MTG Salvation

So, I've been giving thought to my old friend FNS lately. Something that always bugged me was how the deck just didn't have the raw power to punch through sometimes. Attacking with a bunch of 1/1s takes a long time to get through, giving the opponent ample time to find an answer or just do something broken and win.

Stoneforge Mystic has been performing extremely well in Legacy as of late. In both U/W Tempo and Death & Taxes is has been a linchpin.

And it would work well in FNS. It can put equipment into play through Standstill, doesn't mind being returned to hand (recasting it for more equipment is nice), and allows us to run more than just Jittle.
I'd run Sword of Fire and Ice as a minimum, perhaps a Sword of Light and Shadow as well.

Along with a splash for white, the before-mentioned Aven Mimeomancer could see play. Making our 1/1s into 3/1s and giving our Ninjas evasion is quite nice. I'm not as convinced about this without testing.

The obvious slots to work with are the Writ of Passage ones, as well as dropping the count of Jittes in the deck. Something like:
-2 Umezawa's Jitte
-2 Writ of Passage
-8 Island
+4 Tundra
+4 Flooded Strand
+1 Sword of Fire and Ice
+3 Stoneforge Mystic

I will be putting this together for Sunday Legacy, I'll see how it works.

Also, besides the possibility of Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile in the main/board, what other juicy white cards might we want to include?

-T

I remember seeing a grid-magic like system a long while ago (old Inquest or a website) where they pre-laid out basic land all over the grid. As you moved over a land, you 'acquired' it and then were able to tap it for mana. If another player crossed it, it was theirs. Land destruction left a part of the board that was crossable, but didn't produce mana. I'm sure there'd be a way to make the landscape makes sense (mountain ranges, rivers/ponds), but I can see it being an alternative to the system you proposed.
-T

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Don't understand why this is a threat. Use the enchantment to get Krovikan back to your hand, then replace it on top, and continue as usual.

That's assuming you see Tortured Existence every game and that it hits play and stays in play, all of which aren't guaranteed. Especially if you're dredging.

There's a quasi-similar version of this deck in Peasant based around TE and dredge creatures that I run, it's where the Brownscale tech came from. That deck doesn't get very much card advantage or recursion, though.
-T

I'm kind of the 'pioneer' of the budget versions, though I do own all the cards to build the 'real' version. It's still quite good, and I argue that Twisted Abomination is better than Chrome Mox.

I've been testing a heavy green splash for Golgari Brownscale and Sakura Tribe Elder. I'm not sure if STE is better than Twisted Abomination yet. Though it lets you get more than one land a turn, they come into play tapped and have to be basic.
Brownscale does retarded things when you have two of them between your hand and graveyard. Dredging is sometimes a good idea for the deck, but the chances of burying a Krovikan Horror under chaff makes it sketchy.
-T

Mulch hasn't been used in years in 40 land. Treasure Hunt has been discussed in many threads, in many forums, and found lacking in almost every way. It's worse than Mulch at finding land, why would you want to spend even more precious non-land slots on that?
Exploration, Manabond, Life From the Loam are minimum 4x, that leaves Gamble, Burning Wish, Intuition, and Mox Diamond to fill in for acceleration / tutoring. I don't see how Treasure Hunt is any better than any of them.
-T

I still think the Blue splash is just as competitive, if not more so, than the non-Blue. Doubly so if you use Burning Wish. It functions much the same as Intuition, fetching answers to problems when you need them.
-T

I run one basic forest in my deck, it's the first thing I Gamble/Fetch out if I remotely think there's a chance they're playing Blood Moon.

There are also other ways of dealing, like running Firecat Blitz in the board to just play through it, or using Firebolt to kill a Magus of the Moon.
-T

The deck starts with 4x Exploration & 4x Manabond. I don't see a reason to ever run less than that.

If I were to text Explore, it'd be in the Mox Diamond slots.

As another discussion, during my testing I've discovered that Burning Wish feels way more powerful than Intuition. Keeping your manabase simple and being able to wish for an answer to just about everything (especially under Blood Moon) seems to be a better use of those slots.

I don't think that Explore has any place in the deck. Maybe if it was G to cast. In Lands, every single non-land card has to provide a major benefit to the deck. Exploration and Manabond allow us to accelerate turn after turn, Gamble searches for whatever we're missing, Life From the Loam is our engine, Burning Wish searches for answers, Intuition does much the same as Gamble, and Mox Diamond is pure accelerant (and lets us play around Blood Moon and Back to Basics).

A one-shot Exploration for 1 more mana? No thanks.

The biggest problem with it is the colors, same for the B/R and the eventual B/U one. The deck is pretty much G/R, with either a splash for white or blue (or occasionally both). Having a land that taps for just splash colors seems like it would just weaken the deck.
At least the green manlands can be tapped to drop an Exploration or Manabond on turn 2.

-T

It does grow. As addressed in the article, +1/+1 counters will remain on the land indefinitely.
-T

So, the G/R manland has been spoiled:


I think it's too slow. While it does provide R or G, 4 mana to activate it seems harsh. Yes, it can get rather large (hitting that 4/4 that I miss about Monestary), and yes, it can be double activated to provide +2/+2 for each attack, but it still seems weaker than Treetop Village and Mishra's Factory.

Terrain Generator only puts basic land cards into play. Most lists only run a single forest.

Edit: And to add more content, I really hope the R/G manland from Worldwake is awesome. I've been running R/G 40-land for over a year now, but I still miss Nantuko Monastery being a 4/4.

-T

There's a new article on the mainpage talking about a deck similar to mine:
http://mtgsalvation.com/1170-thoughtseizing-the-opportunity-ninja-faeries.html

The primary difference is that it runs Goyf, Vial, and Swords instead of Thopter and Sprite. It also runs less countermagic.

Thoughts?
-T

Odd, if you are running Stifle as a mana-denial counterpart, wouldn't you still want to keep Daze?
Also, I can see dropping the Writs for Threads, it seems pretty good to me and those slots are always fluid anyways.

Have you tried Wastelands instead of Mutavaults with Stifle?
-T