Chaos Warp was probably the hardest of them to cut... It could go back in to be honest but I am trying the deck without it. More often than not it sits in my hand waiting for a good target. If I saw more opponents running things like Propaganda and Ghostly Prison style of decks I would definitely put more emphasis on some removal.
Relic isnt just grave hate, it also cycles itslef which is nice. This deck has very little dependance on its own graveyard in a whole. Squee will be back to my hand everytime my turn comes up. If it is such an emergency that I have to hit him with it then it is probably a gamebreaking move that has to be stopped regardless of him. Faithless is nice but I will probably move somewhat quickly between the first copy and the flashback of it. With anger, I tend to try to get him into the grave right before I go off because I will get hated off if he gets there much sooner than needed.
The relic does have a little bit of hate for my own deck but it doesn't hinder it much. The important part of it in my mind is that it cycles itself off. I am trying to move through my deck very quickly in this list as I want to draw game winners and resources quickly. I cant say that it will all stay as is but out of the removal I cut only Chaos Warp was I somewhat sad to see go.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Few direct questions: No fetchlands. Is there a reason why? Do you not want to thin your mana in the longer game? Imperial Recruiter, what would you sub out for him? What would you sub out for Mana Crypt?
Few direct questions: No fetchlands. Is there a reason why? Do you not want to thin your mana in the longer game? Imperial Recruiter, what would you sub out for him? What would you sub out for Mana Crypt?
With the fetchlands I considered running them but in my opinion the thinning that they actually do is extremely minimal in a 60 card deck and really not noticeable in a 100 card list when you can only have like what is it 4 fetchlands in a mono colored deck. Generally speaking if I were running some topdeck manipulation such as Sensei's Divining Top where a shuffle means better selection. I would also consider running them if I were running Crucible of Worlds. In my opinion though fetchlands in a mono colored deck don't do much beyond these 2 functions though. It wouldn't really hurt much if you wanted to include them but I would also consider running topdeck manipulantion and or the crucible.
With Imperial Recruiter honestly he might be a bit more of a pipe dream. If I actually had him I would probably include him anyways but this deck doesn't actually have all that much. It is strictly better than Goblin Matron so it could just replace him but I think you could work with it a bit more than that... Off the top of my head he would be a bit hard to add to the list though. He is good but this list doesnt have a ton of targets for it. I built this list with a lot of backup plans so Marton getting tucked isnt a total failure.
Mana Crypt I would probably sub in for Everflowing Chalice. The chalice is just sort of a strictly slower stone that I usually throw out for 2 or 4 mana so it would generate the same amount of mana but allow me to ramp faster off of it. Everflowing Chalice isn't really impressive or anything but it works ok...
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Had sort of an odd 4 player game last night where I did a turn 1 Sol Ring, Turn 2 Marton, Turn 3 Sword of Fire and Ice + equip to Marton to start drawing cards lol.
Turn 6: I swing in with all my dudes and kill one player and mostly kill a second. My guys were + 7/+7 at this point. I spawn 12 more tokens.
Turn 7: Win +19/+19 buff on attack...
sort of an odd game where I just pushed early because that was the type of hand I had that I needed to do it and it worked out... it never works so slick where nobody interferes but for some reason it did last night...
I guess I am just going to chalk that up to sort of an odd game... Normally I wouldn't have dropped marton anytime near when I did that time but I wanted to draw cards off of the sword so it was my best available play. Then it just came down to nobody answering my threats and it just spiraled out of control to me winning fast.
Well... it has been a while since I have gotten in a game with my mono red tokens however they are still haning in there. I figured I would go through some AVR changes now for this deck even though it hasnt been getting as much attention from me of late.
Notable AVR cards:
Battle Hymn some sort of cool mana production that is creature based. My issue is that it is a bad card until I am going off however fairly good while going off. Still Mana Geyser seems a bit more robust overall at giving me some mana to work with. I dont like how it feels very situational to give me much for mana at any time.
Dangerous Wager draw 2 cards for 2 mana is always good. The downside is you ditch your hand first. I wish this was like draw 2 cards then discard down to 2 cards instead... It is an option but not one that I am really excited about currently. Faithless Looting feels far better than this.
Lightning Mauler another haste outlet. I like mass haste when I can get it however this would give me a body to swing with and give marton haste which is nice. The problem is that it gets swept up easily.
Mad Prophet sort of cool looting effect. I dont like how much he costs to drop or that he discards then draws however he does at least have haste. Worth thinking about in the least.
Reforge the Soul another good on the spot wheel effect. I had really hoped they would print another wheel for red and this seems soooooo much better than Wheel of Fate so I am happy. I think it will likely be an easy inclusion.
Zealous Conscripts versatile card as it can hijack a titan / give marton haste so I like the bit of versatility I could have here.
Conjurers's Closet flicker effect for some ETB triggers. Unfortunately I dont have that many ETB creatures in here...
Moonsilver Spear potentially a 4/4 token per turn unfortunately I dont run that many creatures to equip and I never have really liked a single token a turn sort of production in here. Still a 4/4 flying token is nice...
Cavern of Souls nice little cute land. Unfortunately it has a big price tag on it and relatively small impact on the deck. Not really excited / disappointed all in all. I could add it but I doubt I will notice much upgrade from it and it costs sort of a lot to purchase currently.
Going Foreward:
Dragon Mage -> Reforge the Soul: the results from the Dragon Mage were spotty to say the least. It was sort of fun if I had haste but outside of that he was very hit and miss. Plus he costs a ton of mana for a sort of bad threat / uncertain value.
Squee, Goblin Nabob -> Zealous Conscripts squee is amusing but I think the possibility to hijack a titan / grant marton haste pans out better. Plus there is the Kiki-Jiki combo with the Zealous to consider even though it is unlikely in here.
Well... it has been a while since I have gotten in a game with my mono red tokens however they are still haning in there. I figured I would go through some AVR changes now for this deck even though it hasnt been getting as much attention from me of late.
I love this deck and am actively working on getting all the cards for it. Marton is so under rated. Thank you for posting your updates; they are not lost in the crowd.
Battle Hymn some sort of cool mana production that is creature based. My issue is that it is a bad card until I am going off however fairly good while going off. Still Mana Geyser seems a bit more robust overall at giving me some mana to work with. I dont like how it feels very situational to give me much for mana at any time.
Dangerous Wager draw 2 cards for 2 mana is always good. The downside is you ditch your hand first. I wish this was like draw 2 cards then discard down to 2 cards instead... It is an option but not one that I am really excited about currently. Faithless Looting feels far better than this.
Lightning Mauler another haste outlet. I like mass haste when I can get it however this would give me a body to swing with and give marton haste which is nice. The problem is that it gets swept up easily.
Mad Prophet sort of cool looting effect. I dont like how much he costs to drop or that he discards then draws however he does at least have haste. Worth thinking about in the least.
Reforge the Soul another good on the spot wheel effect. I had really hoped they would print another wheel for red and this seems soooooo much better than Wheel of Fate so I am happy. I think it will likely be an easy inclusion.
Zealous Conscripts versatile card as it can hijack a titan / give marton haste so I like the bit of versatility I could have here.
Conjurers's Closet flicker effect for some ETB triggers. Unfortunately I dont have that many ETB creatures in here...
Moonsilver Spear potentially a 4/4 token per turn unfortunately I dont run that many creatures to equip and I never have really liked a single token a turn sort of production in here. Still a 4/4 flying token is nice...
Cavern of Souls nice little cute land. Unfortunately it has a big price tag on it and relatively small impact on the deck. Not really excited / disappointed all in all. I could add it but I doubt I will notice much upgrade from it and it costs sort of a lot to purchase currently.
Going Foreward:
Dragon Mage -> Reforge the Soul: the results from the Dragon Mage were spotty to say the least. It was sort of fun if I had haste but outside of that he was very hit and miss. Plus he costs a ton of mana for a sort of bad threat / uncertain value.
Squee, Goblin Nabob -> Zealous Conscripts squee is amusing but I think the possibility to hijack a titan / grant marton haste pans out better. Plus there is the Kiki-Jiki combo with the Zealous to consider even though it is unlikely in here.
Cards I like: Zealous Conscripts - Just awesome all around IMO Reforge the Soul - Yes please; likely replace Wheel of Fate Mad Prophet - about on par with Jalum Tome, but another body is nice. Dangerous Wager - I look at this as "pay 2, draw 2 cards". Likely to use when my hand is emptyish.
I love this deck and am actively working on getting all the cards for it. Marton is so under rated. Thank you for posting your updates; they are not lost in the crowd.
Cards I like: Zealous Conscripts - Just awesome all around IMO Reforge the Soul - Yes please; likely replace Wheel of Fate Mad Prophet - about on par with Jalum Tome, but another body is nice. Dangerous Wager - I look at this as "pay 2, draw 2 cards". Likely to use when my hand is emptyish.
Glad someone is listening still lol. Sometimes it can be hard to get people psyched for mono colored commanders. I really do love marton though he just has so much of a bad ass old commander feel to him but his buff is stupid amazing. Most people see me playing an old red commander and just dismiss what he does.... until I tell them I am swinging lethal at them with 6 creatures.
I have a feeling that Zealous Conscripts is just going to be one of those versatile all around great cards. It should have a lot of good uses and the fact that he has haste himself is nice.
Mad Prophet I might end up having to consider him as an add somewhere just because of the fact that he draws me cards and can turn sideways when needed. The haste on him is nice as well... I will see what I can do about including him.
I am just really bummed that white got all of the token spawning that is good out of this block. Still the amazing card draw additions that red got has me still quite happy.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Opening hand is mostly just suck. I end up keeping some jank which is like 4 lands and a Mind's Eye. I had such a bad start I literally just crawled my way into the Mind's Eye tapped out at 5 mana for that turn. From here I just drew some cards as nobody answered it. Jor Kadeen started swinging at me for a little damage but sadly I didn't have an answer. I blew my hand up big but never managed to draw anything important. I hit a Gamble which I shifted into a Incendiary Command to rotate the other 8 cards in hand into something else. Jor Kadeen had a set of Precursor Golems out and slammed his commander. I took like 18 damage that turn off of him... From here I did a Mana Geyser into a Eldrazi Monument + Myr Battlesphere to turn him away from me. I dropped a Mimic Vat as well just to see where it would go in the case that I could sac the battlesphere to the monument next turn.
Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer who had become Jor Kadeen's secondary target at that point dropped a wrath to keep the golems + Serra Ascendant off of his back. I picked up a Primeval Titan from kamahl for my Mimic Vat at this point. Sadly Kamahl went next and he had a Survival of the Fittest in play which he cycled a Solemn Simulacrum into a Terastodon. As I didn't have any mana up he threw it down smashing my Mimic Vat + Eldrazi Monument as well as Jor's Double Strike land. Somehow my Mind's Eye is still in play and this is like after some 5+ turns of just drawing off of it. I don't know if he missed the fact that I still had it or what but I wasn't complaining.
I went and dropped some more tokens as well as beat in for some damage to Jor as he had no board position left. Go go myr ball! Everyone else started building back up slowly. Kamahl threw tons of creatures into play somehow as well as having Kamahl in play. He is sitting on probably 15ish land so it is a problem. From here I go with a Tears of Rage all in on Kamahl to keep him from picking me + someone else off next turn with some stupid overruns. I have to give up something like 9 tokens, my Myr Battlesphere and Siege-Gang Commander to do it but I would have died anyways and he had tons of blockers so I went all of my guys in on him.
From here we start building back up. I am again sort of the primary target of the last 2 players. I play a few threats which Gwafa bribes off such as my Kozilek but he did draw me some good cards. I have a problem trying to play Marton due to Gwafa's ability to bribe creatures. I hit another Incendiary Command hand cycle to ditch a Firecat Blitz and Anger (Gwafa has been buffed so killing him with the 2dmg isn't an option currently). I sort of draw into crap off of it though. Jor Kadeen hits me for like 12 with a Steel Helkite with an Argentum Armor on which puts me at 1 life. Gwafa misses the fact that he could have made one of his creatures unblockable with his Jhessian Balmgiver which would have killed me on the spot.
My turn comes back around and I know that I have to win on the spot. I peeled a Gamble (Kozilek hit my graveyard earlier and shuffled it back in. He is still on the board again but it happened earlier) on Gwafa's turn so I go ahead and cast it tutoring up my Insurrection. From here I cast Insurrection to steal Gwafa so he cant interrupt Marton. I drop Marton into play for the first time this game and I flash back my Firecat Blitz for 6 leaving a single mountain to grant haste left. I swing all in and manage to kill them both just barely.
It was a close game lol. I might end up needing to add something like Starstorm or something to this deck yet. A fast agro deck focus firing me can be a bad thing for this deck. Still, it was a fun game and I had fun with it. I didn't quite expect to draw as much hate playing mono red as I did but mostly all of the swinging in the game was at me. Gwafa really should have gone unblockable and finished me off but he claimed he felt back banking a kill shot off of Jor when he had done all of the work. I didn't complain with getting a shot for the win.
That's a pretty awesome game IMO. I love getting an Insurrection off. Really well done!
One question: Why did you leave 1 mountain up for haste? Insurrection gave all creatures haste when it resolved I think.
Thanks for the recap - that's pretty damn awesome. I can't wait to get the remaining cards for this deck and take it for a spin.
Anger requires a mountain in play to grant haste. If I had lead with Marton Stromgald and relied on Insurrection to grant him haste (which I do a lot) then I would have put myself at risk of Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer bribing Marton in response to the Insurrection. That would have been an option though if I had a sac outlet left in play but I did not so I needed to keep a mountain up to keep haste from anger as I had to work around Gwafa and his damn bribe.
Due to that I chose to bank off of Anger for haste and steal everything before hand to push that option away from him.
Homeward Path -> Haunted Fengraf I simply wasnt utilizing Homeward Path enough. I might end up picking up something else but for now I am going to give Haunted Fengraf a spin considering the fact that most of the creatures in this list do about the same thing so fetching any of them back would be fairly good. I think it is worth testing at least since I haven't played it anywhere yet.
Snow-Covered Mountain -> Mouth of Ronom I have been running this card for like forever however somehow I never got it on my digital list and I just noticed that so I guess I will just add it here rather than trying to go back to a post like 3+ months back and get it in then. Having situational removal on a land is great as it gives me the option if I have to use it to get out of a pinch without using up a spot in the deck. End of turn smashing a Spike Weaver to blow a player out is very fun.
OP UPDATE:
I did some moderator work to Push a second post up for my access for the primer. This opens up some room for me to try to add additional information without running out of space too quickly.
Changelog - I added a changelog and backtracked through the entire thread doing my best to note changes that have occurred throughout this thread's life. It was sort of tricky to get back into the mindset of some of the changes I made further back but I did my best to log changes and when they occurred and why I might have thought of making the swap.
