MTG Salvation

Very cool report llama and grats on your winnings. One question, was not running Qasali Pridemage a major decision for you or did you just not consider it good enough for your list? I ask because I'm considering using 2 of them when I upgrade my list to a lite-Green splash for Gavony Township in Mono-W.

Also, as a followup to my previous doubts on Ghostly Prison I have to admit it was a very good SB choice (I ran it as a 2-of) for the event I went to earlier this week against BW Soul Sisters. I also shoved in two Aegis of the Gods to try out but I haven't gotten any action on those yet.

Against burn I have a playset of Inquisitor Exarch, 3 Kitchen Finks, 3 Thalia, and a playset of Judge's Familiar. The burn matchup should be really easy in my opinion if your maindeck is tightly fit against them though mine has a bit of overkill...

On Ghostly Prison, I wouldn't consider it very effective. I don't know if Twin still does this but Echoing Truth from the board turns off that plan. It's also not so great under Thalia-tax which we probably want versus the Twin player but can't afford to deal with ourselves. I have two Celestial Purge and two Spellskite in my board for that.

Ah whoops, my bad. RTFC for me. Thank you.

If I have a Torpor Orb, Sigil of the Empty Throne, and Heliod, God of the Sun on the battlefield and use Heliod's ability to make a creature does Torpor Orb cause my Sigil to not trigger?

The idea of a solid Red Black deck in Modern has interested me for a while. Not using Goyf is probably the biggest thumbs down as far as this decks potential success but I'm more just experimenting within the bounds of the format. I dip in and out of following general meta but I'll be testing this list some to maybe bring to local modern events if it gets steam. Any critique and comments are greatly appreciated. I made the list to have decent pulls vs the majority of the format.

Yey-o, figured I would do a little update again. I've made my switch back to 16 lands and removed glitterfang which kinda sucks because I just got foil ones, haha. I still like the creature but this 1/1 just can't dish out the beats like I want. I had a bunch of matches vs one of my other friend's MBC and it was a much different story. Instead of using witchs, gray merchant, and tendrils of corruption he went for Syphon Life as his main win condition with minimal creature focus. My deck stomped in the exact opposite direction, winning 5-6 games in a row iirc. So at the end of the day I guess the MBC match-up isn't set in stone but certain versions will just wreck a creature deck like mine.

Next on the testing horizons will be subbing in Rubblebelt Maaka replacing Fervent Cathar. I really like both cards but sometimes I never get to 3 so having a combat trick like Maaka should work wonders and technically push more damage through than the Cathar in some cases. Again, Trample would be sweet but I can't see myself running any of the trample cards avalible at this time. The closest one I thought about was Satyr Rambler and he's just a worse Kruin Striker 99% of the time. I'm supposed to get in a few rounds with a Green Big Dumb Creatures deck soon so we'll see how that goes.

Maaka is cool I agree. I feel like there are just too many good / decent options for this deck to really pin down what's truly the best main deck. I find my deck really does have issues getting in bigger swings so Maaka or Brute Force would be good but what I really want is more trample on my guy and almost nothing provides.

A few updates, my friend playing mono-black tagged out his Ravenous Rats for Cuombajj Witches and it's disgusting to watch half my dudes run into a 1 / 3 that just kills them anyway. Sideboard wise Apostle's Blessing has done bugger all to shore up the matchup as well because it's hard to determine if I can reasonably tap out to keep board presence vs saving what I have and even then Geth's Verdict exists. We've just about come to the conclusion that the matchup is 9-1 in his favor because the only way he loses is on shoddy keeps and doesn't peel removal or witches 2 turns in a row.

I'm also having actual mana issues now so I'm considering going to 15 or 16 lands and probably tossing Glitterfang out despite how much fun he is.

I noticed Onslaught as an option before and I agree it can be really powerful, especially if I ran more Giitterfangs and their ilk like your list. I dropped it because I worried about the effect being mandatory. I'll pick up a few copies to test out somewhere in the 75. Blessing probably will be my best bet for Mono-B, thanks on that. Looking in the other thread made me realize that 2x Fireblast might be good to squeeze into the list as some reach for those last few points.

On a side-note, I see many list run Forgotten Cave and I can't understand why one would risk being forced to play it and lose a whole turn of tempo on it for the benefit of a cantrip. Is it okay in general and I just run them or are they for a certain reasons because I don't think I can afford tap-lands in this list.

Edit: The horror in my eyes when I saw that I can't get foil Onslaughts.

