MTG Salvation

I love how people in this forum claims the successful lists are questionable yet celebrates the fact that this forum lives in Tier 2 (because of these questionable lists which consistently top8s big events). This hypocresy that lies in these forums push successful people away from posting here (not only D&T/hatebears, but in general).

Maybe it's time to understand there is a reason why successful people running successful lists play different cards than most people here, rather than constantly say "this is bad, that's bad, they are so lucky". Retrospective time, everybody! Let's try understanding why successful people move away from the cards that are considered good and play cards that actually win games and yet are consiedered 'questionable' here.

Not trying to be harsh to anyone, nor trying to call out anyone. Just think it's about time to ponder about these things.

Greetings Fae team! I'm back on Faeries again after a long break. My current list:



Considering changing the Countersquall in the main for another Liliana of the Veil, or Liliana, the Last Hope in place of 2nd LotV in the board (3 lilis total). Would also like to get another slot for GQ but can't touch surgicals as of now -maybe in the future- and the rest of the slots are pretty tight, can't really play it maindeck.
Not playing Mistbind mostly because Tron is not largely played in my LGS. Kalitas and Tasigur have been great in that spot, as they hose aggro decks pretty well.
The list feels strong, it has a fair game against most decks, although the only deck I have thoroughly tested is Merfolks (a bit over 100 games) with a win rate of 65% pre-board and 75%/80% post-board.


I've seen an uptick in discussion for Liliana of the Veil in the last couple pages. Having played her in faeries since 2014, here's my 2 cents on the card:

For people playing Lili in the main, consider trimming countermagic from your deck. Lili's dominance in the board comes from +1-ing her as much as possible, whether to quickly ultimate vs a Titan Shift deck or to control the board presence of a creature deck. If you can't profitably +1 her, you shouldn't be playing her (at least mainboard), and if you are siding her in, try to trim counterspells for her slots. When Lili is good, counters are generally bad -exception being combo/control, but then you do the same with removal spells- so keep that in mind.
In modern there are more creature based decks than spell based combo or control decks, so that makes our priorities a bit easier:
Removal spell > Counter spell.

Remember: Counters are good as long as there are things on the stack. For things to be on the stack, your opponent has to have cards in hand. Liliana is insanely good at having players go hellbent. So, if you're keeping your hand size in 1 card, keep the card that impacts the board, not the card that has the potential of impacting the stack. This is not really a rule, nor it's restricted to removal spells 100%. Assess the match up, assess your hand, decide what will have more impact before discarding and cursing your topdeck. Lili does not forgive.

Holding up counterspells and discarding value cards or removal to Lili is bad vs decks that want to tap creatures to win, that's why it's a general rule that Lili and counters don't get along (modern is a creature based format after all). Against creature decks it's easier to deal with a resolved creature through removal than having the window open to counter it, and -as where modern stands right now- good counterspells generally cost more mana than good creatures. So if you +1 Lili and you have a Counter and a Removal in hand, discard the counter and play the removal, then compliment with -2 if necessary. Even if you can't play the removal because you tapped out for lili or because you used your black source for a Tseize/IoK, discard the counter and play the removal next turn or when necessary.

The best card to join Lili in your deck is Snapcaster Mage. Always keep the Snapcaster when discarding to Lili's +1 (unless it's strictly necessary to hold something else and being forced to +1 her). Thiago will re-buy what you discarded to her or what you already used and need to re-use, while keeping the beats or protecting her. Don't be afraid of Snapcasting instants in your turn then proceed to +1 lili. If you play serum, you can play snap, target serum, +1 lili, then cast serum. Another great play is going Snap, flashback discard, +1 lili. Snapcaster Mage is the best ally of Liliana of the Veil in UB.

Mystic Snake? I'm in love with this deck.

Quote from 123shumpy »

Im telling you from months of play with the deck that ancient stirrings is good, you don't need to cast it on turn 1 its good at every point in the game. It is a very powerful effect that does a lot for the deck. Also just because nobody on mtg goldfish isn't playing it just means they haven't tried it, probably because there playing the same stock list everyone else is. Im not saying that Chalice isn't great because we all know it is, but there are other great options for this deck and ive found that ancient stirrings and path are very effective.

Yes, stirrings and path are good, that's why GW tron exists. There is a thread to discuss Gx tron decks and it isn't this one. Here the deck is Colorless and it doesn't want to play stirrings, nor green sources. It's not just a 1x1 swap (you can't just take out chalices and bring in stirrings), you have to warp the manabase and many other slots in the main deck to profitably play that single green spell (like the chromatic eggs). This decks says 'screw eggs and stirrings, let's just play Eldrazi threats instead' and chooses to play TKS, Reshaper, Smasher and Endbringer.

