MTG Salvation

We got a new toy:

Emry, Lurker of the Loch
2U
Legendary Creature - Merfolk Wizard
This spell costs 1 less to cast for each artifact you control.

When Emry, Lurker of the Loch enters the battlefield, put the top four cards of your library into your graveyard.

T: Choose target artifact card in your graveyard. You may cast that card this turn.
1/2

Value doesn't get much more efficient than this... dodges the golem tax with reduction. Unloading ballista and recasting them seems like a deadly play.
Thoughts?

Quote from Bearscape »

I was 100% on the Frogtosser Banneret train at the start but I'm now convinced the card is too weak. The acceleration is great, but individually it is rarely worth a card, needing multiple Ringleaders to be worth the investment.

Well for my part i'm still 100% on the frogtosser banneret bandwagon. Playing multiple goblins a turn is key to winning and cost reduction is the best way to do that. Note that i play only 20 lands as opposed to a lot of people's 22-23, so if i did like a lot of people do, these frogtossers would just be more lands anyways.
Playing 4x aether vials, plus 4x skirk prospectors + 4x goblin warchiefs and 4x frogtosser bannerets in addition to the new mulligan rule makes 20 lands very reasonable for this deck in my opinion.

Quote from MagicYio »

And to answer the last part of your response: the purpose of Piledriver is to race your opponent.

All of the points you make are very fair. I'll give old goblin piledriver a try, probably in the place of my two goblin chieftains, since they both have the same purpose of racing. We'll see how it goes!

I play zero piledrivers, they are very bad in combat, not worth it unless you play the 8 whack aggro version with legion loyalists.
I play 4x marshals, they are just good goblin fodder.
Here's my updated list:


I streamlined the deck a bit, removing the one ofs, making the deck very consistent.

I'm playing tarfire because we lack other turn one action, i dislike legion loyalist and knucklebone witch. The extra removal has been very useful.

My experience playing with the deck convinced me that we should run 8x cost reducing goblins, those effects are totally busted with matron and ringleader.

I also think that for the most part running the painless mana base helps a lot. The non shuffling thing i mentionned in my last post doesn't actually make sense since matron shuffles our deck, but, unless you plan on playing black non-goblin cards in the sideboard, i don't see a reason to hurt ourselves when we can have near-perfect painless mana. For this reason i plan on removing warren weirding from the sideboard for maybe engineered explosives vs bogles.

Pretty cool card. Sphinx's revelation was good and dealing damage is much better than life gain in most situations, which makes it probably worth the extra mana. A card draw spell that mitigates the tempo loss usually associated with such spells by being also removal (or straight up just a win con) at instant speed is pretty interesting for a control deck. And the added flexibility of the copy half that can be used for value earlier makes this very powerful imo.

Something being «Stricty better» than something else is a very strong statement that is almost never true. Taking even a small amount of damage from your lands and sometimes losing to blood moon makes this statement objectively false. Maybe you think the splash is worth it, that is worth discussing. But it is not «strictly better».

Alright now we're talking

This new lord will push the deck, we might get to a point were there will be too many spirits to choose from, if the printing of a new lord is any indication of future increase of support for the tribe. Of course this is a problem i welcome with great joy

I'm with streexgeist on this one, i'm very excited for this. Seems like a no brainer in the sideboard, and i'll definitely give this a shot x2 in the main. Just being a 2cc 2 power flying beater makes this great. I might be wrong and maybe its just for side, but i can't wait to try this out!

Good to have feedback from other people on traxos, this will save me testing time with the thing, didn't really want to test it more after my initial disappointment. Bird is great though, love it.

I've never taken throne of the god-pharaoh out of the deck, it never disappoints. In addition to being just great in general it just beats cards i hate losing to, like worship and ensnaring bridge. I'm currently on 2 and have been happy with this number.

I also still love god-pharaoh's gift since i started playing it, it just gives the deck a big splashy artifact to use all the extra mana. It provides free wins vs heavy control decks and isn't really awful against any decks, the challenge is just getting to resolve one.

I really don't like the idea of jace, the mind sculptor in spirits. It goes against everything this deck is about. Tapping out for a 4 mana card that isn't a creature, and sorcery speed on top of that? This is a recipe for disaster i think. At least in control decks it serve as both a card draw engine AND a win con, and it hasn't even been that insane in those decks. We need no additional win con, beating with flying bears is all we need.

