MTG Salvation

Hey guys

I've played 55 matches with my GW Pillow Fort build (No Ideal) and so far the winrate is about 64%. I made quite a bit of changes over that stretch and I think the build I have now is definitely better than in the beginning, so I'm excited to see how this continues. Below is my winrates by match vs all the decks I played:

https://gyazo.com/d10ba21100e1001ba2e5997384cae7a2


Interesting things to note, the 2 most popular decks, Zoo and Cookbook, I have a 10-1 record against, and the 3rd and 4th most played against decks in this sample was merfolk and affinity, which I have a 7-0 record against. This could be a product of people playing fast linear decks at the time of new meta changes, so we'll see if that trend continues. Here is my most updated list.


https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4032792#online

Quote from Cranial_extraction »

So I say it wins on turn 1 less than 10% of the time, you show evidence it wins less than 10% of the time and I'm wrong? Goldfishing is not a representation of a deck irl. Half those games (statistically) would be the opponent goes first, and could disrupt. You can not brute force the number up that way and claim it as evidence.

So, again you've replied without your "data". If you had read the post you would have seen how it's much more likely that the true number is well over 10%. The 7.5% number was wrong because it didn't include all the possible turn 1 combos. Secondly, the turn 1 goldfishing stats were done all on the play, so outside of force of negation, there is 0 interaction you could have. Turn 2 goldfishing was a whopping 48% so even if you take some off of that due to interaction, it's still absurdly high and that's with the Vancouver mulligan. With London mulligan it's much higher, the guy said his turn 1 on the play winrate is closer to 20% now. It's laughable that you're talking about evidence again and yet you have still provided none. I went from providing my personal experience to actually providing some data for analysis. You have made statements that you've provided no evidence for, and I provided a decent amount of evidence that what you said is false. I said if you had any data to share yourself, feel free and you didn't. So unless you got something more than just blindly trying to refute what I'm saying, then I guess we're done here.

Quote from Cranial_extraction »

Quote from SandmanNess »

I didn't make a claim to the deck's overall win rate. You did. I shared personal experience only. Therefore since you introduced the stat the onus is on you to cite it or provide evidence that the number you stated is accurate. You didn't include a sample size, you didn't say if it was pre or post london mulligan rule, and you also didn't address the fact that any deck winning on turn 1 at anywhere near 10% (if that's even accurate) is still easily worthy of a ban in modern.

Here you go friend. A deck that's less than 2% of the meta, which posts a single 5-0 roughly every 2-3 days. As I said before, you are free to watch people who actually test the deck on twitch. No I will no do it for you. You ARE the one who made the claim that " Neobrand goes off on turn 1 at least once every match I play against it, and quite frequently twice." which is outlandish and supported by no evidence other than your word. You are now walking that back saying you didn't claim anything and shared personal experience, but expect WotC to ban the deck based on your personal experience. Multiple other people have refuted your outlandish claims.

Uhh,except they haven't. First of all, when a deck is new, meta share is largely irrelevant to brokenness. Modern is an expensive format. Usually until a deck makes a few top 8s at some larger events, people are not going to buy in. Again, KCI, was 2% of the meta for a long ass time, but was always just as broken, the same with AmuletBloom. Hogaak didn't have top meta share or even large meta share right off the bat, and people had an easier transition to it, because bridgevine was already a thing. Also people don't like to buy into a deck that may be immediately on the chopping block. Neobrand is not a thing without the London Mulligan and that went into effect 2 weeks ago. So saying a deck isn't broken because it doesnt have meta share after 15 days is absurd. As far as my claim, again I made a personal experience claim. The last match I played against it I lost on turn 1 twice. I have yet to play against Neobrand without it getting at least 1 turn 1 win. Here's screenshots form my last match. If there was easier ways to find specific games in MTGO I could definitely get more. Watched some content on youtube today from a popular streamer playing against neobrand and guess what? Turn 1 win.





