MTG Salvation

That's interesting. I don't see O-stone as a lock in my wishboard because I'm on 3 maindeck in my build and I feel I can move one to the side post-board for access to wishing it. I prefer that because I have many more cards in my wish board than you do and slots are extremely tight.

I originally thought ballista was a lock, but now I'm certain that a creature is a lock but I'm changing whether that creature is ballista or spellskite. Spellskite often blocks better than ballista (if you're wishing it on turn 3 with 3 mana left) and skite is a silver bullet in a few matchups. I'm currently seeing infect in local paper tournies so skite is getting the nod right now.

Grafdigger's cage is my lock for my graveyard hate slot. I typically will move cage to my maindeck postboard against dredge to hit it turn 1, and move a relic to the side as a wish target late. My sideboard also includes 1 surgical extraction so postboard I have 1 relic, 1 surgical, and 1 cage in my maindeck to hit early and I have 1 relic in my board as a wish target.

Lattice is definitely a lock as it's a 6 mana better than ulamog card a lot of the time.

Witchbane orb is something I've flipped back and forth on. Sometimes the 4th mana cost makes it feel bad and too slow, other times it's turn 4 against titanshift and I really wish I had the witchbane in there because it would have lined up perfectly. Ive also beaten mill because they couldn't target me with their spells or (some) of their triggers anymore.

Ensnaring bridge is absolutely a lock in my list at the moment. Before creator karn was printed I was VERY off of this card as I didn't see how it worked with the tron shell. But in practice, boy it does work. Early game against phoenix, titan, shadow; later against humans once you empty your hand more. It's been pretty important in spots for me to protect creator so I can lattice lock next turn with creatures on the board.

Trinisphere has been my single best performing card thus far. It has won multiple times more games singlehandedly than any other card. Other than the obvious times (infect, phoenix) the card is EXTREMELY punishing to modern decks that operate on low land counts or miss land drops early. A lot of times the trinisphere tells the opponent "you have 1 turn to use at least 3 mana on a spell to stop me from latticing you next turn and locking you out of the game with your empty board state" and if they don't have a card, which they likely won't or likely can't pay the mana tax, it's a free win basically. I've used this card against way more of the field than I anticipated because it's great in spots where the opponent can't pay the tax regardless of what deck they are.

One more card that isn't a lock but is proving really well is sorcerous spyglass. Looking at the hand of control players at a 2 mana cost is pretty good; considering I've cut TKS for my list for better combo hate cards like trinisphere. You can shut off planewalkers from bgx or UWx, it's good against robot varieties,field of ruin,the mirror,and griselbrand to name a few. I feel like I'm forgetting some other utility of this card as well.

So I've tried both a small wish board (6 cards) and large (9-10) cards and Liquimetal Coating usually makes the cut in the latter but no the former. The first turn it comes down it shuts off a land on the opponents turn with creator's passive (weak to lightning bolt out of titan decks) but that one turn can mean everything againt titan or the mirror. Coating becomes absurd the following turn, when you can then turn the opponent's land into an artifact and then uptick on it with creator to turn it into a 0/0 creature and kill it. So basically you can make a makeshift karn liberated that eats lands and have 8 copies of karn in the mirror (or use the coating 1 time to shut them off karn while you lattice the next turn). The popularity of tron right now and the prevalence of the mirror are reason to include this card in larger wish boards. 8 karns in the mirror is good.

Crucible is a great card and I ran one in my side pre-wishboard testing quite often. I started with one in my wish board but in testing I'm not sure I like how it played out. Against the two decks I want crucible (bgx and uwx), i found a turn 4 creator on 4 mana into tutoring crucible was just not doing anything. Before, I could play the crucible on turn 3 against bgx or I could bait uwx into countering a 1 mana ancient stirrings on turn 4 to easily resolve crucible there. crucible coming down 2 turns slower against bgx is not helpful, and trying to resolve crucible against uwx in this scenario is more difficult as well. With how tight my sideboard list is, I'm just not sure if this card is making enough impact to deserve a slot as a wish target when other options are more powerful.

So here's where I'm at with testing. My maindeck is identical whether I'm doing a small or large wishboard:

12 tron land
4 forest
1 ghost quarter
1 sanctum of ugin
1 blast zone (hands down the best colorless utility land we have access too and the only one that gives green producing Horizon Canopy competition for the slot)

2 Ulamog
3 Wurmcoil
1 Ballista
4 karn liberated
4 karn creator
2 ugin, spirit dragon

4 chromatic sphere
4 chromatic star
4 expedition map
3 oblivion stone
2 relic of progenitus

4 sylvan scrying
4 ancient stirrings

Small wish board:

1 grafdiggers cage
1 trinisphere
1 ensnaring bridge
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 spellskite
1 mycosynth lattice
3 thragtusk
3 nature's claim
2 dismember
1 surgical extraction

With this build I'm keeping spot removal in because I don't want to auto lose to infect, devoted druid, etc. Pretty much swapping tks in the board for silver bullets against different combo decks.

