MTG Salvation

Went 4-0-2 yesterday.

I've been harping on myself for strings of bad modern showings lately, because I've been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too focused on the legacy metagame... and sorta forgot how to play the deck, and when I was playing modern, I just played a lot of UW Tron... Got back to basics today.

I've dropped the Voices from the mainboard for Thalia's. I like it in the creature matchups, but Zoo's all but disappeared. It's Naya Midrange or nothing these days, and I'm not entirely thrilled with it's performance lately, moved all the Thalia's in.

Again, to harp on how nice Vials are is this: You can side them out and fill your deck with more creatures. I subbed 2 out vs BWR Midrange, 2 vs Jund, 3 vs Boggles (of 3). If I played UWR in the room, I wouldn't have sided out any, and I would have still had access to them g2/3.

R1 was vs Boggles, 2-1, I mulliganed to 5-6-5 in g1, 2, and 3... G1 I think I got run over I had a really bad hand, and it just wasn't going anywhere... My 7 was a tec edge & 2 paths, and I knew my opponent was on Boggles, so... Went to 6 with just a plains, no vials. If there was a Vial, it would have been OK, because mirran crusader's pretty much the nuts. My 5 was 2 lands, mirran crusader, worship and scavenging ooze. Didn't find the 4th land. G2, I was literally just a little faster than Boggles crashing in win a double exalted... G3 was Mirran Crusader + Engineered Explosives making it really difficult for him to come back. He had double rancor, double totem armor, but I had a Thalia out as well... and it would have slowed him down to the point where he wouldn't have been able to come back.

R2 was vs Jund. 2-1. G1 took forever, I eventually just got there on the back of a scavenging ooze. Card is probably one of the best in the matchup to save and then throw down once they've used a bunch of their removal. G2, I side poorly, completely forgetting that he boards in Anger of the Gods, and I only board in 1 of the Burrenton Forge Tenders... He doesn't draw it, but, what does make his life miserable? Thrun. Thrun made his life miserable. He boarded out 2 of 4 Lilianas, and thankfully for him, saw both of them to get rid of thrun, because his Tarmogoyf wasn't great. I was pretty much edged the entire time in that game. G3 I board in more Forge Tenders, again making his life miserable. I made a questionable decision of: with Liliana out and Thrun as my only creature on my side, I tap out for a Sword of War and Peace. I have 2 creatures in hand, but I also had a Stirring Wildwood on the table to negate Liliana's -2. I could have held off a turn or two, but, I wanted to force the play, force his hand, because I knew I had a Loxodon Smiter in hand, and that if he wanted to get any more value out of it, he'd have to +1 it. And he did. I suited up the Smiter, and redirected the SoWaP damage to Liliana, and was like, lets make it more awkward. Sword of Body and Mind! Now basically he had zero blockers to block it with, I suited the Smiter up again, and took him down to 6 life, and made a Wolf... and he went to the tank, and I glanced at the clock, and it was like 30 seconds left, and I was close to winning, but not close enough where I didn't need him to hurry up to prevent a draw. So I told him his best play was: Anger of the gods the dude away, -2 the liliana in his hand and pass the turn. Because he was dead otherwise. I got the turn back and time went to zero... Played an Arbiter, swung in with Stirring Wildwood, and brought him to 5. He played a Courser, went to 7, I double suited the Arbiter with Pro Green/Blue/Red/White... and took it home.

R3 was vs WRB. I thought I was playing against burn. He didn't find an answer to Worship either game and I had a much harder clock.

R4 was a draw vs Esper Mill. That deck is scary. I'm not joking. Most of the people who play mill aren't great. This person is not one of them. His clock is fast, the ability to interact is minimal. Maindeck Surgicals and Crypt Incursions. Ugh

R5/Quarters was vs Boggles again. Neither game was he in it. G1 I had the mainboard Worship, and while I was on the draw, he fetched and drew 2 cards with Horizon Canopy... and I didn't draw one. I baited him with a Ghost Quarter. But I was like. I'm not going to draw a card or fetch anything, after him being at 197 life and me being... at... uh, 1. He scooped. G2 was another worship game, I was faster than him though. Mirran Crusader and Qasali Pridemage blocking, sacing, and preventing lifelink was excellent.

R6, I drew again with esper mill.

Overall, felt much better.

Quote from bakofried

To be blunt: run 0 Vials or 4. You don't want to topdeck them in the mid to late game, and while they're not -dead- draws, they're not a card you want random numbers of. You either want to open with them or not.

