MTG Salvation

you could try making a deck around knacksaw clique. At least it'd be different every time you play against a different deck. or other stuff that lets you steal your opponents stuff, like a deck built around beguiler of wills.

I'd aim for something as reactive as possible - i.e. not going for the same combo every time, or just dropping as many fatties as possible and swinging for the fences - so you're looking for control, or at least aggro-control imo, if you don't want a stealy sort of deck as mentioned above.

I can't really decide if I want this to be a casual deck or a modern deck...there are a few really good cards for it outside of modern, but most of the key cards are modern legal.

Anyway, here's the first draft.



Basically it's built around some of my favorite izzet creatures: gelectrode, guildmage, and crackleburr (hunter is along for the ride since crackleburr wants more RU creatures and it fits the theme). Obviously the deck focuses on pinging and cantrips, with lots of late-game card advantage and a nice low curve. Crackleburr along is pretty much a game-winner if he gets active.

I mostly wanted it to be hard as balls to play, so the goal is to have a million things to keep track of and a million decisions to make. Of course playing it in multiplayer multiplies the difficulty tenfold, as multiplayer is wont to do.

I'm still sort of struggling with whether I should try to make this competitive or not, but I have the sinking feeling it's not ever going to even border on competitive for modern, although all it loses is hunter and brainstorm (probably to be replaced with stream hopper or wee dragonauts and desperate ravings or manamorphose). Of course if I'm not trying to make it modern I've got access to the punishing fire combo, but it feels a bit cheesy for casual.

anyway, enjoy!

EDIT: wow, really? They changed my title? Lame.

people bashing lich's mirror have clearly never heard of channel

lotus petal, forest, channel, mirror, cast an eldrazi or whatever and then drive your life into the ground in response to it resolving so you restart with full life, a ton of mana, and some big monstrosity on the field.

although, to be fair, channel is the broken part of that combo.

guess what mythic I pulled at the pre-release? -_-

(the answer is archangel's light).

At least I also got a beguiler, but other people in my prerelease group got a sorin and a lich so...not exactly thrilled. erg.

I'm leaning towards havengul lich. It seems incredibly powerful in a limited format.

I recently managed to get my sister hooked on the addictive ink, and it took around 20 minutes to explain to her why this was a bad card, and I'm still not positive she believed me.

So yes, I guess this is made for the people who just started a few weeks ago. It just better not be ME opening it at the prerelease...I can tolerate it in a draft where I can pass it away, but I damn sure better not get this in sealed.

If I twincast my flashbacked increasing savagery, will the copy have the "from the graveyard" kick to it and give me 10 counters, or only 5?

Thanks!

has anyone else noticed that the rares in these hypothetical packs are always the most useless tripe in the set? Is this some conspiracy or am I the only one that didn't get the memo? I guess it wouldn't be very hard to pick if the lich was your rare, though.

EDIT: oh yeah, and burning whatever is the obvious pick imo.

Quote from Squ7

I was wondering, would Increasing Vengeance work well with Shrine of Burning Rage? Assuming that Increasing Vengeance can be used to copy itself for, lets say a 100 times before letting the last copy target the instant or sorcery that was played at the very beginning (if that would be needed to stop a possible loop).

no, the copies are not cast.

As far the the original combo, though, even if it doesn't work with BV (which I assumed it didn't) can it work with the whole infinite copies of a burn spell combo I originally proposed? I'm fairly sure it doesn't, but I'd like to have a real rules guru tell me to my face before I let this one die.

alpha and it isn't close. he's one of the best uncommons in limited in this set.

The geist is nice, though.

I went with the lord. Red is nonexistant and black is pretty lame after the pass, so you're sending awesome signals. Still, could potentially screw you over.

Helvault actually is probably the right pick. If they aren't packing artifact removal, it's pretty much win target game if you get it going. also, no color commitment.

Soul seizer seems dangerous. you're still passing a lot of blue, and soul seizer is no mind control. a 1/2 flying blocker nullifies it, they get a turn to do something before it can attack, they can kill it as a creature OR an enchantment, they can bait it out if they haven't already played their bombs....it's not terrible, but it's way, way worse than mind control.

Helvault or stromkirk, imo.

I can't believe UB has as many votes as UG. There are a grand total of 2 playable creatures in that color combo that are cheap and long for the cold embrace of death, yet 3 good midrange zombies that need to eat corpses to do anything, so your odds of casting a decent creature before turn 8 are about nil, and 70% of your card base is funky utility spells that do jack-all to save you while you're getting steamrolled by the guy who actually put together a deck with a respectable number of creatures and a curve that makes sense. If you're not playing green or white here, your creature base is going to be awful.

Quote from dimir impersonator

EDIT: I love how people always say the packs are bad. This pack is pretty strong. I count 9 cards that would easily make my deck if they were in my colors, and at least one or two cards that would be acceptable 23rd cards. How is that a weak pack?

It's not so much that the pack's power level overall is bad (although it could also be that innistrad is higher power level overall and I'm getting pretty used to it) it's that nothing is outstanding in it. The rare is borderline useless and the uncommons, besides the captain, are pretty mediocre, and the captain really has the potential to screw you over if you start running with it.

This is a fine pack for picks 3-10, but I'd really prefer to see something jump out at me for my first pick and there's nothing outstanding unless you're ready to commit to UB while passing good black and decent blue.

I'm thinking UG with a red splash for the ranger and maybe the mystic retrieval.

I feel like you've almost got to pick green for the aggro power. 2 pilgrims, 2 young wolves, with the morbid triggers and the splinterfright to seal the deal. I like the flying power and reach of blue and I think it synergizes nicely into your curve with the early green drops, but I could see white for the control.

I'd be really sad about giving up the dream of the BV + gravecrawler combo in limited, though.

Huh, interesting that I'm the first to like gavony ironwright. It was sort of a wacky choice on my part but let's be honest, this pack is pretty bad.

to me, fires of undeath seems like it will either kill something that cost less than it, or work with a weenie to kill something midrange-ish...I appreciate that removal is important in limited, but it's still very inefficient.

captain is the obvious and most fun pick, but with so many of the good cards being blue and black I feel like you're likely to get starved on pack 2 if you commit to both colors right off the bat.

Death's caress is less tempo-y but I think it's better choice, you want your removal to kill their threats, and most dangerous threats will be out of range for fires. I don't mind waiting on my removal as long as it can guarantee a trade with their bombs. Still, I didn't like picking black with the rest of the pack, but it would have probably been my second choice.

ironwright leaves the pack with very little white (I could certainly see picking griffin over it, though) so you've got a good chance of picking up good stuff in pack 2. And I don't feel like committing heavily to a color or 2 right off the bat with a pack that lousy. I'm guessing it'll be hard to activate, but with UW or UB tokens, seems like turning a bunch of 1/1 flyers into 2/5s is a game-winner when it happens.