Large wish board:

1 grafdiggers cage
1 trinisphere
1 ensnaring bridge
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 spellskite
1 mycosynth lattice
1 liquimetal coating
1 witchbane orb
1 walking ballista
2 thragtusk
3 nature's claim
1 surgical extraction

Losing spot removal and a thragtusk to have more turn 3 wish targets against the field and have witchbane against titan, burn, mill, etc. Also walking ballista is a great card turn 3 and later but again I prefer skite if I'm using a smaller wish board, at least right now.

There's lots of testing and practicing to be done but I feel like the minimalistic wish board replacing TKS with silver bullets has some real legs. It lowers the curve of the maindeck a good bit, gives us a maindeck threat against blood moon in creator, and gives us a one sided stony silence which is super nice against all kinds of decks. It's really hard to say with any certainty whether this build or the traditional build is better right now, but I think they are within small percentage points of one another regardless so there's a lot to be gained in testing this new configuration when we know what we have in the traditional build and we know how to pilot it.

It cannot be correct to sideboard maps and scryings in the matchup. Those cards are better than oblivion stone and I don't think it's particularly close.

Relics can be useful to protect our tron lands from sugrical extraction, but as you run crucible of worlds there is a bit of a non-bo there so trimming a relic or two is fine. UW is one of the matchups to have crucible in your board for, you definitely bring it in.

For UW control with the sideboard 'user-23561543' linked, I would do this:

IN: 3x tks, 3x claim, 3x thrag, 1x crucible
OUT: 4x ostone, 3x wurm, 2x relic

You could also bring in only 2 tks if you want to keep more relics in to protect against surgical. 3 claims will be enough, you don't want to get stuck with multiple in hand.

Quote from 123shumpy »

Whats the game plan for sideboarding against Humans and Hollow one ?

Humans:

Out: 4x smasher (huge blowout if they phantasmal image it, we also become a control deck hoping to turn the corner after endbringer, dust, wurmcoil, or ballista with collar resolve). 4x chalice as they have cavern of souls and vial. 2x mind stone as we want to be developing our board with creatures or removing one of their creatures on turn 2.

In: spatial Contortion, warping wail, collar, needle naming vial and then canopy for backup, ratchet bomb, hangarback, torpor orb

Hollow:

Out: 4x chalice (they will resolve burning inquiry or looting even if we are on the play, before chalice resolves, they also have a bunch of ancient grudges that can be cast after they self mill it to their GY). 2x dust due to their GY recurrence and hollow one, 1x ulamog because it's slow, 2x ballista as it's not premiere removal for their 2 toughness creatures (outside of bloodghast).

In: 2x wail to counter looting, inquiry, and goblin lore, as well as exile flameblade adept. 3x relic for obvious reasons, 1x surgical because sometimes even on the play T1 relic is too slow. 2x hangar, 1x cage to stop bird and bloodghast shenanigans.

With this configuration I've gone 7-0 in my last 7 matches against the deck on MODO. We have bigger creatures, and they can't beat a wurmcoil or endbringer outside of double bolt. Warping Wail is the mvp as it catches them very off guard when you counter one of their busted sorceries and make them waste their entire turn.

Edit: some general discussion, I've been pretty down on mind stone as I evaluate how cards have performed for me the past couple of weeks. Even though I've had good results, I can think of numerous times where mind stone interfered with another turn two play and felt pretty bad. The modern format is just in a place where using mind stone to ramp out a t3 TKS or t3 or t4 smasher is just too slow for the first play of the game, and even a t3 TKS on the draw can be too slow of interaction. We really need to be doing stuff turn two in modern, and as I look on mtggoldfish at the meta, 14 of the top 20 decks I would want wail in my deck both game 1 and post board. It is removal and interaction I've found the deck is in desperate need of game 1. Sure mind stone helps ramp out our higher costed eldrazi, but I don't think that's where we want to be for an opening play until the meta slows down a step. One could argue that mind stone synegizes with Scion of Urza and that blood moon is prevalent, but I would say with the addition of scion of Urza to the deck we have more than a handful of threats that don't care about blood moon. SoU, ballista, wurmcoil, dismember, chalice, and dust are all playable through it. And we also have 4 maps and 2 wastes to cast our eldrazi, which is a decent number of outs. I ran wails over mind stones for a very long time and only went back to mind stone when blood moon decks became popular a couple of months ago, and with Scion of Urza being an amazing answer to blood moon and damping sphere I feel pretty confident in wails once again for some early game interaction. As I said, a massive amount of decks at the top of the meta have some pretty powerful uses for warping wail, some of which are our weakest matchups in humans, affinity, Titanshift, and to a lesser extent GX tron. It also is pretty important against counters company to exile an early devoted druid to avoid a turn 3 game 1 blowout. Lastly, I've found that burn and storm have become closer to even matchups whereas when I ran 2 wails maindeck i beat these decks with ease much more often. Wail has so many uses against both of these decks, and we are in a much better position against these decks when we win game 1 and get game 3 on the play, than when we lose game 1 and have to win game 3 on the draw.