You on the other made a general claim about what the deck can do and provided no evidence at all, and no detail about how those numbers were reached. I didn't post screens with what I said because I was making a statement based on anecdotal evidence and stated so, so evidence is largely irrelevant. But YOU made a claim about the deck as a whole backed by "data" and then provided no data. I don't expect WOTC to do anything, it's dumb to expect anything from WOTC even if scores of people want them to, but that's not what this thread is about is it? So stop making baseless claims with no evidence. After a little bit of searching I only found one real reference to the turn 1 win rate and it was wrong, as pointed out by someone else.

"Number of possible opening hands is 60C7=~386 million. A lower bound for the number of T1-win opening hands is 4 Neoform*4 Rider*4 Chancellor*8 Cavern/Spirit Guide*19 other green cards*55 generic cards*54 generic cards = ~29 million.

29/386=~7.5% Not perfect, but it's a definitive lower bound, and mulligans will improve it significantly."

"I think you've missed a lot of the opening hand variation. I'd suggest that the best way to approach is classifying functional T1 hands in 7 categories:
Chancellor + Land + Neo + Pact/Rider + Green
Ch + Sim Spirit Guide + Morphose + Neo + P/R + Gr
Ch + Ch + Mor + Neo + P/R
SSG + Land + Mor + Neo + P/R + Gr + Gr
SSG + SSG + Ch + Eldritch Evo + P/R + Mor + Gr
SSG + Land + Ch + Evo + P/R + Gr
Ch + Ch + Land/Guide/Ch + Eldritch Evo + P/R

(and potentially SSG + SSG + Land + Morphose + P/R + Green + Pickup a Green card on the draw)"

So without even including all the possible turn 1 combos, mathematically it can go off at roughly 7.5% That doesn't include mulligans, and especially doesn't include the London Mulligan rule, so I'd say your statement of it only wins turn 1 less than 10% is almost certainly false. If you got some better data then stop hiding it and post it. Regardless, none of this takes account how often the deck can put together a turn 2 or turn 3 win. If it can win turn 1 at 10% and turn 2 30%, is that worth a ban to you? What numbers of people barely getting to play magic are acceptable to you? Because the fact is decks have been banned in modern for being less explosive than that.

Edit: here's a little more evidence for you:

I didn't make a claim to the deck's overall win rate. You did. I shared personal experience only. Therefore since you introduced the stat the onus is on you to cite it or provide evidence that the number you stated is accurate. You didn't include a sample size, you didn't say if it was pre or post london mulligan rule, and you also didn't address the fact that any deck winning on turn 1 at anywhere near 10% (if that's even accurate) is still easily worthy of a ban in modern.

Is this really a conversation about the actual numbers of a deck in MODERN going off on turn 1? Is there any deck ever in modern that was even capable of winning on turn 1 at all, much less at a 10%? A deck that's winning 10% on turn 2 in modern has a fair shot of getting banned, and no, it was on MTGO, not paper. Not to mention it's a deck that can combo turn 1, that can dodge any way to stop it outside of a 1 or 0 mana blue answer even if you actually get a turn to play something. It's unaffected by graveyard hate, unaffected by a chalice on 1, only slightly affected by a chalice on 0. You do nothing and they either have it or they don't. And for a deck that wins on turn 3 that wouldn't be a problem but it isn't winning on turn 3, it's winning before I play my first land. And I'd love to see your <10% data, make sure it's post London Mulligan.

Lol are you kidding me about the format being great right now? Neobrand goes off on turn 1 at least once every match I play against it, and quite frequently twice. At least against hogaak, there was a chance to do something, the last match I played, I lost twice in a row on turn 1. There literally 0 percent chance that deck makes it past a major tournament before it gets hit with the hammer.

All games were played on the competitive constructed leagues on Arena and the sideboard is listed in the most recent deck post.

1x Prey Upon
1x Plummet
2x Find//Finality
2x Thrashing Brontodon
3x Vine Mare
1x Carnage Tyrant
3x Kraul Harpooner
1 Vivien Reid
1 Ripjaw Raptor

Here's another update on my list now that I've reached 50 competitive league matches.