There is no room for stirrings in the deck, it's not a deck that improves with stirrings, it's a bad Gx tron if you choose to play stirrings in C Tron.

Quote from CharonsObol »

Quote from Underused Cards »

To be honest, it feels like a gimped Death and Taxes. And wins through the Eldrazi like normal. That said, I can see where Chalice helps in some matchups. But at the same token, why not just jam 4 chalices in the side and play with Vial?

I actually think the better question is "why play white at all?"

The best lockdown decks in Modern are red, and they play 4-8 copies of Moon effects in the maindeck. This build already runs maindeck SSG and Gemstone Caverns; cutting white entirely and playing red instead is just common sense. Plus you'd get access to better removal.

With white in the deck, the deck is just hurting itself.

This is not entirely true. While Moon effects are powerful, they don't seem to be outright game winning in modern (maybe in some specific MUs). Like in the eternal formats, mana acceleration + Chalice + Taxing (especially Thalias) is more effective than just dropping a Moon and hoping to win from there. Playing Moon forces to play a high number of Wastes which is not ideal, Magus is way too fragile in modern to be an actual Moon if you don't have the enchantment. Also, Bolt + Chalice don't get along (the reason why path is on the board), anger is only good against Dredge and little critters decks like regular DnT or Abzan CoCo (which is a deck that's falling out of flavor), it's a lackluster card against most decks.
If you were to play mana accel into moons, you'd be just better off running Sun and Moon.dek rather than eldrazi cards, this deck has a different identity and a different game plan and it feels a lot stronger than dropping a Blood Moon and hoping to draw a game winning card to ride off while the opp is mana screwed.

My 2 cents on the subject.

EDIT:

I don't see the value on playing 4 Battlefield forges over 4 Cavern of Souls, other than casting the monkey which is as bad as not being able to cast it. I guess it could restrain you from casting Arbiter or Thalias in hand, but I believe it could be a great asset for the deck, especially in cases where you need to resolve a TKS/Smasher vs Control or set a Chalice on 2 and want to ignore it with your 2drops.

Quote from tersx »

Quote from darktutor »

Not sure what you mean by that. I assume you mean "stacking" instead of attacking. But what really confuses me is the part where you say you can use KHE to "get to 6 mountains before the first valakut trigger resolves". If you don't have 6 mountains when the lands hit the battlefield, valakut doesn't trigger. So if you play a land and sac KHE to get to 6 lands, only the KHE fetched lands trigger, the previous ones never triggered.

This is false. Valakut triggers whenever a mountain enters the battlefield regardless of how many mountains you already have, THEN it checks if you have 5 other mountains.

Say that to the rules:

Quote from 603.4. »

A triggered ability may read “When/Whenever/At [trigger event], if [condition], [effect].” When the trigger event occurs, the ability checks whether the stated condition is true. The ability triggers only if it is; otherwise it does nothing. If the ability triggers, it checks the stated condition again as it resolves. If the condition isn’t true at that time, the ability is removed from the stack and does nothing. Note that this mirrors the check for legal targets. This rule is referred to as the “intervening ‘if’ clause” rule. (The word “if” has only its normal English meaning anywhere else in the text of a card; this rule only applies to an “if” that immediately follows a trigger condition.)

I like the delver approach and I like it a lot! Here's my spin at it

Quote from deathandcatmix »

Lol 5 drops might be the requirement by the end of the month lol #fatalpush

There was people testing Gearhulk not too long ago and it stopped even being discussed because it was rough on the mana and not winning the game on the spot. Going forward I think D&Ts will have to go 23 lands and 24 if playing TKS and Baron, these kind of card pushes the games to go longer and stopping nonsense like Infect and DS Zoo, I think Baron is likely to be a key player in the upcoming metagame although not sure if for DnT, but from BWx decks like Junk and maybe Esper if it rises with maybe 1 more good printing.

Quote from Gathering Magic Primer »

Viridian Corrupter is not a may. Attacking with an Inkmoth and playing Corrupter post-combat may not work out well for you. This interaction is also relevant when playing against Eldrazi Displacer. It’s also important to note that if you have an activated Inkmoth and your Corrupter is blinked by Displacer you cannot use Vines to save your Inkmoth.

If you have vines in hand you just cast it on Corrupter and it's not blinked, so there is no problem there. You can save inkmoth with vines in that scenario.