Game Reports - new section in the OP where I have taken sort of the stats of some of my game results and put direct links to posts with game reports. This new section is sort of a cool way to go through a few of my own games with the deck. I hope to improve my reports here in the future and be able to provide in depth reports of how the games are going.
My next project is to sort of go back through the card options and fix it up a bit better. I want to get this primer up and running but I don't feel it is quite there yet. Still the two OP updates I covered here were very time intensive and added a lot to the page. I am looking forward to kicking this deck into the list of full blown primers sometime soon I hope. The above 2 sections probably took me like 4-5 hours to implement into the list mainly on the changelog since I had to backtrack and identify each post that a deck change occurred in.
I have been playing a few online games with Marton to really good success. I have played some like 3 games in the last week so I will do my best to get them all in as best detail as I can.
GAME 1: 3 player FFA game. It was meant to be a 4 player but one of the guys dropped right as we got going. Opponents here were Sigarda, Host of Herons (appeared to be enchantress) and Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper (basic sac value creatures and tokens with haste) played by ticker.
The game got going decently for me. I hit a turn 3 Worn Powerstone, turn 4 Coalition Relic. Sigarda who went first ramped into his commander on turn 4. Sek'Kuar decided to Mwonvuli Acid-Moss Sigarda's only green source immediately after they dropped their commander which was really sweet for me as it put him on the **** list. Sigarda dropped a Shield of the Oversoul on his commander the turn after and started ripping into Sek'Kuar. From here I was sort of sitting poorly so I dropped my Memory Jar to try to dig into answers. At this point I was sitting at like 8ish mana max mostly tapped down from the Jar. Sek'Kuar did very little with his turn at this point I think he dropped his commander and put a skullclamp on it. At some point in here he also blew up Sigarda's Serra's Sanctum as well. Sigarda put a second hit onto Sek'Kuar putting him at 14 general dmg and a turn from killing him.
At this point I popped the Memory Jar and drew into a lot of mana. I dropped a land and a Mana Vault. From here I kicked out a Goblin Offensive for like 8 tokens I think it was. Sek'Kuar is not doing a whole long now... I think this is when he blows up the Serra's Sanctum and I think he turned a creature over for a token that hit Sigarda back. Sigarda goes and has some mercy on Sek'Kuar and decides I am a bigger threat currently and hits me for 7. On my turn I drop In the Web of War + Marton Stromgald and slap Sigarda back. I think I miscalculated my dmg as I left him at like 5 life. Sek'Kuar decides it would be fun to play Nature's Revolt and passes turn. Sigarda topdecks the land he needs to hit a Terminate and tuck the lands. He should have attacked with his commander before he did it but whatever. After the wrath I am left with the best board position still having my haste + 3 mana stones with Mana Vault still tapped. (LOOKING BACK: his 6th land would have had summoning sickness so he wouldnt have been able to have used his wrath here)
Moving on though, I tapped my Coalition Relic to charge it for my turn giving me 4 mana going to my turn. I topdeck a Solemn Simulacrum which I play and slap Sigarda for 4 dmg (thanks to In the Web of War) with putting him to 1 life. My opponents go and mostly drop a land or whatever having been behind me due to the land wrath. I topdeck a second land and drop a Siege-Gang Commander which slaps Sek'Kuar for 15 all in all. I think arround this point Sigarda just concedes to the fact that I can shoot him at will and drops. Sek'Kuar goes again and I dont think he draws anything and the game is mostly over at this point.
GAME 2: 4 player FFA match. Opponents here were Phage the Untouchable (one shot commander kills with control), Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir (very creature light heavy control list that seemed to be built arround combo / control), and Kaalia of the Vast (seemed like sort of a low quality build as far as I saw)
The game gets going alright. I turn one Gamble into a Sol Ring random pitching a Tears of Rage that I wanted out of my opening hand anyways but didnt have other fodder to throw into drawing with. I turn 2 drop the sol ring wich is a bit slow unfortunately as I wanted my simulacrum on turn 2 but whatev. Turn 3 I go for Solemn Simulacrum which Teferi counters. Phage gets away with a Phyrexian Arena. I drop another mana stone and sort of watch what is going on. Teferi tutors into a Spell Crumple arround now and everyone sort of slow rolls things hoping not to eat it. Teferi does an EOT Thirst for Knowledge and discards an Omen Machine... This tells me he probably has a better wincon in hand already. Kaalia drops his commander in soon after so I dont know if he didnt notice it but he eats the crumple. I drop my Chandra Ablaze into play hoping he doesnt have any more counters in hand which he doesnt. I wheel the hands and see the Knowledge Pool that I force him to discard. Kaalia concedes out of the game sometime arround now... I dont really recall anything beyond the spell crumple though. I get going with some token creators as Phage has a Lightning Greaves + Torpor Orb in play. I manage to dump like 15 myrs into play off of Myr Incubator but do it totally incorrectly as I thought I could sac one of them to The Abyss and loose Marton once to it. Phage recovers a Damnation and blows it up to kill my stuff. On my next turn I hit a Snake Basket off for like 10 snakes. At this point I am just trying hard not to leave an opening for him to hit phage into play and one shot me. I end up talking him into hitting phage into play and attacking Teferi with it though. He goes for it and I guess Teferi's only option is to try to block it so he casts teferi and eats a Withering Boon lolz. Phage one shots him and he is gone.
It gets to my turn and I flip a 22 card Warp World. Phage gets a smaller one but gets stupid lucky with his. My board ends up being something like:
and possibly a few more things that I cant recall offhand... I hit a lot of spells though which sucked but seeing as I had stripped out like 15 of my artifacts earlier there wasnt a ton left to hit.
He hits Liliana to tutor into Cabal Coffers and eats the Mind Stone to draw + play it. I think he was looking for a wrath option but he was too mana lite to pull it off. He uses Karn to exile Kozilek. I respond to this by using Kiki to copy Goblin Welder I activate my Slate of Ancestry to discard my 0 card hand and draw 7. Kozilek is exiled at this point. He goes to kill kiki with Sorrin probably because of the wurmcoil being able to offset a life setting. I push Kiki onto the Mimic Vat and smash his Torpor Orb by giving him back his Mind Stone with the token Goblin Welder. He passes turn and I go to town. I drop Fervor, activate the Mimic Vat to drop Kiki back in. Copy the Myr Battlesphere with kiki. Drop Marton into play and win.
The game gets going alright. Uril hits Gaddock Teeg into play on his turn 2. I hit a turn 3 Worn Powerstone, turn 4 Rapacious One. Uril at this point swings teeg at me intending to kill him I think. I just take the 2 and deny him whatever he was trying to do lol. He got really mad that I didnt kill him as well. Omnath is ramping like mad... Vish Kal is mana screwed in his corner. Uril is just sort of sitting on a few lands not screwed but not ramping. My turn hits and I go to drop a Mind's Eye but am reminded of teeg on the field so I go with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, copy my Rapacious One with Kiki and beat Uril for 10 dmg dropping a lot of eldrazi into play. I eat 2 of them and use my last 2 mana to drop Marton into play. Uril is getting mad and he puts a sword on teeg swinging it at me which I just chump with a token lol. He totally wasnt paying attention here as Omnath was open to his sword of feast and famine. I think and just drops out of the game saying something about his kids. Omnath ends up dropping a Doubling Cube + Seedborn Muse. The turn after he drops Omnath + Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger into play. He ends up with tons of mana and a big commander at this point.
I ramp up my creatures and slap Vish for lethal assuming if he had hit his 4th land drop I might have eaten on a wrath. I end up dumping 28 eldrazi tokens into play. Vish killed Marton with a block so I recast him. Omnath goes and goes up to 110 mana... He doesnt have anything worth doing though as he cant trample / evasion his way through currently. I go and kill him on my turn where he hit like 200 some mana in his pool.
It looked like sort of a slow start due to not having amazing ramp in my opening hand. I was sitting behind a few lands and an Everflowing Chalice. I hit my third turn and managed to hit a Sol Ring + Terrain Generator activation. Turn 4 I topdecked a Thran Dynamo and dropped it in + dropped my Everflowing Chalice with 3 counters on it. About here Gris dropped a Damnation on Rhys. Next I dropped a Mind's Eye to try to recover my lost hand. My following opponent dropped a Chains of Mephistopheles which made things harder however it was still good as filter is better than nothing for red. Progenitus jumped into play thanks to an early Fist of Suns and luckily me playing mono red sort of turned people to others. I dropped a 4 counter Orochi Hatchery and rolled out a few tokens at the EOT of my opponents. Progenitus slaps rhys and rhys *****es him out for not hitting the mono black player. Sitting with a few tokens in play I followed up with Marton slowplayed and waited. From here the mono black player dropped a Yawgmoth's Will to Geth's VerdictProgenitus who ducked it with a Stonecloaker. Rhys does little to nothing and I activate my Orochi Hatchery again putting me at 8 snakes then trigger a token from Kher Keep. My turn rolls in and I throw down a Firecat Blitz for 13 cats. I hit declaring attackers and ask if anyone has any responses. Nothing comes in so I wait a moment and procede to tap down everything. My buff is +22/+22 and 2 of the opponents have no creatures. I send 4 tokens apeace to the no block players and 14 remainders at rhys who probably has like 4 blocks. They were very irate with me as I think this was around like turn 7/8 the mono red player killed all of them without an infinite combo. I think I heard someone comment that it was the worst game he had ever played lol.
EDIT: Also, Beetleback Chief is probably going to be really solid. The fact that it would give me another goblin which gives me options for Moggcatcher and Goblin Matron. The downside is that it seems a lot worse than Siege-Gang Commander but I had sort of been considering cutting Ensnaring Bridge anyways. It is something to consider at least.
I put in another game of 4 player FFA online. I like how the deck sort of quickly wins / looses games so I tend to play it a bit more online. Opponents were Kresh the Bloodbraided (creatures and hate cards), Edric, Spymaster of Trest (pillofort hug...), and Patron of the Moon (combo / control).
The game got going and I hit a turn 1 Faithless Looting throwing away some of the slower / more expensive cards. I kept Vicious Shadows and threw away Warp World based upon the fact that I was against Kresh... I dont know if it was the right play or not. Edric drops a Veteran Explorer which he runs arround with for a bit trying to get it killed. Turn 1 EOT Patron uses a Mystical Tutor into Mystic Speculation, on his turn he hits a Merchant Scroll into Force of Will for some nice backup emergency counter. Edric drops a Forbidden Orchard into play and gives Kresh a token that he hopes that he will kill his explorer with. I point out that that was a dumb move considering he has a skullclamp in play and so he takes the dmg and clamps the token for cards...
I hit turn 3 and drop an Imperial Recruiter (which I play online but dont own so it isnt in the list) and tutor for Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker to hand... looking back at this move it might not have been such a good move considering I knew he had a force of will in hand. Normally against edric I would go for Siege-Gang Commander off of something like this however I already had him in hand. From here I sort of draw some attention and get attacked a bit from Kresh so I give in and block with the Imperial Recruiter because I think it will get him off my back that I cant copy it.
The blue player turns into a loop of just scrying and keeping up counter magic... Nobody is really playing anything great. Edric comes in and a few hug cards. I hit a Solemn Simulacrum arround turn 4 I think and turn 5 I follow up with Siege-Gang Commander for some bodies to hit people with. I start swinging at the blue player to draw some cards and try to kill him b4 we get comboed on but then the dumbass edric player plays a Hunted Troll and gives the blue player a bunch of tokens..... damnit. Kresh tries to get away with a Defense of the Heart but it gets shot down by a counter. Blue player gets a Gauntlet of Power into play off of a Reshape and it sticks to the board. Next turn I drop my own Gauntlet of Power + Godo, Bandit Warlord grabbing Sword of Fire and Ice. The blue player does an EOT Long-Term Plans into his wincon. From here he hits me with his 4 flyers and draws 4 off of Edric and combos off...
Well that was sort of a bad game where the blue player didnt draw any attention... I drew a lot as a mono red deck and we lost to infinite combo... yays. I think the Kresh player either knew me as a user or had seen a similar deck to mine as he was really warry of my the whole game. I got thrown off like the whole game by his pocket Force of Will and the damn group hug player didnt help things out at all... Well too bad I guess. I unfortunately had sort of a slow ramp hand and my other opponents werent focusing on him so he essentially just got to goldfish us because I think he countered one spell the whole game and just won without anyone else hitting him other than me once or twice.
DECK CHANGES
Ensnaring Bridge -> Lightning Mauler The bridge just hasnt been cutting it for me of late. When this deck was in its earlier configuration it wouldt execute quite as fast but now I need to answer the combo decks sooner and use marton more and to do that I often need more haste. I like what the Mauler brings to the table as I could easily pay 6 mana for marton + the mauler.
Squee, Goblin Nabob -> Beetleback Chief I know that it is a bit early for this one yet however I have had some success with my goblin package already and the fact that this is 3 goblins for 4 mana seems great to me. I have some goblin support already in the deck and I have plenty of ways to abuse extra bodies.
Eldrazi Monument -> Akroma's Memorial I sort of feel like I draw about the same attention with either card. The big differeence being that I need haste with Marton to do much of anything. Between dropping him in and hoping haste will cover him and dropping him in with haste + flying + 2 color protections I think I like Akroma's a bit more in theory. The Eldrazi Monument seems good on paper but slow playing off of it rarely pans out for me.
Ok, playing more matches has just further shown that there are some problems with some cards. I am going to sort of recap some of the changes then I will hit on some of the games I have had lately.
DECK CHANGES:
Godo, Bandit Warlord -> Reverberate I always got the impression that godo was sort of a goodstuff add to the deck. I like him with a sword in hand however the swords just werent really working out that great in the deck. He doesnt further the token tactics and I have found drawing into Sword of Fire and Ice to be a bit troublesome in this deck at times. I dont always have the creatures needed to swing arround with it so.... meh. I like the idea of some spell copying though as it lets me piggyback some of the stupid big cards in the late game, grab some card advantage, ramp in the early game, really sort of whatever I need. I figured I would give them a bit of time in the list and see if they worked out for me or not.
Wurmcoil Engine -> Reiterate I love the Wurmcoil when I can manage to play with the Goblin Welder as well however I just havent been feeling this creature in the deck of late. It is sort of slow and while I like the life pickup it doesnt nicely do much for token work here. I have ended up drawing it and feeling a bit clunkey several times now. I dont think it is the worst offender of what is getting cut but I want to try to do without for a bit and see where it brings me. I havent decided yet if the addition here should be Fork or Reiterate but I figured as I am already running Reverberate I will try 2 different effects and see which I usually prefer and if it turns out that the extra mana cost behind this doesnt pan out I will swap to fork.
