MTG Salvation

hey i just made 5-2 in the modern ptq

lost to grixis control, he played 7 surgicals and 1 anger in the 2 sideboarded games. i left him at 1 and he milled me with multiple thought scours in the both games i lost

also lost to bw taxes, turn 2 rest in peace in both sideboarded games. ive almost won the last one but he topdecked land into wasteland strangler and 2 removal/creatures in a row so that my hasted bloodghast couldnt kill him, he won at 1 life (i know the topdecks because i drew seize the turn after rip)

i won against burn 2 times, death shadow, soul sisters and wr nahiri, almost all of the times ive won the games where one sided, never lost game 1 but faced more hate than i expected. also got lucky with having looting in my opener a lot of times and topdecking the dredger with it

i would have prefered the second pharao and the third seize above the 2 decays, or maybe the 2 lightning axes, although i might be overvaluing axe as discard effect

sorry my bad, i misunderstood the info next to the deck name

well done on the guide, the structure its great

why do you think merfolks its a great matchup? i strugle with it a lot, mostly because of spreading seas, mutavault and vial+harbinger. i only lost once against it but all the matches were hard mode

played in a local tournament and ended up drawing in the top4 after a 4-0-2 start in the swiss



played against sultai midrange control, affinity, merfolks, dredge and ad nauseam

the games against merfolks where challenging, i dont know if its a good or bad matchup but its definitely hard to play

grim flayer was great because even though its for the grindy matchups i could bring him in against dredge and nauseam alongside more relevant interaction to be fully redundant on the pressure plus disruption plan

i only drew whispers and witness once against the sultai deck and did what you expect them to do, wich is good enough for me considering the other options

i prefer last hope instead of of the veil because its a lot easier to generate card advantage with it and its good against cards that generate multiple chumpblockers like eldrazy sky spawner, master of waves, kitchen finks, etc wich sometimes gives them enough time

the 2 terminates were a concesion to the grixis and eldrazi decks, i dodged them but they become easier when you can kill their creatures. on the other hand i would have liked to have decay against nauseam and affinity, you cant have it all

i think 2 tarfire its the right number, at least for now. it does very little

i tryed bitterblossom and its to slow, you play it on turn 2 and on turn 4 you attack for 1, also the life loss matters, we want to drop between 7-9 life and stop right there unless the coast its clear to go for the kill

i liked your idea of playing thrinax, unlike lingering souls its soft to counters, discard and path, but every threat that we play in this slot will be soft to those as well. strangleroot geist and geralf's messenger are other options but thrinax is a lot easyer to cast

i think the deck its better with just 3 colors, but since my meta is full of B/G/x midrange and U/x/x control the white splash helps a lot

the options in jund colors are a bit lacking, strangleroot geist and geralf's messenger go to hard on the mana and kitchen finks is a nonbo with shadow, maybe sprouting thrinax as mentioned above its the solution

if it costs 3 or more then its not good agaisnt leyline, you will have acces to discard as soon as turn 4 and thats to late

wich decks play leyline? nauseam, bogles, wr prison and puresteel paladin. maybe i forgot some, but except wr prison the rest are quite fast and you wont have the time to play reclamation sage to destroy the leyline and unlock the target discard

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I've been absolutely fine without lingering souls, I've been tinkering a lot with sideboarding and avoid slotting in too many 3 drops

I don't think lingering souls is needed in the deck, all it does is clunk up opening hands, and I've been finding more often than not that I'm just chump blocking with them and losing tempo.

The white splash is a trap, you don't need it, it's just slowing your deck down a lot. The first few games I played without the white splash I hated it and went back to white. Got my ass kicked at the store, went back to mtgo, tested the Jund version more and have been winning more games since.

what do you mean exactly with that?

against wich decks it slows down the game? except affinity, i think if we bring in souls, our opponents decks slows down the game even more

dont you want it against grixis or patriot control and abzan midrange?

as of lately im having a lot of little problems like that

flooding a lot

keeping a one land hand with 2 cantrips and never drawing the second land

having traverse stuck in my hand because i dont have delirium

drawing to many cards that do nothing in the current situation/matchup (fatal push, temur battle rage, tarfire, etc)

topdecking discard

i think a little bit more of deck manipulation would be great

michael majors played his list and made top8, i dont think its that obvious. also theres plenty of things to be right or wrong

i think gerry is right about liliana the last hope, and i say that having played 4 lotv main before. it does the things the deck wants, its soft to removal and swarm strategies, last hope its good agaisnt those things. veil might be more powerfull but i found that its not well positioned right now, at least for me it keeps underperforming

having played without any temur battle rage or rampager i think that playing 1 rampager is right

the rule of law creature and kataki i think are unecessary, but the ranger of eos and lingering souls are the cards you want to draw against midrange and control. without those cards the deck is a bit helpless agaisnt grixis control and abzan midrange

gerry talked about the deck in his GAM podcast and sugested a few new directions to take

architects of will instead of tarfire for a BG build

thought scour instead of tarfire for a BUG build

i think its very easy to splash a color in the BG version (likely needs grudge/souls against affinity) and cant see the benefit in playing BUG (snapcaster its not that good in this shell)

playing architects of will in the tarfire slot opens a lot of space, maybe BG with a white splash in the sideboard or who knows

thanks for putting all this together, even if its not something to follow word by word its nice to have other opinions on what to cut

while ghash77 streamed this deck a lot and put a ton of 5-0s, the creator its someone from germany, he made top8 of the germany rptq last december

both are ok

last hope is a bit redundant if you are already playing kolaghan's command

i think lotv its a better maindeck card since it almost always does something, while last hope can be a blank, but its great to have acces to last hope against decks with a lot of x/1 creatures, so i would play lotv main and last hope side

if instead of kolaghan's command you are playing more copies of abrupt decay and fatal push i can see last hope being better than lotv in the main, but it will still be a blank in some matchups

so the top 4 of the gp has 3 death shadow decks

so close, he missed 2 affliction triggereds and the opponent won at 5 life