MTG Salvation

Went 2 - 2 overall.

Red Prison 2 - 0
(Got super lucky in that my opponent had terrible draws, this deck is a nightmare to play against with Chalice and Blood Moon etc.)

Tron 2 - 0
(Game 1 had a nut hand, dealing 18 on turn 3 with Groundbreaker, Experiment One having regenerate meant O-Stone couldn't help him)

Tron 1 - 2
(A resolved Ugin is game over. Wormcoil is also very difficult to deal with)

UR Phoenix 1 - 2
(If we can neoform for Eidolon of Rhetoric it's an easy win, otherwise letting them flip Thing In The Ice is normally game over)

A pretty average result, although I got to play the absolute nut hand vs Tron:
Turn 1 -> Experiment One
Turn 2 -> Geist [4 dmg]
Turn 3 -> Pelt Collector, Neoform for Groundbreaker. [18 dmg] [Exp One 4/4, Geist 3/2, Pelt Collector 5/5]

So this is the deck i'm gonna take to FNM tomorrow. I'm going to try Groundbreaker, Revolution Sage is probably the best Neoform target if you have a fetch in hand, but being able to Neoform onto Geist for 10 hasty power seems pretty useful to me. With a turn one evolve creature thats 18 damage by turn three, assuming they played a fetch/shock that's the game right there. Also could be useful against an opponent who clears the board, you can hold Neoform plus one two drop in hand for a hasty finisher.

I'm not too committed to Huatli's Raptor, but it's nice to have another 2 drop that pumps the board, might work well with Sidisi's Faithful if it comes to that.

On Lands, I'm pretty sure 20 is the sweet spot, mostly you need two lands in hand from the draw, and then to draw into another later on. I've had issues with opponents shutting down blue/white mana with Field of Ruin so i'm going to go for two blue/white shock lands. I agree with cavemandan that the deck needs to be able to play green from every land, cards like Geist and Groundbreaker are very restrictive mana wise.

Played the Bant Evolve deck at FNM. Went 3 - 1

UW Control 1 - 2
Whir Prison 2 - 0
G Tron 2 - 1
Suicide Zoo 2 - 1

Deck is actually pretty good, with the right hand you can explode onto the board with 14~16 power turn 3. Other hands are slower but still create a wide board state pretty quickly. Evolutionary Leap is crazy value in a deck with 12 creatures that replenish themselves on death, basically reads "pay G, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature, draw a creature card". Neoform is great for fishing up silver bullet sideboard cards also.

That being said, boardwipes basically mean it's game over. Without targets for Neoform or Pongify, and losing all the evolve creatures that you've built up, the game is pretty much unrecoverable.

Some fun plays you can make with the deck:
Neoform for Rallier to bring back Gaddock Teeg or Kataki from the graveyard.
Pongify the opponents creatures then cast Deputy of Detention to permanently remove them.
Pongify your own Voice of Resurgence when it's targeted by Path or other exile effects to keep the tokens.
Cast Sidi's Fathful to return Knight of Autumn to your hand so you can use it again to remove artifacts / gain life.

I've been following cavemandan's list for a while. I've already made the deck, will take it to FNM tomorrow.

I'm going to test Huatli's Raptor, when running only one Avatar there's the risk of drawing the card, which means there are no good 2 CMC cards to get from a neoform on a 1 mana creature. Running some trial hands I've got got situations with lots of evolve creatures but the only sac target is a young wolf.

Raptor benefits from buffing your creatures in a go wide strategy which could be better against heavy removal, whereas Avatar goes tall. However if your evolve dudes wont benefit from the 3 power of a Neoform'd Raptor it's always going to be better to go for avatar.

I'm not sure how much I like running Spell Pierce and Path as one ofs, I'm going to MB an Evolutionary Leap and keep 2 Pierce and Path in the SB.

The 5 - 0 list looks like something tuned entirely for this graveyard heavy meta. Pure hate-bear aggro.

I have the cards and i'm gonna build it and take it to FNM so I can beat this guy who just bought into dredge. Hah.