Also have to completely disagree. When you're using it as a consistency tool, it allows you to be more aggressive with your mana. Normal concepts of what Vials are for, are usually incorrect in the way this particular deck operates. While not as reliant as D&T is on Vial, it's used more as a tool to augment the manabase.

I think birds are generally better the more swords you play.

Because they're both better cards than BoP.

BoP really fills in a need after Vial and Hierarch. It's not much more than that.

Also, I don't think anyone who posted about BoM knows that D&T is the deck they're talking about -_-. Silent Arbiter or Leonin Arbiter, because I've thought about playing the former in the deck too.

Edit: I've been missing for a while because I've had a lot of legacy tournaments recently. You'll see me more in the future though.

Quote from Cyfiawn

I'm looking into building G/W Hatebears, but have a few questions, mostly building to suit a meta. At my LGS, there aren't many decks running fetchlands. There is: Affinity/Robots, Scapeshift, Burn, B/W Tokens, Jund (w/ fetches), Pod and UWR Control (w/ fetches). Are the few decks with fetches/Scapeshift worth running the full set of Leonin Arbiter and Aven Mindcensor in the main? I'm thinking of running them, and siding them out for the matchups that they don't do anything in (Tokens -> EE, Burn -> Spellskite/Thalia/Burrenton Forge-Tender, Robots -> Stony Silence)

Bad Idea. Maybe a Mindcensor (but you have to remember, even vs Affinity, Mindcensor gets work vs flyers). It's generally consensused here to not play a full playset of Mindcensors. But Arbiters are almost always a solid card. Lets go to the next section to find out why

The next question comes to land choices. Is it going to be worth running all the Tech Edges and Ghost Quarters for this? I've never played a deck that runs them, so not sure how efficient they really are at times. I feel they may end up causing mana problems then helping me win games, but I'm not sure.

Just try it, play with one of the decks that any of us play (I'd also suggest picking up my list, about 4-5 pages back, just for a different flavor of the list, one that runs Aether Vial as a mana-consistency card). You'll realize that the Ghost Quarters are not only amazing, but strip mines. TecEdges are also very good, but not as good as Ghost Quarter in the deck, which is why you play 4. You never (or very rarely, mostly in the mirror) want to side out Arbiters because of the damage that the combination of the two create. You force your opponent to play a much weaker slower line because of the threat of just wastelanding them. If you've played legacy, you know that feeling of playing around wasteland.

Also, how do people feel about trying to throw Birthing Pod into this? We have a nice curve and it can turn our Dorks into usefulness (Pridemage, Ooze, Voice, Arbiter, Spellskite). I wouldn't run 4, but I'd be tempted to throw in 2. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you Pod away Leonin Arbiter, I'm pretty sure you can search your whole library without paying 2, right?

Tough to do. You normally want to create critical mass of creatures as opposed to high value creatures. You're correct on how Arbiter interacts with Pod (which is the exact same way that Arbiter acts with being pathed), but most dorks are actually value adding cards. Noble Hierarchs are excellent at creating efficient attacks and Birds of Paradise are excellent sword carriers.

Re: "It was an anti-meta deck once", it's true, it was. It was anti-jund back in the day, well, specifically anti-discard, but there's so many configurations to how to build the deck, it's always "anti-meta", much in the same way that Maverick is in legacy, you build the deck to the meta. It's considerably less of a meta deck than Ad Nauseum is anyway. It's at it's worst in heavy UWR metas, but even then it's not that bad if you're well prepared for it.

It's semantics, nothing more.

I think the Caverns is fine. I did an analysis a bit ago where if you're not running Vials, you're able to at least play it for value most of the time. For the double mana sources (which is more of a case with the WW not the GG), its difficult, but it's also true that we run enough dual colored sources that, plus birds, you're able to roll 80% of the time with the mana you have.

Completely agree on Township.

Quote from Khaiden

Ive been piloting my GW-Hatebears deck the last 2 Modern game nights at my local store. We are usually about 25-30 ppl playing

I love the deck, its awesome, there is so much fun things to do with flickerwisp/restoration angel.

The main issue here is: you're (according to MTG Salvation's classifications), Playing W/x Death and Taxes and not G/W Hatebears. They're two different decks. We're a little over 20 cards different in the mainboards.

