MTG Salvation

This is such a silly argument; the question was answered for us long ago. There was actually a time BBE Jund existed before the printing of Deathrite Shaman but after the banning of Punishing Fire. Back then people were running anywhere from ~8-10 three-drops in addition to 4 BBE, not very far away from what is being run today, and you cannot find lists that run less than 25 land. Here are just a few top finishes when I searched only for decklists at Premier events, you can look for less competitive tournaments if you wish:

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2817&d=218178&f=MO
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2804&d=218107&f=MO
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2776&d=217954&f=MO
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2641&d=217158&f=MO

Unless you're going to argue to me that the entire professional community in 2012 was collectively having a stroke, this is a settled question. Obviously you can always cheat on land and hope to get lucky. After all it's just one card. But don't kid yourself.

1) I don't know why you have to cut a Pulse for Path. There's no reason why you can't run 2 Pulse and 2 Paths. I actually 5-0'd a league recently with such a list. It also had a Celestial Purge in the sideboard to have more answers to creatures that get past Fatal Push / Decay. Especially if Bedlam Reveler becomes more popular, I think this will be good:



2) I agree that 4 Souls is probably good right now. I have to imagine the thinking behind cutting to 3 is that it is really bad against Tron and combo, but those decks didn't do very well at the PT. The format seems very fair right now.

I scrubbed out really hard in GP Vegas (2-4) playing a deck very close to Michael Braverman's 10th place deck from SCG Charlotte. Frustrating since I was straight crushing it in side events the previous day. I had a bye, beat Burn, and lost to Merfolk, Eldrazi Tron, UW Control, and 8-Rack. Against Merfolk and UW control, in two games each match, I got screwed by multiple Spreading Seas...

My decklist was:



The deck felt quite good although a bit threat light. Cavern made Tidehollow Sculler reliably castable, but losing Mutavault made it hard to back up the hand disruption with appropriate pressure. For instance, in a match against 8-rack (traditionally a good matchup for midrange Lingering Souls decks), I just couldn't get there since I didn't draw enough threats to outpace my opponent, and I didn't have Mutavault to fall back on. Similarly, in my match against UW Control, I just didn't have enough ways to pressure his planeswalkers, which seemed completely unbeatable every time they resolved (although in fairness, the Spreading Seas issue I mentioned before definitely was relevant). Some of this can be chalked up to variance, like sometimes you play really tight and your draws just don't come together. But it definitely suggests upping the threat count.

That being said, I think Cavern over Mutavault is right because Tidehollow Sculler is just that good and because Ceremonious Rejection is a real card now. People in this thread seem way too worried about the opponent getting the card back, but that's not the point. They usually have to spend a card to get the card back, and the point is that you get to limit their options by taking the appropriate card. For instance, you will sometimes see a hand with Terminate and Push, and you're supposed to take Push so that they have to Terminate your otherwise-non-threatening 2/2 to get their card back (instead of, say, Terminating a Reality Smasher). Another example: you can usually slow Burn down by a turn by taking the most tempo-positive card in their hand like Boros Charm or Lightning Helix. If they leave the Sculler alone, it's better than an Inquisition, and otherwise they have to burn a Bolt and some tempo to get their card back, which has the same effect overall. Sculler makes it so easy to plan your next few turns, I love it.

I would say that it's probably right to just cut some of the maindeck interaction for more creatures that can beat face. Cast Out was actually fine as a maindeck out to random permanents like Karn, and I'd like to keep playing it. The cycling mode is great when you don't need it. I would probably cut the Dismember and the Collective Brutality for the fourth Reality Smasher and some other threat. Both those cards were pretty medium and seemed more like sideboard material. But it's possible you're supposed to cut all 3 one-of's for more threats.

I don't like Displacer since we don't want to take turns off to flicker stuff. Shriekmaw also seems a bit below curve; 3/2 for 5 is just not where we want to be, and its trigger is not a may ability, which means it might get stranded in hand against Grixis Shadow, which is just unacceptable. Hangarback Walker is an old piece of BR Processors tech that might fit the bill in small numbers. Matter Reshaper? Smuggler's Copter?