Just had my first competitive league 5-0 with Baby Karn maindeck. The [-2] is doing such serious work post-board when games slow down due to each player slowing the others game plan more (typically). I've been honing in on a list and the one I've currently got in my signature is the one I ran for this league. It feels really nice. Torpor Orb does some work outside of the humans matchup I did not expect. It destroyed a Kiki-Saheeli deck in game 3, and buys us some much needed time against Primetime decks (titanshift and amulet titan). It's also a cheap mana investment to add to karn token anthem, I routinely have 4/4's or larger just all day every day. The clock Karn Tokens puts on is absurd, and it feels broken to create a 4/4 or larger for zero mana with a [-2] if you're also playing the threat you just drew for turn with your mana.

Since Baby Karn came out on MODO Ive played 75 matches for record of 43-32, 57.33%. In that time I had the one 5-0 and five 4-1's, and have made quite some amount of tickets. After the 40 I made from the 5-0 I'm now over 100 tickets in the bank, all from the 75 matches. The deck is performing really well with Baby Karn on MODO, this stretch of matches competes with the deck's performance during it's height (for mysel), when it was battling Grixis Shadow for the top deck in the format. I've only been able to play very little on paper because of the end of the semester, but now it's over and I'll be jamming lots of paper with this list as well.

Oh one more thing, Buried Ruin is the real ******* deal now, SIGNIFICANTLY better than Sea Gate Wreckage and deserves the slot hands down. Walking Ballista is almost always just chilling in the yard for you to use it as board removal or pinging for lethal late game, and it just crazy when you've got like 10-12+ mana really late game, and can be paired with Cavern of Souls to ensure it resolves and saves you from a lethal creature attack or guarantees the ping for lethal doesn't get stopped. It is a bit easier to play a T2 ballista for 1 to ping a birds of paradise or something, when you know in a handful of turns you can replay it much larger thanks to buried ruin. It is so much better to tutor for buried ruin than sea gate wreckage with a lategame topdecked map, especially with Scion of Urza giving us card draw and keeping our hand from being empty. Im empty handed less often than before and even before Baby Karn Sea Gate was so minimally useful. And also think about it's ability to bring back a chalice that was removed, or a relic or some other hate card. Super stoked about this card moving forward, not even close to as narrow as Sea Gate Wreckage and IMO worth trimming down to 3 or 2 ghost quarters, depending what you were at before.

I've been seeing damping sphere, and it's both been underwhelming against me and daggered the opponent, and it's gotten me just as good when the opponent is racing me down and already favored in the matchup (humans). But the builds I've tried with Baby Karn have been performing so well, he really is a perfect threat in this deck. When he slams through a blood moon on turn 4 (or after you've been GQ'd off of tron or eldrazi temples) and takes the game over in 2 turns it just feels so good.

Edit: List -



Surgical comes and goes from the side depending on how the meta shifts, it's definitely worth a single slot right now, a great play against Hollow One which is wildly popular on MODO. This is the most singletons Ive ever had in my E tron sideboard and it feels really flexible as a whole. Basilisk Collar is expendable but also decent against multiple tier 1ish decks so I've kept it in for the time being. And once again, it's another anthem for Karn tokens which has been super relevant in post-board games.

Two wastes just doesn't feel to greedy, the only times I feel punished are when I naturally draw them before I start getting path'd or quartered, and of course I've lost games to that but it is so rare to happen twice in the same match that I feel comfortable with 2 wastes if it means I get a second cavern to be able to name wurm or construct with it off of a late expedition map. Ensuring our expensive creatures resolve is so key to hammering the final nails in the coffin of the opponent in matches where counterspells are relevant. Even against storm, getting around remand is key.

Edit 2: 26/75 of the cards in this build are artifacts, I hadn't realized how many of the nonlands are artifacts until just now. Buried Ruin has some serious potential here. As does Baby Karns [-2].

Quote from Click5 »

Do you see adding more baby Karn to the list?