Hey-o, some of my friends recently started doing a lot of Pauper, semi-competitive. While I enjoy some of the Tier 1 lists like Mono-U / Mono-B Control I wanted to try for some speed and test a hyper-aggression red deck that isn't burn or tribal goblins because that's been done and I just wanted to explore different archetypes. After some play-testing and extensive tweaking I've come to a list that I'm feeling pretty good about. I'm looking for further suggestions on the list and, more critically, sideboard options because my Mono-B match-up is abysmal to the point where I can't win unless he stumbles on lands.



The main reason for Glitterfang is to have a guaranteed trigger for Cohort, Denizen, and Striker. I set Bushwhacker as a 2-Drop because there's almost no situation where I'm forced to play it un-kicked. The 14 lands have been running perfectly for me so far where I can even keep 1 land hands and just get that 2nd or 3rd land drop no problem and my odds to have a 2 land hand are decent as well.



The only things I've considered changing on the SB are -2 Electrickery for 2 Seismic Stomp or 2 Nightbird's Clutches and then some number of other things for Sylvok Lifestaff.

Feel free to test out the deck and let me know what you think!

I feel like the real problem with Spirit of the Lab. is what do we take out for it and just how relevant is it when decks like storm aren't popular? We have better answers to them anyway. UWR plays a lot of stuff on our turn so the only card being hurt there is Sphinx's Rev. It's definitely worth picking some up to test with though.

Quote from Lucrion

What would you say is the minimum number of legendaries that makes Castle worth the spot? I'm going to be running 3-4 Thalias and 1-2 Mangaras in my deck, but I don't know if the Castle would be worth it with those numbers. I was hoping someone who has more experience with the deck could provide some insight.

Most of the decks running Castle run only one copy because things got odd if you have two in your opener before the legendary rule change. Now it's probably safer but I still wouldn't want to run two in most builds. With your build two would probably be plenty.

Quote from Tom

After more games I've concluded Hokori is bad. He often hurt me more than my opponent and was overall unimpressive except in very particular situations.

I'm now going to replace the maindeck Hokori and restoration angel withe 2x angel of jubilation. I'll also replace the sideboard restoration angel and Hokori with another finks and splicer.

I've shyed away from AoJ in the past because she dies to bolt. However, because of what I said earlier...

...I have reason to believe that she will be quite decent. Potentially better than resto. Pumping all other guys and stopping fetchland activations / pod activations / melira combo is really powerful. We'll see.

From my experience, running Angel of Jubilation wasn't really that impressive. Granted I ran it as a 1 of but every time I drew it there was little to no relevance to her being on the board and I can't see a 2x being that much better. The :symw::symw::symw: makes it rough as well. I'd be interested to hear your findings.

I started running War and Peace as well and I'm enjoying it but I haven't played against a lot of real decks recently either so I can't say much on it. I find it so hard to think of what I could take out for another sword though.

@Monolith I personally still play the mono White version still but I also don't have a large scene to play with. I've had decent 3-1 results most weeks when my closest store was holding tournaments. If you plan on going to major events like PTQs and such GW seems to be the more consistent choice as you have more options.

@Dragonwisper I keep asking about him too but there hasn't really been a discussion on him iirc. The only real downside is lose of double strike. Pro green will get you through creatures (goyf being the most relevant one I can think of) but otherwise I would rather blank burn removal and pyroclasm instead.

Quote from kattphud

This card really is perplexing to me. It inexplicably has two mechanically similar supertypes (any meaningful distinction between the two went out the window in Planar Chaos and Shards of Alara), and despite being blue it has two clearly red abilities. I really hope Wizards isn't backsliding into the old mistake of "blue can do anything because wizards can do anything and wizards are blue because wizards are so smart and blue is the color of mind magic". Let's not have more Prodigal Sorcerer + Spiny Starfish nonsense, please.

This really isn't out of blue's part of the pie. The card draw on your creatures connecting has gone as far back as Ophidian and forcing creatures to attack was done a while back with Alluring Siren. Being an artifact enchantment works too because the triggered ability slides into the enchantment side and the tap effect fits the artifact side. Really this card is oozing with synergy the way I see it.

Also, I was beat to it. haha

To be honest, I can't see much wrong with your list at a glance. Building this deck really comes down to personal preference and meta guessing I've found. I don't have experience with MTGO though. For me, I'm not too big a fan of Judges Familiar in DT but that comes to preference. If you can fit in some Mirran Crusader that might improve some of your matchups and they hold equipment well.