MTG Salvation

My Modern Assault Loam list, everything is oldest possible foil, except the Urborg which is unfortunately FTV, and the Bobs which are judge promo.

Bit of an old photo and list, but here is my foiled UR Storm:



When I get around to it ill probably post my foiled Assault-Loam list, but I might have to pick up foil Onslaught Bloodstained Mires first.

Quote from Alleyway Jack

This debate started when a user, who had never seen the list Finkel was playing, had his mind set on playing it.. without even seeing the deck.. or having any idea at all what changes were made yet. He had no idea what it was he wanted to play. All the info he had, was that Finkel was winning, and it was storm. To me that seems like netdecking. I called it out and you came to his defense. Which also sparked you to flame my deck.

Why does it matter if some player decided to netdeck the list, and why are you "calling out" inexperienced storm players for wanting to start with a pro's list? While I do not believe that players should blindly netdeck a pro's list, my opinion against that is based on my belief that any changes to the list should be made based on a player's experience and understanding of the deck, and I do not believe that a person new to the archetype is going to have the knowledge to make positive changes to the deck without first starting with a basic frame, in this case the latest PT/GP decklists. Everyone needs to start somewhere, and if we call out new players for starting with Finkel's list, all we will be doing is alienating them from playing the deck entirely, or creating an argument that will inevitably devolve into a series of personal attacks like we have seen in this thread many many times. That is not constructive. When you see someone new to the deck, help that person. Give him advice on how to play the deck better, and let his personal experiences with the deck guide his future decklist changes.

As for Gifts Ungiven, I am still in love with the card, but I don't believe that it is worth building the entire deck around, and I certainly don't believe its worth making the deck a full turn or two slower. I view gifts as a tutor, a way to set up a guaranteed loop that ensures victory, be it tutoring for cards to activate ascension or to tutor up and set up Past in Flames. This is the list I am currently playing:



As you can see, I cut down to 1 Gifts. I originally had 3, but the card is quite slow, and as izzetmage has pointed out, it doesn't win the game on its own. It is a card that wants to be cast mid-combo, and when you do, you find yourself with that guaranteed loop we both love so much. I am probably going to cut the 4th Electromancer as it rarely does anything for me (one of the benefits of only owning 3 foil Electromancers is that you always know which one is the 4th) in favor of another Shivan Reef, and I am still on the fence about the bolts and ravings. Bolt is very nice at dealing with opposing problem creatures, but I do find myself pitching it to Lootings more often than not, so Im not entirely sure if I want to continue having 2 in the main. Desperate Ravings, I just cant make up my mind about. The card advantage is nice, but I find myself discarding key cards a large amount of the time, and I always want to have a Looting immediately afterwards to clear out the jank that lady luck didn't want me to discard. I think im going to test it some more, but am probably going to cut the bolts and Ravings for another Looting and 3 Peer Through Depths

Quote from Shmanka

It's posts like these that adhere to the bad reputation this community shows.

This is a tremendous lack of knowledge, let's just put this in simple terms.

If you simply attack once and connect with Jitte; it's really hard to lose.

Look at the impact the card has on Legacy, it's alongside batterskull with every stoneforge package. If the deck has Tundra, it has a 100% chance of running Jitte.

What does that say? In a format filled with combo, this deck can add two "shocks" for each combat phase, against aggro, it can provide removal, against burn based decks, it can provide lifegain. I don't exactly understand how this high level of neglect works with Jitte. Jitte is worse than liliana of the veil, and people on this very thread are crying about that card existing.

Yes it needs to connect, yes you only get two counters, and yes its legendary. That doesn't mean its dramatically undercosted with a ridiculous amount of utility.

I can count on my hand the amount of times I've played a Jitte, connected and lost in standard during that era. It's very rare, it doesn't matter who you play against.

I played 2 Extended seasons with at least 3 jittes in my 75, one of which in a deck playing 4 Stoneforges, so yes, i am fully aware of how good jitte is.

What i dont believe however is that its as format warping as many people here think it is. It is not going to be a 4 of in every creature deck. More likely it would become a sideboard card, much like batterskull is now, except more widely played (not exactly hard to do) because of its cmc.

Im not saying it should get unbanned, i honestly dont care. I just wanted to point out that people are exaggerating a bit when they mention the effect jitte would have on the format

Quote from Hinotama

Unban -> Seething Song

Ban -> Grapeshot

This wouldnt do anything productive for the format though...