Spawning Pit -> Omen of Fire I have seen a few more blue combo decks than I really like seeing online so I figured I would give this a spin and see how it pans out. It seems like most every game I get 2+ opponents running some blue in their colors and this screws with white as well so I figure it seems like fairly win to try out. Normally I dont like resorting to this sort of tactic but seeing as how it has sort of 2 functions I wanted to give it a spin for a bit.
Sword of Fire and Ice -> Ruination I have been seeing a lot more 3+ color decks online as well so I figured I would give some light LD a spin. I figured considering this isnt a full land destroy effect perhaps people wont get as pissed about it but still... It seems to be one of the few tools to use in mono color vs so many multicolor decks running so few basics.
Incendiary Command -> Mad Prophet ohhh man the command has not been working well at all for me. I think ideally it works best in a deck that actually has some good draw power to it and then when you hand sits at like 15 cards you rotate a large hand into another large hand. When I am sitting at 0-2 cards in hand I hate drawing it. When I have a full hand I usually hate to part with a card or two in hand and go down in CA. The big problem here is that most of the functions dont work well because the 2 dmg kills a lot of my stuff and I have a hard time taking card disadvantage and shifting the rest of my hand with this. The prophet can be used for attacking and it comes in and lets me choose and rotate things as I want.
Haunted Fengraf -> Mountain I have felt like my nonbasic count is a bit higher or I am just getting a bit unlucky so I figured I would cut one. Especially with Ruination coming into the list keeping a check on the nonbasic count seems like a solid idea.
GAME REPORT
I had another 4 games that I got in since my last report but the first two were sort of really long games I think we ended up spending close to 2 hours on the first 2 with 3/4 of the same players between them using mostly the same decks.
GAME 1: 4 player FFA. I was playing against Progenitus (5c planeswalker control deck running 3 creatures 12 wraths and tons of walkers), Riku of Two Reflections played by A.Minor so I am assuming his salvation list for the most part. I think the final player was a Zedruu the Greathearted deck which I cant remember like any plays from at all other than using a Rootwater Thief a few times to jack with people.
I cant really remember much of this game because it was so long... What I can remember was I didnt draw like any card draw or creatures for like most all of the game. My ramp just wasnt there either so it was like nonstop land drops and odd utility that didnt work without creatures in play. I ended up getting Akroma's Memorial into play and used marton like on his own to prod planeswalkers and defend from 1/1 lifelink vamps which was great but man it just crawled all game. Then finally I almost went off with a Myr Incubator + Akroma's Memorial but I was screwed for mana and so I had to slow roll it and someone hit a big green elephant and pooed all over my board... it really sucked. I remember hitting a sort of funny Homeward Path trigger to give a ton of stuff back to the riku player just because the 5c deck kicked my ass with his triggers. Overall though Homeward Path has been totally terrible for me though and needs to come out of my online deck. I keep forgetting to pull it from the list though. In the end I dont remember exactly how this one ended but it wasnt with me winning it so meh. The problem was I wasnt drawing nicely, I wasnt hitting draw or ramp for **** and my opponents were running lots of answers.
I thought I had a great starting hand with a turn 1 Faithless Looting that threw away an Anger + a fat expensive card. I was really stoked for the good start but before my turn rolled back arround we saw 2 Bojuka Bogs hit play and hit me and Kresh's graveyards thanks to Shirei and the 5c players. At this point... I was looking a lot worse than I thought I was and slow played into the game. I gambled into an Insurrection after feeling like I had no other ways of winning the game but I think a 50/50 Kresh ran over the 5c player when he got too threatening using an unblockable trick as well as drawing like 20 cards from greater good off of a stupid huge 20/20 Primordial Hydra that he flashed into play as a 10/10 hydra at the EOT off of Winding Canyons then proceded to drop Kresh into play with haste off of a Hall of the Bandit Lord and combat tricked him into one shotting the 5c deck... I think Shirei tried doing something silly to kill it like a Living Death but in response to the spell Kresh flings his commander at Shirei to kill him and stop me from rezing a bunch of sweet dudes. I never did hit that mana I needed to hit insurrection and conceded the game with 2 cards in hand against a 23 card jund deck with a clear board...
This was sort of a really odd game that I cant really remember a ton about. It ended up being sort of an odd game where Riku kept throwing spells at the mono blue player and the blue player would beat him back. I ended up getting sort of a slow start from what I remember. Turn 3 Tresserhorn tried to hit an Aggravated Assault which the mono blue player Mana Drained. On the blue player's turn he dropped a Mana Crypt and proceded to tap mana. Riku acted with a Krosan Grip which he didnt have priority to play... The blue player pointed this out and riku just responded ok when I do have priority then... The blue player played a Caged Sun for blue... not exactly a great move riku... I myself stumble trying to hit 4 mana for my Gauntlet of Might as I do manage a turn 4 land it is valukut and comes in tapped... I slow play into my gauntlet. From here I decide to slow play this one and let riku and the blue player fight. I play a Mind's Eye and procede to try to keep my hand as big as it can be. From here the mono blue player tries to get away with a Leyline of Anticipation which gets Voidslimed. Riku a few turns later attempts to cast his commander which gets countered as well by a Draining Welk. Riku and the mono blue player play a bit of keep away with the Draining Welk with Riku trying to keep it locked down with Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and the mono blue player trying to squish the blue planeswalker throwing arround a Lightning Greaves to try to get out of the lockdown.
I am just playing creatures and herp derping my way arround for a bit. The mono blue player gets his commander out and starts dropping some big mills onto riku. I start worrying that the blue player could go off soon so I go ahead and unleash marton on him with Marton buffing +7/+7 to a bunch of guys running him right over. Riku puts up his defenses using Tamiyo, the Moon Sage to tap marton down with 2 blockers up. I make the mistake of sending too little to go kill her as I think I sent 3 bodies to take her down and he managed some combat tricks with Capsize + buyback on it and chump blocking.
Tresserhorn is still stuck at like 4 lands I think and it is well into the game so he is just sort of sitting there. Riku eats up most of Tamiyo's loyalty to draw some cards. On my turn I know he still has the capsize with the ability to use it once or twice yet. I lead with Sword of Fire and Ice and equip it to marton to force him to use it early. He uses his Capsize and copies it with buyback to bounce Marton and the sword in response to the equip. I play Marton again and soulbind him to Lightning Mauler for haste. At this point Riku drops complaining about something or another. Tresserhorn calls it game as he had tapped out to play something but apparently had a stifle in hand to stop marton's pump from killing him the following turn. It was a really odd game where I got 2 players to tunnel each other and just managed to keep a card draw effect in play + nobody wrathed me... really odd.
GAME 4: Started as a 4 player FFA but someone dropped immediately so it was a 3 player FFA before anything really even started. Opponents were Karn, Silver Golem and Animar, Soul of Elements.
My opening hand had a Wheel of Fortune + 2 mana stones so I was sort of happy with it. I got started with a Mind Stone on turn 2 and a turn 3 Worn Powerstone, turn 4 Gauntlet of Might. Sadly I didnt really hit any more lands so most of the game I operated on 2 mountains and I think I hit a third land on like turn 7 or something...
From here animar was fairly pissed as we were both far ahead of him ramping but he played like a Sakura-Tribe Elder which he poped off rather than paying the 1 mana or having it bounced by the portal. Karn on his turn dropped a Darksteel Forge which was apparently enough for animar to call it quits and drop from the game. I followed the forge with playing an Akroma's Memorial on a mostly empty board. Next turn Karn drops his commander in and beats me across the face for 17 dmg with his forge + 2 of his 4 mana artifacts. I am down to 23 life. I go and drop a Myr Battlesphere which I had to tap out to play :(. Immediately he bounces one of my tokens out of play with his Erratic Portal. I swing with the other 3 tokens + Battlesphere which he Maze of Ith's and takes 3 dmg. On his turn he bounces another one of my tokens out and hits me for another 13 dmg. I go down to 10 rather than blocking currently. My turn rolls arround and I still have 2 of the tokens + the battlesphere. I drop Marton + Lightning Mauler and swing back at him. He mazes the battlesphere but still takes 19 dmg from my attack. This pushes him down to like 10 life as he had taken some dmg from his Ancient Tomb earlier. He goes and plays an All is Dust on me (OMG this guy is stupid lucky). He was thinking he was going to clear all of my creatures but forgot that the myr party was colorless. I block his 9/9 with one of my tokens, chump block one of the 4/4s with the Myr Battlesphere and take 8 dmg going down to 1 life. My turn again and it looks bleek. I topdeck a land which I play mistakenly I realize immediately because I need all the mana I can get and I have to Wheel of Fortune into an answer. I wheel and see the mountain which I had wanted to play instead and kick myself. I look at what I have to work with and I have the option to play a Wurmcoil Engine but it would tap me out far enough that he would bounce it on his turn and he can maze it currently... I instead go with Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician sacing 2/3 of my mts into some tokens. If I had held off on the land and gotten that mt into play it would have been a game win... stupid me. I swing in and get him for 9 dmg putting him at 1 life remaining. I have enough blockers though that he cannot manage to get through on me for more than 1 dmg on his turn even if he manages to pay all the mana for it. I in turn would finish him off with the battlesphere + marton poking in for that last life with haste off of the Akroma's Memorial.
From here we have sort of a long debate as to why attacking me wont win him the game and which he finally agrees with me that he cannot connect for lethal without some sort of trick. He in turn taps a ton of mana down and drops Karn Liberated nuking my Akroma's Memorial. I think he had enough mana that he could have swung at me with 2-3 of his guys yet but I think he just sort of blanked on it. He adds a Winter Orb to play which actually DOES screw me because I topdeck an Insurrection but cant afford to play it lol by 1 mana.
I look at my board real hard for a moment trying to figure out how to hit him for 1 dmg when he has a lot more guys in play and his are indestructable and mine are no longer flying + vigilant. Then I realize I still have Myr Battlesphere + one Myr token. I turn the battlesphere sideways and tap the token FTW!!!!!!!!!! We have a long discussion as to how he cant stop the 1 dmg from killing him. He thinks he can stop it with Maze of Ith but we pull the errataed text from gatherer specifying combat only. In the end it was a really fun game that could have ended much worse in my mind.
Overall the games went fairly well. I won 2/4 of them and the 2 that I didnt win I was against control heavy decks and I didnt draw like any ramp / card draw that really worked out. Some of the issues again were with who I was facing as I have some trouble with control but it is also in the fact that I really need more good draw >_< hopefully they come out with more quality red draw for me to use in the future.
I play on Cockatrice with my username there ISBPathfinder again. My hours are really unpredictable though because I am working odd ass hours for work currently. I am glad you like my game reports as they are sort of lengthy so I am glad someone enjoys reading them or I would just be wasting time. Still I sort of have fun mashing them out. It lets me sort of replay some of my old games myself and sometimes it is good to reflect on old games when you are looking at making some deck changes as well.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Well I had a bunch more games but I honestly cant really recap everything that happened in each of the games. I think I put in something like 6 games that were all started as 4 player FFA. A few of them dropped down to less than that shortly after but ya.
GAME 1: really lots of bad things happening together. The mono black player was an Ad Nauseam deck and tried to combo off. He wasn't paying attention to the Avacyn player's board though and he lost to a Suture Priest which technically he didn't remind him of the dmg until he did 3 creatures so it was not valid but the guy left before I could point out that may triggers need to be enforced when they happen. I ended up loosing to the mono white player who did something like turn 3: Extraplanar Lens, turn 4: Gauntlet of Power, turn 5: Avacyn, Angel of Hope turn 6: Wrath of God + Iona, Shield of Emeria (choosing red). He beat the scion casual deck to death and I scooped... it was really bad.
GAME 2: really sort of a lame game but I ended up pushing a Orochi Hatchery to the win. As sort of a heads up playing a turn 1 Mana Vault into a turn 1 Coalition Relic... its not that productive. I didnt ramp into anything else off of it so if I have more things to do with early mana its nice but I ended up spending turns untapping the vault to do other things and taking dmg. I hit up a Mana Geyser that pushed me into like 15 mana in the early game so I hit a 10 mana Orochi Hatchery and started dumping 5 dudes a turn into play. Goblin Bombardment came in after this and I just sort of rode opponents effects to the win from here as Stranglehold + Angelic Arbiter were both like screwing with everyone but me. Someone forgot about the Stranglehold and threw away a Tooth and Nail lol. From here I just amassed like 15+ tokens and ran everyone over. I got life totals down far enough that when someone tried to hit me with a Jokulhaups I just rammed 15 snakes through a Goblin Bombardment and killed him. From there the last player went down fast as I pushed back up to like 9 tokens and attacked him + bombed him FTW.
GAME 3: we ended up loosing a player early so it was like a 3 player game where the 5c player got really screwed and ignored all game. I think it was like turn 2 or 3 or so a Serra Ascendant came in from the mono white player. He started beating on me but I managed to ramp quickly into Akroma's Memorial which allowed me to potentially block him. He swung at the 5c player a few times rather than into the tokens. I hit an Emrakul's Hatcher right after he tutored up and played a Sword of War and Peace. Chancellor of the Forge dropped me another like 5 goblins and hit him back for a ton of dmg with a Gauntlet of Might in play. From here he tried gaining what he could back off of the 5c deck but I slammed them with a hastey marton for a good like 60+ apeace.
GAME 4: Crappy game of screw... I start with 1 colorless land in hand and mulligan heavily to get a setup of 2 in hand with an opening hand of like 4 cards... It totally blew ass and we got run over by Sliver Queen + Sliver Legion. It was just bad opening hand screw that never improved. I think we were all dead by like turn 8 or 9. It was swift and bad.
GAME 5:Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Zealous Conscripts infinite on turn 4... lol this one was absolutely stupidly perfect for me. I started with Zealous Conscripts and Gamble. I drew Wayfarer's Bauble on turn 1, poped it turn 2. Gambled on turn 3 which discarded a land which I luckily topdecked the 5th one I needed on turn 4 and hit an 11 mana Mana Geyser. I got lucky with this one because it was like everyone was fully tapped out and a Mayael with good ramp baited out a Path to Exile the turn before I did this. Stupid fast combo win lol.
GAME 6: turned into a 3 player game fairly quickly. Mayael and Numot as my opponents. Mayael got really lucky and ramped out fast with a turn 1/2 Burgeoning. I got sort of stuck on mana at arround 5 but managed to land a mana doubler and a few tokens in play off of a Emrakul's Hatcher. Mayael got some annoying planeswalkers into play and Avacyn, Angel of Hope. Numot played his commander out which I couldnt afford to take the LD from so I hit a Warp World for like 12 targets and hit a bunch of spell targets... I did manage 3 lands and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Emrakul's Hatcher + Vicious Shadows. Numot is at like 6 cards in hand so I just take like all of the eldrazi tokens I make and ram them through the shadows to stop some BS he was going to steal stuff with. From here Mayael does something small and I just push out Marton with haste thanks to setting up a In the Web of War. I run him over for like 30 dmg with this attack which kills him as he was down to like 20 from shadow triggers and some small poking.
