MTG Salvation

I would not play hostage taker nor aetherborn. 4 toughness is way more toughness than 3 in terms of dodging removal and/or coming out of combat alive. I'd suggest Contraband Kingpin. Specially if you are straight UB, you don't want to trade your contempts with scrapheap scrounger, as you'd rather save that for hazoret or chandra, so you need another way to deal with the robot, and kingpin is a far better response than aetherborn.

Secondly, hostage taker has the same issues you mentioned with Scarab G. If you want to play it and activate in one turn, you probably need 8-ish mana (most things you'd really want to steal are 4 mana). If you were weary of saving 9 mana for scabs, you should also be weary of saving 8 mana for hostage taker.

Quote from Phoenix849 »

Might be a stupid question, but do you think this deck is viable without The Scarab God? I still have all those UR Control staples and those 4 Torrential Gearhulks are sad I can't find them a new home. Seems that UB is the only viable place for them now. But honestly there's no way I'm bying pushed God mythics to only play standard for maybe a few months.

I don't think it's needed. I didn't include it for three reasons.
1) W/out the scarab god, you have access to 3 great cards that hose it, without compromising your own strategy: the spyglasses and the silent gravestone. For some time I had 1x spyglass in the main (instead of the 3d scatter) to further improve your G1 points. A 5/5 for 5 is not so good vs our 5/6s. Also, spyglass is never truly dead, so its not terrible to include in the main.
2) Also, everyone is starting to load up on vraska's contempts for scabby. VC is great vs scabby but reeeeeealy lackluster vs Hulk.
3) Almost all the deck plays instant speed. I like that

Having said that, old Scabby Doo is a fantastic card, so i doubt it's bad to play 1 or 2 (but i wouldn't play more than that)

Looks like a cool deck to play! I'm wondering, if you are playing Grixis, why not make room for 1-2 Cut//Ribbons? This gives you a good option to win the game with the Aftermath once you flip the Azor's Gateway. Also still a fan of The Scarab God and I think a singleton Tetzimoc, Primal Death would be good over a Gearhulk.

Totally. I did not include tetzimoc or cutt//ribbons for 2 reasons. 1) i don't own them and I didnot want to go buy them 2) gateway is slow to flip and there is plenty artifact removal going around (abrade, naturalize, the naturalize dino, cast out, ixalan's binding, etc). This deck wants to play assuming that you never flip the gateway, and instead be happy with getting as many loots in before they kill it. With this in mind, adding cards that are medium on their own, and get amazing with a flipped gateway, could lead to some dead cards in hand.

Talking about cards i don't own, and scarab gods, I would love to get a Jace's defeat in th board instead of the 3rd negate. Vs UBx control/midrange decks you board it instead of the 3rd scatter. It fulfills the same role (counter hulk and scabby) but if needed can help fight a counterbattle.

Here is my current approach list. Its different than the rest, since I am trying to be a good UW control deck first and foremost, and a good approach deck as a secondary objective. As such, I favor stuff like disallow before supreme will. Here is the list



I just got my second 3-2 in competitive leagues. Lost to GR ramp (which seemed unwinnable), temur black feat the scarab god (twice, twice 2-1, and twice i think i punted. did not seam like a bad matchup but i still lost twice to it) and UR gifts. I obliterated zombies, constrictor decks, red eldrazi, and the mirror. The deck seemed to win by a mile when it wins, and the losses were close, so maybe it's me piloting wrong (if someone wants to play the deck and see how they do be my guest).

For the future, the creatures have been underwhelming, so i might try to improve the % vs ramp and perhaps have something vs the scarab god, that always seems to punish me.

Some tips for the mirror and why I like hour of revelation. 1) In the mirror the key for me was to never cast my suns, make sure I can use my 14 post board counterspells (4 disallow, 3 negate, 4 censor, 1 supreme will, 2 summary dismissal) + the two dispels to counter all their suns. From then on, winning is academic. 2) the 1-of hour has been really good; people don't expect it and cleaning up chandra+creatures or liliana (and her mastery) + zombies has been very useful. Also, vs gifts, it was useful to know that i could tap out and not fear the opponent resolving a gift. It means not playing cast outs, but I'm ok with that. I never was in a situation of thinking "if I only had a cast out", but I have been in situations were I was digging deep hoping to draw the hour.

That optimistic unban list is quite optimistic

Quote from idSurge »

The problem is, Standard has been a slave to their marketing research driven Design/Development philosophy, and oddly enough, the masses do not know what makes for a good game..(hint, its not casting unanswerable bombs).