I dunno about restoration angel, do we even have worthy etb to abuse? Flickering rattlechains is useless since the angel already saves a creature anyways, angel is just a 4cc rattlechains at this point. Flickering nebelgast herald produces no additional benefit, if resto was just a random spirit with flash it would trigger herald anyways (same with wanderer). So we have the really corner case of flickering queller in response to the etb trigger, and, i mean, that's just meh. Angel costing 4 mana just messes up the land count math and makes vial real awkward compared to having all 2 and 3 drops. There are plenty of decent 3 drops spirits to choose from, i see no need for the angel here.

EDIT: also if you look at my sideboard you'll notice burrenton forge-tender x2. The card is the absolute nuts vs burn (and great vs red decks in general). Comes down 2 full turns earlier than finks and is a lot easier to cast with a single white in the cost (meaning less shocking ourselves with land and easier to cast under blood moon). I don't think i've ever lost to burn after resolving a t1 forge tender and i play vs burn quite often. Try it and you'll love it or your money back

Hi, i've been absent for a while but i'm getting back into modern after a little break, i'm eager to try that curious obsession tech. Also is eidolon of rhetoric worthy of MD now with bbe and all the unfair stuff?

Sadly there hasn't been any new spirit printed in a while, vampire revenant is the only new spirit since shadows block and there are zero spoiled in dominaria (yet)

Still i'm keeping my spirits up, will report once i get enough game with the cute new aura.

C.R. 903.10a says "A player who's been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander over the course of the game loses the game" (emphasis added). In a game that uses the traditional Commander variant, this state-based action is checked at every check for state-based actions (C.R. 903.10, 704.3; see also C.R. 704.2), even while the player in question controls Platinum Angel and so can't lose the game due to that state-based action (under C.R. 101.2) — it doesn't matter whether that commander is still present or whether its owner is still in the game. Compare with C.R. 704.5h, a state-based action that generally destroys a creature "dealt damage by a source with deathtouch" (since state-based actions were last checked), even if that source has changed places after dealing damage but before the creature is destroyed this way; for example, if Goblin Cannon somehow has deathtouch while its ability resolves (see also C.R. 704.4).

EDIT (Jan. 3, 2019; Feb. 4, 2019): Correctness edit.
EDIT (May 12, 2019): Clarification.
EDIT (Oct. 19, 2022): Edit quoted text.

Quote from Ace1 »

Another little detail about the fetchlands, if we are to play artificer's assistant shuffling our deck is a small disadvantage. Whenever we scry a card to the bottom, we never see the card again. With fetchlands we negate all the scrying our bird provides. Not a huge deal, and if our opponent uses path to exile and/or field of ruin/ghost quarter etc, this doesn't matter, but still it is a small advantage of fetchless mono blue to add to the list and be aware of.

Agreed, unless you fetch for the land you just put on the bottom Then you're breaking even.

EDIT (to avoid double posting): Have gone 2-3, 3-2, and 4-1 in the Friendly League since posting my list the other day. Today's 4-1 list is nearly identical to what I went 4-1 with the other day; it is just -1 Sage of Epityr for +1 Artificer's Assistant, for a 2-4 split between those cards in the main. I also went -1 Pithing Needle for +1 Damping Sphere in the sideboard. I brought in Sphere vs Tron and it preformed well. I'll definitely be keeping that one around, hoping to up it to 2 copies after I round out my SB a little more. Path to Exile also preformed really well in these last few leagues. Ramping them from path rarely impacted my game plan either; it's all in the timing as I mentioned before. FWIW, I rarely bring Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Path in together. That could be awkward. Generally, they're good against different types of decks, so the situation rarely comes up.

EDIT EDIT: another 3-2 and 4-1. Three 4-1's in the space of 6 leagues feels fairly amazing to me. These are the types of runs I go on with my b/r Hollow One deck, which is a well established, tiered, Pro Tour top 8ing deck. I am not saying that Blue Steel is as good as Hollow One (it's likely not), but this is still exciting to me. The only thing that has really changed in my build is Artificer's Assistant. IDK if the bird can be given full credit for this run I am having, but he definitely rocks! I give him my 100% seal of approval as a staple of the archetype, and all that good stuff. We're getting down to our last few flex spots, aren't we? Seems like around 56 of the main 60 card are pretty well established now

P.S. Sorry Ace1 for quoting you and then adding two edits that have nothing to do with my initial comment. I am trying to avoid double posting, but really don't have any clue about how forum etiquette is supposed to work.

I also got a chance to play this deck at Grand Prix Las Vegas. It was a blast, and I got a chance to talk to Zac a bit on day 2 about his experience with it. Though I won my first three rounds, I didn't do nearly as well as Zac and ended up 4-4-1, which I attribute mostly to him being a much better magic player than I am, to my cutting the Pithing Needle out of my sideboard at 2am the night before the tournament (which cost me a really important match), and to me forcing a tie in round 6, ensuring matchups with decks trying to stall out the game for the rest of the day. I'll throw my poor tourney report up here for the sake of good science.