EDIT: GAME 7: walked away with another win. I got a big mana hand and ramped a lot. I ended up hitting Marton Stromgald + Insurrection in the same turn on like turn 7 or 8 I want to say. I just sort of kept a low profile and kept ramping. Once I got there I just stole everything and won :p. Sort of a d-bag win but it was fun to watch everyone go wait wtf just hit us? I find it really funny when people are like... wtf how are you buffing and haven't read what my commander does until it kills them.
Out of my last changes I have drawn the copy effects a few times and they were useful. Omen of Fire I haven't really made a decision on yet as I think ruination is probably more useful but there was a situation where I kept it in my pocket and it was really solid. It does decently against Kaalia decks as I have noticed they do a lot of annoying things with white creatures especially Avacyn but a lot of times they don't have a ton of plains. So far the times I have seen Mad Prophet were just sort of odd times to draw it so I haven't had a consensus on it yet. More testing I suppose.
I also play Weiss Schwarz, Chaos, Vanguard and Wixoss.
Weiss Schwarz Sets
Accel World, Angel Beats, Familiar of Zero, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, Guilty Crown, Kill La Kill, Robotics;Notes, Sword Art Online.
Chaos Partners
Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Iona, Kirishima, Kongou.
Dangan Ronpa: Asahina, Togami.
Freezing: Vibration: Chiffon, Satelizer.
Vanguard Clans Favoured
Angel Feather, Dark Irregulars, Genesis, Neonecter, Pale Moon, Shadow Paladins, Tachikaze.
Red still lacks a lot of really solid token producers in my mind so I still plan on going through with him. He isn't out yet so my trice games haven't reflected him being in the deck but I run Gauntlet of Might and Imperial Recruiter online just to test them. I think he will end up being a mostly just better Precursor Golem as he costs one less mana, he is tutorable off of Moggcatcher and Goblin Matron.
I like him so far on paper. The only really foreseeable downside being that Siege-Gang Commander feels like a magnitude better for one more mana... Still we cant have every creature be as good as Siege-Gang Commander I suppose...
Ok, playing more matches has just further shown that there are some problems with some cards. I am going to sort of recap some of the changes then I will hit on some of the games I have had lately.
DECK CHANGES:
Godo, Bandit Warlord -> Reverberate I always got the impression that godo was sort of a goodstuff add to the deck. I like him with a sword in hand however the swords just werent really working out that great in the deck. He doesnt further the token tactics and I have found drawing into Sword of Fire and Ice to be a bit troublesome in this deck at times. I dont always have the creatures needed to swing arround with it so.... meh. I like the idea of some spell copying though as it lets me piggyback some of the stupid big cards in the late game, grab some card advantage, ramp in the early game, really sort of whatever I need. I figured I would give them a bit of time in the list and see if they worked out for me or not.
Wurmcoil Engine -> Reiterate I love the Wurmcoil when I can manage to play with the Goblin Welder as well however I just haven't been feeling this creature in the deck of late. It is sort of slow and while I like the life pickup it doesn't nicely do much for token work here. I have ended up drawing it and feeling a bit clunky several times now. I don't think it is the worst offender of what is getting cut but I want to try to do without for a bit and see where it brings me. I haven't decided yet if the addition here should be Fork or Reiterate but I figured as I am already running Reverberate I will try 2 different effects and see which I usually prefer and if it turns out that the extra mana cost behind this doesn't pan out I will swap to fork.
Spawning Pit -> Omen of Fire I have seen a few more blue combo decks than I really like seeing online so I figured I would give this a spin and see how it pans out. It seems like most every game I get 2+ opponents running some blue in their colors and this screws with white as well so I figure it seems like fairly win to try out. Normally I dont like resorting to this sort of tactic but seeing as how it has sort of 2 functions I wanted to give it a spin for a bit.
Sword of Fire and Ice -> Ruination I have been seeing a lot more 3+ color decks online as well so I figured I would give some light LD a spin. I figured considering this isnt a full land destroy effect perhaps people wont get as pissed about it but still... It seems to be one of the few tools to use in mono color vs so many multicolor decks running so few basics.
Incendiary Command -> Mad Prophet ohhh man the command has not been working well at all for me. I think ideally it works best in a deck that actually has some good draw power to it and then when you hand sits at like 15 cards you rotate a large hand into another large hand. When I am sitting at 0-2 cards in hand I hate drawing it. When I have a full hand I usually hate to part with a card or two in hand and go down in CA. The big problem here is that most of the functions dont work well because the 2 dmg kills a lot of my stuff and I have a hard time taking card disadvantage and shifting the rest of my hand with this. The prophet can be used for attacking and it comes in and lets me choose and rotate things as I want.
Haunted Fengraf -> Mountain I have felt like my nonbasic count is a bit higher or I am just getting a bit unlucky so I figured I would cut one. Especially with Ruination coming into the list keeping a check on the nonbasic count seems like a solid idea.
Ok going back to these deck changes. It was fun to try them but they are all way too situational based upon my opponents playing certain types of decks and under certain circumstances. The LD effects were devastating when they worked and I did execute like a turn 4 one sided armageddon once with ruination once. The problem with the LD effects is that I essentially never want to be singled out as the person in the lead until I am ready to win on the spot or win next turn.
I also noticed a reasonable issue with Warp World with adding like 5 bad targets to the deck. If they had worked out I would have pushed through but generally they were not working out. Sometimes I would keep 2 mana up for like 6 straight turns without seeing anything reasonable to target with the copy effects.
Mad Prophet this has been like the one card that did pan out surprisingly well. I often end up with some situational things in hand or just need to see more cards in a turn so rotating things has been great as it is one at a time and he has haste. I have been very pleased with him and am sort of sad to see that the M12 version wont be having haste.
DECK CHANGES Reverberate -> Crystal Ball I didnt ever really think of this card in here but I think it might be better than Sensei's Divining Top for this deck as I just dont shuffle enough in this deck. Card selection is really good to have so I think I will try it out and see where it goes.
Reiterate -> Defense Grid this is a great effect for the deck but I am not yet sure if I want to give up a card to have the effect. It helps protect marton and when I am trying to go off so I like that but I don't know how happy I will be to see it so we will see where it goes.
Omen of Fire -> Skyship Weatherlight I wanted to give this a shot... It might end up being too much mana to utilize but I felt it was sort of easier to handle than Planar Portal's 12 mana to drop and execute in one shot. I would easily grab like 4-5 cards with the weatherlight and still be happy plus I have a lot of targets between artifact and creature. Worth some testing I think.
Ruination -> Teferi's Puzzle Box I am honestly not sure how this will pan out here. My Rebels deck has made good use of it but there is also things like Land Tax, and Tithe and other sweet hand increases there.
Mana Vault -> Grim Monolith Generally I don't need the buff to the mana super early but the size of the buff here is nice for when I am doing my big plays. I like the monolith due to its ability to untap whenever I want to. The slow down in speed to drop and the cost difference hasn't really been that noticeable.
Also just a tidbit about Beetleback Chief. I think I am cutting him from my list here. I still have it on the decklist here but I am not running it in my online list anymore. I am essentially always disappointed that he isn't just Siege-Gang Commander. I think that generally I want to see 4+ bodies per card when it comes to the token production in the deck. I would kill to have another Emrakul's Hatcher or Siege-Gang Commander. I will have to update the actual list later as I have to run and grab lunch.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
The guy who revealed Liliana and Karn through Warp World almost got away with bloody murder. Planeswalkers don't come into play via Warp World. They get shipped to the bottom with the instants, sorceries, and auras that can't enchant anything.
It's very awesome to see these game logs though. I've spectated a few of your matches here and there and the deck does look very solid.
Hey thanks SC, I have been working hard to try to improve this deck. It is so much fun to just curb stomp opponents with mono red. I really need to sit down and take some notes during some games as they are a bit harder to do game reports on some of the online games. I do like writing up the reports but sometimes when I just nail out like 6+ games in a day off or something it gets hard to do them. I will see what I can do about getting some more in depth reports with the updates.
Private Mod Note
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Soooooooo it has been a while since a goblin this impactful for EDH has been spoiled. I definately enjoy my goblin package so Moggcatcher and Goblin Matron will definately both probably be tutoring into him some. As for his actual impact in the deck, I would say he wont be as powerful as Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, but I would say he has a strong impact for the deck that I feel is much stronger than the interaction that say Dragonmaster Outcast has for the deck. I still have a few slots that I dont really have nailed down though so I think for now the outcast will stay in the list. However strictly speaking the quantity of creatures is much more important than the quality of them. I like the outcast for some defensive tokens though as 5/5s really make people think twice when I get a free one every turn.
DECK CHANGES:
Beetleback Chief -> Krenko, Mob Boss I had some issues with Beetleback because it doesnt give me the optimal 4+ bodies from one card. I almost always have something else I would rather tutor into. Both of these options both have a wrath vulnerability issue but Krenko has a lot more potential if left alone. I feel like Krenko is something like 1/2 - 3/4s power of Kiki-Jiki for this deck. He really fits with what I want to be doing and has great potential considering I was already running a goblin package.
Teferi's Puzzle Box -> Rings of Brighthearth I am getting more and more activated abilities. With the addition of Krenko I sort of thought about its addition again. With adding it I am going to add some fetchlands to enable some ramp options, there is the potential to go infinite mana here with Grim Monolith, it works great with Moggcatcher, it works well with Kiki-Jiki and Krenko. It just seems like it might have enough things that it works with to give it a shot here. EDIT: I just wanted to cover some nice interactions for Rings: Goblin Welder, Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician, Krenko, Mob Boss, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Mad Prophet, Moggcatcher, Siege-Gang Commander (removal), Orochi Hatchery, Wayfarer's Bauble, Grim Monolith, Coalition Relic, Crystal Ball, Mimic Vat, Skyship Weatherlight, Snake Basket, Memory Jar, fetchlands, Kher Keep, Buried Ruin, Mouth of Ronom, Strip Mine, Terrain Generator. Long story short I dont think we will have a huge issue finding targets to use with it.
Fetchland Package Essentially I just didnt have a reason to include it before. With the addition of rings though I think that it makes it viabl enough for addition even if it is a small chance to execute them it is still a possibility.
I am really happy how on theme Krenko really is going to be for this deck. Hopefully he turns out to be an amazing add for the deck.
Just a quick update so far on some of the cards I have gotten to use and see:
Crystal Ball - It has been really solid so far. I remember a game where I hit it like 3 turns in a row and buried everything each time. This deck needs specific things at specific times of the game. This helps me grab land / ramp when I need it or go for the big end gamers later on. I wasnt sure how it would really pan out but I can usually afford to pay one mana and I just dont have enough shuffle effects in the deck yet in my mind to allow top a spot.
Skyship Weatherlight - so far it has been really solid. It won me a few games now with Akroma's Memorial. I really need to sort of play with it and figure out how many targets to go with, what targets to go with, and what sort of situations to do what with it. I really like it so far though. 8 mana the first turn isnt as hard to swing as I had originally thought either. It also makes for amazing Goblin Wielder fodder once used up. I will have to play with it more to figure out what the usual setup for it will be but keep in mind you can exile your commander with it and put them in the CZ from this.
I have seen some of the fetchlands now and... so far I ahvent really liked them but I havent drawn rings yet either so time will sort of show if that change will pay off or not.
The game got started and my opening hand is like ramp and lands... im like well lets see how I draw into it so I go first with playing Terrain Generator, Mana Crypt (I play it online but not in person). I kick off of the Generator and kick out a mountain. Turn 2 comes arround and I drop a Dormant Volcano that I am testing out and bounce the mountain and kick it back off the Terrain Generator. By turn 3 I am sitting at 7 mana in play so I drop a Everflowing Chalice with x = 3 followed by a Goblin Matron to go get Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker as I have like nothing but ramp so it gives me an option to dig further into non land / ramp cards. I am sort of unlucky in the fact that I have a lot of nonbasic lands though and am only sitting at RR with my 10 max mana at this point.
On turn 2 Zirilan hit a 2 mana stone and turn 3 he droped a Sculpting Steel of my Mana Vault so he is ramping decently as well. Everyone else is really slowly dropping lands one at a time.
Zirilan ramps really hard arround here with an Everflowing Chalice for x=4 and I think a second mana stone off of that as well. Homura drops a Mortapod arround now. I remember he couldnt stop me from copying the Matron the first time but it came down arround here. Anyways the mortapod is bad news for me but I just sort of keep an eye on it for now.
Turn 5 I drop a Winding Canyons. It is my intention to set up to try to kill a few players next turn so I sit behind my mana with kiki untapped as well using him as bait currently. I swing some damage onto Zirilan just to put him down some where possible. Zirilan's turn and he drops a Blood Moon on us I think to screw with my Mouth of Ronom which I have in play. It screws with my plans to flash marton in a lot more though so I use the gang and throw a token at the germ and he responds by killing my Goblin Matron. I kick out Marton Stromgald with flash far before I really wanted to but I got screwed on my play. I managed to dig the third red source land last turn to pull it off. Zirilan drops his commander into play and is done with his 5th turn.
Homura goes and uses a Mark of Mutiny on my Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. I respond by making another set of gang tokens but dont have the mana left to throw kiki off with the gang. He straps him to the mortapod and swings at another player. He thing shoots him at Marton and I am damn pissed at the stupid Blood Moon at this point.
My go and I can see already that Zirilan is going to take the straps to me if I let him untap. I go ahead and shoot off 2 goblins at his commander to buy myself time. I drop a Skyship Weatherlight and pick out a few targets grabbing (Rapacious One, Akroma's Memorial, and Chancellor of the Forge). I swing a few more damage on Zirilan and sit back with some mana up to activate the Weatherlight.
Next turn I just sort of sit in the water waiting to get the axe from mr dragons. I sit with mana up to untap the memorial but I dont have much for other plays. Zirilan fetches a Steel Helkite and whacks me good with it. He blows it for 0 hitting my remaining 3 tokens and my best two mana stones in play. This puts me wayyy back on mana as now its esentially just 6 land and a still tapped Grim Monolith. Zirilan drops a Sundial of the Infinite and dumps his turn to keep his dragon. Homura goes and uses an Act of Aggression on the helkite blowing up like 6 mana worth of stones from Zirilan then puts it on a pod and shoots it off. This pushes Zirilan under the amount of mana he needs to recast his commander again if it dies again.