Match breakdown and winrate:



Win Percentage on play vs draw:



Individual match breakdown from 25-50 (can't screenshot the whole thing):




So, first thing is that the total win rate so far of 74% is insanely high, higher than I thought it would be, and after 50 matches it's getting out of the realm of just possible variance. Given the current meta, there's some things that really stand out as positive.

1. Control is absolutely everywhere, in multiple variants, and so far the deck has performed excellent vs the control matchup as a whole. My total control record so far is 15-6, and I was only running 1 Carnage Tyrant main deck, I've since upped that to 2 to give me an even better game 1 matchup.

2. Both GB midrange and MonoRed remain great matchups, with me being 5-0 vs Monored and 7-2 vs GB midrange. I thought both decks would be more popular, but it definitely seems that GB has fallen on the popularity scale given that I only saw it twice in 25 matches. Monored I also only saw twice in 25 matches, it's mainly been just tons of control variants.

3. The only bad matchup I've found so far is the monoU aggro deck and I haven't sen it one time since I made the sideboard adjustments for it, I really expected to see it more, but glad I didn't.

Here is the current list:



75% winrate in standard is really really high, and the deck feels great in most matchups. Not really sure what I might change at this point, I've considered cutting the prey upons for more blanchwood armors and cutting a ghalta for another 3 or 4 drop like maindeck ripjaw raptor, but honestly I don't know if it would improve anything. Will keep playing, testing, and updating.

Quote from Redirus91 »

Played quite a few games today with your deck, one problem I had was mulliganing. If you dont have any mana dorks then you dont have a play until turn 4, excluding SLC. Some hands I had 2 lands, 1 dork and 4 drops, dork got killed and it took too many turns to find lands to play my spells. The deck seemed to stall a lot because I didnt want to attack my beast whisperer or goreclaw into opposing blockers. There were games where I was behind so I woldnt win the race of attacking with my new gigantosaurus or ferox.

I keep every single 2 land+ 1 mana dork, especially on the draw and it's hard for me to see a world where that goes bad long term. There's only 1 deck that can somewhat punish that draw and it's monored. If its UR control, they shoot a dork but then what? They aren't killing me turn 5 or even turn 6, so you get plenty of time to draw lands or more dorks. If it's GB, the only way they have to kill it is plaguecrafter, assassin's trophy does nothing and they also aren't killing me turn 5. What other deck kills my dork in the first few turns but also puts so much pressure that I can't draw out of it? monored can certainly shoot a dork, but then they are using their mana to kill the dork, not cast creatures to run me over. And monored is the deck that has the hardest time with an early resolved threat. So yeah, I can see how if you keep a 2 lander plus dork, it dies and then you brick 3 turns in a row vs specifically monored then you probably get punished. but that's really just bad variance. And it would have to happen multiple games in a row. And so far my record vs monored is 4-0. Also FWIW, I almost never attack with beast whisperer, it just being alive helps you win the game, same with goreclaw. Its sole job is to make things cheaper and swing in when you have other big threats that benefit from trample damage and multiple pumping. This is also a deck where you use your life as a resource pretty heavily in the early game, you take no risky blocks with key pieces and you keep landing threats and then win over 1 or 2 turns.

Hey guys,

So, after reading through the recent posts and lists, I seem to be of a differing opinion than pretty much everybody. I've also run through the few lists that managed to 5-0 on MTGO and they seem to be similar to each other in most respects. I've seen a lot of decks running early 1,2, and 3 drops in a classic effort to curve out, like Pelt Collector, Kraul Harpooner, Thorn Lieutenant, and Jadelight Ranger/Merfolk Branchwalker. I just don't think this should be the primary goal of MonoG Stompy, in a format that has 2 solid mana dorks and several great large costed threats. So I have gone a different direction than most with my list, sacrificing early threats for much better later threats and I've had pretty good success. I've played a total of 25 competitive league matches on Arena and tracked my results so I will share them here and then break down my choices.