No, I think 2 maindeck is the place to be. There would need to be more artifact synergy for the -2 for us to want to run 3 or 4 copies. There also isn't much room for more than 2 Scion of Urza unless we cut into our creatures or dismember/dust/mind stones, which I wouldn't want to do.

I still feel like the card outperforms Karn Liberated, warping wail, relic, and spatial in the flex slot, it does so much for a card coming down on curve on T4, or later in the game when we are starting to run out of gas. I definitely recommend anyone on the fence to pick up the card as it's going to see lots of standard play and therefore won't be dropping too much in price anytime soon. I can't speak enough to how much SoU takes over a game in just 2-3 turns worth of activations in this deck, whether it be upticking for card advantage or -2 for beat down tokens. I did find that the -2 became quite good for us post-board, because we are often siding in extra artifacts.

Quote from ccc1522 »

Hey guys so ive been on here for some time and have a few things id like to point out and one question


With the recent printing of damping sphere i feel now is better than ever to run mind stone as more than just a 2 of. I personally run at least 3 and always have and ive never regretted it and now with damping sphere its more justified.

Now for further justification for running maybe even a whole playset of mind stine is the new karn. His minus ability will work best obviously with more artifacts and mind stone is perfect.


In the current meta there are a few running 4 endbringer. I personally run 2/2 split of endbringer/wurmcoil.

Honestly wurmcoil is simply to dam good and now has synergy with karn.

My next point has been mentioned but id like to reiterate it.
zhalfirin void. It would be crazy nit to run at least one. It has great synergy with karn as well as scruing a useless card to bottom before that +1 is pretty great and lets us dig as deep as possible.

There has been some conversations concerning hangarback walker and ive always ran 2 in the sideboard. I have never known what match ups to bring it in? Do you guys run that card? And if so what match ups does it come in?

Mind Stone is great, there is also downside in drawing more than one in your opening hand. I think New Karn would alleviate the need for 4 mind stones, because the card accelerates through the deck so fast, whereas a Mind Stone would be a 3 mana investment late game to dig a single card to replace it (if it was topdecked). However, on the flip side one could say more Mind Stones would synergize with New Karn as it ramps him out on Turn 3.

Wurmcoil is great right now, and as the maindeck is a pretty tight list with few flex spots, I would say it's better in the maindeck than Basilisk Collar if one had to choose one over the other.

I'm not sure on Zhalfirin Void in this deck, it seems much better in Eldrazi Stompy which has lots of real bad draws late game in Serum Powder, SSG, etc.. Our lands are very tight, there's a little wiggle room in number of Cavern of Souls, whether to have Sanctum of Ugin + Ulamog, and whether or not to use Sea Gate Wreckage (which I will be cutting with New Karn as the planeswalker will make our hand empty much less often late game). However, any cutting or trimming to those lands should definitely be used to up the Ghost Quarter count as high as possible before you'd want to fit in Void. You want Ghost Quarters because in two key matchups (Affinity and GX Tron), you really really want a naturally drawn GQ or two so you don't have to invest mana and Exp. Maps to get them. You also want GQ pretty early in the game against these two decks.

Hangarback Walker is really good against the following decks: Any grixis deck or jund deck as they can only destroy it, meaning you will (almost) always get the thopter tokens), aggressive decks such as burn and zoo as it can chump for 2+ turns between the walker and the thopter(s), control decks like Sun and Moon and Skred Red that do not have path to exile (mardu mancer also does not run Path to exile), Blood Moon decks like Blue Moon (side note, it's also not only great but is one of our only not terrible cards against Breach + Emrakul decks, as it can be sacrificed to her annihilator trigger and one thopter token can chump block). It's also good against ponza, dredge, infect, living end, smallpox, and it is an absolute silver bullet to Grixis Shadow when paired with Cavern of Souls. Avoid it against patch to exile, taxes decks using flickerwisp, and decks with trample or evasion like merfolk and elves.


I've been thinking about how to include Hangarback in the maindeck (as a 1 or 2-of) because of the potential with Karn, and because it's decent against humans, jund, and RB hollow one. All is Dust is not great against a few of the top decks in the meta (tron, affinity, and RB Hollow), and trimming down on the maindeck count in favor of a Hangarback Walker also helps speed our deck up slightly against the kind of fast meta at the moment.

Here's a list I came up with:



What do you guys think? Would this list be better with both Hangars main and both Dusts in the side? Or is Dust so good in certain matchups you want access to it game 1? Basilisk Collar seems kind of like an expendable sideboard card, cutting it could make room for a third relic which is a great sideboard card at the moment.

