MTG Salvation

Last updated 4/5/11

This is a budget blink deck for MTGO. The goal is to abuse ETB abilities, build up a board position and ramp my mana. End game usually involves either a protected Gaddock Teeg, blinking Terastodon repeatedly or firing off a large Genesis Wave. Notes on some of the individual cards:

Gaddock Teeg - Running blue allows me to protect him very well and along with the recursion makes him a nightmare to deal with. I can also bounce or flicker him, cast expensive non-creature spells and then recast him or have him just come back at the end of my turn. He's not a guy I'll just run out on turn 2 because he'll just get killed and make people mad but he's a great guy to play late game to help seal up the win.

Gilded Drake - Stealing creatures is nice but with Gilded Drake I can steal a guy then bounce or blink out Gilded Drake to steal more guys.

Dust Elemental - This guy does a lot for the deck but his main role is to protect my creatures from removal and to reuse their abilities. He rarely is cast and stays in play. This guy is awesome sauce with an Aether Vial at 4 counters.

Clone/Sakashima the Impostor - Sakashima is the better of the 2 with the ability to copy generals, Gaddock Teeg and Myojin of Seeing Winds but they are both fantastic with blink effects. They are both much better than Rite of Replication, and yes, I don't run Rite of Replication in a deck with 30+ ETB creatures.

Glen Elendra Archmage/Mystic Snake - These guys are really important to protect my board from sweepers. They can be reused over and over to lock people out of the game. Much better than Draining Whelk because they cost less mana.

Body Double - Another great guy to blink he's got a few other uses as well. If I copy Reveillark with him I probably just win and he can copy the Myojin and still get a divinity counter if I cast him from my hand which is handy because those guys cost a billion mana.

Changeling Titan - He's important because most of the blink enablers don't return a creature to play right away, they either bounce the creature back to my hand or return it at EOT. With the Titan I can champion a guy like Mystic Snake and then either bounce or flicker the Titan to get the effect of the Snake at instant speed. He's also a huge creature in this deck.

Knight-Captain of Eos - I went with this guy for my fog lock. If people attack me then I fog, if I run out of soldiers then I blink him and fog. He can also sac Changeling Titan in a pinch which can be nice depending on what he is championing.

Mass Polymorph - This is a great way to get a bunch of ETB triggers and if I hit Eternal Witness I can use it again.

Ghostway - Other than being an obvious ETB enabler and protection from sweepers this can be looped over and over with Eternal Witness in play because the Eternal Witness can always just get it back.

Defense of the Heart - If nobody has enough creatures I can give someone hippo tokens with my general to trigger this. Savage Pheldagriff tech.

Lurking Predators - I've got more than 40 creatures and run a lot of land thinning so this is triggering about 50% of the time. Getting a free creature on every other spell cast is insane.

Wild Pair - Simply amazing. There are a ton of creatures with power + toughness = 4 and I can bounce my guys to keep it going. A must answer very quickly card for my opponents.

Mirari's Wake/Mana Reflection - The deck can be a mana hog later in the game and these are both very helpful for being able to cast both of the Myojin in the same turn.

Winding Canyons - Giving my creatures flash is a very potent effect and even better when it is on a land.

Cards I'm not running because of Magic Online:

Cloudstone Curio - Obviously fantastic in this deck it is simply too annoying to play online because it triggers off everything which really bogs down the game. Would play in paper Magic for sure.

Aura Shards - Same problem the Curio has in that it just triggers way too much. I found I would quickly destroy all the enchantments and artifacts that I didn't control and would constantly have to target Aura Shards then have to tell Magic Online that no I don't actually want to blow up my own Aura Shards.

How does this deck do on average? Do you just tend to grind people out? How do people react to your deck do they think of you as a thread or do you tend to fly under the radar?

Have you considered a Cream of the Crop? It would let you filter a lot and set up Lurking Predators.

Quote from Tantarus

How does this deck do on average? Do you just tend to grind people out? How do people react to your deck do they think of you as a thread or do you tend to fly under the radar?

Have you considered a Cream of the Crop? It would let you filter a lot and set up Lurking Predators.

This deck usually does pretty well. Since I am playing against random people online I think most people think I'm playing group hug when I reveal my general since that deck is fairly common. Then after awhile they realize I'm not playing group hug but don't usually attack me because I have blockers and most of my early drops aren't very threatening. The deck gets going later in the game when the synergies start coming together. Usually I win by either locking people out of the game with Teeg/counterspell locks or with more of a combo finish using the Myojin. Cream of the Crop is nice, I'll see if I can pick one of those up.

@Peter: That's a pretty interesting suggestion and the card should be dirt cheap. I'll pick up one of those for sure.

I sold my Reflecting Pool and Mystic Gate and put most of the tickets back into the deck buying some important cards like Karmic Guide, Defense of the Heart and a couple Ravnica shock lands. At this point I think I have all the important cards I need but if there are any cards less than 10 tickets or so let me know and I'll see about getting a copy. I've added a sort of mini primer to the first post as well.

seems like mass polymorph is awesome there, i'd add ways to tutor for it.