My lessons -

• Don't leave your Pithing Needle at home. It's incredible against Affinity and Counters Company and Bant Eldrazi and you can find it with Trinket Mage.
• Academy Ruins is awesome for grindy matchups. When you've run out of gas, ensuring that you'll topdeck a Ballista or a Lodestone Golem is amazing. I definitely prefer it over Cavern of Souls.
• Throne of the God Pharaoh won me a bunch of games, and was pretty much never a dead draw thanks to Blinkmoth Nexus. Highly recommend playing two.
• Basilisk Collar (and Trinket Mage to find it) is MVP if you get stuck fighting janky creature decks in the loser's bracket.
• Master of Etherium is a ******* house. He gives the deck a lot of reach by boosting the fliers. I wished I was playing the 4th one.
• Take the loss over the tie with this deck at a big tournament cause prison decks are a nightmare.

Matches -

Round 1 - Racist.deck - 2-0
Got matched with a janky mono-white deck where all the creatures had protection from black, and he was running Painter's Servant to turn everything black. Would actually have been pretty hard to battle through all that unblockable lifelink except that G1 and G2 I got Basilisk Collar on Walking Ballista to shoot first Painter's Servant and then the rest of his board.

Round 2 - Burn - 2-1
G1 he got the nut draw and roasted me and my slow opener. Game 2 I was manascrewed so he dropped the second Eidolon, which totally ended up hosing himself after Judge's Familiar and Blinkmoth got enough hits in. Once I got a third land and dropped architect into double Golem it was over. G3 I had a turn 3 Golem, a turn 4 master and wanderer and T5 Wurmcoil Engine was just overkill. This was the only game I cast one the Wurmcoils in my board.

Round 3 - Jund - 2-0
In both of my games, I don't think I actually hit him for damage with anything except Mausoleum Wanderer, Copter, and Blinkmoth, but between that and Bob it was enough to kill him. Mausoleum Wanderer is great in multiples.

Round 4 - Counters Company - 0-2
Got matched with Eric Severson (7-3 in PT Amonkhet) coming in off his 3 byes. Game 1 I mull to 5 on the play, and I actually have him dead on board when he untaps on turn 6 and proceeds to go infinite. G2 he plays T2 Devoted Druid, T3 Vizier into Duskwatch Recruiter into Walking Ballista. I got him to play me a third game and I ran over him with double Lodestone Golem (the first time I drew one all match) and killed him turn 4.

Round 5 - Bant Eldrazi - 1-2
G1 I mulled to 5 and got ran over by t3 thought-knot t4 smasher. Game 2 I got Golems on turn 3 and 4, a Master of Etherium on turn 5, and wrecked him. Game 3 was a grinder and a huge mistake on my part. I had two Trinket Mages in my opener. Punt 1 - playing a Trinket Mage on turn three with no way to play the Basilisk Collar I searched up that turn when he had both Eldrazi Displacer and Thought Knot on the board so he just blinked Thought Knot on his turn and took the collar. Punt 2 - Rifling through my deck t4 off the second Trinket Mage looking for a Pithing Needle only to realize I'd cut it from my board the night before. RIP.

Round 6 - Abzan Junk - 1-1-1
G1 - he removed everything I cast, and beat me down with Lili and Goyf.
G2 - I stablizhed early with Basilisk Collar and Walking Ballista, then won with Lodestone Golem and Smuggler's Copter.
G3 - He removed everything I played again, and one Grim Flayer went almost all the way. I had repeatedly suggested we play fast when the game was starting, but he said wasn't worried about time, so I somewhat vindictively forced the tie with a Walking Ballista double block. Huge mistake - I hadn't realized that at a giant tournament, when you have a tie, you'll always be matched with people with ties. 2 of my 3 next matches were with prison decks.

Round 7 - Angel Chord - 2-1
G1 he got turn 3 Archangel on Thune, turn 4 Spike Feeder for infinite life and counters on his birds. Game 2 I ground him out with flyers, and game 3 I won on the back of Throne of the God Pharaoh, which did 8-10 damage and killed him through a Worship.

Round 8 - Enduring Ideal - 0-2
Ghostly Prison tribal is a ******* terrible matchup. I got him down pretty low both of the first two games, but failed to draw into a Throne that would have won me the game through his lock in either.

