MTG Salvation

Quote from axman »

My losses were from playing non-decks and having no idea how to play against them.
Zombie infestation dredge and 5 color bring to light... were probably the only people playing those decks in the entire room of 900+ people lol.

I've played a few games against that Zombie Infestation dredge, and I can tell you, it's a rough matchup without graveyard hate. Our spot removal is useless, our threats tend to only get 1-2 hits before getting killed by a Vengeful Pharaoh trigger and trying to burn them out is almost impossible with the Golgari Brownscale in the yard. Also, we don't have any decent way of interacting with enchantments, so the namesake card is absolute death if it sticks.

With careful use of counters and graveyard hate (I run Rakdos Charm in the sb) I managed to steal a few wins, but the struggle was real.

I wholeheartedly agree. In a starting hand with both discard and AV I will usually go for discard if I'm up against an unknown deck G1.

TitI is difficult to assess. In either extremes it is like playing a Wall of Omens into a Torpor Orb, or it's wiping the board and dropping an almost maxed out goyf.

The truth is somewhere in between, but I think it's unfair to look at the card without acknowledging the psychological factor for your opponent.

I'm running it as a 2-of in main, to try it out. So far it's been doing pretty well, forcing the opponent to jump through hoops to get rid of it while I thaw it out using my normal gameplan and the occasional counter to stop removal directed towards it. I never try to force the flip, or break my back trying to save it.

Honestly, I think Kalitas may very well be maindeckable.

I don't think Thopter combo will be much good for us. It's a strong play, but with the amount of artifact hate people are running nowadays I can't see myself having much success trying to free up the necessary slots. The amount of valuable cards we lose in the process just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Quote from Bamfuzi »

Alright, thanks man. You say you're running kalitas? I'm trying him as a one of, but still not sure what to think of him, how often do you run him?
To be fair I haven't tested a ton with him, will give it a chance during FNM this week.

I run him as a two-of. One main, one sb atm but I might look into changing it to two main. It's a meta call between him or P&KN i guess. In my meta there is lots of finks and similar recursive creature decks.

Quote from Grixis724 »

Kalitas is great but for 4 mana he just dies without getting you value right away. When he sticks around he performs very well but he just doesn't always stick. I suppose it won't hurt but if that's my plan to wait til turn 4 and they kill it, I'm most likely going to lose. He IS in my sideboard so it's all good but I think I will still consider keeping 2 anger and adding a surgical extraction or 2.

Also, if I have kalitas out and I play anger of the gods. Since anger changes death to exiling already, does that make it so kalitas can't do that effect and get a token? Or does it work out somehow

Yeah, he recieves a lot of hate (due to being a huge threat), so might be most suited in a deck with some amount of counterspells for protection. He's been an absolute all-star for me, but I suppose his effectiveness is meta dependant. If you're facing lots of spot removal, P&KN would be the better 4-drop.

As far as AotG vs Kalitas, since he won't be giving us any tokens, having him in main actually made me remove AotG from the board altogether and run Pyroclasm instead.

Bamfuzi: I've tried her. She's an absolute monster of a bomb, but way overcosted for us. 5cmc is already pushing it, and should be considered to be our absolute limit I think.

We want to be able to keep pressure on while still maintaining some control, she should be more at home in a classic draw-go control style.

Grixis724: Look into Kalitas, he absolutely destroys creature-based recursion while giving us board advantage.

Quote from Frostdragon4 »

Sin Prodder, I don't know. It can give your opponent the ability to land hate you for 0. I see it certainly having a place in the deck, but I'm not certain if it's up to the level of Bob.

Will he though? You still get the usual draw step, and unless your deck is manaweaved beyond imagining, the risk of exactly every other card in your deck being a land (with exception for cards drawn off of Serum Visions etc) are slim to none.

I think it's an interesting card, makes Cut a situationally better removal than Terminate since he both fuels delve and causes damage, while also allowing us guaranteed extra draws if we play a more delve-focused build.

I'm not sure it's a slam-dunk by any means, but it could prove to be a very useful addition.

How about this? Perhaps just a lot more fun than good, but I still can't help picturing him in a Grixis Control-style deck with lots of graveyard synergies.

Here's my current list. I'm not at all sure on how the snapcaster/jace VP split should look in the finalized version.

Also, might be because of inexperienced players in my meta, but an early Ashiok never seems to fail to distract vs CoCo/Kiki-Chord, and usually buys me enough time to look for sweepers or work my way into heavy pressure from Kalitas/Tasigur.

Never seen bogles in my meta, so as of right now, I'm not running any edict effects.

I think TitI can be a very nice inclusion, but I want to playtest it extensively first.



Thoughts?

How do we all expect to see Grixis Control fare once Eye of Ugin (I'm assuming here) becomes banned? I'm slowly piecing together a list, trying to anticipate a future meta, and looking to strike a balance between Tasigur, P&KN and Kalitas in order to handle all the aggro.