I push the Weatherlight trigger on my turn and manage to get Akroma's Memorial finally. I do some hand masterbation as well with Faithless Looting to move some stuff arround and throw away a Firecat Blitz as well as some expensive X mana spawners. At my EOT Arc Slogger hits for 4 dmg on Zirilan and puts him back in the CZ. Zirilan does little on his turn but he does hit the Arc Slogger with an activation from Erratic Portal which I like to see.
Homura drops a Siege-Gang Commander getting ready to start some big beat down with his commander. I drop the Akroma's Memorial unable to do much else but hope to stop him from totally destroying me. Zirilan manages to get enough mana to drop his commander again essentially sealing his fate with that move. Homura drops his commander and uses the Mortapod to axe him. He then swings out and kills Zirilan who was down to 9 life from repeated pokes and hits me for the last 4 dmg. This pushes me down into the teens as I had been sort of getting poked a lot from the Mana Crypt and poked some as well.
My turn and I drop a Myr Battlesphere which I forget to swing with as what really matters at this point. Numot has his first play of the game and drops a Wrath of God... really dude. Homura animates 2 lands as 2/2s that turn into 4/4 flyers and he dumps all his mana into pumping them and slaps me in the face with them. This puts me to like 4 life.
My turn and I go all in with a Firecat Blitz flashback + Marton Stromgald + final Skyship Weatherlight activation into Rapacious One. Sadly I have tons of nonbasic lands here or this might have been close to game on this play. I sac 5 mountains and go down to 4 nonbasics left with the Dormant Volcano still giving me red mana I am at 5 mana left for next turn. I swing everything at Homura which turns the cats into 6/6 flyers and takes him out almost exactly as he was at 30 life. He is out of the game.
Numot does little and passes back to me. I topdeck the land and hit Rapacious One into play with haste. He has a Pestermite which he stalls my attack with and chump blocks Marton. Luckily the First Strike wins me the combat without loosing Marton. On his turn he drops Numot into play. My turn again and I hit him good spawning a bunch of 0/1 tokens. I drop an 8 mana Orochi Hatchery as a recovery plan in case of a wrath and pass back. He swings at me thinking he has the game with his flyer clearly not noticing Akroma's Memorial gives flying and pro red. I just chump it with a few guys and move on. My go and I drop the Chancellor of the Forge dumping 9 more tokens into play. I swing everything for a +17/+17 buff for like 310 ish dmg.
It was really close and I almost stole the game away early on. I need to figure out what targets to go for with Skyship Weatherlight in the future as I think that Chancellor of the Forge was a bad pick for it. It was a very close game though. Sorry that the report ran a bit long but it was almost like a 2 hour game.
Relic isnt just grave hate, it also cycles itslef which is nice. This deck has very little dependance on its own graveyard in a whole. Squee will be back to my hand everytime my turn comes up. If it is such an emergency that I have to hit him with it then it is probably a gamebreaking move that has to be stopped regardless of him. Faithless is nice but I will probably move somewhat quickly between the first copy and the flashback of it. With anger, I tend to try to get him into the grave right before I go off because I will get hated off if he gets there much sooner than needed.
The relic does have a little bit of hate for my own deck but it doesn't hinder it much. The important part of it in my mind is that it cycles itself off. I am trying to move through my deck very quickly in this list as I want to draw game winners and resources quickly. I cant say that it will all stay as is but out of the removal I cut only Chaos Warp was I somewhat sad to see go.
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[Modern] Allies
With the fetchlands I considered running them but in my opinion the thinning that they actually do is extremely minimal in a 60 card deck and really not noticeable in a 100 card list when you can only have like what is it 4 fetchlands in a mono colored deck. Generally speaking if I were running some topdeck manipulation such as Sensei's Divining Top where a shuffle means better selection. I would also consider running them if I were running Crucible of Worlds. In my opinion though fetchlands in a mono colored deck don't do much beyond these 2 functions though. It wouldn't really hurt much if you wanted to include them but I would also consider running topdeck manipulantion and or the crucible.
With Imperial Recruiter honestly he might be a bit more of a pipe dream. If I actually had him I would probably include him anyways but this deck doesn't actually have all that much. It is strictly better than Goblin Matron so it could just replace him but I think you could work with it a bit more than that... Off the top of my head he would be a bit hard to add to the list though. He is good but this list doesnt have a ton of targets for it. I built this list with a lot of backup plans so Marton getting tucked isnt a total failure.
Mana Crypt I would probably sub in for Everflowing Chalice. The chalice is just sort of a strictly slower stone that I usually throw out for 2 or 4 mana so it would generate the same amount of mana but allow me to ramp faster off of it. Everflowing Chalice isn't really impressive or anything but it works ok...
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[Modern] Allies
Had sort of an odd 4 player game last night where I did a turn 1 Sol Ring, Turn 2 Marton, Turn 3 Sword of Fire and Ice + equip to Marton to start drawing cards lol.
Turn 4: Rapacious One, my opponent on his turn Shattering Spree's my Sword of Fire and Ice + Sol Ring
Turn 5: Urabrask the Hidden and swing in for 12 spawning 6 tokens.
Turn 6: I swing in with all my dudes and kill one player and mostly kill a second. My guys were + 7/+7 at this point. I spawn 12 more tokens.
Turn 7: Win +19/+19 buff on attack...
sort of an odd game where I just pushed early because that was the type of hand I had that I needed to do it and it worked out... it never works so slick where nobody interferes but for some reason it did last night...
I guess I am just going to chalk that up to sort of an odd game... Normally I wouldn't have dropped marton anytime near when I did that time but I wanted to draw cards off of the sword so it was my best available play. Then it just came down to nobody answering my threats and it just spiraled out of control to me winning fast.
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[Modern] Allies
Notable AVR cards:
Battle Hymn some sort of cool mana production that is creature based. My issue is that it is a bad card until I am going off however fairly good while going off. Still Mana Geyser seems a bit more robust overall at giving me some mana to work with. I dont like how it feels very situational to give me much for mana at any time.
Dangerous Wager draw 2 cards for 2 mana is always good. The downside is you ditch your hand first. I wish this was like draw 2 cards then discard down to 2 cards instead... It is an option but not one that I am really excited about currently. Faithless Looting feels far better than this.
Lightning Mauler another haste outlet. I like mass haste when I can get it however this would give me a body to swing with and give marton haste which is nice. The problem is that it gets swept up easily.
Mad Prophet sort of cool looting effect. I dont like how much he costs to drop or that he discards then draws however he does at least have haste. Worth thinking about in the least.
Reforge the Soul another good on the spot wheel effect. I had really hoped they would print another wheel for red and this seems soooooo much better than Wheel of Fate so I am happy. I think it will likely be an easy inclusion.
Zealous Conscripts versatile card as it can hijack a titan / give marton haste so I like the bit of versatility I could have here.
Conjurers's Closet flicker effect for some ETB triggers. Unfortunately I dont have that many ETB creatures in here...
Moonsilver Spear potentially a 4/4 token per turn unfortunately I dont run that many creatures to equip and I never have really liked a single token a turn sort of production in here. Still a 4/4 flying token is nice...
Vessel of Endless Rest grave hate + ramp. Not bad but not great ramp either.
Cavern of Souls nice little cute land. Unfortunately it has a big price tag on it and relatively small impact on the deck. Not really excited / disappointed all in all. I could add it but I doubt I will notice much upgrade from it and it costs sort of a lot to purchase currently.
Going Foreward:
Dragon Mage -> Reforge the Soul: the results from the Dragon Mage were spotty to say the least. It was sort of fun if I had haste but outside of that he was very hit and miss. Plus he costs a ton of mana for a sort of bad threat / uncertain value.
Squee, Goblin Nabob -> Zealous Conscripts squee is amusing but I think the possibility to hijack a titan / grant marton haste pans out better. Plus there is the Kiki-Jiki combo with the Zealous to consider even though it is unlikely in here.
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[Modern] Allies
I love this deck and am actively working on getting all the cards for it. Marton is so under rated. Thank you for posting your updates; they are not lost in the crowd.
Cards I like:
Zealous Conscripts - Just awesome all around IMO
Reforge the Soul - Yes please; likely replace Wheel of Fate
Mad Prophet - about on par with Jalum Tome, but another body is nice.
Dangerous Wager - I look at this as "pay 2, draw 2 cards". Likely to use when my hand is emptyish.
Glad someone is listening still lol. Sometimes it can be hard to get people psyched for mono colored commanders. I really do love marton though he just has so much of a bad ass old commander feel to him but his buff is stupid amazing. Most people see me playing an old red commander and just dismiss what he does.... until I tell them I am swinging lethal at them with 6 creatures.
I have a feeling that Zealous Conscripts is just going to be one of those versatile all around great cards. It should have a lot of good uses and the fact that he has haste himself is nice.
Mad Prophet I might end up having to consider him as an add somewhere just because of the fact that he draws me cards and can turn sideways when needed. The haste on him is nice as well... I will see what I can do about including him.
I am just really bummed that white got all of the token spawning that is good out of this block. Still the amazing card draw additions that red got has me still quite happy.
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[Modern] Allies
Had a decent game last night with this deck. I was playing a 4player FFA against Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer, Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer (designed for emperor use but he likes it anyways), and Kamahl, Fist of Krosa.
Opening hand is mostly just suck. I end up keeping some jank which is like 4 lands and a Mind's Eye. I had such a bad start I literally just crawled my way into the Mind's Eye tapped out at 5 mana for that turn. From here I just drew some cards as nobody answered it. Jor Kadeen started swinging at me for a little damage but sadly I didn't have an answer. I blew my hand up big but never managed to draw anything important. I hit a Gamble which I shifted into a Incendiary Command to rotate the other 8 cards in hand into something else. Jor Kadeen had a set of Precursor Golems out and slammed his commander. I took like 18 damage that turn off of him... From here I did a Mana Geyser into a Eldrazi Monument + Myr Battlesphere to turn him away from me. I dropped a Mimic Vat as well just to see where it would go in the case that I could sac the battlesphere to the monument next turn.
Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer who had become Jor Kadeen's secondary target at that point dropped a wrath to keep the golems + Serra Ascendant off of his back. I picked up a Primeval Titan from kamahl for my Mimic Vat at this point. Sadly Kamahl went next and he had a Survival of the Fittest in play which he cycled a Solemn Simulacrum into a Terastodon. As I didn't have any mana up he threw it down smashing my Mimic Vat + Eldrazi Monument as well as Jor's Double Strike land. Somehow my Mind's Eye is still in play and this is like after some 5+ turns of just drawing off of it. I don't know if he missed the fact that I still had it or what but I wasn't complaining.
I went and dropped some more tokens as well as beat in for some damage to Jor as he had no board position left. Go go myr ball! Everyone else started building back up slowly. Kamahl threw tons of creatures into play somehow as well as having Kamahl in play. He is sitting on probably 15ish land so it is a problem. From here I go with a Tears of Rage all in on Kamahl to keep him from picking me + someone else off next turn with some stupid overruns. I have to give up something like 9 tokens, my Myr Battlesphere and Siege-Gang Commander to do it but I would have died anyways and he had tons of blockers so I went all of my guys in on him.
From here we start building back up. I am again sort of the primary target of the last 2 players. I play a few threats which Gwafa bribes off such as my Kozilek but he did draw me some good cards. I have a problem trying to play Marton due to Gwafa's ability to bribe creatures. I hit another Incendiary Command hand cycle to ditch a Firecat Blitz and Anger (Gwafa has been buffed so killing him with the 2dmg isn't an option currently). I sort of draw into crap off of it though. Jor Kadeen hits me for like 12 with a Steel Helkite with an Argentum Armor on which puts me at 1 life. Gwafa misses the fact that he could have made one of his creatures unblockable with his Jhessian Balmgiver which would have killed me on the spot.
My turn comes back around and I know that I have to win on the spot. I peeled a Gamble (Kozilek hit my graveyard earlier and shuffled it back in. He is still on the board again but it happened earlier) on Gwafa's turn so I go ahead and cast it tutoring up my Insurrection. From here I cast Insurrection to steal Gwafa so he cant interrupt Marton. I drop Marton into play for the first time this game and I flash back my Firecat Blitz for 6 leaving a single mountain to grant haste left. I swing all in and manage to kill them both just barely.
It was a close game lol. I might end up needing to add something like Starstorm or something to this deck yet. A fast agro deck focus firing me can be a bad thing for this deck. Still, it was a fun game and I had fun with it. I didn't quite expect to draw as much hate playing mono red as I did but mostly all of the swinging in the game was at me. Gwafa really should have gone unblockable and finished me off but he claimed he felt back banking a kill shot off of Jor when he had done all of the work. I didn't complain with getting a shot for the win.
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[Modern] Allies
One question: Why did you leave 1 mountain up for haste? Insurrection gave all creatures haste when it resolved I think.
Thanks for the recap - that's pretty damn awesome. I can't wait to get the remaining cards for this deck and take it for a spin.
Anger requires a mountain in play to grant haste. If I had lead with Marton Stromgald and relied on Insurrection to grant him haste (which I do a lot) then I would have put myself at risk of Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer bribing Marton in response to the Insurrection. That would have been an option though if I had a sac outlet left in play but I did not so I needed to keep a mountain up to keep haste from anger as I had to work around Gwafa and his damn bribe.
Due to that I chose to bank off of Anger for haste and steal everything before hand to push that option away from him.
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[Modern] Allies
Homeward Path -> Haunted Fengraf I simply wasnt utilizing Homeward Path enough. I might end up picking up something else but for now I am going to give Haunted Fengraf a spin considering the fact that most of the creatures in this list do about the same thing so fetching any of them back would be fairly good. I think it is worth testing at least since I haven't played it anywhere yet.
Snow-Covered Mountain -> Mouth of Ronom I have been running this card for like forever however somehow I never got it on my digital list and I just noticed that so I guess I will just add it here rather than trying to go back to a post like 3+ months back and get it in then. Having situational removal on a land is great as it gives me the option if I have to use it to get out of a pinch without using up a spot in the deck. End of turn smashing a Spike Weaver to blow a player out is very fun.
OP UPDATE:
I did some moderator work to Push a second post up for my access for the primer. This opens up some room for me to try to add additional information without running out of space too quickly.
Changelog - I added a changelog and backtracked through the entire thread doing my best to note changes that have occurred throughout this thread's life. It was sort of tricky to get back into the mindset of some of the changes I made further back but I did my best to log changes and when they occurred and why I might have thought of making the swap.
Game Reports - new section in the OP where I have taken sort of the stats of some of my game results and put direct links to posts with game reports. This new section is sort of a cool way to go through a few of my own games with the deck. I hope to improve my reports here in the future and be able to provide in depth reports of how the games are going.
