ Shadowgripper--I agree. I'm testing out nephalia academy right now too, and noticed that its great against targeted discard, but you can run into trouble with liliana locks if you get caught at the wrong time. Truths really helps there in the situations where you don't or can't discard without messing up your angle of attack.

@namida/Keirandthewhale, I win with conflagrate more often the in games with supression field--sometimes field never gets played--then I'd kill with LS. Other times I also have a patrician's scorn in cooincidentally, so I'd kill with the LS again after blowing up field (this would happen against a U-control deck most likely, so they can't fetch for lands to counter stuff until I have 3 pacts in my hand AND go off on their turn).

My usual plan against BGx has just been 4 leylines, 2 thoughtseize + I usually swap up what I'm siding out. Typically I go -1 unlife, slight, serum, spoils, -2 pacts. I've been taking out all pentads and 2 pacts lately, but I think I don't like that as much. My jund opponents learned from me how to beat Ad nauseam and know the match up well, so I have to switch up how I board sometimes to throw them off of what to prioritize. The issue is that I think competent non-absent minded Jund players will always bring in fulminator, which is tough for us to deal with without turn 1 bloom AND enough lands or a simian while also holding pieces of the combo (given no leyline). Pentad often dies, but it comes down before BGx has really drawn that many cards or established clear card advantage with bob, sometimes you can steal games by speeding up, rather than eliminating targets for their removal. Now that I've written this out--I'm pretty settled on taking out -1 unlife, -spoils, -3 pacts, and 1 cantrip for 4 leylines and whatever other 2 cards I'm running at the time for beating jund.

Quote from Namida »

So I went to a Modern event today, playing BatHickey's list with the Suppression Fields, and I subbed in a Dragonlord Dromoka for the Grave Titan since I don't own Grave Titans. I went 2-3, beating Jund and Nahiri, losing to Jund, Junk, and Blue Moon. Suppression Field directly contributed to my win against Jund, but it was never good if I didn't play it before Turn 2. Oddly, Conflagrate was the MVP for me today--my blue opponents all played Snapcaster Mages on Turn 2 every game, and Conflagrate just killing their only pressure was very useful; I also killed a ton of Lingering Souls tokens against Junk. The play of the day was losing to Blue Moon because I played a Dragonlord Dromoka on Turn 5, only to have my opponent enchant it with Imprisoned in the Moon and destroy it with a Tectonic Edge.

Sounds like a tough lineup of decks to beat--mind explaining what happened in the matches where you lost?

IMO--suppression field for me is behaving like leylines 5-7 (now 5-7, not 5-8). The idea is that mulling against discard and being able to turn 1/2 them or a leyline against BGx is perfect and buys you enough time to just win.

Specifically just stony silence causes quite a few problems if you don't have an answer to it in your hand before you combo. If you've got one or two echoing truths or disenchants, you likely still only have them in your combo turn.

Pentad prism is pretty important to my ability to properly get off a successful lab man kill--and so while you don't need patrician's scorn to beat a leyline, its annoying for decks with faster clocks (or if you were just slow to get the combo off in general) to have to have extra mana on the combo turn to get off a echoing truth.

Hope this makes sense now--card is a weird one.