Round 9 - RW Prison - 1-2
Game 1 I ran him over with the usual creatures and Throne, but the next two games I mulled to 5 twice and got locked out with planeswalkers, ghostly prison, and removal.

This is my list. The sideboard is reflective of my fear of Affinity, Eldrazitron, Grixis Shadow, and Dredge, none of which I faced at any point.

Yes I love the 2-2 split. four birds was too many, and 4 pests was too many. Often you got into weird situations where the redundancy was annoying, and/or not crewing a copter came up.

I want to write a more extensive report at some point of GP Vegas main event, but I've been awfully busy since getting back.

Round 15 Affinity [2-0 vs. Parson, Kenneth]
Round 14 Eldrazi Tron [1-2 vs. Horspool, Tyler]
Round 13 Dredge [2-0 vs. Tsujikawa, Taiga]
Round 12 Counters Company [1-2 vs. Kanner, Zack]
Round 11 Abzan [2-0 vs. Allard, Jason]
Round 10 Burn [2-0 vs. Delleola, Edric]
Round 9 Mardu Pyromancer [2-1 vs. Aye, Gareth]
Round 8 Bogles [1-2 vs. Ferry, Sergio]
Round 7 Burn [2-1 vs. Gonzalez, Juan Pablo]
Round 6 Eldrazi Tron [0-2 vs. Hiatt, Cody]
Round 5 Eldrazi Tron [2-0 vs. Verdesoto, Daniel]
Round 4 Living End 2-0 vs. Bruce, Adam
Round 3 Burn [2-1 vs. Littles, Charles]
Round 2 BYE
Round 1 BYE

Pithing Needle plays an important role costing exactly 1 mana. Many games you will be able to play Trinket Mage on turn 3 and put the needle into play immediately thanks to Etherium Sculptor or Chief Engineer, but with Revoker you lose out on redundancy. Having access to stop the devoted druid combo right away is a big deal imo.

Switched from the midrange version of the deck to the aggro version of the deck after about 60 or so matches - the midrange build folded hard to Storm (I see the matchup as more or less an auto-loss) and had a pretty unfavorable matchup against Dredge; I was tired of going up against those decks in MTGO leagues over and over again. The Death Shadow matchup wasn't so hot either, and what's the point in playing a deck that can't compete against DS in this meta?

With that said, I enjoy the aggro version much more, and it's got a lot more game to it than I had thought. It also does better in the Mono U Architect mirror, for what it's worth. Oh, and the Aethersphere Harvesters are A+. Bad T1/2 matchups I'd look out for when deciding to play the deck or not in your meta would be: Storm, Tron, Titanshift, Dredge, and Elves.

EDIT: Ceremonious Rejection is great.

Hey guys, picked up this deck on a whim last week after I saw Zac Elsik's tweet. I was not expecting to do well, but so far I'm 9/1 with the deck having only lost to Affinity. Here's where I'm at with my list and I'll explain the deviations between my list and the other ones.



As you can see, my main deck is basically identical. I started out with a 2/2 split between Etched Champion and Master of Etherium, but the former always felt bad in this deck. Either you don't have metalcraft, which means he's a vanilla 2/2, or you do have it, and you can't make him blue with Grand Architect. Easy swap, since Master of Etherium was always great, and this helps make most draws more powerful.

Another swap I made was to play a Hangarback Walker in the main over the second Throne of the God-Pharaoh. While the throne is a good card for pressuring, I felt that it wasn't always great, and I wanted to hedge for the Death's Shadow variants. Hangarback is great since it's an automatic two for one, and they struggle with flyers. This deck is able to produce 5/5 Walking Ballistas on the fourth turn, so this card is similarly powerful. The main downside compared to the other [X][X] is that he doesn't interact as well. But that's why it's a 4/1 split in favor of Walking Ballista.

Honestly, I won so many games by just flying over the opposition with Smuggler's Copter, Mausoleum Wanderer, Signal Pest and Blinkmoth Nexus. The fact that this deck plays 8 lord effects is great for this. And this brings me to the MVP from my sideboard. Aethersphere Harvester also flies, pressures planeswalkers really well (Copter/Havester + Ballista kills either Lilianas). The main reason for the inclusion was for a card to bring in for the lifegain, which blue lacks. This card won me a lot of games. Large flying lifelinkers are nothing to scoff at. It basically blocks every threat in the format other than Death's Shadow, since a single lord effect brings it to a 4/6.

Again, another Hangarback Walker in the board for the grindy matchups. It's unreal good with Master of Etherium.