Quote from Lectrys »

Quote from 0oSunnYo0 »

LUTS Seems pretty good in this shell.

Ah, I'm never sure whether to count Mono-Red Arclight No Runaway decks in this thread! Maybe I should, because those decks are absolutely eating up Light Up the Stage:

evergo's Jan. 25, 2019 MTGO Modern League ListMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Lands 18 Mountain Creatures 4 Arclight Phoenix 4 Monastery Swiftspear 4 Soul-Scar Mage Spells 4 Faithless Looting 4 Lava Spike 4 Light Up the Stage 4 Skewer the Critics 4 Gut Shot 1 Lightning Axe 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Manamorphose 1 Shard Volley	Sideboard 1 Lightning Axe 2 Abrade 2 Bedlam Reveler 1 Blood Moon 1 Dire Fleet Daredevil 3 Dragon's Claw 2 Ravenous Trap 3 Surgical Extraction

This deck is going in a more UR Phoenix-like direction and ditching Bedlam Reveler for non-graveyard-dependent sources of card advantage.

Played this exact deck at my FNM today. I had a delivery of cards that didn't arrive so I was looking for a deck I could build quickly from stuff my local shop was likely to have. I managed to get all the cards except I only had 3 Monastery MentorsSwiftspears!

Anyway... This deck is absolute gas!

I went 3 - 1 - 2 Total, placed into the top 4. 3 Wins (Red Prison, Grishoalbrand, Grishoalbrand [again]) , one intentional draw, two losses (8 whack, Jeskai Control).

Considering I had never played this deck before and got the pieces right before the tournament... This is a pretty powerful deck. Admittedly it's not too complicated to play, sort of burn meets aggro kinda thing.

Light up the stage is a nuts card, very consistantly it's R - Draw 2. Sometimes its 2R - Draw 2, but even then that's usually when you've 4+ lands going anyway. The only issue is when you snag Phoenix with Stage, because that's almost guaranteed to just be a wasted Phoenix.

Skewer is... less good, but still very decent. Against control it can be much harder to get a Spectacle trigger which sometimes leaves you with two of these 3 mana bolts in hands.

My main issue is the lack of sideboard mono red gives you. Sure you can bring in Blood Moon which is nice, but it really needs something like white/green for cards like Rest In Peace, Stony Silence, or some kind of enchantment removal. Playing against someone with Leyline of Sanctity is just rough.

Lot's of cool ideas floating around...

On the topic of Value vs Straight Combo, has anyone else checked out the list by Sam Pardee?

Mtgoldfish list (different one!) https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/prime-speaker-vannifar-with-kiki-combo-in-modern/

It's a list leaning heavy onto combo using Postmortem Lunge, I guess since you expect Vannifar to get killed it's a way of playing it the next turn regardless

Quote from the nobodys »

Just kind of stopping by to check out how this deck is progressing (I kind of love all combo decks). One question, is there any reason why Village Bell-Ringer isn't used here? It doesn't have Exarch's tap-down ability, but since this combo is typically going off after a chord on the opponent's end-step, tapping down a removal land seems less relevant. And Bell-Ringer can untap all your mana dorks and potentially let you cast him and chord, or chord for him and then chord for something else?

Just curious why he isn't in any lists.

Probably because Deceiver is traditional in creature combo decks like this, it's the first thing people think of. If there is a valid reason to play it over Bell-Ringer that would be interesting... since white would be easier for this colour base

It seems there's all sorts of takes on this deck. The problem I have with trying to use rhythm of the wilds or other haste enablers is it either decreases the reliability of the deck, or reduces valuetown style creatures.

Yeah this is primarily a combo deck, but the combo is going to get shut down pretty often and so we should be able to hold up some amount of aggro as a plan B.

That being said, has anyone seen the deck mtggoldfish posted? https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-prime-speaker-pod-modern

I like the back up combos, plus other creatures which can stretch the game out like having more Renegade Ralliers or playing Suntitan. I like the way he has structured it, if the card is a key combo piece then it's at least a 2 of, that way you have a backup if cards get removed / stuck in hand / etc.