Horizon Canopy doesn't provide card advantage (you spend a card, you get another one), it rather gives you resource filtering (you change a land for a fresh card off the top f your library).

This forum seems to be the catch all for Sultai strategies, so until one of them gets the tier rating necessary to warrant it's own forum I am in favor of updating the title to include all sub archetypes.

Quote from darktutor »

Quote from CharonsObol »

We don't auto-lose G2 to Affinity running Whipflare.

I mean, that's gotta be worth changing the whole deck, right?

While that is helpful, it's kind of the most niche scenario you could possibly wish for against affinity. Burrenton Forge-Tender covers this problem without making the deck weaker to the rest of the field's sideboard, while also providing an edge against a lethal Galvanic Blast or a removal aimed at your best dude.

I'm deeply saddened that you thought I was being serious. The oddball suggestions in this thread just got slightly too real.

While people are bringing up playing red in the deck I finally did it!

Starting up a twitch series soon...

I don't have a ton of info to share but know this...

It's going to be fun and enlightening. As I get closer to launching the series, I'll fill you all in on the plan. Hope you are excited about this!

-catmix

my opponent ran away before I could find out if this game was winnable :c

Death&Taxes: mtgTop8 Quicklinks

What is this post about?
        Despite the recent meta-wide popularity of Death&Taxes (and the BW-Eldrazi variant in particular) the posted results still seem to be sorted under a number of crazy titles. Searching through Hatebear, Flicker, Eldrazi, etc. results to find actual Death&Taxes listings can often be a pain, especially when you just want to compare the top few recent decks in your splash color.
        This list uses google-fu and short-links to type the "Decks must contain following cards"-entries into mtgTop8 so you don't have to.

Search Posted Wins
The links below are sorted from top-to-bottom following wide-to-narrow applicability. You can hover-over the links here and bookmark them to your browser. Favorite and forget it.

 

• Death&Taxes / / Hatebears      (Searches for: GQ, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
These results are super general and not necessarily D&T. Though, sometimes it's useful for comparing Death&Taxes vs. Hatebears.


• WX-Death&Taxes      (Searches for: Wisp, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
Finds >95% of all D&T decks (all color variants) while excluding Hatebears decks with decent accuracy (Hatebears tends to not run Wisp).


• WGX-Death&Taxes      (Searches for: Forest, Wisp, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
Finds white-green D&T lists as long as the pilots packed at least one basic Forest.


• WBX-Death&Taxes      (Searches for: Swamp, Wisp, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
Finds white-black D&T lists as long as the pilots packed at least one basic Swamp.


• WRX-Death&Taxes      (Searches for: Red, Wisp, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
Finds white-red D&T lists as long as the pilots packed at least one basic Mountain.


• WUX-Death&Taxes      (Searches for: Island, Wisp, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
Finds white-blue D&T lists as long as the pilots packed at least one basic Island.


• WXC-Death&Taxes      (Searches for: TKS, Wisp, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
Finds most Eldrazi D&T lists, even most micro-splashes, since TKS is often the biggest reason to dabble in Eldrazi.


• WCX-Death&Taxes      (Searches for: EzTemple, Wisp, Vial, and ThaliaGT.)
Finds heavily-splashed Eldrazi D&T lists by searching for maindeck Eldrazi Temple; this will often miss Eldrazi micro-splashes.

Why?
        I mostly made this post because I got annoyed manually typing entries into mtgTop8 and figured others might be in the same boat. Some of you may already have your own work-arounds but for everyone else, here it is. The formatting is a little over the top but I wanted to grab everyone's attention to gauge interest. (And maybe selfishly snag some likes in the process; Muwahahaha! <--evil laugh)

Suggestions
If there are some important searches that you feel I missed (or better search cards for a given splash/variant) feel free to PM me a suggestion.

Quote from Gul_Dukat »

you just said you commonly go for the combo and get path'd.


you should never combo unless your about to die, or you can protect it or they don't have ways to interact with it. like if their playing mono green ramp

your playing the deck wrong.

Ok, easy there.

First, @PraiseTheKappa, I will say that I do agree with Gul_Dukat that Pact of Negation is not ideal. I'd almost call it unplayable in this deck at the moment. There are just too many cases where you need your protection spell for other purposes. We aren't hyper focused on the combo, but even if you are trying to jam it on turn 4/5, more often than not, cards like Inquisition and Dispel will do almost the same job as Pact (if not better sometimes), while being much better in any noncombo situation. Especially with all the burn decks and blue mirrors running around, I'd highly recommend those two over Pact. Straight U/R Twin would be more likely to play Pact, given their reliance on the combo and ability to support it a little better, but even they are more likely to play stuff like Spellskite and Dispel instead. That said, if you still want to test it for yourself, you absolutely should.