Edit: Testing this list on MODO atm in comp. leagues, and Scion of Urza has been destroying games where the opponent plays Blood Moon or Damping Sphere. Jund played a sphere against me followed by double fulm and I still took it late game with a pithing naming LOTV, 1 thopter token, and a double -2 on Scion to make 3/3 then 4/4 tokens and finish the game. Against Kiki Chord they mooned me on T3, had to take T4 to ballista their tireless tracker but T5 slammed Scion of Urza and they conceded a few turns later. In the latter game, I -2'd as well since I had a grafdigger cage on the battlefield before T5, the -2 has been really impressing me overall. He is still at 3 loyalty after making a 3/3 when I had two artifacts, that was so so good in the Jund game.

Edit 2: 4-1, 8-2 in games with this list (-1 spatial +1 relic in the side, MODO meta is FULL of graveyard decks). My matches were atually four 2-0's and an 0-2 to burn who drew like a god. Baby Karn won so many games when he came down on turn 4-5, and also late game when we were both hellbent. The best part about those games won by Baby Karn? I did not have natural tron any of those game, they were all me having 4 mana on turn 4, and the card still dominated.

It seems like you have chosen which deck to play based on the likelihood that deck goes infinite on the MODO meta. Not everyone is interested in the same thing; personally I play MODO as often as I can, but the reason I play it is to play much more than my schedule allows me to play paper, and to practice my deck against fringe decks or decks I would otherwise not face in my paper meta. I prefer to play the game in paper and in person, and use MODO as a tool to be better prepared for paper tournaments, which are my main focus. E tron has performed very well for me locally, my MATCH winrate in paper lifetime with the deck is 149-68, 68.7%. The reason I'm still on the deck is because it continues to perform well for me and I continue to win store credit, probably to the tune of at least a thousand dollars since I've been playing the deck in total. The humans matchup seems very far from unwinnable, and it feels pretty hyperbolic for you to say that game 1 against affinity (it is a terrible matchup though, stats don't lie) and humans is auto-loss. I've won SO many games against these decks by getting fast mana for an absurdly large ballista, an early all is dust, or a T4 ulamog into concession. Those decks do not interact with our lands or our assembling of tron, and a well above average eldrazi tron hand will beat an average to below average affinity or humans hand game 1. It seems you feel like your opponents will always have the nuts when you type so hyperbolic, whereas I am confident I can win games and matches against bad matchups thanks to variance.

GX tron has honestly only been performing better than E tron on MODO. Ive been watching both decks quite closely when it comes to paper tournament results; day 2 count, top 8 count, etc., both decks are pretty equally represented and GX tron has actually fallen out of recent Top 8's whereas E tron has been there. Why would this be when humans and affinity are auto-losses? How are people going X-2 or better in swiss with E tron if the field is so well lined up against it? I don't buy that E tron is a bad deck simply because of metashare percentage. I think E tron is so much more resilient to tron hate than GX tron. It doesn't get hosed by surgical or crumble, and both decks are pretty equally punished by multiple field of ruins/Quarters. Stony Silence and chalice aren't doing much against E tron compared to GX tron, and while GX tron will have an easier time removing dampening sphere, E tron doesn't care so much that it's on the battlefield. Ignoring all of those things, modern is a format where both your deck and your opponent's deck will not operate optimally every single game. It's a game of variance, sometimes your deck runs hot, sometimes you dodge bad matchups and sometimes you draw like a god and win those bad matchups anyway. If some dude can win an SCG tournament with KCI combo, why should I care that GX tron is SLIGHTLY better positioned at a tournament than a deck I have a blast playing and see a lot of success with? Another point which I like to make is that GX tron wins and loses by a wide margin sometimes, a bit too much for my taste. I like that E tron has close games, grindy games, plays as control and beat down, and has game against a massive amount of a wide open modern meta. I practice the bad matchups like crazy because I am super determined to overcome the odds and super stoked when I pull off a win rather than being sad or depressed that the deck that should beat mine did.

I honestly don't know where you are coming from, coming into the forum and trashing the deck that continues to put up results just because you have some bias against it. Is the reason you feel the need to do this because you wish you could play the deck but you can't because it can't go infinite on MODO? What else would it be? I've absolutely noticed a trend of you seeming to think your opinions are fact throughout our conversations here and this entire page of your posts is a resounding example of that attitude. It's pretty hard to have a constructive conversation with someone when they immediately dismiss your input with a scoff because it's so below their level of thinking, and that's the attitude I tend to get from you. It's one thing to bring up points as to why E tron may be worse, discussion is always great and it's why I post here, but to phrase it in such a condescending way as you have in these comments is ridiculous. And lastly, did you have to be such a dick to someone on literally their first post? Who cares that they said something that was wrong when they said affinity isn't a bad matchup, what the hell is the point in tearing them down rather than having a civil discussion? It kinds feels like you have an attitude toward E tron for whatever reason, and I don't know what the point of bringing it here is.