Nice write-up as always. I'm gonna be honest, I've stopped playing the deck. The last time I played I was just shut down by decks such as Storm, Tron, and Spirits.

There were opportunities to win the game, but it always meant relying on Craggwick discard with only 50% or 33% chance of getting the win, and if you whiff it's game over. Taking the time to make it 100% is a turn or two too slow I think. Those odds just aren't suiting me at the moment.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Quote from Soot »

I'm going to run Bant Bogles tomorrow at FNM using that list. If it goes well I'll let you guys know.

I appreciate it. I've always wondered about Bant Bogles in practice. I've never done it or Aura Swap, despite having all the cards. I just didn't have the guts.

One thing I'd be wary of is [c]Thing in the Ice[/I]. It turned an easy matchup into a nightmare for us. I would like to have 4 Path to Exile and probably even 1-2 Dismember in the SB for that card. Maybe that's overdoing it since I haven't played actually played Bogles in a while, but I feel scared of it. It flipping is GG for Bogles. Scoop it up time...

Yes, it was as you say. In theory Bant boggles could have been good. However, UR phoenix with Titi was auto-lose. Won a few games but lost overall, deck didn't feel too strong IMO, at least for this meta.

Playing bogles again just reminds me how often we have to mull to 4 or 5 for a playable hand... Anyway, until people stop playing UR Phoenix I can't recommend any kind of Bogles deck at the moment. Feels bad man

I'm going to run Bant Bogles tomorrow at FNM using that list. If it goes well I'll let you guys know.

Played recently at FNM. Did ok, 1 - 2. Played a list pretty close to Archgaze's old stock list.

Had lots of bad draws, mulls to 5 etc. Didn't get to land any nice Cragganwurms either.

Anyway, one of my biggest problems was just fixing the right mana! Getting triple green and also double red out of a few lands proved very difficult. Dorks were removed a great majority of the time. Drawing colourless land and having a dork removed really held up a lot of lines of play. Thinking about this I realised the big problem was Steel-leaf champion and it's GGG cost. This card was getting stuck in my hand far too often. This led me back to thinking about Archgaze's newer list. If we remove Steel-leaf what do we have space for?




So I was thinking something like this, which plays closer to a mid-range deck with the Cragganwick combo. I don't own any goyfs and I don't think they would be that great anyway. I'll have to change the sideboard around to reduce white mana dependence. I'm also not sure blood moon is where this deck wants to be, but I'm gonna try it out over the next week and see how it does.

@FoodChainGoblins

I think you're missing a little something in your list... a 16/16 wurm creature maybe?

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Quote from 7he5haman »

Good luck FoodChainGoblins!

Archgaze placed 15th in this week's MTGO Modern Challenge:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/modern-challenge-2018-12-09

List is quite different to the one he won with - no Steel Leaf Champions, X2 Blood Moon MB and X2 Goyf MB too! (Among other changes.)

Wow! What a difference.

Why is he refusing to do 4 Knight of Autumn? Does anyone here play MTGO and can ask him? Also, Wall of Reverence has been terrible for me.

I get the feeling wall of reverence is brought in for more than burn matchups, humans and spirits maybe? could be others too. Can outlast a lot of aggro with the lifegain + block every turn.

Lack of Knight of Autumn actually makes sense in the deck he is running now, since it leans much heavier on using blood moon. Knight works in the old deck but you wouldn't rely on white mana in his new one.

I'm not sure how much I like his new deck, If we want to use blood moon then we probably don't want to be half-hearted about it and would have to change the whole mana base. Personally I dislike goyf in a deck like this with such a small spell count. Maybe he's just trying out something new. I'm gonna keep to the older style since it took 1st place previously. I have been thinking about trying Huntmaster of the Fells for a while though.

edit: I see he's also switched to double Anger of the Gods in the sideboard, which makes sense to me

edit2: I think a lot of his card choices are actually meta calls, especially the double scooze with only 1 tracker tells me he was expecting a lot of phoenix, jund, or other graveyard decks