I slightly disagree. I don't think "people don't know what's good for them". I think what happened is wizards saw a fact (people like midrange) but ignored the causes of that fact (that people liked midrange because they were not playing 99% mirrors). In other words, market design asked the wrong question. The correct question is not "what's your favorite archetype" but, rather "what's your favorite archetype. Would you still like this archetype if you only played mirror matches". Had they asked THAT question, maybe they would have gotten a more informative answer...

I know it's a picky point, it's just that as a matter of principle I dislike the "people don't know what they like" philosophy... I think that when you observe people going "against their interest" what is really going on is that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Quote from Basinator »

On a budget, I only see chances winning vs them by either being faster (hence my Red Deck Wins) or getting them away from playing that tide-turner (for instance, my B/R Vampire Madness basically lost vs Skysovereign and V Gearhulk once it hit, so I had to play Pick the Brain without Delirium because I didn't have Transgress the Mind)

Wondering if the/my issue is mostly too strong individual cards than archetypes.

Well, WotC is in the business of making money, and so they "price discriminate", meaning that they print different subsets of cards for different intended audiences with different budgets. That way they can have a finger in every pie. As far as constructed formats go, they print cards that are intended for competitive play, and these will always be pushed (therefore sought after and expensive), they print some wonky cards that are clearly intended for EDH (thus, non competitive and cheaper, unless you want a foil, and then you pay more... price discrimination, again). So, what I'm trying to say with this, is that it will always be hard for a budget deck to be competitive (not impossible, but extremely hard), and that's not because of a "slip up", or a mistake in design, it's rather intentional I'd say.

With that in mind, I think that pushing a small set of individual cards hurt them alot. I made the analogy a few posts up: they are in ice-cream store whose market research said chocolate (i.e. midrange) was the favorite flavor. So, they pushed away all other flavors and sold only chocolate (i.e. they really pushed planeswalker and resilient creature-based midrange decks). Problem is, when all you have is chocolate, the previously "best flavor" quickly becomes boring and bland.

Wotc stated that starting with Hour of Devastation (AKH was already in print when they started getting negative feedback about standard) they'll make the answer cards better. hopefully this means "battlecruiser midrange" gets pushed out by slower control decks. And slower control deck always open the door for "going under" with sligh-style hyper aggro (which, circling back to your point, is generally the cheapest archetype)

Here is what every set needs: good aggro, good midrange, good control. The problem (as I mentioned in other posts, and someone at channelfireball mentioned as well, i forgot who he was) is that wotc blurred the lines between these and now its all just flavors of midrange.

Let me give an exampel of what I meant. First, some definitions. You might not agree 100% with them, but broadly spekaing an archetype is defined by how it transforms one resource ot another.

1) Aggro are decks focused on turning cards into damage asap. Typically you have high/low P/T ratio, hasty dudes for 1 or 2 mana (basically, every card that is not an actual shock/bolt is a 2 or 3 power creature with haste... "a bolt on a stick" if you will). Tops curve at 3 mana. Gets no card advantage. It either kills on turn 4 with the top 11-12 cards from its library, or loses the game.
2) Midrange is the archetype that trades its own life points and mana for resilient permanents; then it uses those permanents to end the game asap. Generally it has the most efficient dudes in P/T terms, and can grind out many 2-for-1s (generally in the form of creatures that trade favorably with removal, or permanents that provide a slow, but steady, stream of cards). Since midrange accures card advantage "drop by drop", it wants to go long vs aggro but end the game quik vs decks that can get massive bursts of CA.
3) Control is about trading all it resources (life points and mana) for card advantage. whereas midrange gets CA "by the drop", control generates ever increasing waves of CA (compare, for instance, phyrexian arena to sphinx's revelation: arena provides 1 card per turn, for a certain numebr of turns, Rev can provide all those cards at once.)

Look at mardu vehicles. Is it control? Hell no! It's not focused on trading its life and mana for extra cards in hand. Is it aggro? Not really, since its plan is not "trade my cards for your life points" its plan is solidly midrange: trade my mana for resilient permanents (vehicles, gideons) and slowly start churning out card advantage via scrounger, inspector clues, and gideon tokens. It is an agressive version of midrange, but if you analyze the resources it trades, it is asquarely a midrange deck.

Same for copycat. It is a combo version of midrange, but it is midrange nonetheless. Early on, the copycat player trades his life points for a board position that provides a slow, steady stream card advantage (virtuosos, refiners and oaths, copied by saheeli or blinked by guardian). It then kills you with that stream of CA (pumping out thopters, or running you out of gas by copying refiners, and beating you down with whatever is left over). The combo is actually just a side-effect.

The problem with standard is not the lack of variety in decks. Its the lack of variety in archetypes. Bring back blazing fast aggro and glacially slow control, and let them share the stage iwth midrange. That will really make the environment more interesting and attract players back.