My next project is to sort of go back through the card options and fix it up a bit better. I want to get this primer up and running but I don't feel it is quite there yet. Still the two OP updates I covered here were very time intensive and added a lot to the page. I am looking forward to kicking this deck into the list of full blown primers sometime soon I hope. The above 2 sections probably took me like 4-5 hours to implement into the list mainly on the changelog since I had to backtrack and identify each post that a deck change occurred in.
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[Modern] Allies
I have been playing a few online games with Marton to really good success. I have played some like 3 games in the last week so I will do my best to get them all in as best detail as I can.
GAME 1: 3 player FFA game. It was meant to be a 4 player but one of the guys dropped right as we got going. Opponents here were Sigarda, Host of Herons (appeared to be enchantress) and Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper (basic sac value creatures and tokens with haste) played by ticker.
The game got going decently for me. I hit a turn 3 Worn Powerstone, turn 4 Coalition Relic. Sigarda who went first ramped into his commander on turn 4. Sek'Kuar decided to Mwonvuli Acid-Moss Sigarda's only green source immediately after they dropped their commander which was really sweet for me as it put him on the **** list. Sigarda dropped a Shield of the Oversoul on his commander the turn after and started ripping into Sek'Kuar. From here I was sort of sitting poorly so I dropped my Memory Jar to try to dig into answers. At this point I was sitting at like 8ish mana max mostly tapped down from the Jar. Sek'Kuar did very little with his turn at this point I think he dropped his commander and put a skullclamp on it. At some point in here he also blew up Sigarda's Serra's Sanctum as well. Sigarda put a second hit onto Sek'Kuar putting him at 14 general dmg and a turn from killing him.
At this point I popped the Memory Jar and drew into a lot of mana. I dropped a land and a Mana Vault. From here I kicked out a Goblin Offensive for like 8 tokens I think it was. Sek'Kuar is not doing a whole long now... I think this is when he blows up the Serra's Sanctum and I think he turned a creature over for a token that hit Sigarda back. Sigarda goes and has some mercy on Sek'Kuar and decides I am a bigger threat currently and hits me for 7. On my turn I drop In the Web of War + Marton Stromgald and slap Sigarda back. I think I miscalculated my dmg as I left him at like 5 life. Sek'Kuar decides it would be fun to play Nature's Revolt and passes turn. Sigarda topdecks the land he needs to hit a Terminate and tuck the lands. He should have attacked with his commander before he did it but whatever. After the wrath I am left with the best board position still having my haste + 3 mana stones with Mana Vault still tapped. (LOOKING BACK: his 6th land would have had summoning sickness so he wouldnt have been able to have used his wrath here)
Moving on though, I tapped my Coalition Relic to charge it for my turn giving me 4 mana going to my turn. I topdeck a Solemn Simulacrum which I play and slap Sigarda for 4 dmg (thanks to In the Web of War) with putting him to 1 life. My opponents go and mostly drop a land or whatever having been behind me due to the land wrath. I topdeck a second land and drop a Siege-Gang Commander which slaps Sek'Kuar for 15 all in all. I think arround this point Sigarda just concedes to the fact that I can shoot him at will and drops. Sek'Kuar goes again and I dont think he draws anything and the game is mostly over at this point.
GAME 2: 4 player FFA match. Opponents here were Phage the Untouchable (one shot commander kills with control), Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir (very creature light heavy control list that seemed to be built arround combo / control), and Kaalia of the Vast (seemed like sort of a low quality build as far as I saw)
The game gets going alright. I turn one Gamble into a Sol Ring random pitching a Tears of Rage that I wanted out of my opening hand anyways but didnt have other fodder to throw into drawing with. I turn 2 drop the sol ring wich is a bit slow unfortunately as I wanted my simulacrum on turn 2 but whatev. Turn 3 I go for Solemn Simulacrum which Teferi counters. Phage gets away with a Phyrexian Arena. I drop another mana stone and sort of watch what is going on. Teferi tutors into a Spell Crumple arround now and everyone sort of slow rolls things hoping not to eat it. Teferi does an EOT Thirst for Knowledge and discards an Omen Machine... This tells me he probably has a better wincon in hand already. Kaalia drops his commander in soon after so I dont know if he didnt notice it but he eats the crumple. I drop my Chandra Ablaze into play hoping he doesnt have any more counters in hand which he doesnt. I wheel the hands and see the Knowledge Pool that I force him to discard. Kaalia concedes out of the game sometime arround now... I dont really recall anything beyond the spell crumple though. I get going with some token creators as Phage has a Lightning Greaves + Torpor Orb in play. I manage to dump like 15 myrs into play off of Myr Incubator but do it totally incorrectly as I thought I could sac one of them to The Abyss and loose Marton once to it. Phage recovers a Damnation and blows it up to kill my stuff. On my next turn I hit a Snake Basket off for like 10 snakes. At this point I am just trying hard not to leave an opening for him to hit phage into play and one shot me. I end up talking him into hitting phage into play and attacking Teferi with it though. He goes for it and I guess Teferi's only option is to try to block it so he casts teferi and eats a Withering Boon lolz. Phage one shots him and he is gone.
It gets to my turn and I flip a 22 card Warp World. Phage gets a smaller one but gets stupid lucky with his. My board ends up being something like:
8-9 land
Goblin Welder
Goblin Matron
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Wurmcoil Engine
Myr Battlesphere
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Mimic Vat
Slate of Ancestry
a few mana stones... I cant remember which ones.
and possibly a few more things that I cant recall offhand... I hit a lot of spells though which sucked but seeing as I had stripped out like 15 of my artifacts earlier there wasnt a ton left to hit.
My opponent hits:
4 land
Karn Liberated
Sorrin Markov
Liliana Vess
Torpor Orb
Mind Stone
He hits Liliana to tutor into Cabal Coffers and eats the Mind Stone to draw + play it. I think he was looking for a wrath option but he was too mana lite to pull it off. He uses Karn to exile Kozilek. I respond to this by using Kiki to copy Goblin Welder I activate my Slate of Ancestry to discard my 0 card hand and draw 7. Kozilek is exiled at this point. He goes to kill kiki with Sorrin probably because of the wurmcoil being able to offset a life setting. I push Kiki onto the Mimic Vat and smash his Torpor Orb by giving him back his Mind Stone with the token Goblin Welder. He passes turn and I go to town. I drop Fervor, activate the Mimic Vat to drop Kiki back in. Copy the Myr Battlesphere with kiki. Drop Marton into play and win.
GAME 3: 4 player FFA match. Opponents are Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter, Omnath, Locus of Mana, and Uril, the Miststalker.
The game gets going alright. Uril hits Gaddock Teeg into play on his turn 2. I hit a turn 3 Worn Powerstone, turn 4 Rapacious One. Uril at this point swings teeg at me intending to kill him I think. I just take the 2 and deny him whatever he was trying to do lol. He got really mad that I didnt kill him as well. Omnath is ramping like mad... Vish Kal is mana screwed in his corner. Uril is just sort of sitting on a few lands not screwed but not ramping. My turn hits and I go to drop a Mind's Eye but am reminded of teeg on the field so I go with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, copy my Rapacious One with Kiki and beat Uril for 10 dmg dropping a lot of eldrazi into play. I eat 2 of them and use my last 2 mana to drop Marton into play. Uril is getting mad and he puts a sword on teeg swinging it at me which I just chump with a token lol. He totally wasnt paying attention here as Omnath was open to his sword of feast and famine. I think and just drops out of the game saying something about his kids. Omnath ends up dropping a Doubling Cube + Seedborn Muse. The turn after he drops Omnath + Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger into play. He ends up with tons of mana and a big commander at this point.
I ramp up my creatures and slap Vish for lethal assuming if he had hit his 4th land drop I might have eaten on a wrath. I end up dumping 28 eldrazi tokens into play. Vish killed Marton with a block so I recast him. Omnath goes and goes up to 110 mana... He doesnt have anything worth doing though as he cant trample / evasion his way through currently. I go and kill him on my turn where he hit like 200 some mana in his pool.
GAME 4: it in a 4 player FFA. Opponents were Rhys the Redeemed, Progenitus, and Griselbrand.
It looked like sort of a slow start due to not having amazing ramp in my opening hand. I was sitting behind a few lands and an Everflowing Chalice. I hit my third turn and managed to hit a Sol Ring + Terrain Generator activation. Turn 4 I topdecked a Thran Dynamo and dropped it in + dropped my Everflowing Chalice with 3 counters on it. About here Gris dropped a Damnation on Rhys. Next I dropped a Mind's Eye to try to recover my lost hand. My following opponent dropped a Chains of Mephistopheles which made things harder however it was still good as filter is better than nothing for red. Progenitus jumped into play thanks to an early Fist of Suns and luckily me playing mono red sort of turned people to others. I dropped a 4 counter Orochi Hatchery and rolled out a few tokens at the EOT of my opponents. Progenitus slaps rhys and rhys *****es him out for not hitting the mono black player. Sitting with a few tokens in play I followed up with Marton slowplayed and waited. From here the mono black player dropped a Yawgmoth's Will to Geth's Verdict Progenitus who ducked it with a Stonecloaker. Rhys does little to nothing and I activate my Orochi Hatchery again putting me at 8 snakes then trigger a token from Kher Keep. My turn rolls in and I throw down a Firecat Blitz for 13 cats. I hit declaring attackers and ask if anyone has any responses. Nothing comes in so I wait a moment and procede to tap down everything. My buff is +22/+22 and 2 of the opponents have no creatures. I send 4 tokens apeace to the no block players and 14 remainders at rhys who probably has like 4 blocks. They were very irate with me as I think this was around like turn 7/8 the mono red player killed all of them without an infinite combo. I think I heard someone comment that it was the worst game he had ever played lol.
EDIT: Also, Beetleback Chief is probably going to be really solid. The fact that it would give me another goblin which gives me options for Moggcatcher and Goblin Matron. The downside is that it seems a lot worse than Siege-Gang Commander but I had sort of been considering cutting Ensnaring Bridge anyways. It is something to consider at least.
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[Modern] Allies
I put in another game of 4 player FFA online. I like how the deck sort of quickly wins / looses games so I tend to play it a bit more online. Opponents were Kresh the Bloodbraided (creatures and hate cards), Edric, Spymaster of Trest (pillofort hug...), and Patron of the Moon (combo / control).
The game got going and I hit a turn 1 Faithless Looting throwing away some of the slower / more expensive cards. I kept Vicious Shadows and threw away Warp World based upon the fact that I was against Kresh... I dont know if it was the right play or not. Edric drops a Veteran Explorer which he runs arround with for a bit trying to get it killed. Turn 1 EOT Patron uses a Mystical Tutor into Mystic Speculation, on his turn he hits a Merchant Scroll into Force of Will for some nice backup emergency counter. Edric drops a Forbidden Orchard into play and gives Kresh a token that he hopes that he will kill his explorer with. I point out that that was a dumb move considering he has a skullclamp in play and so he takes the dmg and clamps the token for cards...
I hit turn 3 and drop an Imperial Recruiter (which I play online but dont own so it isnt in the list) and tutor for Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker to hand... looking back at this move it might not have been such a good move considering I knew he had a force of will in hand. Normally against edric I would go for Siege-Gang Commander off of something like this however I already had him in hand. From here I sort of draw some attention and get attacked a bit from Kresh so I give in and block with the Imperial Recruiter because I think it will get him off my back that I cant copy it.
The blue player turns into a loop of just scrying and keeping up counter magic... Nobody is really playing anything great. Edric comes in and a few hug cards. I hit a Solemn Simulacrum arround turn 4 I think and turn 5 I follow up with Siege-Gang Commander for some bodies to hit people with. I start swinging at the blue player to draw some cards and try to kill him b4 we get comboed on but then the dumbass edric player plays a Hunted Troll and gives the blue player a bunch of tokens..... damnit. Kresh tries to get away with a Defense of the Heart but it gets shot down by a counter. Blue player gets a Gauntlet of Power into play off of a Reshape and it sticks to the board. Next turn I drop my own Gauntlet of Power + Godo, Bandit Warlord grabbing Sword of Fire and Ice. The blue player does an EOT Long-Term Plans into his wincon. From here he hits me with his 4 flyers and draws 4 off of Edric and combos off...
Well that was sort of a bad game where the blue player didnt draw any attention... I drew a lot as a mono red deck and we lost to infinite combo... yays. I think the Kresh player either knew me as a user or had seen a similar deck to mine as he was really warry of my the whole game. I got thrown off like the whole game by his pocket Force of Will and the damn group hug player didnt help things out at all... Well too bad I guess. I unfortunately had sort of a slow ramp hand and my other opponents werent focusing on him so he essentially just got to goldfish us because I think he countered one spell the whole game and just won without anyone else hitting him other than me once or twice.
DECK CHANGES
Ensnaring Bridge -> Lightning Mauler The bridge just hasnt been cutting it for me of late. When this deck was in its earlier configuration it wouldt execute quite as fast but now I need to answer the combo decks sooner and use marton more and to do that I often need more haste. I like what the Mauler brings to the table as I could easily pay 6 mana for marton + the mauler.
Squee, Goblin Nabob -> Beetleback Chief I know that it is a bit early for this one yet however I have had some success with my goblin package already and the fact that this is 3 goblins for 4 mana seems great to me. I have some goblin support already in the deck and I have plenty of ways to abuse extra bodies.
Eldrazi Monument -> Akroma's Memorial I sort of feel like I draw about the same attention with either card. The big differeence being that I need haste with Marton to do much of anything. Between dropping him in and hoping haste will cover him and dropping him in with haste + flying + 2 color protections I think I like Akroma's a bit more in theory. The Eldrazi Monument seems good on paper but slow playing off of it rarely pans out for me.
CARDS STILL IN CONSIDERATION:
Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
Skittering Invasion
BOARDERLINE CARDS IN THE DECK:
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[Modern] Allies
DECK CHANGES:
Godo, Bandit Warlord -> Reverberate I always got the impression that godo was sort of a goodstuff add to the deck. I like him with a sword in hand however the swords just werent really working out that great in the deck. He doesnt further the token tactics and I have found drawing into Sword of Fire and Ice to be a bit troublesome in this deck at times. I dont always have the creatures needed to swing arround with it so.... meh. I like the idea of some spell copying though as it lets me piggyback some of the stupid big cards in the late game, grab some card advantage, ramp in the early game, really sort of whatever I need. I figured I would give them a bit of time in the list and see if they worked out for me or not.