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

Excellent points around Tituba9.

Against those quick decks we could always give Karn's -2 a shot. If played turn 3 or 4 we may already have 1 or 2 artifacts on the board. Combinations of Mind Stone, Map, Ballista, Chalice, Walker, Cage, Collar or Relic. A 3/3 creature with Karn at 3 loyalty on turn 3 or 4 could slow the tide against Humans or Affinity. Natural Tron on turn 3 with a Mind Stone and Map/Relic on the board could lead to a Karn, Reshaper and a 3/3 token creature if needed. I'm excited at the prospects and think what you said about running Little Karn over Big Karn with Ulamog sounds correct. I need to start play testing.

Lastly, would 2 baby Karn free up the Sea Gate Wreckage slot? Maybe for a 3rd Cavern or 3rd GQ or a Field of Ruin? Could 2 Baby Karn and -1 SGW free up a slot for a man land? Would Sanctum be necessary without big Karn then?

You bring up some good points on the -2 I hadn't thought about. It doesn't turn it into s good card against humans and affinity, but it does make it less of a liability. Even a 1/1 could chump a non-flyer to buy time for us to play bigger creatures the following turn.

I'm not sure about the sea gate slot. If Karns were in the maindeck, you would think we'd be at an empty hand less often. That slot could be a buried ruin or GQ/Field/Tec. Edge instead. I don't think we need 3 cavern, usually two is enough even through land destruction or spreading seas. I still like sanctum without big karn, I don't like the idea of running a 1-of ulamog with no way to tutor it to hand. There's also ridiculous utility in sanctum and I like that. With 2 new Karns I could definitely see less of a need on sea gate.

If Weatherlight wasn't historic cards, but rather ancient stirrings (or ancient stirrings that couldn't choose lands), it would be something that interested me. But as it is it's mostly "dig 5 for an artifact card". I think I would prefer both skysovereign and smugglers copter in that spot. The former helps more against flyer decks (affinity, taxes), and copter is really good for filtering extra lands. Colorless eldrazi stompy runs a 1-of copter maindeck to filter lands and dead SSG/serum powder mid to late game. With new Karn, may be copter is a good way to deal with the extra Karn draws. It also is good against flyers obviously, AND can be crewed with a Karn-2 token. I actually really like sound of 2 new Karn and 1 copter maindeck after this discussion.

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

I'd like to get a little talk about Karn, Scion of Urza going. Will he boot out his bigger self? Will we split Karns, 1 big/1 little? How many sounds good? Any thoughts all?

I really like what new Karn does for the deck, it smoothes out our clunky mana, whether we are flooding or bricking. It finds tron pieces and threats. The downside is it is a bit slow. How does new Karn help the humans, affinity, GX tron, and storm matchups? We are at risk of losing games against these decks before the card advantage takes over the game. Against affinity and humans, we need to be putting creatures down or using our mana on removal, where is the time to play a 4 mana walker when we are almost always playing catch up in board state? It feels pretty bad there. Against midrangey stuff and control, a new Karn that sticks should be amazing and take us over the top in terms of threats and cards. Also, imagine the upside of having T3 tron and playing new Karn + a reshaper to protect it. Or using mind stone ramp to play it T3 into an empty board. That sounds really good against certain decks. Basically my feelings are if Modern were a midrange and control-fest, Id put 2 in the maindeck instead of both Old Karn and Warping Wail to smoothe out the clunky draws. It would help find lands or threats, help activate tron, and give us card advantage before we can get to Endbringer. But if it's too wide creature/combo of a format, it might be 1-2x in the side for grindy matchups. There is certainly room in my sideboard for 2 copies if it performs as I think it would.

What it comes down to for me is how well Warping Wail maindeck performs in the matchups where we need it, specifically the ones I mentioned earlier; storm, affinity, humans, and GX tron. Wail performs really well here and is far from a literal dead card in other matchups like all is dust is. I can understand the philosophy of wanting to focus on 'our' gameplan game 1 and save Wail for the sideboard, in which case new Karn would fit two maindeck slots better, but I think Wail has a legitimate use in many tier 1-2 matchups. It costs 2 mana to new Karns 4, so it lowers the curve of the deck. It's a great tempo card, and gives us instant speed interaction which is often not expected from the deck. I guess I've always been wary of having too high of a curve with the deck, to minimize the games where I lose to bricking on lands and mulligans with unplayable hands.