Quote from SC1987 »

You haven't considered the long(er) term ramifications of printing stronger answers. Simply put, if you print stronger answers to existing threats, eventually you'll also need to print stronger threats and it becomes an arms race which is also not healthy for Standard. Also, there are usable answers in Standard right now like Grasp of Darkness, Anguished Unmaking, Unlicensed Disintegration, etc. Sure they're not the best but they should give an idea of the power level of answers to be expected in Standard and you can't blame Wizards for existing usuale answers not meeting your unreasonably high expectations. I don't how or why you find these answers "unplayable" but if they are, what do you want to be printed? You might find Pithing Needle to be "very reasonable" but has it occurred to you that it seems only reasonable to you because of your higher-than-normal expectations for a new answer? Think about it: you opponent drops it early game, and now your whole tempo/game plan is disrupted until you draw an artifact removal. Doesn't sound much more fun than losing to infinite kitties. If it starts with this, what else do you want to be printed? A non-counterable Path to Exile?

I think you miss the point. The idea is not "print stronger answers" but "print answers that are on par with the threats". If wizards prints a 1 mana, 4/4 indestructible creature, then yes, they should print an uncounterable path to exile. But if the best creatue wizards prints is a 5 mana 1/1 vanilla, then I'd be happy with a 5 mana -1/-1 spell: storng threat, strong answer, laughable threat, laughable answer. Its all about balance, not arms race.

Given that the initial condition is a set with very powerful threats, that means that the answers going forward need to be powerful, which means that the threats going forward also need to be powerful. Thus, given the intial condition (i.e. if we ban nothing) WotC cornered themselves in an equilibrium where both threats and answers have to be powerful. This is fine by me (and probably all players). As far as they maintain a power balance between threats and answers, having high-powered standards in the future is perfectly acceptable. Arms races only happen when the balance is upset in favor of threts or answers.

EDIT: I dont think current answerrs are nearly on par with threats. In a world of 5 mana wraths and creatures that replace themselves when they etb (refiner, virtuoso, tracker, thraben inspector, etc) 1-1 removal like the one you mentioned is terrible. You are loosing value with each transaction, and that value loss really adds up. If they insits on 3-mana dudes that replace themselves, then the 3 mana removal should trade at a rate better than 1-1. If refiner/virtuoso/tracket/etc reads "3 mana- get a dude that replaces itself" then the removal should read "3-mana: kill a dude and draw a card". Yes, this is more powerful than we are used to, but it is not more powerful than the threat that its killing.

Lastly, since you've established yourself as more experienced than I am and based on your claims that none of the removals currently in Standard are effective against 4c Saheeli, what type of card(s) do you think needs to be printed in order to deal with the copycat combo effectively? And how feasible do you think such a card would be printed on Standard?

I haven't read the whole discussion, but the answer to this question is really simple. It has three parts, that combine to explain why removal seems great but in reality is terrible. The first thing to understand is that dealign with cat is easy. If cat was all we had to deal with, I can brew up 2 or even 3 control decks that destroy it completely; the point is that those decks fold to vehicles. The real question is: how can you beat the cat while simultaneously have a chance vs vehicles"

1. The planeswalker/creature connundrum: the top 2 decks play a fine mixture of creatures and non creatures (typically in the form of walkers). Mardu plays vehicles, chandra gideon alongside resilient creatures that in some cases are even backed up by avacyn granting indestructibe; Saheeli plays virtuoso and refiner, alongside chandra. Unfortunately, there are few answers that overlap all these threata, meaning that there is a high chance of having in hand the wrong answer for the question your opponent is asking (say, have a shock in hand vs a whirler virtuoso, or having a negate when the opponent casts the cat). What cards do we print to fix this? print removal that is universal across walkers and creautres (like hero's downfall or even something like silumgar's command), and a counterspell that can catch both creatures and walker (1U instant: counter target creature or planeswalker). PS: these "waker or creature " answers must be instant speed, to help fight the combo.
2. Most of the creatures played are either imprevious to removal or have ETB effects that removal consistently trades at worse than 1-1. Mardu plays thraben inspector (which produces an artifact for all the artifact synergies), scrounger (that just comes back and means you ended up "trading" 0-1); Saheeli plays virtuoso (with energy for instant activation) and rogue refiner (which etb draws a card and 2/3 of a thopter), so trying to play 1-1 removal vs them is terrible. Currently, there are two ways to deal with creatures that replace themselves, and both are terrible: (1) sweepers (of which fumigate is too inefficient and radiant flames forces you to play 3 colors to be remotely playable... and both of these make you tap our and risk a gideon resolving or being combo-ed out) and (2) "counter target creature" spells, of which we only have horribly awry (see item 1 above to why you can't play too many of them, hence why you can't bank on this card, or others like it, to bail you out). And before anyone claims "what about 3 mana universal counters", the point of a counterpell is to gain tempo. If you are spending 3 mana to counter a 1,2 or 3 mana creature, you are further setting yourself behind. What to print: a "creature or planewsalker" 2-mana counterspell, go back to 4 mana wraths, or print cards that allow you to remove the creature and gain back the value your opponent got form the ETB trigger (example: "1BB instant: destroy target creature. If that creature has cmc less than or equal to 3, it's controler discards a card" or "WUB: exile target creature. Draw a card." Yes, these are much more powerful cards than what we are used to nowadays, but the whole point is that threats became so powerful, that answers must also become morte powerful. I would even go as far as saying that the classic counterspell is a fine card for standard, given the power level of some threats.)
3. AFTER you print instant apeed answers that can deal with both creatures and walkers (either as counterspells or removal spells that recoups the lost value form your opponent's etb creatures), you must print a 1-mana deck manipulation effect to help with hitting land drops. Currently, 4C saheeli has a ponder of sorts, and a tutor of sorts, whereas reactive decks have anticipate. If the proactive deck is able to find threats more efficiently than the reactive deck can find answers, there is no point in printing the answers in the first place.