Wurmcoil Engine -> Reiterate I love the Wurmcoil when I can manage to play with the Goblin Welder as well however I just havent been feeling this creature in the deck of late. It is sort of slow and while I like the life pickup it doesnt nicely do much for token work here. I have ended up drawing it and feeling a bit clunkey several times now. I dont think it is the worst offender of what is getting cut but I want to try to do without for a bit and see where it brings me. I havent decided yet if the addition here should be Fork or Reiterate but I figured as I am already running Reverberate I will try 2 different effects and see which I usually prefer and if it turns out that the extra mana cost behind this doesnt pan out I will swap to fork.
Spawning Pit -> Omen of Fire I have seen a few more blue combo decks than I really like seeing online so I figured I would give this a spin and see how it pans out. It seems like most every game I get 2+ opponents running some blue in their colors and this screws with white as well so I figure it seems like fairly win to try out. Normally I dont like resorting to this sort of tactic but seeing as how it has sort of 2 functions I wanted to give it a spin for a bit.
Sword of Fire and Ice -> Ruination I have been seeing a lot more 3+ color decks online as well so I figured I would give some light LD a spin. I figured considering this isnt a full land destroy effect perhaps people wont get as pissed about it but still... It seems to be one of the few tools to use in mono color vs so many multicolor decks running so few basics.
Incendiary Command -> Mad Prophet ohhh man the command has not been working well at all for me. I think ideally it works best in a deck that actually has some good draw power to it and then when you hand sits at like 15 cards you rotate a large hand into another large hand. When I am sitting at 0-2 cards in hand I hate drawing it. When I have a full hand I usually hate to part with a card or two in hand and go down in CA. The big problem here is that most of the functions dont work well because the 2 dmg kills a lot of my stuff and I have a hard time taking card disadvantage and shifting the rest of my hand with this. The prophet can be used for attacking and it comes in and lets me choose and rotate things as I want.
Haunted Fengraf -> Mountain I have felt like my nonbasic count is a bit higher or I am just getting a bit unlucky so I figured I would cut one. Especially with Ruination coming into the list keeping a check on the nonbasic count seems like a solid idea.
GAME REPORT
I had another 4 games that I got in since my last report but the first two were sort of really long games I think we ended up spending close to 2 hours on the first 2 with 3/4 of the same players between them using mostly the same decks.
GAME 1: 4 player FFA. I was playing against Progenitus (5c planeswalker control deck running 3 creatures 12 wraths and tons of walkers), Riku of Two Reflections played by A.Minor so I am assuming his salvation list for the most part. I think the final player was a Zedruu the Greathearted deck which I cant remember like any plays from at all other than using a Rootwater Thief a few times to jack with people.
I cant really remember much of this game because it was so long... What I can remember was I didnt draw like any card draw or creatures for like most all of the game. My ramp just wasnt there either so it was like nonstop land drops and odd utility that didnt work without creatures in play. I ended up getting Akroma's Memorial into play and used marton like on his own to prod planeswalkers and defend from 1/1 lifelink vamps which was great but man it just crawled all game. Then finally I almost went off with a Myr Incubator + Akroma's Memorial but I was screwed for mana and so I had to slow roll it and someone hit a big green elephant and pooed all over my board... it really sucked. I remember hitting a sort of funny Homeward Path trigger to give a ton of stuff back to the riku player just because the 5c deck kicked my ass with his triggers. Overall though Homeward Path has been totally terrible for me though and needs to come out of my online deck. I keep forgetting to pull it from the list though. In the end I dont remember exactly how this one ended but it wasnt with me winning it so meh. The problem was I wasnt drawing nicely, I wasnt hitting draw or ramp for **** and my opponents were running lots of answers.
GAME 2: Playing against 2/3 of the same opponents with A.Minor moving to a Kresh the Bloodbraided and the 5c Progenitus planeswalker deck again. We had someone else jump in with a Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker deck as well.
I thought I had a great starting hand with a turn 1 Faithless Looting that threw away an Anger + a fat expensive card. I was really stoked for the good start but before my turn rolled back arround we saw 2 Bojuka Bogs hit play and hit me and Kresh's graveyards thanks to Shirei and the 5c players. At this point... I was looking a lot worse than I thought I was and slow played into the game. I gambled into an Insurrection after feeling like I had no other ways of winning the game but I think a 50/50 Kresh ran over the 5c player when he got too threatening using an unblockable trick as well as drawing like 20 cards from greater good off of a stupid huge 20/20 Primordial Hydra that he flashed into play as a 10/10 hydra at the EOT off of Winding Canyons then proceded to drop Kresh into play with haste off of a Hall of the Bandit Lord and combat tricked him into one shotting the 5c deck... I think Shirei tried doing something silly to kill it like a Living Death but in response to the spell Kresh flings his commander at Shirei to kill him and stop me from rezing a bunch of sweet dudes. I never did hit that mana I needed to hit insurrection and conceded the game with 2 cards in hand against a 23 card jund deck with a clear board...
GAME 3: 4 player FFA. Opponents were Riku of Two Reflections, Ambassador Laquatus (heavy control and I think he was going for infinite mana + mill from his commander), and Lord of Tresserhorn played by fattyluvboat.
This was sort of a really odd game that I cant really remember a ton about. It ended up being sort of an odd game where Riku kept throwing spells at the mono blue player and the blue player would beat him back. I ended up getting sort of a slow start from what I remember. Turn 3 Tresserhorn tried to hit an Aggravated Assault which the mono blue player Mana Drained. On the blue player's turn he dropped a Mana Crypt and proceded to tap mana. Riku acted with a Krosan Grip which he didnt have priority to play... The blue player pointed this out and riku just responded ok when I do have priority then... The blue player played a Caged Sun for blue... not exactly a great move riku... I myself stumble trying to hit 4 mana for my Gauntlet of Might as I do manage a turn 4 land it is valukut and comes in tapped... I slow play into my gauntlet. From here I decide to slow play this one and let riku and the blue player fight. I play a Mind's Eye and procede to try to keep my hand as big as it can be. From here the mono blue player tries to get away with a Leyline of Anticipation which gets Voidslimed. Riku a few turns later attempts to cast his commander which gets countered as well by a Draining Welk. Riku and the mono blue player play a bit of keep away with the Draining Welk with Riku trying to keep it locked down with Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and the mono blue player trying to squish the blue planeswalker throwing arround a Lightning Greaves to try to get out of the lockdown.
I am just playing creatures and herp derping my way arround for a bit. The mono blue player gets his commander out and starts dropping some big mills onto riku. I start worrying that the blue player could go off soon so I go ahead and unleash marton on him with Marton buffing +7/+7 to a bunch of guys running him right over. Riku puts up his defenses using Tamiyo, the Moon Sage to tap marton down with 2 blockers up. I make the mistake of sending too little to go kill her as I think I sent 3 bodies to take her down and he managed some combat tricks with Capsize + buyback on it and chump blocking.
Tresserhorn is still stuck at like 4 lands I think and it is well into the game so he is just sort of sitting there. Riku eats up most of Tamiyo's loyalty to draw some cards. On my turn I know he still has the capsize with the ability to use it once or twice yet. I lead with Sword of Fire and Ice and equip it to marton to force him to use it early. He uses his Capsize and copies it with buyback to bounce Marton and the sword in response to the equip. I play Marton again and soulbind him to Lightning Mauler for haste. At this point Riku drops complaining about something or another. Tresserhorn calls it game as he had tapped out to play something but apparently had a stifle in hand to stop marton's pump from killing him the following turn. It was a really odd game where I got 2 players to tunnel each other and just managed to keep a card draw effect in play + nobody wrathed me... really odd.
GAME 4: Started as a 4 player FFA but someone dropped immediately so it was a 3 player FFA before anything really even started. Opponents were Karn, Silver Golem and Animar, Soul of Elements.
My opening hand had a Wheel of Fortune + 2 mana stones so I was sort of happy with it. I got started with a Mind Stone on turn 2 and a turn 3 Worn Powerstone, turn 4 Gauntlet of Might. Sadly I didnt really hit any more lands so most of the game I operated on 2 mountains and I think I hit a third land on like turn 7 or something...
My opponent Karn on the other hand did something like turn 1 Voltaic Key, Turn 2 Sol Ring + Sisay's Ring off of turn 2 Ancient Tomb. Animar dropped his commander on turn 3 and Karn in turn dropped Unwinding Clock + Erratic Portal. On my turn, this is where I hit the Gauntlet of Might Karn bounced animar back to hand off of the portal.
From here animar was fairly pissed as we were both far ahead of him ramping but he played like a Sakura-Tribe Elder which he poped off rather than paying the 1 mana or having it bounced by the portal. Karn on his turn dropped a Darksteel Forge which was apparently enough for animar to call it quits and drop from the game. I followed the forge with playing an Akroma's Memorial on a mostly empty board. Next turn Karn drops his commander in and beats me across the face for 17 dmg with his forge + 2 of his 4 mana artifacts. I am down to 23 life. I go and drop a Myr Battlesphere which I had to tap out to play :(. Immediately he bounces one of my tokens out of play with his Erratic Portal. I swing with the other 3 tokens + Battlesphere which he Maze of Ith's and takes 3 dmg. On his turn he bounces another one of my tokens out and hits me for another 13 dmg. I go down to 10 rather than blocking currently. My turn rolls arround and I still have 2 of the tokens + the battlesphere. I drop Marton + Lightning Mauler and swing back at him. He mazes the battlesphere but still takes 19 dmg from my attack. This pushes him down to like 10 life as he had taken some dmg from his Ancient Tomb earlier. He goes and plays an All is Dust on me (OMG this guy is stupid lucky). He was thinking he was going to clear all of my creatures but forgot that the myr party was colorless. I block his 9/9 with one of my tokens, chump block one of the 4/4s with the Myr Battlesphere and take 8 dmg going down to 1 life. My turn again and it looks bleek. I topdeck a land which I play mistakenly I realize immediately because I need all the mana I can get and I have to Wheel of Fortune into an answer. I wheel and see the mountain which I had wanted to play instead and kick myself. I look at what I have to work with and I have the option to play a Wurmcoil Engine but it would tap me out far enough that he would bounce it on his turn and he can maze it currently... I instead go with Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician sacing 2/3 of my mts into some tokens. If I had held off on the land and gotten that mt into play it would have been a game win... stupid me. I swing in and get him for 9 dmg putting him at 1 life remaining. I have enough blockers though that he cannot manage to get through on me for more than 1 dmg on his turn even if he manages to pay all the mana for it. I in turn would finish him off with the battlesphere + marton poking in for that last life with haste off of the Akroma's Memorial.
From here we have sort of a long debate as to why attacking me wont win him the game and which he finally agrees with me that he cannot connect for lethal without some sort of trick. He in turn taps a ton of mana down and drops Karn Liberated nuking my Akroma's Memorial. I think he had enough mana that he could have swung at me with 2-3 of his guys yet but I think he just sort of blanked on it. He adds a Winter Orb to play which actually DOES screw me because I topdeck an Insurrection but cant afford to play it lol by 1 mana.
I look at my board real hard for a moment trying to figure out how to hit him for 1 dmg when he has a lot more guys in play and his are indestructable and mine are no longer flying + vigilant. Then I realize I still have Myr Battlesphere + one Myr token. I turn the battlesphere sideways and tap the token FTW!!!!!!!!!! We have a long discussion as to how he cant stop the 1 dmg from killing him. He thinks he can stop it with Maze of Ith but we pull the errataed text from gatherer specifying combat only. In the end it was a really fun game that could have ended much worse in my mind.
Overall the games went fairly well. I won 2/4 of them and the 2 that I didnt win I was against control heavy decks and I didnt draw like any ramp / card draw that really worked out. Some of the issues again were with who I was facing as I have some trouble with control but it is also in the fact that I really need more good draw >_< hopefully they come out with more quality red draw for me to use in the future.
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[Modern] Allies
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[Modern] Allies
GAME 1: really lots of bad things happening together. The mono black player was an Ad Nauseam deck and tried to combo off. He wasn't paying attention to the Avacyn player's board though and he lost to a Suture Priest which technically he didn't remind him of the dmg until he did 3 creatures so it was not valid but the guy left before I could point out that may triggers need to be enforced when they happen. I ended up loosing to the mono white player who did something like turn 3: Extraplanar Lens, turn 4: Gauntlet of Power, turn 5: Avacyn, Angel of Hope turn 6: Wrath of God + Iona, Shield of Emeria (choosing red). He beat the scion casual deck to death and I scooped... it was really bad.
GAME 2: really sort of a lame game but I ended up pushing a Orochi Hatchery to the win. As sort of a heads up playing a turn 1 Mana Vault into a turn 1 Coalition Relic... its not that productive. I didnt ramp into anything else off of it so if I have more things to do with early mana its nice but I ended up spending turns untapping the vault to do other things and taking dmg. I hit up a Mana Geyser that pushed me into like 15 mana in the early game so I hit a 10 mana Orochi Hatchery and started dumping 5 dudes a turn into play. Goblin Bombardment came in after this and I just sort of rode opponents effects to the win from here as Stranglehold + Angelic Arbiter were both like screwing with everyone but me. Someone forgot about the Stranglehold and threw away a Tooth and Nail lol. From here I just amassed like 15+ tokens and ran everyone over. I got life totals down far enough that when someone tried to hit me with a Jokulhaups I just rammed 15 snakes through a Goblin Bombardment and killed him. From there the last player went down fast as I pushed back up to like 9 tokens and attacked him + bombed him FTW.
GAME 3: we ended up loosing a player early so it was like a 3 player game where the 5c player got really screwed and ignored all game. I think it was like turn 2 or 3 or so a Serra Ascendant came in from the mono white player. He started beating on me but I managed to ramp quickly into Akroma's Memorial which allowed me to potentially block him. He swung at the 5c player a few times rather than into the tokens. I hit an Emrakul's Hatcher right after he tutored up and played a Sword of War and Peace. Chancellor of the Forge dropped me another like 5 goblins and hit him back for a ton of dmg with a Gauntlet of Might in play. From here he tried gaining what he could back off of the 5c deck but I slammed them with a hastey marton for a good like 60+ apeace.
GAME 4: Crappy game of screw... I start with 1 colorless land in hand and mulligan heavily to get a setup of 2 in hand with an opening hand of like 4 cards... It totally blew ass and we got run over by Sliver Queen + Sliver Legion. It was just bad opening hand screw that never improved. I think we were all dead by like turn 8 or 9. It was swift and bad.
GAME 5: Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Zealous Conscripts infinite on turn 4... lol this one was absolutely stupidly perfect for me. I started with Zealous Conscripts and Gamble. I drew Wayfarer's Bauble on turn 1, poped it turn 2. Gambled on turn 3 which discarded a land which I luckily topdecked the 5th one I needed on turn 4 and hit an 11 mana Mana Geyser. I got lucky with this one because it was like everyone was fully tapped out and a Mayael with good ramp baited out a Path to Exile the turn before I did this. Stupid fast combo win lol.