@Gul_Dukat, chill out dude. He's new to the deck, and is simply asking for advice. No need to berate him and tell him he's playing the deck wrong. I wouldn't exactly call this sound advice either:

you should never combo unless your about to die, or you can protect it or they don't have ways to interact with it

When to combo is a very sensitive choice, yes, but you can't limit yourself to restrictions like this, just as you can't always jam the combo on turn 4. Sometimes you try and jam the combo even if you aren't about to die, or you aren't sure they have interaction. Usually, yes you wait until the coast is clear or you are forced to combo under pressure, but sometimes those things are unknown and you still have to go for it. There is no "wrong" way to play the deck, it's personal preference.

At the very least though, have some respect. Don't just yell at a fellow poster for not knowing the optimal way to play this strategy. Be helpful. That's what the threads are for. Saying something like this would be much more preferable:

"In general, it's better to wait for the combo until you have a good opening, or you are forced to try and win before your opponent kills you. Sometimes you jam it on turn 4, but usually you are better off waiting until you can protect the combo, or when your opponent taps out foolishly. Running into removal every time is a sure sign you are being too hasty with the combo. Just take your time, and remember to do everything at their EOT whenever possible to give you maximum control over the game."

That's much more constructive advice for Kappa than, "you're doing it wrong."

Quote from Mitorah »

Quote from cwalumd »

If you have guides for different common matchups, I think that would be very helpful to the community. I would certainly love to read them.

Indeed. I have FNM this friday, and I was thinking of bringing faeries to the table and I could use all information I need.

I have a lot of personal notes. I will give the infect guide first. Afterwards, we will see how it goes .

Quote from Cikan »

(See page 169 taking out the Go for the Throat for a H. Recall in the board for deck list. Very much like the Metillion list).

Bladiebla. Tournament succes!

Well done! Always those stupid semifinales >.< . I don't think that dropping Tect Edge is a real deal. Scapeshift and Tron are still not your friends and I found it overperforming in the Jund matchup, were every removal spell counts. That said, new builds of jund are favourable for us (unlike unfavourable junk lists). Bitterblossom is a house now they run 2 Abrupt Decay. My thoughts about all the matches is pretty much the same. It's great to have another sample going on with the list I have been developing for months now.

I only scored very humble results during the last FNM. Being very tired left my play a lot to desire for.
1-1 draw against RG tron
2-1 win against RG tron
0-2 loss against Zoo Company
2-0 win against 8-rack. I have no idea how 8-rack is supposed to win once the opponent gets acquantained with it. It realy is a one-trick pony.

Also, Darktutor, I love you your results and your considerations about anticipate et al. A faeriedeck should have powerful draws, not such cards. I like your experimental, but competitively orientated mind. Really helps us to beat the meta . Grats! Also love the 4 Lilianas.

I still feel that UB Faeries are reasonably well-positioned in the meta. However, the upsurge of Company decks might really shrink our chances.
----------------

No one else in my meta plays Faeries, so it was a ton of fun Friday to be that guy.

As long as you win you should feel proud . I also have no one else to play and test faeries with. In my country (Holland) Faeries has the highest top8/attendence conversion rate of all decks, guess who played faeries solo .

What are thoughts on Extirpate or Surgical Extraction as a side option? Let's you see hand, can mess with graveyard stuff, can potentially pull cards out of their hand (and library), can kill a combo deck (not that faeries needs help there) - can depower a goyf at instant speed and I really like the phyrexian mana cost aspect. I suppose the question would become, what do you take out that does less work? I guess really, these cards don't effect the game enough to take a slot or two when we already have such good disruption.

Actually, against Tron the cards are nice. A one-off is perfectly justifiable, I would not get anywhere beyond that though. We don't need more than 3-5 slots against combo decks, however, these slots need to be general and good.

Has Sage's Dousing been tested? It seems we run a lot of wizards..

No, did you?

How about Condescend ?

Did you?

Delay?

Good against counter mirrors. However, we already beat counter mirrors so hard that we don't usually care.

Dimur Charm?

Has some sidedeck merits. Can remember some suggested it during the Cruise-Delver Era.

Quote from Gregaries »

I believe might have mistaken Sakura Tribe Elder and Veteran Explorer.

Haven't even finished the primer and I'm already getting trolled by someone's troll account.