Here is my two cents on what that problem with standard is, and how it wont be solved by bans: in the past, there were somewhat clear archetype distinctions. You had aggro (defined as a deck tbat wants ot empty the hand asap, and generally wins by beating down before the opponent can get their gameplan going), midrange (decks of incremental value, that take some setup, but after that setus is done they snowball out aggro's control) and then control (a deck that plays for a game longer than the midrange deck).

Recently, WOTC has nerfed control (counterspells are too ineficient/narrow, removal is generally less than 1-1 due to prevalenc eof powerful etb effects, and card-draw was significantly scaled down after the 'mistake' of Sphinx's Revelation), meaning midrange was the new control. But.... it also gave aggro tools to grind out a match, either by having cards that generate advntages the longer they stay in play, or cards that can positively trade with point removal (scrounger, thraben inspector, smugler's copter, tracker, rogue refiner, etc). So, when you nerf control and beef up aggro, what you get is a unique archetype: midrange (for those owndering, yes... I do believe the current builds of mardu are essentially midrange strategies... if you dont believe me, just see how well they can grund out games of 10-15 even 20 turns.)

The problem of a "midrange only" format is that there can only be so many midrange decks. WotC prints only so many resiliant, long-game cards, which means two things: there are few decks (there is only so many ways that the few powerful midrange cards can be palced together), and even still the format wont feel diverse because mostly all tier 1 decks will be playing the same grindy/midrangey strategy.

I thnk the answer is to (gradually, over the coming sets) go back to basic archetypes as they were meant to be: have one uber fast, blazing "sligh" deck that CANNOT go long vs midrange; have a powerful, resilient midrange deck that can handle 1-1 removal and slow grinds, but that CANNOT survive an avlanche of card advantage; and have one true powerful control deck that buries you under a bajilion cards if given enoug time, but fold to the sligh deck. I think RtR was the last seriously fun standard format, and that format had exaclty hsi structure: there were burn decks that either ended the game turn 4 or just folded, there where some Orzhov and GW midrange decks, and then there was UW control. Take a look at the T8 of the M15 pro tour and the T8 of Aether Revolt... the former had tru aggro, true midrange and true control all featured in it (and not only through the top 8). The same division held up in most GPs after that; this time around its a midrangey aggro (mardu) vs a midrange combo (cat) fight, with no real aggro and no real control in sight.

Quote from NZB2323 »

SFM is not safe for an unban while batterskull is legal.

People are playing Karns, Valakuts, 1 cmc 10/10s beaters, turn 3 grapeshots, and gaining infinite life while scrying their entire deck---but SFM with batterskull is too powerful? Come on, man, it's not even a fast threat, that SFM isn't even swinging with an equipped Batterskull until turn 4, provided no removal has been used---you feel this is whats going to oppress modern?

Why 10%? Wouldn't you use his mirror % as the benchmark for "even" matchups? So anything under 75% are at a deficit, and anything above is at an advantage? So only 5/20 (25%) are advantaged matchups? Seems fine to me.

That 75% in the mirror really calls the dataset into question, and the only way I see to salvage it is to set the mirror as the benchmark for even matchups.

To add to that, on the draw, that seems a *lot* worse. Heart of Kiran drop on turn 2, and a decent guy on 3, before you can cast this.

On th eplay, I guess you curve turn 3 this, turn 4 tap lands, turn 5 liliana, make a zombie? Looks opressive enough, especially if you chain them.

Felipe Valdiva's cheat was of course with a temple of deceit. Seems fitting.