On the mana side, I hated Fetid Heath, that card plays so awkwardly when you want to use a colored mana on your turn to cast a discard spell or creature but also want to hold up a colored mana for a removal spell on your opponent's turn. At least once I had to time a removal spell incorrectly. Also makes Spreading Seas better against us. Should have just been the fourth Courtyard. Marsh Flats was also great. With full playsets of Cavern, Flats, Courtyard, and Caves, your mana is 100% pristine, everything is always castable, it's great. Perhaps it's too good, and we should get greedy and cut some of it for Mutavaults?!

Also, note I played the 24th land, I really think it's correct. We're trying to cast 5 drops and get full value out of Souls in the late game...

Overall I feel like the deck is really well-positioned and plays great. It just beats the ***** out of Death's Shadow and all the GY decks. I know that's weird to say having just gotten completely wrecked at Vegas, but sometimes you play well and the draws just don't come together. There's a lot of tuning left to be done with this archetype, and I think it's worth working on with Modern so wide open. I refuse to believe that a format where Taking Turns can top 8 is a format where this deck can't.

I've done a fair amount of testing, mostly against the fair decks of the format (Jund, blue control decks, etc), Affinity, and Burn. Here is what I have learned and some ideas that I think might be worth trying:

1) Relative to the BR Processors deck that I described in the previous page, the lack of K-Command and burn spells makes it more likely than the BR deck to run out of gas or fall a few points short of lethal, so I think prioritizing threat density is more important than I had previously realized. For this reason, I think Shambling Vent is indeed something you want, and I'm going to start running it at least as a 2-of. Sorry for doubting you, deaddrift!

A less obvious (and more controversial) change that this logic leads to is running Liliana, the Last Hope instead of Sorin, Solemn Visitor. They're both somewhat-situational value cards, but I think Liliana performs her job a little better in this deck. I know Sorin's anthem is great when you've got tokens, but it's mainly great when you've already established a board presence, whereas a Liliana can claw you back into a game where you've run out of gas by rebuying a Smasher or whatever, whereas I am basically never happy making a Vampire token with Sorin. When you're a ahead on board, the +1 can shut the door in the same way Sorin does by changing a lot of the combat math for your opponent. I know it's not as flashy as dealing 12+ and gaining a pile of life, but I think it might still be good enough. Against aggro decks like Affinity and Infect, it can singlehandedly win the game (even if they pump a Glistener Elf or whatever in response to the +1, it will die on their upkeep since Liliana's effect lasts until the beginning of your next turn, not until the end of turn.). Against other Lingering Souls decks, it just busts open the Spirit subgame in your favor.

It might not work out, but I think it's a logical idea to try.

2) Hangarback Walker is still good, but I think we can do even better. It was really required in BR in order to have some defense against Liliana of the Veil, but in this deck, Lingering Souls performs much of the same work. But what to replace it with? I know the standard reply will be Matter Reshaper, but I think this is too conservative still. My thoughts:

I think our imagination has been restricted a bit because we're afraid of just getting our creatures Fatal Pushed, but the problem is that Fatal Push actually hasn't taken over the format. Look at the top 16 of this weekend's SCG Modern Classic, for instance. Fatal Push is being played, but it isn't something you need to warp your entire gameplan around. i.e. I think it's OK to run some creatures that aren't guaranteed value even if they die to Push. For example, Jund and Abzan aren't unplayable all of a sudden, even though Grim Flayer and Tarmogoyf die to unrevolted Pushes. The key point is that they're very low opportunity-cost cards with very high ceilings. If they stick, they can win the game. Things like Matter Reshaper will almost never cause you to fall behind on cards, but it will rarely actually win you games outright, and there are plenty of board states where casting a Matter Reshaper does nothing.

From this perspective, I think Endless One could actually be good in this deck. You want to block 2/2's out of Zoo and Burn, and Endless One does that on turn 2 even without a Temple. On later turns, it can become even larger than Reality Smasher, and will just Abyss every other midrange deck's threats until they find a non-Bolt removal spell. In draws when you actually do have a Temple but no Relic, it is a play that allows you to hold Wasteland Strangler for later value, or double cast removal and a 2/2 blocker if you have it, which ought to stabilize most boards. It is also castable under Blood Moon, and represents adequate pressure against Sun and Moon decks that attempt to hide behind Blood Moon while playing only a small amount of removal that can deal with huge creatures.

