MTG Salvation

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Quote from MatsuriFramboise »

Match 1: Azusa Amulet, loss 0-2
For a while I was thinking some of the most frustrating things we could deal with would be decks that dump tons of tokens on the board or Affinity. No, it's this. The ramp is just way too hard and taxes are completely worthless. I'm glad it's not necessarily a heavy meta deck. <_<

What did you bring in? Id suggest trying your Kataki's, Eidolons, revoker and worship. Ditch the displacers and stragnlers.

Kataki wouldn't stop anything when he could just tap and bounce a ton of mana to save his Amulets. Eidolons might have been okay, but he rarely cast more than one spell per turn anyway. Revokers had no useful targets. Worship would have been great if I had drawn into it. Displacer and Stranglers were what I used to try to eliminate his Amulets and Titans and stall the game out until I could draw into more removal. He wouldn't have had anything to do had I managed to kill off all the Primeval Titans.

I boarded in Worship, Eidolons, and Revokers anyway, at any rate. Didn't help.

Pretty decent night at FNM with BW Eldrazi & Taxes. Went 3-1.



Match 1: Azusa Amulet, loss 0-2
For a while I was thinking some of the most frustrating things we could deal with would be decks that dump tons of tokens on the board or Affinity. No, it's this. The ramp is just way too hard and taxes are completely worthless. I'm glad it's not necessarily a heavy meta deck. <_<

Match 2: Affinity, win 2-1
Kataki does work.

Match 3: Stompy, win 2-1
He actually had a pretty good chance of winning game 3, but he tilted out to me flickering stuff and scooped. A win's a win, yo.

Match 4: Affinity, win 2-0
He didn't really know what to do in game 1 since he's new (why people dive right into Magic with $700+ (far more than that, since he had a Masterpiece Mox Opal) decks, I don't really understand) and doesn't understand the interactions of his cards or how they could be utilized to his advantage. Game 2, Kataki came down. He scooped.

Thoughts:
I hate Shambling Vent. Gonna have to invest in Godless Shrines already. Ugh.
When people say E&T can be clunky, they ain't lying. Sometimes it's suffering, never pulling the interaction you need.
Despite that, it works pretty well. I'm not dissatisfied, Azusa Amulet is just such an awful matchup that kept me from potentially going 4-0.

I was actually thinking about Akroma the other day, myself. I decided against her since it seems like too inconsistent of a combo. That said, do morphed creatures also flip when exiled with Flickerwisp or Fiend Hunter? I could consider her if that's the case.

I think I'll be giving Archangel Avacyn a try this week in the sideboard. She is high CMC, but by the time I would want/need her on the board, I'll likely have that much mana to work with. I personally think she's more versatile and a bigger overall threat in most cases over the Hulk due to being instant-speed, having flying, being able to be used to save our creatures, and has lots of value in being recurred that doesn't hurt us when pulled off correctly. Yes, she can backfire, that is true, but at the same time, her presence on the board will put pressure on the opponent. Do they risk killing one of our creatures and having her go off? Do they risk the notion that we have ways of flickering her so that they take all of the damage and we take none? It would end up being a mind game of "I can't let them swing in unblocked, but if I block or let one of their creatures die to mine, I'm gonna trigger an Anger of the Gods+ Bolt to the face effect that they can save themselves from?". And if they use removal on her, she's still done her job in protecting our squishies by taking the blow instead of them.

At least, in theory.

I may or may not just want a reason to keep trying to find a happy home for her in Modern. <_<;

This is getting kind of stupid at an alarming rate. Can we not argue over something so small before we even have significant data on whether or not it's good? That's kind of the whole point of trying new stuff.

The problem with putting new Thalia in E&T is that she competes with Eldrazi Displacer and Blade Splicer for deck space in the 3 CMC zone-- and I feel Blade Splicer gives far more value than THC does since it's a recurrable Golem generator and gives them First Strike. Don't get me wrong, I love new Thalia to pieces, but when the E&T archetype runs Displacer, it feels like better value to play the card that can be devastating when recurred a few times. Selfless Spirit is cool and can protect our squishy taxers, but I'm not personally running any right now simply because I don't know what to drop to fit it in.

I know we've discussed the value of Cataclysmic Gearhulk so far, but I just remembered another card-- what of Archangel Avacyn? She has a similar ability to Gearhulk, but can be flashed in to protect our creatures, is an evasive beater with vigilance, and we have control over her destructive flip effect via flicker tricks and Selfless Spirit, should we be running it with her. All for the same price as Gearhulk. It may be a little too cute, I think, but if Gearhulk's working, maybe Avacyn's added versatility and evasion may be worth considering?

I think we've more or less concluded that Concealed Courtyard is definitely in for sure for BW variants. In my own limited testing, it's INFINITELY better than the Isolated Chapels I was running before.

Cataclysmic Gearhulk seems like super cool sideboard tech for our worse matchups, and the fact that it can be recurred with Resto or Displacer means it's a value machine. I really am intrigued by it.

I'm going to disagree with the notion of "special snowflake" versions of the deck, however, because WU versions of the deck seem to have been performing pretty dang well for the people who have been trying it, myself included. Truthfully, I'm not 100% sold on E&T yet. Successful it may be, but it is still wildly inconsistent and the manabase, even with optimal lands, is still clunky due to catering less to color-fixing and more on making sure we have Eldrazi fuel.

Quote from CharonsObol »

Quote from MatsuriFramboise »

I still kind of want to run a couple Smuggler's Copter merely for the sake of giving Arbiter, Splicer, or Thalia a method of attack without putting them in danger, so they feel less fragile and more functional.

The problem with that reasoning is that you could simply have run a different creature in that slot and held back Arbiter, Splicer, or Thalia to block.

Fair point. I just thought that the benefit of having a 3/3 flier that's hard to interact with that also lets you loot outweighed that deficit.

I still kind of want to run a couple Smuggler's Copter merely for the sake of giving Arbiter, Splicer, or Thalia a method of attack without putting them in danger, so they feel less fragile and more functional.

Pulling off Displacer+Gearhulk sounds absolutely hilarious as the ultimate tax.

Hm, neat! I think I might want to sideboard one as a pseudo-boardwipe or something.

Which Gearhulk?

Irony would have it that the EMN Lili I pulled was part of my trade fodder for an Aether Vial to build this deck to begin with. Now I kinda wish I had one again to pop in the deck.

I don't really see what net benefit she has for us that the EMN Lili doesn't already do. Since we don't get much (or any) card draw, planeswalkers that force us to discard cards too seems like a net deficit for us unless our hand is already empty-- and that goes for Lili of the Veil, too. EMN Lili is pretty awesome though, because she can weaken or kill things, reanimate things, and give us an inevitable-win board state in tokens.

I will say that ORI Lili does have the cool benefit of not being affected by Thalia, though. And for being Vial-able.

I'm a fan of Blessed Alliance, myself. Sure, it's not 1-mana, but it has lots of modes to utilize even when you don't need it as removal. Versatility is always nice, especially if you plan on mainboarding it and you end up against a not-so-aggro deck-- in that case, you can use it for lifegain or untapping creatures for ambush-blocking.