MTG Salvation

Hey all,

Just a little brew I've worked up and been testing out. If you want to build it and post your results, I'd love to hear them.
(Feel free to edit as much as you'd like)



So, I'll try to explain a little bit about what the cards do.
If you're unfamiliar with Voltron, it's an archetype where you basically play creatures and then use equipment/auras to buff them and turn them into intimidating threats, similar in many respects to Bogles except our creatures often lack hexproof. This is why Voltron decks typically run more equipments than auras, as equipment continues to stay on the field even after the equipped creature is destroyed.

Stone Haven Outfitter and Weapons Trainer act as core cards for the deck essentially. I especially like Weapons Trainer equipped with Captain's Claws, as it will power out 2/1s every time you attack. Stack it with Stoneforge Masterwork and you now have a potentially game-winning threat.
SHO is good overall and helps us stabilize throughout the game, I wouldn't run less than 3.
Toolcraft Exemplar is just good in this deck; he gains bonuses just for us having equipment in play. Very good all around, I would not go below 3 because he is a good t1 play that scales throughout the game. Only complaint is that he doesn't work as well as I'd like him to with Stoneforge.
Thraben Inspector; all-around tech creature, the clue token buffs Toolcraft and you can use it for card advantage later on.
Relic Seeker is basically just an equipment tutor on a stick. Militant Inquisitor can turn into a sizable fatty as the game progresses.

Now to the enchantments and artifacts...

Oppressive Rays. I tried playing Pacifism in this deck but it just didn't do what I needed it to do. Oppressive Rays often fulfills the same role as Pacifism for W instead of Pacifism's 1W while also allowing us to stall creature abilities when needed. I've won games because of Oppressive Rays and I would not go below three copies in any iteration of this deck.
Murder Investigation is a nice tech, it often will make your opponent hesitate about killing your creature. Works especially well with Weapons Trainer, as all the tokens will be 2/1s.
Open the Armory tutors for whatever we need, so it's a nice addition. I would never run more than 2-3 though.
Shrapnel Blast is amazing in this deck, it can close out games when our opponent manages to stabilize later on. The only reason I'm not running 4 is because I want to keep this as close to mono-W as possible.

Captain's Claws is probably the core equipment of this deck in that it produces attacking creature tokens when we attack with creatures. ALWAYS RUN FOUR.
Shield of the Avatar is an often overlooked equipment from M15 that helps us with our game plan quite a bit. Much of our strategy revolves around attacking with creatures, and Shield of the Avatar helps us keep our equipped creatures alive by protecting it from damage-based removal and by preventing combat damage from any defending creatures. Good equipment but it doesn't dodge non-damage removal which is unfortunate.
Stoneforge Masterwork works well with much of the creature synergy we have in our deck; Weapons Trainer is the shining all-star for Masterwork as the only creatures he doesn't gain bonuses from are Toolcraft Exemplar and Sram. We would be playing 4 but Toolcraft Exemplar makes this a little difficult.
Helm of the Gods is basically only there to gain advantage from playing Oppressive Rays. I don't know of any better equipment to play so it made the list.

For our lands.

Battlefield Forge and Inspiring Vantage are no-brainers. Ally Encampment is there for Weapons Trainer and SHO. I'm really iffy about having Inventor's Fair in the deck, it's basically only there for the lifegain and that's it. Sea Gate Wreckage as a one-of to keep our hand stocked.

Anyways, I would love feedback regarding the deck, thanks for reading! (Also sorry if the layout is a bit of a mess)

Hey, so I was looking into a possible mono-G Scales build for Frontier, and I noticed Scrounging Bandar. Combined with Hardened Scales, does that mean that every one counter moved from Bandar and put on another creature counts as 2 counters when it's moved? Or does it not count as counters being "placed" because they're being moved from one creature to another? I tried looking for rulings for this but I couldn't find any. Thanks in advance!

Quote from Baorap »

This primer looks awesome! I was just wondering about this archetype after I saw Firebrand Archer spoiled from HOU. Do you think it has legs as extra copies of Thermo-Alchemist? It's easier to remove by the 1CMC red removal spells but it can still attack for 2 while triggering the damage.

I honestly never noticed this guy in the HOU spoilers but he seems like a nice addition to the deck.

Reserved for Later 3 (UR Alchemist)

Reserved for Later 2 (Jeskai Alchemist)

Reserved for Later 1 (RUG/Temur Alchemist)

This is the Grixis version of the deck, which I think is by far the best (and also the most expensive).

Your early gameplan is to get out Thermo-Alchemist as early as possible and try to keep him safe as he will give you an impressive edge over your opponent. Think of him like Delver almost, except he's not Delver.
Tasigur is, well, Tasigur. He does his own thing and he's an impressive beater.
Jori-En, and Homunculus are all deck tech for us. Since we do go a little short on hand-refillers sometimes. Jori-En is there to provide us with a source of card draw. The thinking here is that we would like something similar to Dark Confidant to help us out, and Jori-En (as far as I know) is the closest we can get in these colors in this format. On the plus side, Jori-En is not a terrible body. Now you may be thinking "BUT WAIT 2 SPELLS PER TURN HOW DO YOU PLAY 2 SPELLS PER TURN SOCIALIST WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?!?!?!?". That's where Homunculus comes in. He's kind-of meh early game, but when he flips into Voracious Reader, that's when things start to go nuts. At that point, he basically becomes a conditional Tarmogoyf that makes everything you play slightly more under-costed, really helping us draw from Jori-En and just drop spells left and right. On top of that, every spell that we drop beefs VR up by one, making him comparable to Tasigur in terms of power/cost (NOT EQUAL, JUST EMPHASIZING I NEVER SAID EQUAL).