3) Everyone is running 4 Path / 2 Push instead of 4 Push / 2 Path, and I'm not exactly sure why. The deck is trying to stabilize to TKS and Smasher, which means you don't want to be giving aggro decks an extra land's worth of tempo. You'll cast Path early if you have to, but I'd much rather cast Push. You might be worried about high-cmc threats like Tasigur or Angler, but I would argue that you shouldn't be since (a) we run a bunch of creatures that just flat out beat those in combat, and (b) we still have access to some Paths anyway, so it's not like we don't have outs. Push + GQ also allows us to try to get in front of very creature-dense decks like Bant Eldrazi or Naya/Abzan Company (where we're just not going to be able to kill all their threats 90% of the time), whereas Path feels counterproductive (e.g. Path Voice of Resurgence, untap into Collected Company??).

4) Early interaction. I think even though we have a ton of Thought-Knots, it would still be nice to have something closer to the the usual BGx density of discard spells to make it less likely we die in the early game. I think we're the best midrange deck, so let's not die before midgame.

Here's a list that I'd like to kick around:

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Despite Baron_Sengir_007's horrible tone, I think there is a legitimate question as to whether or not BW retains any advantage over Mimic-based builds in general (UR, Colorless, or otherwise). The Pro Tour was not super-inbred, and I don't know why this keeps being said. Basically all major archetypes were represented if you look at the metagame breakdown, and the conversion rates into day 2 and top 25 speak for themselves. The Mimic decks are definitely the real deal. There are two main things that I think are working against us now:

First, all our one-for-ones are too expensive. Both the discard and the removal we play is just not good because they can play their hand way faster than we can answer it. If you played Standard during Affinity's reign in 2004, you will remember that Shatter and Oxidize were actually not very effective versus them because they would just play artifacts faster than you can destroy them. The same is true here. Their decks are designed to maximize the amount of virtual mana that Eye of Ugin makes by overloading on 2's and 3's, and we just can't answer them all. They will commonly play 2 things a turn for two consecutive turns, and because the things they are playing dodge almost every 1-cmc removal spell besides Dismember, we cannot hope to match their velocity with reactive spells. We have to play sweepers, but there are no 3cmc sweepers that reliably sweep them. So we have to look to 4cmc sweepers like Damnation. But this is not reliable. Sometimes Damnation will be too slow, sometimes it will be stripped by TKS, sometimes it will be Warping Wailed, sometimes it will not deal with multiple manlands, and sometimes they will read you and hold back a fatty or two so that your sweeper doesn't actually alleviate the pressure. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and I think that it is too risky to be a viable plan.

You might argue in response that all of these things are true of Affinity as well, but the difference there is (1) Souls is actually good against them and generates value, and (2) most of their artifacts don't really matter, just the "lords" - Plating, Overseer, and Ravager. With Eldrazi, nearly every creature they play is capable of doing real damage and attacking through our typical boardstates - even Mimic.

You might also argue that all my concerns are true of Little Kid Abzan, and you'd be right. That's actually a bad matchup for us! The difference is now Mimic-based Eldrazi has great matchups against decks that Little Kid struggles with, and it has an insane amount of hype now, so we should expect to see it more often.

Second, Ensnaring Bridge, Worship, and other hate cards that the metagame is moving towards hampers us just as badly as it does them.

In the face of these two challenges, I have serious doubts about whether Processor-based builds can compete.

I made top 4 at a 59 person SCG IQ in NJ with BW Eldrazi. I went 4-0-2 in the Swiss, won the quarterfinals, and lost in the semifinals. First, a decklist and some preliminary remarks:



As I've mentioned before, I'd like to build BW Eldrazi in such a way that it can play a decent game of Magic even when it doesn't find Eye or Temple. That means playing a lower curve like I've done. I only run 2 Smasher because (a) he's just a dumb beater, you don't need too many, and (b) it's too hard on the mana running 8 5-drops. Herder is just way, way better than Smasher overall, so you're definitely not shaving him. Lowering the curve has the highly-desirable side effect of enabling you to completely cut Expedition Map and Oblivion Sower, both of which are horrible cards in a midrange strategy. I am quite certain that doing this is correct. Ulamog is still OK as a get-out-of-jail-free kind of card, since you're naturally good at making the game go long, and then it becomes a nice Eye target that you can cast without the aid of Oblivion Sower. Ulamog got sided out a lot since I played a fair number of quick decks, and it's possible that he should be cut for another cheap interactive spell.