Nothing needs to be done to Storm. Its a turn 4 combo deck that is a shadow of what it once was. Its good, but its not oppressive. All giving back Song will do is make the deck faster, at which point the wincon really doesnt matter as much as non-storm players think it would.

Please people, lets keep this discussion civil...

Izzetmage, your idea intrigued me, so Ive decided to try it.

I decided to goldfish 10 games with the following rules:

1: Properly shuffle, only keep hands that you would keep in an actual game situation.
2: Play as though it were an actual game, not to highlight the power of any specific card. This is to prevent bias and show how a real game would proceed.
3: Assume every game we are on the play.
4: Every goldfish that doesn't result in a Lethal Grapeshot or Warrens that produces 20+ goblins is considered a failure, with the sole exception being a t2-t3 warrens that would produce enough goblins to kill t5.
5: Any unorthodox uses for Looting must be noted.

I have yet to try it with Ravings, but here is what 10 games with Looting resulted in:

Ill let you guys decide which discards were bad and which weren't

Can we please keep this Lootings vs Ravings discussion civil? I dont care if I agree with what your trying to say or not, if you say it with civility and respect, i will at the very least consider and respect your argument.

Im not trying to argue that Looting is better than Ravings, nor am i suggesting that everyone should automatically play 4. What i am suggesting is that people give it a fair test before jumping to conclusions about it. Ive played with looting for more than a year now, but in no way shape or form am i so attached to the card that i would be unwilling to cut it if i find a build that can work as efficiently without it.

If all you want to do is play Finkel's 75 without question, power to you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Id rather see everyone play that than see storm become an extinct deck. But I cant just take his list and call it a day. I want to take storm to the extremes, test everything, see how far it can be pushed, to fully explore what is and isnt possible with the deck. Some of the changes are going to be amazing (MD Empty the Warrens how I love thee), some of them are going to be horrendous (Reforge the Soul why did you have to be so bad), but i will continue trying different ways to build the deck until they ban it to oblivion. All i ask is that everyone else on these forums keeps a similar open mind.

Quote from Tom

Also if one of the IQ winners isn't around for the BPB, I assume we go to the next in points, right?

We haven't discussed this at all yet, but its something I think we will need to go over in detail later. I personally am not a fan of the idea of playing out the BPB over one weekend like originally planned. Getting 16 players from around the world to all be available to play at the same time seems like a logistical nightmare. Id rather we hold it as a separate tournament held at the same time as the first tournament of next years cycle, with something like 3 rounds of swiss then cut to T8, but that's just me.

In this post, any mention of a "combo deck" is referring to an engine combo such as storm, eggs or elves and not a 2-card combo such as twin.

On Ancestral Visions: I dont know if AV will ever get unbanned, and i honestly dont care if it does, but lets please stop using Violent Outburst as a reason for or against it, because Outburst is terrible unless you are 100% sure what card you are going to cascade into, ala Hypergenesis or Living End. The only 2 decent decks that ever cascaded into AV were the RUG deck in double standard that had BBE and no Outbursts and the Shardless Agent deck in legacy, where it works because it can also hit awesome cards like hymn and because Agent actually does something on its own. I can see AV seeing play in NLU decks, Teachings decks (and other control decks) and possibly Scapeshift or even Twin decks, but not in conjunction with Outburst.

On the Turn 4 Rule: I have been against this rule since its creation. When it was first announced, I claimed that it would eventually lead to a format with few or even zero top tier combo decks. For combo to be competitive, I believe the functional turn for the turn 4 rule should be lowered to 3.5.

Every single engine combo deck has an internal functional turn at which it can consistently combo off. If that functional turn is not faster than its opponents, the combo deck will lose. Aggro decks in this format are all turn 4 decks. How is combo supposed to compete with that if the banned list is designed to keep them at turn 4 themselves? Win the die roll every round?

I am not saying that a deck that consistently wins on turn 3 would be a good thing for modern. Elves (with glimpse) was a turn 3 deck with the occasional turn 2 win. Storm (with Rite) was a turn 3 deck with many turn 2 wins. These decks were too powerful for modern. Storm with song however was a turn 4 deck with the occasional turn 3 and a rare turn 2. It was exactly the kind of speed i think combo should be allowed to have in this format. It wasnt overpowered, it wasnt oppressive, and though it could occasionally win before turn 4, it was going to win at least 65-75% of its games on the 4th turn.