I have grouped our spells roughly by their uses to us. Our first group consists of card draw; Dig Through Time and Ancestral Recall-- oops,Treasure Cruise. These are our card draw/filter options. DTT is obviously busted and there's no reason we SHOULDN'T be playing it. Cruise is nice, but be careful as you can screw yourself over with it. I might even recommend replacing with another Anticipate. Speaking of Anticipate, it's good because it lets us sort through the deck to find answers. Other than that, Painful Truths is there to give us a good source of card draw without having to worry about delve.

Our second group consists of our utility spells. These can be flexed depending on how you want to play the match out. Hordeling Outburst is to give our deck a little bit of board presence though if you feel like it you can replace it with Dragon Fodder or something else if you don't think we need it. Kommand just gives us so much flexibility that we don't have a justification for not playing it, and Brutality is another flexible card that fulfills many spots in the deck that otherwise would be difficult to fulfill separately. Kozilek's Return is a good instant-speed sweeper when we need it that won't kill our creatures (hopefully).

Our third group I've essentially jumbled together as "Removal and Burn". Lightning Strike is the closest we can get in the format to Bolts, so it'll have to do, and Stoke is actually a rather flexible card that can close out games for us (5 damage altogether if you tap an Alchemist) or get rid of a troubling creature our opponent may have. We're also playing Wild Slash because it's swiftly better than Shock and it helps us avoid Fog-like effects that our opponent may be packing if you need to close out the game quickly Sparta Kick is just good, one mana to remove many of the problem creatures in the format (or most of them if Revolt is active) such as Jace VP, Swiftspears, Lieutenants, Hangarbacks, Ballistas, Advocates, Grim Flayer, Scrapheap, TitI, etc.

Our last group is counterspells which are even more fun to play now that most of our counters now have a "deal 1 damage to target player" stapled onto them because of Alchemist. Mix and match to suit your taste.

I'll tackle these one by one.
Side out Brutality for Transgress if you find that you just need better options for hand manipulation.
Harsh Mentor is there for if you need to outgrind your opponent but just need that extra "push".
Murderous Cut is targeted removal if we need to unconditionally kill something that Fatal Push just cant.
Languish, Suns and the extra Return are all sweepers if we need them. Mix and match these for whichever one works best for you.
The extra Disallow and Dismissal are there to provide some beefier counters in case your opponent is playing a more ramp-based strategy.
Smash is extra artifact removal in matchups against Ensoul, because sometimes you just need to KILL IT NOW.
And Tormod's Crypt is there mainly to stomp on other decks that rely on delving and/or graveyard recursion such as Grixis Control.


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SaheeliCat is gaining in popularity at the time of this writing. I have yet to face it, but I will try to give some tips based on my analysis of the deck.
1. BEWARE THE PLANESWALKERS. You cannot, under any circumstances, let a PW hit the field. Even if it isn't Saheeli, odds are it's either Nissa or Nahiri. Once one hits the field, the game will quickly slip from your grasp.
2. WATCH OUT FOR ISHKANAH, JACE AND BOARD WIPES. These are the biggest utilities for the deck; if you aren't careful then they can really dim your chances of winning. Jace easily dies to removal. Ishkanah may be hard to deal with in game 1 but if you see her then for sure SB some Fatal Pushes for less conditional removal. Play your counters right and you should be able to dodge some board wipes before they catch you off-guard.
3. KEEP UP THE PRESSURE. You're packing Homunculus and Tasigur as well as posessing chip damage featured by Alchemist, and that's not including the damage you can deal with spells. If you play your cards right, your opponent won't live long enough to recover.

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Piloted this deck at a local FNM. I bearly managed to go 4-0, hardest matchup was against Jund as the removal left my side of the field a bear nothing. This deck requires skill, if you play it right you will bear down on your opponent from the beginning of the match and it will be hard to stop.

So, I'm currently building a Grixis Delver so I can start going to Modern events near me, the only catch that I've had is that I don't know if it's the right deck for me. I currently don't possess many Modern staples except for most cards on the Delver deck list, which is why I'm building it. Should I try selling the GD deck and then buying another one or keep on building it and see if I don't get better with practice?

For the record, I do have fun with aggro, control, and aggro-control. I'm not much of a combo player, something about combos just seems "off" to me, and I don't like them.

So, I was playing against a Souls deck and noticed Beckon Apparition in his mainboard. It got me to thinking, would it be a decent idea to maybe sideboard B.A. in a Delver deck for graveyard hate? Think about it, it basically doubles as targeted yard hate with an essentially free 1/1 flier and the synergy with Pyromancer. If used correctly, you can hit problem cards in either yard to hurt Goyf, or hit Lingering Souls to prevent flashing back.

I've also been playing Dimir Charm because it's actually quite strong. Sorcery counter (in my meta anyway) came up more often than expected, the removal helps when dealing with stuff like Dark Confidant or opposing Pyromancers, but the thing that I love about it the most is the third option. For you, you can set up your draw and get fuel for Delve, or sabotage an opponent before they get something important. Decent.

TL;DR: Beckon Apparition and Dimir Charm aren't bad cards.

So, I'm not sure if I'm being an idiot here, but has anyone ever considered siding Kiora's Dismissal against Leyline of Sanctity or other enchantments? I get it's only a bounce and not a permanent answer, but food for thought.

That actually looks pretty good, I think I'll consider it, although my current land base looks more like this

It might seem a little odd but some of these I did already have, like the Spirebluff Canal

So, I am planning on making a Grixis Delver deck, problem is I'm trying not to spend much more than $20 on any single card, with the exception of Snappy of course. Can I just eschew the playset of Scalding Tarns and instead maybe run 4 Polluted Delta and 4 Bloodstained Mire and possibly some slightly higher number of shocks? Thanks.