And one final note, I know people probably see the Oboro, Palace in The Clouds as an anti choke card, but in the it's so much more. The fact that you can pick it up to loot away with Smuggler's Copter is not to be understated.

This deck really does showcase the power of Vehicles in modern, and I'm happy to say they're great!

@Reedy: that's awesome! Totally agree.

RE: Leyline. Fair arguments now, thanks for clarifying.

In other news I went out to a Wednesday night magic (non-Leyline list FYI) and finished 3-1, beating UW Control (2-0; Aether Grid FTW), Doran Stompy (2-1; did get T3 25'd in G2), UWR Aggro (2-0) losing only to Burkhart style Grixis Control (0-2) but to my own oversights and on the tiniest margins! Tale worth telling -- G1 after grinding through all the Commands and Squalls, our combo is finally online. With my last Foundry activation - to have a lethal thopter force on board and bring me up to 13 life - on the stack, opponent goes Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Cryptic bounce his Snap; fetches the last mana source from his library and Snap Bolts to 12 me dead! G2 I shred his hand bare, but overlook a single Relic activation which would've delayed his Tasigur a full turn. He's all-in on beatdown with Tasigur, Tar Pit and a blue Gearhulk on the last turn and I get in that spot where my only out is topdecking a Sword or Bridge. I draw land for turn, extend the hand for concession. I flip the top card of library: Sword. EDGES!!!

Cryptbreaker is not a great topdeck, specially if you have already one out, but he's an extremely versatile value engine, we run 4 because we want to see at least one each game.

Between Cryptbreaker, Liliana, Collective Brutality, we have several ways to get value out of our less-desirable topdecks. I'd even think that Cryptbreaker is probably the best reason to be playing zombies, if we just wanted a bunch of Savannah Lions we'd be playing humans, but it's the graveyard interactions and grindy card advantage that sets zombies apart as a deck.

Quote from Ace1 »

I'd love to have more details on your testing. What list did you use? How many games did you play? against what decks? How many games did you win/lost?

I updated the list in my previous post but it's here: The brief testing was a combination of 5 games vs DSJ (sorry, no play-by-play notes) of which I won 2 and I also played through ~30 rounds of goldfishing on my own to assess the manabase, curve, and overall consistency -- hardly conclusive! I encourage you to do your own testing, too -- but I had mixed impressions with Wayward Servant... it's really tricky to evaluate. Some games it just dies and provides no value, or its topdecked late and you don't have a grip of Zombies to really fuel the drain. Even when you play him T2 and he sticks he is a bit slow to have an impact, though, in that it just has to sit there turn 2, doesn't put your opponent on much of an early clock, doesn't disrupt them, and you don't want to block with it, either. If a game goes long, and he sticks, and you get a good engine going (Colossus, maybe Gravecrawler though that wasn't in my list) he can do something like -6 +6 life swing, which is obviously tremendous (accumulated) value for a 2-drop. At the moment I don't have enough data to say where he falls between "win-more" and "win-enough". As an aside, you don't really want to be slowly pinging a Death's Shadow player since this actually helps them somewhat, rather you really want to close the game out with an "alpha strike" to quickly take them from 8-10 life to zero life. I will say that Wayward Servant gets better with Gravecrawler, even without the machine-gun combo. Overall I wouldn't dismiss Wayward Servant and I really do love the card. It certainly deserves more testing in different configurations and against a broader variety of matchups. I think it excels when paired with more Thoughtseize effects to make sure it sticks, sac outlets (ideally zombie type) to enable recursion loops, and more Zombies that enter the battlefield multiple times. However, too many hand disruption spells and non-zombie sac outlets dilute the slightly more aggressive tempo plan of the Vial list, which is why it's tentatively on the chopping block for that list IMO.

Other little notes: Death Baron was great, and it shut down attacks until they could find a double-strike effect (which beats deathtouch, sadly) or removal. I really loved being able to hold up deathtouch blockers during opponent's turn, and then tap them EoT for Cryptbreaker's draw ability. Vialing in Binding Mummy was great to tap down would-be attackers, and against a midrange deck if you play a couple zombies on your turn you can basically tap down most of their board on your turn. For this reason I didn't find myself needing Lord of the Accursed's Menace ability as much as I thought. I was still kind of mixed on Dark Salvation. Love the scaling flexibility, didn't love the sorcery speed and dependence on board state.

I will test this list next:Again, little differences vs BACE's list include running the 21st land since it's possible to pitch extra lands with Cryptbreaker or Brutality while also trimming Lord of the Accursed since too many 3-drop lords felt a little clunky even if it is good for Vial value. Also running the 4th Path since I think the 4th Path is better than a 31st creature.