MTG Salvation

Congratulations on the 5-0! I've been playing E&T on MTGO for the last 2 months and am regularly going 0-5 or 1-4 so I know it's difficult! Thanks for posting your list. Given my dismal performance I'm going to try and go back to mono-White with Eldrazi and see if I can puzzle some of the match-ups out a bit better.

Has anyone tried Eternal Scourge as win-con in this deck? It seems that with the MD Rest in Peace or Relic of Progenitus it is a powerful and annoying card for opponents to deal with. You can buff it with Walkers or Rancor or Ethereal Armour or some other card I have yet to discover so it can close out a game very fast if need be. It's really nice to have a creature in this deck for random utility and you don't mind loosing it to Nodes.

EDIT: I'm very keen on any deck that can play a significant amount of graveyard hate in the MD right now. The control decks gain most of their advantage from the GY. Suicide Zoo and Infect are gaining a lot of value from their GYs and Dredge....it all GY. So GY hate is preeeeeeeemium right now.

I love the idea of Thoughtseize in the board, have they been working for you.

Pontiff has been REALLY good for me. I often want to top-deck it and it has helped close out games very quickly with flicker/displacer tricks. I play 1 MD and 1 SB.

Been playing Eldrazi and Taxes variant on MTGO for the last couple of weeks. After being a big fish in a small pond I've learned I'm pretty bad at Magic; MTGO is tough! Still learning and making mistakes mostly by not taking advantage of all the my resources each turn. It seems to take a different kind of attention and focus that playing paper magic. Anyways after an abysmal 0-5 league I wanted to post the list I've come to after those two weeks and see what people think.

The list is modeled off of Death and Catmix's lists with Sin Collectors, Orzhov Pontiff and no Arbiter. I think Eldrazi Temple is a broken card in Modern and so trying to take best advantage of that along with a tax package.



Would like to try Surgical but they are quite expensive.

The sheer variety of decks that you face on MTGO is hard to account for. My goal right now is to 5-0 a friendly league.

This is why I'm trying Eternal Scourge.

I've also struggled removing their Kalitas, Tasigurs and Gurmag Anglers. Wasteland Strangler doesn't cut it here. Fiend Hunter seems decent. I've been running 3x Spellskite MD and that has helped a lot, though I find it difficult as well.

Edit: Dark Betrayal...tech

Bit of a change from the GW/Oath discussion - good one BTW, great points CharonsObol.

Did anyone witness how sweet Eternal Scourge was in the Skred Red deck that one the GP? It was a ridiculous engine against a control deck he played, what a resilient little 3/3. I'm playing BW Eldrazi and Taxes (without Arbiter) trying to get the most out of the formats only Ancient Tomb in colours that do not normally get acceleration. I'm playing 2 MD Relic because it seems good enough most of the time against the wide MTGO meta plus it activates Wasteland Strangler as early as possible. I'm going to try playing 3 MD Relics and 3 Eternal Scourge (2 MD/1SB) with a Sword of Fire and Ice in the main to see if it's any good.

Why bother? I wonder if Eternal Scourge can help fight the Jund and control battles by making their removal less valuable. Especially when I'm playing the Eternal Scourge on the cheap from an Eldrazi Temple. I'm also considering swapping the Sword out for something like Basilisk Collar or Elspeth, Knight Errant. He's got less than impressive stats, as do most of our dudes, but his recursion makes me feel a little more comfortable investing in equipment/planeswalkers - I feel the like pay-off is more likely.

Has this already been tried in a DnT shell?

I wanted to post my thanks to all the people who have contributed to this thread and have helped me with this deck. I recently bought E&T on MTGO and am really enjoying playing it. I'm going to sell a few more paper cards and get the pieces needed for the Blue and Green splashes.

Thanks to SpiderSpace and CatMix for streaming, I've learned a lot from watching you guys and hearing your opinion. Sorry, Jendo, haven't watched your stream yet!

Thanks to to CharsObrn for his AWESOME splash primer, really great resource when I'm looking at UW versions.

Your time, contribution and care have helped me a lot in this game! Merci!

This deck is a bit of holy grail for me. I've been wanting to get a land/hatebear style together for ages but it never seems to work like I want it.

A couple ideas I have not seen in the thread:
Silent Arbiter + Mystifying Maze. Arbiter is pretty sweet at bringing aggro decks to a crawl, obviously better on turn 3 than turn 3. With Maze you have a soft-lock on attackers, downside is that you may trigger ETB effects. This is as close to Maze of Ith as we're going to get in Modern.

Glare of Subdual + Kher Keep or Vitu-Ghazi, The City Tree. Alternatively Elspeth, Knight Errant or Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. I like Kher Keep because it's very cheap to make tokens. Glare is a powerful board control card that does a lot beyond just controlling the attack step. It can shut down Kiki combos, stop a cheated in Emrakul from attacking and other sweet corner cases.