GAME 6: turned into a 3 player game fairly quickly. Mayael and Numot as my opponents. Mayael got really lucky and ramped out fast with a turn 1/2 Burgeoning. I got sort of stuck on mana at arround 5 but managed to land a mana doubler and a few tokens in play off of a Emrakul's Hatcher. Mayael got some annoying planeswalkers into play and Avacyn, Angel of Hope. Numot played his commander out which I couldnt afford to take the LD from so I hit a Warp World for like 12 targets and hit a bunch of spell targets... I did manage 3 lands and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Emrakul's Hatcher + Vicious Shadows. Numot is at like 6 cards in hand so I just take like all of the eldrazi tokens I make and ram them through the shadows to stop some BS he was going to steal stuff with. From here Mayael does something small and I just push out Marton with haste thanks to setting up a In the Web of War. I run him over for like 30 dmg with this attack which kills him as he was down to like 20 from shadow triggers and some small poking.
EDIT: GAME 7: walked away with another win. I got a big mana hand and ramped a lot. I ended up hitting Marton Stromgald + Insurrection in the same turn on like turn 7 or 8 I want to say. I just sort of kept a low profile and kept ramping. Once I got there I just stole everything and won :p. Sort of a d-bag win but it was fun to watch everyone go wait wtf just hit us? I find it really funny when people are like... wtf how are you buffing and haven't read what my commander does until it kills them.
Out of my last changes I have drawn the copy effects a few times and they were useful. Omen of Fire I haven't really made a decision on yet as I think ruination is probably more useful but there was a situation where I kept it in my pocket and it was really solid. It does decently against Kaalia decks as I have noticed they do a lot of annoying things with white creatures especially Avacyn but a lot of times they don't have a ton of plains. So far the times I have seen Mad Prophet were just sort of odd times to draw it so I haven't had a consensus on it yet. More testing I suppose.
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[Modern] Allies
Main Decks
Diaochan, Iroas, God of Victory, Kaalia, Marton, Ulasht, Volrath,
Kaervek, Prossh, Titania
Amusing or Themed
Progenitus
Pauper Guildmages
Azorius Boros Dimir Golgari Gruul Izzet Korozda
Orzhov Rakdos Rix Maadi Selesyna Simic Skarrg Zameck
I also play Weiss Schwarz, Chaos, Vanguard and Wixoss.
Accel World, Angel Beats, Familiar of Zero, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, Guilty Crown, Kill La Kill, Robotics;Notes, Sword Art Online.
Chaos Partners
Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Iona, Kirishima, Kongou.
Dangan Ronpa: Asahina, Togami.
Freezing: Vibration: Chiffon, Satelizer.
Vanguard Clans Favoured
Angel Feather, Dark Irregulars, Genesis, Neonecter, Pale Moon, Shadow Paladins, Tachikaze.
Wixoss - Just trial decks for now!
I like him so far on paper. The only really foreseeable downside being that Siege-Gang Commander feels like a magnitude better for one more mana... Still we cant have every creature be as good as Siege-Gang Commander I suppose...
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[Modern] Allies
Ok going back to these deck changes. It was fun to try them but they are all way too situational based upon my opponents playing certain types of decks and under certain circumstances. The LD effects were devastating when they worked and I did execute like a turn 4 one sided armageddon once with ruination once. The problem with the LD effects is that I essentially never want to be singled out as the person in the lead until I am ready to win on the spot or win next turn.
I also noticed a reasonable issue with Warp World with adding like 5 bad targets to the deck. If they had worked out I would have pushed through but generally they were not working out. Sometimes I would keep 2 mana up for like 6 straight turns without seeing anything reasonable to target with the copy effects.
Mad Prophet this has been like the one card that did pan out surprisingly well. I often end up with some situational things in hand or just need to see more cards in a turn so rotating things has been great as it is one at a time and he has haste. I have been very pleased with him and am sort of sad to see that the M12 version wont be having haste.
DECK CHANGES
Reverberate -> Crystal Ball I didnt ever really think of this card in here but I think it might be better than Sensei's Divining Top for this deck as I just dont shuffle enough in this deck. Card selection is really good to have so I think I will try it out and see where it goes.
Reiterate -> Defense Grid this is a great effect for the deck but I am not yet sure if I want to give up a card to have the effect. It helps protect marton and when I am trying to go off so I like that but I don't know how happy I will be to see it so we will see where it goes.
Omen of Fire -> Skyship Weatherlight I wanted to give this a shot... It might end up being too much mana to utilize but I felt it was sort of easier to handle than Planar Portal's 12 mana to drop and execute in one shot. I would easily grab like 4-5 cards with the weatherlight and still be happy plus I have a lot of targets between artifact and creature. Worth some testing I think.
Ruination -> Teferi's Puzzle Box I am honestly not sure how this will pan out here. My Rebels deck has made good use of it but there is also things like Land Tax, and Tithe and other sweet hand increases there.
Mana Vault -> Grim Monolith Generally I don't need the buff to the mana super early but the size of the buff here is nice for when I am doing my big plays. I like the monolith due to its ability to untap whenever I want to. The slow down in speed to drop and the cost difference hasn't really been that noticeable.
Also just a tidbit about Beetleback Chief. I think I am cutting him from my list here. I still have it on the decklist here but I am not running it in my online list anymore. I am essentially always disappointed that he isn't just Siege-Gang Commander. I think that generally I want to see 4+ bodies per card when it comes to the token production in the deck. I would kill to have another Emrakul's Hatcher or Siege-Gang Commander. I will have to update the actual list later as I have to run and grab lunch.
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[Modern] Allies
It's very awesome to see these game logs though. I've spectated a few of your matches here and there and the deck does look very solid.
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DECK CHANGES:
Beetleback Chief -> Krenko, Mob Boss I had some issues with Beetleback because it doesnt give me the optimal 4+ bodies from one card. I almost always have something else I would rather tutor into. Both of these options both have a wrath vulnerability issue but Krenko has a lot more potential if left alone. I feel like Krenko is something like 1/2 - 3/4s power of Kiki-Jiki for this deck. He really fits with what I want to be doing and has great potential considering I was already running a goblin package.
Teferi's Puzzle Box -> Rings of Brighthearth I am getting more and more activated abilities. With the addition of Krenko I sort of thought about its addition again. With adding it I am going to add some fetchlands to enable some ramp options, there is the potential to go infinite mana here with Grim Monolith, it works great with Moggcatcher, it works well with Kiki-Jiki and Krenko. It just seems like it might have enough things that it works with to give it a shot here. EDIT: I just wanted to cover some nice interactions for Rings: Goblin Welder, Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician, Krenko, Mob Boss, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Mad Prophet, Moggcatcher, Siege-Gang Commander (removal), Orochi Hatchery, Wayfarer's Bauble, Grim Monolith, Coalition Relic, Crystal Ball, Mimic Vat, Skyship Weatherlight, Snake Basket, Memory Jar, fetchlands, Kher Keep, Buried Ruin, Mouth of Ronom, Strip Mine, Terrain Generator. Long story short I dont think we will have a huge issue finding targets to use with it.
Fetchland Package Essentially I just didnt have a reason to include it before. With the addition of rings though I think that it makes it viabl enough for addition even if it is a small chance to execute them it is still a possibility.
I am really happy how on theme Krenko really is going to be for this deck. Hopefully he turns out to be an amazing add for the deck.
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[Modern] Allies
Crystal Ball - It has been really solid so far. I remember a game where I hit it like 3 turns in a row and buried everything each time. This deck needs specific things at specific times of the game. This helps me grab land / ramp when I need it or go for the big end gamers later on. I wasnt sure how it would really pan out but I can usually afford to pay one mana and I just dont have enough shuffle effects in the deck yet in my mind to allow top a spot.
Skyship Weatherlight - so far it has been really solid. It won me a few games now with Akroma's Memorial. I really need to sort of play with it and figure out how many targets to go with, what targets to go with, and what sort of situations to do what with it. I really like it so far though. 8 mana the first turn isnt as hard to swing as I had originally thought either. It also makes for amazing Goblin Wielder fodder once used up. I will have to play with it more to figure out what the usual setup for it will be but keep in mind you can exile your commander with it and put them in the CZ from this.
I have seen some of the fetchlands now and... so far I ahvent really liked them but I havent drawn rings yet either so time will sort of show if that change will pay off or not.
GAME REPORT
Really odd 4 player FFA game. Opponents were Homura, Human Ascendant (he had a lot of creature hijack + sacrifice stuff), Numot, the Devastator (terrible player who did nothing) and Zirilan of the Claw (ramp hard + dragon toolbox style of control).
The game got started and my opening hand is like ramp and lands... im like well lets see how I draw into it so I go first with playing Terrain Generator, Mana Crypt (I play it online but not in person). I kick off of the Generator and kick out a mountain. Turn 2 comes arround and I drop a Dormant Volcano that I am testing out and bounce the mountain and kick it back off the Terrain Generator. By turn 3 I am sitting at 7 mana in play so I drop a Everflowing Chalice with x = 3 followed by a Goblin Matron to go get Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker as I have like nothing but ramp so it gives me an option to dig further into non land / ramp cards. I am sort of unlucky in the fact that I have a lot of nonbasic lands though and am only sitting at RR with my 10 max mana at this point.
On turn 2 Zirilan hit a 2 mana stone and turn 3 he droped a Sculpting Steel of my Mana Vault so he is ramping decently as well. Everyone else is really slowly dropping lands one at a time.
Turn 4 rolls arround and I hit a Mana Geyser for 6 mana just mainly to filter into some red mana. I drop Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and copy the Goblin Matron to go get Siege-Gang Commander and drop him into play.
Zirilan ramps really hard arround here with an Everflowing Chalice for x=4 and I think a second mana stone off of that as well. Homura drops a Mortapod arround now. I remember he couldnt stop me from copying the Matron the first time but it came down arround here. Anyways the mortapod is bad news for me but I just sort of keep an eye on it for now.
Turn 5 I drop a Winding Canyons. It is my intention to set up to try to kill a few players next turn so I sit behind my mana with kiki untapped as well using him as bait currently. I swing some damage onto Zirilan just to put him down some where possible. Zirilan's turn and he drops a Blood Moon on us I think to screw with my Mouth of Ronom which I have in play. It screws with my plans to flash marton in a lot more though so I use the gang and throw a token at the germ and he responds by killing my Goblin Matron. I kick out Marton Stromgald with flash far before I really wanted to but I got screwed on my play. I managed to dig the third red source land last turn to pull it off. Zirilan drops his commander into play and is done with his 5th turn.
Homura goes and uses a Mark of Mutiny on my Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. I respond by making another set of gang tokens but dont have the mana left to throw kiki off with the gang. He straps him to the mortapod and swings at another player. He thing shoots him at Marton and I am damn pissed at the stupid Blood Moon at this point.
My go and I can see already that Zirilan is going to take the straps to me if I let him untap. I go ahead and shoot off 2 goblins at his commander to buy myself time. I drop a Skyship Weatherlight and pick out a few targets grabbing (Rapacious One, Akroma's Memorial, and Chancellor of the Forge). I swing a few more damage on Zirilan and sit back with some mana up to activate the Weatherlight.
Zirilan goes ahead and recasts him with his stupid amount of mana he has avalible. Homura drops in with an Arc Slogger which he blows up my gang with... I flownder in the water pushing my Skyship Weatherlight to try to draw my Akroma's Memorial but get the Chancellor of the Forge.
Next turn I just sort of sit in the water waiting to get the axe from mr dragons. I sit with mana up to untap the memorial but I dont have much for other plays. Zirilan fetches a Steel Helkite and whacks me good with it. He blows it for 0 hitting my remaining 3 tokens and my best two mana stones in play. This puts me wayyy back on mana as now its esentially just 6 land and a still tapped Grim Monolith. Zirilan drops a Sundial of the Infinite and dumps his turn to keep his dragon. Homura goes and uses an Act of Aggression on the helkite blowing up like 6 mana worth of stones from Zirilan then puts it on a pod and shoots it off. This pushes Zirilan under the amount of mana he needs to recast his commander again if it dies again.
I push the Weatherlight trigger on my turn and manage to get Akroma's Memorial finally. I do some hand masterbation as well with Faithless Looting to move some stuff arround and throw away a Firecat Blitz as well as some expensive X mana spawners. At my EOT Arc Slogger hits for 4 dmg on Zirilan and puts him back in the CZ. Zirilan does little on his turn but he does hit the Arc Slogger with an activation from Erratic Portal which I like to see.
Homura drops a Siege-Gang Commander getting ready to start some big beat down with his commander. I drop the Akroma's Memorial unable to do much else but hope to stop him from totally destroying me. Zirilan manages to get enough mana to drop his commander again essentially sealing his fate with that move. Homura drops his commander and uses the Mortapod to axe him. He then swings out and kills Zirilan who was down to 9 life from repeated pokes and hits me for the last 4 dmg. This pushes me down into the teens as I had been sort of getting poked a lot from the Mana Crypt and poked some as well.
My turn and I drop a Myr Battlesphere which I forget to swing with as what really matters at this point. Numot has his first play of the game and drops a Wrath of God... really dude. Homura animates 2 lands as 2/2s that turn into 4/4 flyers and he dumps all his mana into pumping them and slaps me in the face with them. This puts me to like 4 life.
My turn and I go all in with a Firecat Blitz flashback + Marton Stromgald + final Skyship Weatherlight activation into Rapacious One. Sadly I have tons of nonbasic lands here or this might have been close to game on this play. I sac 5 mountains and go down to 4 nonbasics left with the Dormant Volcano still giving me red mana I am at 5 mana left for next turn. I swing everything at Homura which turns the cats into 6/6 flyers and takes him out almost exactly as he was at 30 life. He is out of the game.
Numot does little and passes back to me. I topdeck the land and hit Rapacious One into play with haste. He has a Pestermite which he stalls my attack with and chump blocks Marton. Luckily the First Strike wins me the combat without loosing Marton. On his turn he drops Numot into play. My turn again and I hit him good spawning a bunch of 0/1 tokens. I drop an 8 mana Orochi Hatchery as a recovery plan in case of a wrath and pass back. He swings at me thinking he has the game with his flyer clearly not noticing Akroma's Memorial gives flying and pro red. I just chump it with a few guys and move on. My go and I drop the Chancellor of the Forge dumping 9 more tokens into play. I swing everything for a +17/+17 buff for like 310 ish dmg.
It was really close and I almost stole the game away early on. I need to figure out what targets to go for with Skyship Weatherlight in the future as I think that Chancellor of the Forge was a bad pick for it. It was a very close game though. Sorry that the report ran a bit long but it was almost like a 2 hour game.
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[Modern] Allies