I was playing against an incredibly rude player who was playing Hypergenesis. He wins the roll and proceeds to exile 2 Simian Spirit Guides, play a land, Violent Outburst into Hypergenesis, then drop Progenitus, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, and Urabrask the Hidden into play. He starts ridiculing me, then attacks for the win. The only problem for him was that I was playing a Protean Hulk combo deck and had put both hulk and Viscera Seer into play. With Emrakul's Annihilator trigger on the stack, i sacrificed Hulk to Seer, got Body Double which copied the hulk, sacrificed that to seer to go get Reveillark and Mogg Fanatic, then explained the loop and did infinite damage to him before annihilator resolved. I never saw that guy again.

More recently at a PTQ, I was playing for top 8 with GW Hatebears vs a UW Angel control deck. Game 3 i resolved a Loxodon Smiter and then a Gaddock Teeg. I held back Teeg from combat in case he had Angel and killed him with the smiter and the lieges that followed. After the match he showed me his hand: Angel, Wrath, Cryptic and Revelations

I love how you think I ignored the list with Remands...look at the final standings, he ended up at 210th place with 30 points. After that 9-0 start he went 1-5. Not bad but not amazing either, and I believe that if he cut the cute stuff like Remand he could have gone 11-4 or better.

Again you think that I'm just a Finkel fanboy who won't play anything that he doesn't. Good grief, I just said that I played Storm with Bolts, Remands and Gifts before and found them to be lacking. The Bolt and Remand list was really old and honestly, it did more harm than good to my game because it was so slow (relatively speaking) that it left me scratching my head as to how Storm was ban-worthy.

I played the Epic Experiment version when Song was legal. I played the Young Pyromancer version during the postban BG-dominant days. I even tried Channel the Suns as a replacement for Seething Song - that didn't get far, but it left me with a valuable lesson: don't try to play a 3 color storm combo deck in Modern, your life total and mana base simply can't handle it. If you think I don't try out enough versions of Storm, you're wrong.

And guess what? I actually made a suggestion on improving Finkel's build (play Thought Scours) back in July 2013. Get this right, I do not blindly netdeck Finkel's lists. I'm ready to say when I think he didn't build his deck optimally - hell, even for the recent PT list I disagreed with only 2 Grapeshot. Lay off the personal attacks, because they're demonstrably false and you just look desperate for trying them.

And for the last time: I gave Gifts enough chances. It didn't prove itself worthy of them. Good God, you think I just write off Gifts without even testing it, well, get this: I tested Gifts and it wasn't good enough. How many times do I have to say "I tested Gifts" before it sinks in? I'm cool if you don't agree, but if you think I make a stance based on zero testing (without the appropriate disclaimers), you've got another thing coming.

Storm is certainly customizable, you can make the decision of whether to play Desperate Ravings and 16 lands for Faithless Looting and 18. More seriously though, you certainly can play Gifts or Remand and still manage to win some games - I would know because I've played them before. The big question is whether you win more often when playing a boring cantrip-only deck or a flashier one with Gifts etc. I've already decided the answer for myself and again it's fine if you disagree, but leave the personal attacks out.

Oh and one thing: ANT > TES. Source, just click Compare Decks. There's only 1 deck with 12 lands, Rite of Flame and Silence. Yeah, I might not look like it, but I pay attention to Legacy too, and can tell the difference between ANT and TES. The fact is, some Storm decks are just more viable than others. You'd do well to remember that.

At the end of all this, I think that it just started because I brought up tournament results from Finkel, Ruel, etc. as data, which you then interpreted as me being a netdecking noob who only sings the praises of the pros. Well, time to un-Incept yourself. Reach deep into your mind and get the idea that I only know how to netdeck out of your head, and we can finally have a civilized conversation.

VOTE FOR DREAD RETURN 2014-2014

YOU CANNOT DENY HIS NARCOMOEBA STIMULUS PACKAGE.

Never underestimate the power of WOTC to release under tested, busted as hell blue cards. Have faith, my friend.

As hard as I tree, I wood not leaf my magic cards in a vending machine as they are often vandalized.