This first screenshot is my match breakdown and winrate so far vs the current best decks in the format:


The second is my win percentage on the play vs on the draw:


The third is my list of individual matches played and their outcomes:


These are the first 25 matches I've run, all competitive, and I don't think I saw 1 "home brew". The most off beat deck I saw was probably Merfolk and I played it twice and it was still very competitive. The sample size is small so far but I think I've seen some trends that are very promising.

1. I think the matchup with all of the golgari builds is very favorable. So far the win rate is 5-2 and I lost at least 1 match to a pretty bad punt. The golgari decks don't do well with big creatures and also don't do well with creatures that have hexproof, which is a big part of my sideboard plan. They are rather slow in the beginning and play a lot of underpowered threats in the first few turns that we don't really care about and most of my creatures can't be killed by the cheaper vraksa, which is a big plus. Tying to play that style of game is the reason I think the MonoG lists I've seen haven't done very well against the golgari decks, you have to just go straight over the top.

2. Control decks of all types are very favorable. My current winrate vs all forms of control is 7-1, with most of the match wins being 2-0. They usually use their early burn to kill mana dorks which is only slightly annoying and they have very few hard removal threats to deal with nullhide ferox, Gigantosaurus, and Ghalta. To be fair I've only played Jeskai once, and that will certainly be the harder matchup with mass removal being more prevalent but I think games 2 and 3 are still heavily in my favor.

3 MonoRed is one of the easiest matchups to play. A turn 2 or 3 Steel Leaf Champion followed by a turn 4 threat is usually incredibly troublesome and they have basically no answers for Nullhide Ferox. Once you acquire a means to trample over, the game usually ends.

4. My worst matchup is by far the monoU aggro deck. 3 of my losses came from that deck, it's very annoying to deal with and if you look at the results without including that matchup, the win rate borders on absurd. I don't know what the exact answer is for it but I have plenty of room to put some answers for it.

So here is the list:



So as you can see, the list doesn't even have a full sideboard, and I haven't even used Thrashing Brontodon at all. So there is plenty of room to make the deck even better than what it is.

The eight mana dorks are pretty self explanatory, as is Steel Leaf Champion. Prey Upon has opened up attacking lanes a few times for the win, and Blanchwood Armor on a trample creature usually ends the game. Beast Whisperer wins the game if not countered or killed, it allows me to go way over the top of other creature decks and turns mana dorks into gas late game. Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma makes Ferox, Carnage Tyrants, and Mammoth come in at absurd prices, and the trample ability it gives all creatures is usually how I win the game. Nullhide Ferox is an absurdly broken card and I'd run 8 if I could. Gigantosaurus is ok, it can't be burned out usually and giving it trample is great. Against most decks it eats a removal spell but if it lives even for a turn, it can give you an instantly cheap Ghalta. Ghalta, Primal Hunger is a straight powerhouse and is responsible for most of the wins and it amazes me that people have discussed not playing it. Carnage Tyrant is self explanatory, and Aggressive Mammoth gives the team trample and can win me the game the same turn it's cast. Sideboard is completely wide open, the only thing I usually side in is hexproof creatures and Find//Finality for removal heavy decks.

Will continue to run this and track results, any questions, comments, advice, or criticism is welcome. Thanks!

For the luls:

Game 1 final board state after OP put 30 power in play to swing with on turn 3:


Game 2 final board state:


OP was slightly salty...

Quote from IQglitch »

The abysmal Tron match up is exactly why I dropped this deck for now, I apparently have the worst Tron match-up luck on MTGO. Which is a shame, because like you said, against the rest of the meta the deck feels pretty well positioned.