In building this deck I would run 4x Spellskite. It does everything the deck wants: stalls, protects hate pieces, counts for 2 towards Delirium.

Worm Harvest is a great finisher card, dredges well and supports other cards like Glare of Subdual.

Glittering Wish is a sweet tutor card that does not require Delirium. There are an obscene number of excellent targets including creatures like Gaddock Teeg, Qasali Pridemage and Knight of the Reliquary.

Mina and Denn, Wildborn are a more resilient Azusa that recycles your ETB lands and tramples Knight.

I personally would not splash blue unless I was playing Retreat to Coralhelm but would choose between Red, Black or just straight GW.

Black gives: Raven's Crime, Urborg, Blighted Fen, Abrupt Decay
Red gives: Flame Jab, Kessig Wolf-Run, Kher Keep, Mina and Denn, Firespout.
If you just go with GW you get to run more cards like Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge which seem like a very strong part of the strategy.

Anyways. I'm working on a list to post. Love that this thread is alive!

Looks like a reasonable control enchantment was spoiled:

Authority of the Consulate
W
Enchantment
Creatures your opponents control enter the battlefield tapped.
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under an opponent's control, you gain 1 life.


Comes down so fast, buys time via life gain. It's not super hard hitting but it would be ok to have more than 2 in your deck for stacking life-gain. I don't think is a shoe-in, not exactly what we're looking for but it's something new to think about.

Thank-you both for the good analysis. I don't get to play as much as I'd like so your insights are valuable to me. Cha-ching!

I'm thinking of buying into 4x Concealed Courtyard but I'm not sure I'd ever play them.

In the end does Concealed Courtyard just save me a couple of life points here and there vs. Godless Shrine at the cost of tempo? I can see it making Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek less painful. Does Courtyard make those spells main-deckable in Eldrazi versions?

I can see a BW version that runs Leonin Arbiter wanting the Courtyard. In an Eldrazi Version Caves of Koilos and Godless Shrine/Fetid Heath/Isolated Chapel do the job, what does Courtyard bring that isn't already there?

There are few cases where I benefit from the choice of B or W on turn 1. Usually I'm playing an Aether Vial, Burrenton Forge-Tender post board, a tapped land, a Relic or nothing.

Don't want to blow a bunch of money to just collect dust once the hype is over.

@Lt. Glitter. If you're maxing out on the Spirit/Sanitarium combo I'd think about replacing 2 of those Dryad Militants for Weathered Wayfarers.

Thank you for the awesome report Jendo. Really enjoyed it and it's great to hear how a non-Eldrazi Temple list is doing. Elspeth and Blinkmoth Nexus sure put in their work it sounds like. Lingering Souls also sounded like it sealed the deal quite a few times.

I've been brewing Sisay for a while now and one thing I've found is that the Living Plan lock is my go to almost all the time. I devote quite a few slots to that general strategy: Living Plane, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Elesh-Norn, Grand Cenobite, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and recently Natural Affinity and Nature's Revolt. With Elesh out Natural Affinity is another one-sided Armageddon you have to draw it but it's more copies of the same effect.

I also run Stony Silence/Null Rod so all my ramp is non-artifact. Meaning that I have lots of lands in play and can naturally just get in there for a ton of damage with them out of nowhere. Garruk Wildspeaker, Akroma's Memorial or Eldrazi Monument helps with that. So my secondary win condition is attacking with all my buffed lands...

I've also found that Steely Resolve naming Human is really good in a Sissay deck. It comes down super cheap and protect way more than just Sissay. Azusa, Yisan, Kamahl, Somberwald Sage, Ulvenwald Tracker, Mangara, Magus of the Tabernacle, Grand Abolisher, Preacher, Containment Priest, etc. Also feel free to name Angel to protect Linvala. Similarily I've found Dense Foliage to be pretty nice too since the only spell based spot removal I run is 1 Swords to Plowshares.

For those looking to break symmetry with Winter Orb effects try: Sword of Feast and Famine, Nature's Will, Bear Umbra

Why don't I see any Brain Maggot in any of the BW Eldrazi and TAxes lists? I read a lot of players complaining about a shakey BW and Colourless manabase. Tidehollow Sculler with his BW cost is super tough on turn 2 with all the colourless lands. Brain Maggot is basically the same card with an easier cost. You lose 1 point of both Power and Toughness...you can no longer trade with Goblin Guides, etc... obviously that's a big one. Otherwise they are very similar: they both die to all the same removal (Electrolyze gets better with Maggot, though K-Command gets worse), they both double pump Tarmogoyf.

So why is that -1/-1 not worth the trade off for an easier mana cost?