I think it replaces old Karn entirely if you are running Ulamog in the deck, for permanent exile. I think old Karn had high variance, as we have all experienced, and new Karn is exactly the kind of card advantage this deck needs to keep up with the new beast that is Jund with BBE. But if you're on the 4 Bringer no Ulamog plan, then a 1/1 split of old and new karn could be totally fine. I would definitely want an answer to Ensnaring Bridge + Pithing Needle in my maindeck.

My list with New Karn maindeck would look like this:



As I said, it could easily be swapping the Karns and Wails between maindeck and side. It could also be 2 Grafdigger's Cage and 1 Karn in the side instead of 2 Karn and 1 Cage. I'm going to be testing him quite a bit when he comes out.

I haven't been posting much because a combination of things. Work + school is a busy schedule, and right now I'm feeling other than a few cards in the 75 for personal preference the deck is quite figured out.

I will say that 2 Endbringers and an Ulamog top end, with no Karns, feels like a great end game against a surge of blue decks playing jace. I'm not sure if I like 4 endbringers in a meta with Jace bounces, dreadbores, and paths. An interesting card right now is Oblivion Sower, perhaps replacing Wurmcoil maindeck as a way to both guarentee value on cast if you can process and get lands to cast all is dust/Ulamog. Not to mention it can be cast through blood moon, and is at a nice spot in the curve where we currently have a bunch of creatures that that require wastes to cast. The downside of this is you'd probably want 2 relics main to help exile along with TKS, but I've never been a fan of maindeck relics in this deck because I want as few 1-cost cards outside of Exp. map as possible. We also have a great game 1 against Storm, Living End, and Jund/Junk so I don't think we need the extra GY help game 1.

Perhaps Sower is sideboard, to be brought in with relics in certain matchups? One copy of Wurmcoil and 1 of Sower as utility creatures for matchups where they are all-stars. I currently have 1 surgical in my side I could cut to make that happen quite easily.

I definitely like Contortion more than Gut Shot. We already have ballista pings and wails to deal with stuff at 1 toughness. Contortion targets a lot of 2-3 cost creatures meaning it is either equal tempo or a tempo gain. And it's an extra card to bring in in the mirror where we have to side 8 cards out (4 chalice, 2 dust, 2 wail).

I'm also back on Pithing Needle over spyglass. IMO the card is most critical against affinity, and we don't want a spyglass non-bo with chalice on 2. Pithing will go against more Jace and Lili decks now, and I side chalices out against Jund because their cmc is pretty spread and they have 3x K-command. Jace decks run Cryptic which they like to use to bounce chalice back to hand, while they are tapped out cast the needle on their planeswalker. Needle is a lot better against aether vial and expedition map on T1, which are two of the top current decks in GX tron and humans. Spyglass is clearly better in some situations, but I think pithing is better overall.

One thing Im back and forth on is collar or wurncoil main. I don't think we really need wurmcoil game 1 and I want to cast eldrazi creatures with temple, and I like that collar isn't answered by some decks game 1, but many lists use the wurmcoil main with success. Can someone give a case for wurm main?

Happy new year all, gonna give my thoughts on the meta this month. From 290 matches:

Arclight Phoenix decks: 7.59% (22 MP) (UR 4.83%/14 MP, Mono R 1.72%/5 MP, Hollow Phoenix 1.03%/3 MP)
UWx Control: 7.59% (22 MP) (UW 4.48%/13 MP, Jeskai 3.10%/9 MP)
Burn: 6.21% (18 MP)
Spirits: 5.86% (17 MP)
Gx Tron: 5.86% (17 MP)
Dredge: 4.48% (13 MP)
BGx: 4.48% (13 MP) (Jund 2.41%, BG 1.38%, Abzan 0.69%)
Ponza: 3.79% (11 MP)
Hollow One: 3.45% (10 MP)
Grixis Shadow: 3.1% (9 MP)
Ad Nauseam: 2.76% (8 MP)
Counters Company: 2.76% (8 MP)
Storm: 2.76% (8 MP)
Blue Moon: 2.07% (6 MP)
Boggles: 1.72% (5 MP)
Humans: 1.38% (4 MP)
Titan Shift: 1.38% (4 MP)
Elves: 1.38% (4 MP)
Mardu Pyro: 1.38% (4 MP)

Ironworks, Colorless Eldrazi, Eldrazi Taxes, Hatebears, Goblins, BTL Scapeshift, Grishoalbrand, Grixis Control and Mono Red Frenzy each had 1.03% or 3 MP.

As a point of interest, this month I decided to play exclusively in the Friendly Leagues to see just how much easier it is/how my winrate would change, etc. I wrote about it at length here: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/801804-the-state-of-modern-thread-b-r-26-11-2018?comment=1301

Statistically though, I ended the month with 66.2% winrate which was my best ever, and also amassed 10 trophies.