I really like the Boseiju, Who Shelters All + Entreat the Angels for the extra edge against control. Do you find it being worth it despite it being a dead card once you're into negative life?
I'm curious as to how your Humans match ups shakes out with your list. I found that match up to also be an uphill battle. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben + Meddling Mage usually slowed me down enough for them to get under before I could set up. A Ghostly Prison on turn 4 just doesn't cut it.
Have you tried running Ixalan's Binding? I found the card to be pretty great in the deck. It's essentially an Oblivion Ring, but for one more mana you make sure the card doesn't come back. Great against an Ensnaring Bridge, Meddling Mage, Blood Moon, or a troublesome planeswalker like Jace, The Mind Sculptor or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. The extra casting cost was more relevant than I like to admit in a lot of cases, so I eventually settled on a 3 Oblivion Ring - 1 Ixalan's Binding split.
Against Jund or other grindy decks I found Heliod, God of the Sun to be a great sideboard option. Not only is he protected under Greater Auramancy, but so are his tokens which allows you to build a bigger board state and win through attrition. Also a valuable line against control. Throw a Pariah in there targeting Heliod and you have a secondary Phyrexian Unlife/Solemnity-esque combo, which can be a good strategy in game 2 when you're opponent is preparing for the Solemnity combo.
Silence is something I haven't considered, but I like the idea of being confident in being able to land a key prison piece for just 1 extra mana. I tried real hard to like Grand Abolisher, it just never performed for me, but then again I was jamming this deck back when Jeskai control was the control deck of choice. Maybe with the UW and Miracles lists ticking up, it'll fare better.

Seeing you have some success with this list makes me want to give it a go again. I'll throw it into a comp league this weekend and pray to Heliod that I dodge the Tron match up.

The thing is, every good deck has matchups that they position badly against, modern is just insanely diverse. It just feels a little worse when MonoW plays tron because you feel like you're never in the game. But if my matchup is 10% vs tron and tron is 6-7% of the meta, in theory it should be something that you just try to dodge and if you don't, take your beats, but you should still be able to be competitive as a whole.
Boseiju actually has never appeared for me at the time needed with also me having Entreat to cast while also playing against a control deck. It feels good to have it in there as insurance but it hasn't actually paid off, but mostly because I haven't run into that much control.
The Humans match I feel is favorable for the pure reason that they usually have literally nothing to undo the unlife+solemnity lock if its assembled. Thalia on turn 2 is annoyinn certainly, but I can usually dodge a freebooter with leyline, and without landing a freebooter, they don't usually know what to name with mage. It's not a walk in the park, but I've found that any creature matchup has historically been a good one for me.
I've never played Binding but i did run gideon's intervention for awhile. The thing is, I don't really care about ensnaring bridge, becaause with mistveil planes I dont actuaally have to kill them I just have to make sure they cant kill me. I run 10 plains so also not too worried about blood moon. The planeswalker argument can matter, but it matters only specifically for teferi, because jace alone doesn't beat you with leyline or runed halo in play. If I was going to run a 4 mana rock it just seems like gideon's intervention is better because it lets me name things that kill me before they are cast and also stops damage if I have a creature beating me down. Binding doesn't save me from someone only having a mainbboard nature's claim as their only out, but intervention does. Which I think is pretty relevant given how many people are running more artifact and enchantment hate mainboard these days.
The Heliod+Pariah combo is pretty interesting, but at 4 casting cost it once again becomes a matter of can I get it resolved vs control, where as luminarch is much easier to get through although slightly less effective.

Quote from Boozuka »

The thing about tron is that is has a lot of ways to destroy our board and it's almost impossible to prevent all of them. Ugin doesnt care aboutStony Silence, All is Dust doesnt care about Pitching Needle and so on. The only way to be able to beat tron while playing enchantments is playing the Enduring Ideal version of this deck (in my opinion). Tron is still a very tough matchup, but even if opponent menages to destroy your board you still have your lands, and if you resolve Ideal you can still win. Also all of tron's mass removals are noncreature spells, so searching for Dovescape is almost always equal to winning the game.

I definitely agree that enduring ideal has a better chance to win against tron than entreat, but after running a lot of Ideal at first, I decided at what cost? The ideal list to be effective needs to run dovescape, lotus bloom, and form of the dragon, with dovescape and form being basically useless on their own, and lotus bloom only mattering if you have it in the opener along with ideal. I found that in non tron matchups I would rather have more things to protect me that I can actually cast for cheap than those cards, plus entreat has the ability to do something to save you or to put pressure at 5 mana with hard cast or even 3-4 mana by miracling it. Ideal is cast for 7 mana and does nothing until you have it. So I decided that my overall matchups are better using entreat plus more bullets, than running Ideal JUST to improve my tron matchup slightly, because even with Ideal it's still very bad.