A few notes about nonconventional choices, for those of you who have not been following my ramblings: Sorin, Solemn Visitor was an experimental card today as a second Vault effect that isn't a land, and he was worth his weight in gold, singlehandedly winning me my quarterfinal match. I think he is a perfect one-of. Oblivion Ring was also great all day long, playing a key role in my win-and-in, but of course you must be mindful of the concentration of Abrupt Decay decks. I am tempted to run a second, but this is almost certainly a really dangerous and reckless idea. Disfigure was a metagame choice since the mid-Atlantic region is pretty heavy on little aggro decks, and it was serviceable but not fantastic. I can easily see these being some other removal option like Doom Blade or Dismember. Finally, 1 Urborg: why just one? Answer: Eye + Urborg doesn't matter as much since you're just trying to get to 5, not 6. You don't need Urborg to turn Eye into Workshop. Saving 1 mana is enough to reliably cast the 5 drops. It is just better to have a fourth basic since you often run out of Path/GQ targets with just 3.

Here are match descriptions, hopefully with minimal errors. Sorry if there are errors, since I'm reconstructing from my memory/notes, both of which are imperfect.

Round 1: 2-0 win versus 8-Rack

This is a relatively good matchup for Eldrazi just like it was for Jund. In game 1, he aggressively tried to mana screw me with turn 2 Smallpox, but I had a land-heavy draw and just naturally played out my threats a turn later than I would have otherwise. He drew the wrong mix of removal and discard and couldn't answer all of my threats, and with no board presence of his own, he just died. Oblivion Ring was helpful here to remove a pesky Ensnaring Bridge. In game 2, he mulled to 5 and again lacked enough interaction to meaningfully limit my threats.

Round 2: 2-0 win versus UWR Control

This is another decent matchup for Eldrazi. Game 1 I had a discard heavy draw that ultimately allowed me to play Thought-Knot into Blight Herder safely, which was enough to put the game away. In game 2, I led with an early discard spell into Lingering Souls into flashback Souls. One token drew a removal spell. A few turns later, I cast a Thought-Knot into his two-card hand, and he had land + Path. He Pathed the Seer with the discard trigger on the stack, and his draw was… Detention Sphere! That was lucky. The Souls ended up getting there.

Round 3: 2-0 win versus Naya Company

In game 1, he mulliganned to 6, kept on top, and led with land go. I turn 1 Thoughtseized a Collected Company, seeing two Loxodon Smiters, a Ghost Quarter, and a Path. I followed up with Relic, making sure to activate every turn to keep any potential Goyfs under control, and then he missed his third land drop. A Thought-Knot the following turn later saw that he drew two Goyfs off the top, so Relic was really good here. I took a Loxodon Smiter, and the follow up of Blight Herder was too powerful for his weak Goyfs to control. Post-sideboard, I had All is Dust in my opener and a bunch of Sol lands. He had an early Stony Silence, which was irrelevant to me since I just didn't have a Relic in the opener, and I played Wasteland Strangler. He followed up with Knight of the Reliquary, which quickly grew to 4/4, and I countered with Reality Smasher, which immediately got in for 5. The following turn, with mana open, I attacked with both Strangler and Smasher into his Knight, thinking I could Disfigure the Knight if it blocked the Strangler, but a Path on the Smasher resulted in a Loxodon Smiter being flashed into the battlefield. I let the Smiter eat the Strangler even though I had the Disfigure since I didn't want to two-for-one myself just for a vanilla 4/4. Post-combat, I played a Seer, which stripped a crucial Crumble to Dust from his hand. On his turn, he swung with both creatures, I didn't block, and then he dumped the rest of his hand onto the battlefield, playing a land and a Noble Hierarch. The followup All is Dust was a 4-for-1, leaving him with no non-land permanents and no cards in hand, effectively ending the game on the spot.

Round 4: Win 2-1 versus RG Tron

Game 1 I had the nuts, curving discard into multiple Seers. He got Tron online, but had nothing to cast since his eggs bricked. Game 2, I had Ghost Quarter + Surgical in my opener, and I got so excited when he played T1 Urza's Mine that I just went for it in my first turn. That set me behind quite a bit tempo-wise, and with a flurry of eggs and dig spells, he just curved out his fatties naturally, ending in an Ulamog decking me. Never, ever do that GQ+Surgical play on turn 1; it was awful, and I feel bad for having done that. I should have just waited until the last second so that I could set up some kind of board presence. In game 3, I had turn 2 TKS with Temple + Eye, but when I led with Temple, he GQ'd immediately, which set him behind on tempo, as he could only play an egg on his turn 2. I played T3 Thought-Knot off of Eye + two lands, which took a Karn, leaving two Wurmcoils, an Oblivion Stone, and lands. The following turn, I attacked with TKS to bring him to 16, played Urborg, and cast a post-combat Lingering Souls. He went digging with eggs a bit more and passed back. I then topdecked a Temple, and then cast Smasher the following turn to bring him to 5, and then played a post-combat Stony Silence to turn off Oblivion Stone and an Inquisition to rip Sylvan Scrying from his hand. That was a good turn. However, he topdecked the last Tron piece the following turn despite my efforts, and played Wurmcoil Engine in an attempt to stabilize. My follow-up of Oblivion Ring, however, cleared the way to victory. Sometimes you just have it all.

Round 5 and 6: ID, 8th seed.

Quarterfinals: Win 2-1 versus Merfolk

I kept a sketchy 2-lander game 1 on the draw, which got punished by double Spreading Seas. In game 2, I mulled a one-lander to 6 and bottomed a redundant fatty. Thankfully, he had a slow start with T2 Harbinger of the Tides as his first play, and I curved Flaying Tendrils into Thought-Knot (taking Master of Waves) into Reality Smasher. He countered with Kira, Merrow Reejerey, and Mutavault. I swung for 9 and he didn't block, taking him to 11. Then he slammed Master of Waves on his turn to make 4 2/1 Elementals. I topdecked a second Thought-Knot, cast it, and attacked with Smasher to bring him to 6, leaving behind two Ghost Quarters and two Thought-Knots. The following turn, he went for the alpha strike, which resulted in his Mutavault, Reejerey, and Master all dying (along with all the Elementals) for 10 damage, which wasn't enough to kill me – I am not sure what he was thinking here, perhaps he simply miscalculated, but this of course directly caused his defeat despite a valiant effort from a flashed in Harbinger of the Tides to buy a turn. In game 3, I was able to gum up the board with a bunch of Souls tokens, Thought-Knot, and a pair of unprocessed Blight Herders. He had Kira and a large collection of fish, and neither of us could really attack profitably into the other. Topdeck Sorin, however, completely broke the symmetry of the board, and his +1 directly led to the concession, as all his blocks were awful and I was going to gain more than 20 life.

Semifinals: Loss 0-2 versus Little Kid Abzan

I was again on the draw, and I had no plays before turn 3 in my hand. He went Hierarch, Smiter, Rhino, Rhino. Oh well. In game 2, he had Souls and Township online before I could go over him, and Township eventually ended up taking over the game. Sorin gave me a glimmer of hope here, but my deck was not providing any additional support, and I soon died to a horde of constantly-growing value creatures. I notably had almost no relevant sideboard cards for this matchup.

Overall, I would say the list felt great. I never wanted Oblivion Sower or Expedition Map, and I am likely never going to play either of those cards in this archetype ever again. As for improvements, Flaying Tendrils was kind of bad, and I keep going back and forth on whether or not Ulamog belongs, since his effect is really unique, but I think it's a solid 75, all things considered. I would happily run this back, with the aim of squeezing another card or two in the SB for “big wide decks” like Little Kid and Merfolk. Right now, I feel quite underprepared for those matchups, but I don't know what can be done about it. All the sweepers in these colors are horrible in various ways – this deck would kill for Toxic Deluge.

Thanks for reading!

Here is some theorycraft relevant to all the recent posts about the quality of various cards like Expedition Map, Oblivion Sower, and Shambling Vent. Basically, what I want to say is that the quality of these cards depends on how hard you're trying to midrange versus how hard you're trying to ramp.

To illustrate: people don't really like running Expedition Map because it's so tempo-negative, but they have to because otherwise it's too easy for their hand to get jammed with cards they can't cast. This is particularly bad for 6-drops like Oblivion Sower, because even with one sol land, you will very often miss your fifth land drop and thereby be unable to cast it.

Before Thought-Knot Seer was printed, trying to go "low enough" to get around this was hopeless because there just weren't enough cheap Eldrazi worth running, but I think now we can actually try. Just don't run Oblivion Sower or Reality Smasher. The curve ends at 4 Blight Herder, and everything else is cheaper. You can run an Ulamog as an Eye target because it's actually good as a random save-my-ass card, but otherwise, don't bother. The deck I've been testing with some success is



With this creature suite, you don't have to play Map because you can actually hope to play a fair, interactive game of Magic even if you fail to draw Eye of Ugin or Eldrazi Temple early on. This deck is completely giving up on the pre-OGW builds' total late game inevitability in exchange for extremely consistent, smooth games where you don't just die early on because you drew too many 5 and 6 drops. You can be more aggressive versus decks like Tron with the Reality Smasher in the sideboard.

Shambling Vent is key in this kind of setup because it's another cheap threat, and the fact that it helps with fixing our already-shaky mana makes it worth the poor rate. People who complain about the stats sucking aren't "midranging hard enough" - any random threat will finish the game once you've grinded your opponent out in the midgame. People forget that Jund never actually had to run 5/8's to close out games, and neither do we. Again, this idea is trading off late game inevitability for a more consistent and resilient early/midgame. Obviously, Vent will disappoint you if you're committed to Sower + Ulamog.

You still have to play at least 25 lands in this deck, and my decklist has 26. After all, even though you're running 7 Ancient Tomb, you're still trying to cast 5 drops off of natural land drops. BW Tokens runs 26, so it's not ridiculous or unheard of. Anyway, making land drops is itself awesome because you have stuff to do with your mana, even with your 6th and 7th land drops. Guaranteeing that you can just naturally Ulamog is sweet. Getting to flash back Lingering Souls alongside casting a freshly drawn Blight Herder is amazing. And so on.

Playing this ultra-fair midrange game is better than just playing Jund/Abzan, because your threat quality is so much better, and you still have the powerful nut draw of TKS into Herder which I'm sure everyone has enjoyed in testing. Also, no one is gunning for it yet, especially in paper. No one is going to give up sideboard space for a deck with literally zero IRL results in weeks 1 or 2 of the new format. Similarly, it is true that this just flat out loses every Eldrazi mirror but it's going to be a negligible part of the metagame early on. When/if Eldrazi becomes recognized as a "real deck", then this version of the deck will become bad.

This version of the deck might already be bad, who knows? But I've liked the consistency so far, and I suggest you at least test it!

Smother looks really good

What are peoples opinions on Disfigure vs Smother in the sideboard? It comes down a turn later, but hits a wider variety of creatures. It seems slightly better in Twin, Zoo, and Merfolk matchups to say the least.

Go for the Throat is a literal dead card against a highly popular deck. Doom blade does not have this problem. Blade misses on Bob, Vault Skirge, Tasigur. Throat also misses on skirge. So we are weighing these two points: 1) It's better to play Doom Blade cause we only miss on Bob (but still hit everything else in jund) or Tasigur (but still hit jace/pia-kiran from grixis) or 2) We play Go for the Throat so we can kill bob.

Why would we choose option 2? We are 90%-95% more likely to have blade work better for us in the long run over the course of a large tournament. My split is currently 3 doom blade, 2 dismember, 2 warping wail, and 1 slaughter pact. This combined with multiple stranglers/lilys/thought-knots and I feel very comfortable.