Quote from monstallion

If Zoo, Robots, and Bogles are tougher matchups, would it be legitimate to run a third Engineered Explosives?

Also, DOLZero, you wouldn't be able to post some sort of in/out sideboard strategy? I'd love to take a look at what your thoughts are on the meta-matchups.

I think I had a pretty decent "thought process" to sideboarding about 10 or 15 pages back. I can try finding it again and reposting it later when I get a bit of time.

Edit: link

That said. Totally fair to run 3 EE's if you feel that Zoo, Robots, and Bogles are a good chunk of your meta.

Edit Pt. 2:

I also had the worst showing that I've ever had with this deck yesterday. Very inappropriate 0-2 drop. Played Ad Nauseum, crushed 0-2. Played Amulet Control. Got hosed 0-2. I was like. What the helllllll happened here.

It could be because I was doing nothing but Sealed and Legacy for the past 3 weeks to get my mind off of getting UWR'd to death lately.

Quote from MBTL90

Hmm, didn't think about Thalia. My LGS has lots of storm, so I currently have Rule of Law in my board as a 1 of, and may switch to the eidolon then.

Eidolon is better than Canonist, and probably better than Rule of Law against decks that it matters.

Thalia's also a must-have against any storm decks.

Celestial Purge actually isn't a bad idea.

It's not as good as it used to be when Jund was actually "a thing". Because it hit Olivia Voldaren... It's pretty narrow, but not terrible.

I/R/T Suppression Field sucking. You're right, it does shut down those cards. But you're also not playing the short game. You're playing the long game in the twin matchups. The ones where your GQ's are for their Colonnades. If you're not playing Vial though, it's a reasonable answer. Ooze isn't very good in the twin matchup.

No one is actually playing wear//tear. It's a beater against us because of it's ability to hit an enchantment (like Worship) and Artifact (like Torpor Orb) and blowout.

Quote from duckfammit

Had a 32 person GPT this weekend. Finished in the top 8. Once again my only loss comes from twin. (Granted this loss came with my opponent at 1 life, top-decking the kiki jiki needed to combo out. he was dead on board otherwise. RRRGGG) It's a real pain losing to that stupid stupid deck. As much as I hate to do it, I think wilt leaf liege is comign out of the deck in favor of at least 1 linvala, and possibly something else. Preferably something that hates on twin.

I like the runed halo idea. You could preemptively just name resto angel or whatever other stupid thing they'll combo out with. UWR twin though is my own personal vietnam. I just can't seem to get there as consistently as I like. Thalia doesn't stop kiki, and linvala as a 1 of just isnt consistent enough to see reliably. Most of our other tools don't really stop what they're trying to do like they do with pod.

UWR Twin is legitimately our worst matchup IMO. I totally agree with what you're saying with Linvala though. If you have x hate cards vs twin, adding Linvala's ok. But if you're short on hate cards for twin, just adding Linvala won't address the matchup well enough IMO. Twin is one of those matchups that I look to beat post-board because there's so few ways to beat them pre-board without selling out to them pre-board. We just don't have the tools to make it happen.

I think my pre-board cards that I use to hate Twin are Spellskite (which is still nice because you shut off 4 of their twin plans) and Worship, and 4 Paths. The only thing you can do is make sure you don't tap out, always show path early and often, put a clock down, pray that you get there. Postboard, Worship & Torpor Orb work very well, as well as Suppression Field. I think Suppression Field, like DOL mentioned, requires consideration because of the cost. Mixing hate requires them to have more than just Ancient Grudge... UWR decks have an easier time dealing with it with Wear//Tear (aka my least fav. card to see in modern, ever). But, UR shouldn't be able to profitibly interact with enchantments. UWR Though. Worst of all words.

Brave the Elements seems broad enough to work pre-board.

Envelop's in the SB because it works against the Riptide Pilferer plan. If you Swan Song something of SnS's, you can't keep providing discarded pressure.

That said. I think that kind of sideboard (of Sylvkoe's) isn't really my cup of tea. Mindbreak trap stops the -fast-fast- combo & discard usually lets you do much better g2/3 (along with more discard, more hate, etc...).

But the key is always to have multiple angles of hate. Permanents, Spells, Discard. Keep 'em on their toes.

SOTL is definitely not the way.

Vial is really good. SoTL is definitely not.

Cards like Thrun & Swords are very good in the matchup. Saving 100% of your GQ's and Tec Edges for Colonnades. Making sure you trade 100% with their creatures.