Metagame-wise, Arclight is still at the top of the pack with a solid though certainly not overwhelming 7.6%.

Jeskai Control was oddly popular as I saw it 9 times, but I'm fine with this as it's a great matchup and I got the perfect 9-0 record.

Burn and the mirror match still top 5 in representation.

Saw Spirits more than any other month, it having firmly supplanted Humans as the aggro-disruptive deck of choice in the current meta.

Ponza surprisingly in the top 10. I did play against the same opponent 3 times so for the purposes of analyzing the metagame, using 9 MP rather than 11 makes a little more sense. But even 9 (3.1%) is quite a lot. I suspect this is due to the nature of the Friendly league. I also went 7-4 on the month. It's not that bad of a matchup! Annoying as hell, yes, but very winnable. I'd much rather play against Ponza than Infect or Valakut.

Grixis Shadow rounds out the top 10 but again, I played against the same opponent 3 times (all within 1 hour, in fact), so adjusting for that fact it hits 2.41%, which is pretty much on par. 8-1 record here.

The same thing happened again with an opponent on Ad Nauseam - played against them 3 separate times. This happens on MTGO somewhat often - playing against the same opponent, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen the same opponent 3 times in 3 separate matchups all in one month before. Bit of an irksome aspect of the pairing system, for sure.

I played this list basically the entire month and it felt pretty much perfect. I don't feel the need to change anything going forward. By the end of the month the Horizon Canopy caught up with me a bit and did lose me a few games, but it did help me quite a bit as well. It feels like a wash in terms of which configuration is better - 4 Forest/1 Canopy vs 5 Forest.

Guess that's about it.

Excellent points around Tituba9.

Against those quick decks we could always give Karn's -2 a shot. If played turn 3 or 4 we may already have 1 or 2 artifacts on the board. Combinations of Mind Stone, Map, Ballista, Chalice, Walker, Cage, Collar or Relic. A 3/3 creature with Karn at 3 loyalty on turn 3 or 4 could slow the tide against Humans or Affinity. Natural Tron on turn 3 with a Mind Stone and Map/Relic on the board could lead to a Karn, Reshaper and a 3/3 token creature if needed. I'm excited at the prospects and think what you said about running Little Karn over Big Karn with Ulamog sounds correct. I need to start play testing.

Lastly, would 2 baby Karn free up the Sea Gate Wreckage slot? Maybe for a 3rd Cavern or 3rd GQ or a Field of Ruin? Could 2 Baby Karn and -1 SGW free up a slot for a man land? Would Sanctum be necessary without big Karn then?

This is my current deck.

Its been pretty good. I have never been a fan of running 4 chalice's bc tbh i find countering my own maps to be pretty unproductive unless its absolutely needed and in the current meta 4 seems to be too much and do to little in many match ups. 2 chalice has felt right and i believe is perfect in the current modern climate.

This is my current list.



Mind stone seems to be very uncommon now in many Etron decks. but with the rise of blood moon decks i believe it is more essential to mainboard them. The late game draws are also not too bad as everyone here probably knows.

Phyrexian metamorph is very uncommon but i think its very undervalued. Its very very good. you have the option to copy alot of great stuff which leads to my next point. which is bringing in more fatties. wurmcoil is too good not to include right now.

Warping wail main has saved me from early molten rains and other land destruction bs from GR ponza and is positioned real well atm. Gets rid of those confidants too.

Ideally id run 1-2 cavern of souls but those prices weigh heavily on my soul.

what are your guys thought on batterskull atm? i feel it would be pretty good but have not tested it at all. i wonder how it would be with phyrexian metamorph copying it.

any suggestions or comments are welcome as id love to see what could be done to optimize the list for the current meta(if its even a meta with how wide it is).

If Humans becomes popular again that's a real problem for us, and if more people put down Grixis Shadow for this 5-color version, that's gonna hurt a bit as well. Goyf is much harder to deal with than Tasigur or Angler.

Interestingly though Infect finally broke through after people toying with it in recent months. If it gets more popular, it's good for us, because Chalice and Ballista wreck them.

Overall, the meta does seem to be trending unfavorably for us at the moment, but that's fine. Modern is cyclical and Eldrazi Tron is way too powerful to stay down for long. And to be honest I prefer it when the deck is less hot. It takes the target off our back. I had more success with the deck when it was a bit under the radar, as opposed to recently when it was considered one of the best decks in the format because everyone was gunning for it. Any deck is only really the best deck for the short window in which it's the best meta call before the meta adjusts.