Hey guys,

I posted my MonoW list in January of this year, which was already a well tuned list. That list can be found here: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/477657-pillow-fort-prison-white-x-enchantment-control?comment=888

I've played probably close to another 100 matches with the deck since then, and I'd like to share some more about where my current list is at and why.
First thing I'd like to say is I have given up on beating tron, like ever. Pretty sure my winrate against tron is somewhere between 10-15% and I've decided I don't care. I would say my current build does well enough against the rest of the meta that I can just try to dodge tron. with that, my sideboard has gone through some changes. I've tried everything from 4 pithing needle, to crucible of worlds, to damping sphere, and the fact is none of it really matters or helps in a meaningful way. So I ended up cutting every card in my board that was for tron, and focused on using those slots to improve my other matchups. With that being said, here's my current list:



So I was running Porphyry Nodes up until a few days ago, and I decided that having Silence in the main gives me a better shot against both aggro and control. Nodes has definitely won me some games but overall it just felt slightly too slow and does pretty much nothing vs control. Taking aggro decks off casting spells in the early game, can buy me just enough time to get unlife+solemnity in place before dying. It's not a great late draw and maybe that makes it not worth it to run just 2, but it definitely can help do something vs control decks and that's a weaker area, so I'm trying it for now. I also considered Mana Tithe for this spot, but I definitely need to have that in my opener to get the use from it which means running 4 and I can't justify the slots for it. I also felt Oblivion Ring was overperforming, so I dropped the 4th Idyllic Tutor in order to add a 3rd.
In the board, I am basically focused on improving the control matchup as much as possible, so I have 4 Defense Grid as well as 2 Grand Abolisher. I know that Abolisher eventually ends up dying, but between abolisher, grid and silence, I''m just trying to find the opportunity to land a Luminarch Ascension without it getting countered or at least get the combo in place or pick off a planeswalker. Luminarch Aschension I added purely because it can come down turn 2 and the tokens it creates equal uncounterable threats.
As far as where the deck is in the meta, other than tron I'd say it's in a pretty good spot..
I have well above average matchups vs humans, bridgevine, affinity, burn, storm, infect, hollow one, mardu pyro, and KCI. Jund is around 50/50 and control is probably slightly unfavored. And of course against tron I'm stone dead. Love any and all feedback, thanks for reading!

I don't see how you can possibly ban GCW or any piece of the red decks without banning Teferi. When Teferi lands most games just end. If you drastically weaken the red decks Teferi is going to dominate and stifle the format.

Hey guys!

Little bit of an update. Tuning the list has been going well, I've added a few new pieces that are really bringing everything together. After seeing Karn, Scion of Urza run amok in the format, it just became obvious that I needed to find a place in the list for him. I tried out just 1 copy, and it added a lot, so I added another and a 3rd in the board. The card draw just improves the consistency and also Karn just soaks up tons of damage and also acts a target for vraska's contempt or never/return which paves the way for me to land other more direct threats. I slimmed down on cards that were having less direct impact like sweltering suns and abrade and added things that have more utility like another tormenting voice and seal away. Some of the biggest changes I made have been in the sideboard. I dropped the regal caracals because they were proving to be too slow and not enough impact for the matchup they were slotted for which is the red aggro decks. Same thing with glorybound initate, it just wasn't having enough impact before dying. I also added some forsake the worldly just for the exile effect for cards like scrapheap scrounger. I put more top end threats in there as well, an angel of invention (works really well with Lyra) and a few rekindling phoenix. Another big addition was sorcerous spyglass which most routinely targets Teferi.

The best thing I've discovered is the deck has a good red deck matchup, and given the results of the pro tour I think that's a solid place to be. As always, any comments an ideas are helpful and appreciated, and here's my current list: