[Deck] Death and Taxes

[Barook]

IF i would play this deck with red again, i would quite sure go for 3 recruiters, only 1 Magus and 1 more flex-slot, quite as Barook suggested some days ago for rly just fetching the moon in mu's where you want it...

I'm not sure if 1 Magus is enough, but 3 Magus somehow feels like they're too many.

At the very least, I would encourage testing 3 Recruiter with either 2 Magus or 1 Magus/flex spot.

[BearsandSquires]

It definitely felt that in the mirror the mono white version is favored as they have more flyers and the full set of revokers, while magus doesn't do a lot and sudden demise is most times pretty awkward

[Bahra]

It definitely felt that in the mirror the mono white version is favored as they have more flyers and the full set of revokers, while magus doesn't do a lot and sudden demise is most times pretty awkward

Yes admittedly, the RW version falls short in the mirror. But quite frankly, the mirror is the least of my concerns and having access to additional Stoneforge Mystics and Revokers through Imperial Recruiters, is still pretty nice.

[BearsandSquires]

Yeah besides the mirror, this version felt a lot better in the tournament, with magus winning multiple games by itself

[razvan]

For those testing the red splash, does it improve our Jund match-up?

Speaking from the other end... no. Blood Moon is a problem for Jund if Jund walks into it, but with so much red removal that does 2+ damage, Magus is a lot worse. Of course, Mother of Runes + Magus is an issue, but Jund has some outs to that one too. It helps, but not enough.

That being said, I would be excited to try it out in DnT if I had Recruiters. Recruiter doesn't get Flickerwisp (sadly :( ), but randomly jamming something else (literally... everything else in the deck) with double Aether Vials seems pretty damned fun.

[laklota101]

After reading on both the source and mtgsalvation, I tried a naya taxes brew. This forum has been so interested in rw and salvation has delved into wg, so I'm curious to see if there is a possible overlap, playing it as an extended toolbox variant.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/20-02...xes-copy-copy/
here is the tapped out. Here is the list

Creatures
Staples:
3x Flickerwisp
4x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3x Stoneforge Mystic

Flex Slots:
1x Brimaz, King of Oreskos
1x Mirran Crusader

Toolbox creatures:
1x Aven Mindcensor
2x Magus of the Moon
1x Qasali Pridemage
2x Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

Instant (4)
4x Swords to Plowshares

Land (23)
1x Cavern of Souls
3x Karakas
4x Plains
2x Plateau
4x Rishadan Port
2x Savannah
4x Wasteland
3x Windswept Heath

Artifact (7)
4x Aether Vial
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard (15)
1x Cataclysm
1x Choke
1x Circle of Protection: Red
1x Enlightened Tutor
3x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Pithing Needle
2x Rest in Peace
2x Sudden Demise
1x Sylvan Library
1x Wilt-Leaf Liege

I'll test it out later tonight on cockatrice with a friend or two, otherwise it'll be in the next couple days. If anyone tests it before I get a chance please let me know if it consistent enough.

[Bosque]

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard seems like a significant mana investment. I'd be curious to hear how it goes for you, but I feel like Imperial Recruiter or even Fauna Shaman are better creature tutor tools.

[Tylert]

Of course the Deathblade-MU is way better with the red-splash but you don't play the whole day against this deck, and i have the feeling that in way more matchups magus screws ourselves MUCH more then the opponent... The argument that then you "just don't drop" it, is relative, since you can't shuffle away it and have to play with the cards your deck gives you... (=> see my match vs. Sneakshow, where magus is more weak then a vanilla morph...)
Against elves you are right and i already admitted that sudden demise is great but 1.) that isn't true for the magus, which is the main reason for the splash and 2.) i'm still 10:4 against elves with mono W (which comes mostly from the judgements, which handle Progenitus)...
I did not just play the tournament but tested more against friends and except for bug (i admit i didn't test against stuff like 10post but there mindcensor shines too), magus was nearly always terrible (maybe the meta is a bit other then in Denmark or as online, as i said before). IF i would play this deck with red again, i would quite sure go for 3 recruiters, only 1 Magus and 1 more flex-slot, quite as Barook suggested some days ago for rly just fetching the moon in mu's where you want it...
By the way: there's a little mistake about your 40% of having aether vial in the starting hand: the percentage of HAVING it in your starting hand is right for sure, but: Count away the hands, which you have to mull away despite having vial cause you have no or only 1 offcoloured land, only 3 drops, no creatures but only Equipments etc. - there for sure additional 5-10% go away... Then count away the matches in which your vial gets countered or destroyed and already you are perhaps about 20-25% of having it ready earlygame (maybe i'm a bit wrong of it, im not a mathematic genius^^)
After all i feel just much more comfortable with mono W and like playing the deck the "fair" way, which for sure is worse in some matchups but overall more consistent.
Greetz,
Marius

10-4 vs elves... If you are trying to back up your arguments with this win-rate against elves, no one is going to believe the rest of your speech.
Can you please enlighten us how do you win so much with the wono-W version?

[Wasteland]

While g1 is rly bad, some games or just won by aven mindcensor or a fast Jitte paired with 1-2 swords to plowshares. But of course you will probably loose g1.
G2 / 3 it's about having an EARLY canonist - and with early i mean t2... Containment priest helps too a lot but the key in this mu is the canonist (mother-protected in the optimum case). In fact, a hand with 3 lands, mother, canonist and council's judgement will on the play quite sure win against elves, since he's extremely slow under canonist, you have a solution for Progenitus and in concerning single cards, of which only 1 per round comes down, D&T has the more powerful ones...
I for sure don't want to say that the mu is positive, 10:4 is just my personal record against elves at the moment - ask Julian Knab if i'm right...
Greetz,
Marius

[Tylert]

While g1 is rly bad, some games or just won by aven mindcensor or a fast Jitte paired with 1-2 swords to plowshares. But of course you will probably loose g1.
G2 / 3 it's about having an EARLY canonist - and with early i mean t2... Containment priest helps too a lot but the key in this mu is the canonist (mother-protected in the optimum case). In fact, a hand with 3 lands, mother, canonist and council's judgement will on the play quite sure win against elves, since he's extremely slow under canonist, you have a solution for Progenitus and in concerning single cards, of which only 1 per round comes down, D&T has the more powerful ones...
I for sure don't want to say that the mu is positive, 10:4 is just my personal record against elves at the moment - ask Julian Knab if i'm right...
Greetz,
Marius

Ok, my comment was a little bit sarcastic :)
We all know the tools we have are too slow for the matchup. We have to win G1, and be on the play on G3, and land an early canonnist. then even with that, we need the rest of the pieces to win (Stoneforge into Jitte + revoker + aven mindcensor + containement priest) so we can block all angles the deck has to win (Last Time i played elves, I thought I had covered everything with my cannonist + revoker + mindsencor + jitte, but still lost to a bunch of wolves summoned by wren's run packmaster).
10-4 seems way to much positive...

[Wasteland]

Wren's run packmaster?^^ Sry but i take serious only Julian Knabs actual elves list and i'm quite sure he never played that guy... And even if, it still can be sworded / revokered...
And: The tools we have are definetly not too slow... Of course we might loose to t2 combo-glimpse or t2 natural order (on the draw) - but theese cases are quite rare and even being on the draw you can still have StoP t1 to be nearly totally safe till your t2...
You just have to play enough of the hatepieces in the board (and mindcensors maindeck). Seeing most D&T lists durdling around with only 2 canonists (by FAR the best SB card in more then 1 match...) while naming aven mindcensor "a terrible choice" it's clear, that theese guys get almost everytime stomped by elves...
And as i mentioned before, 10:4 is for sure not representative for this matchup but shows, that the white list too can succesful fight elves.

[Whitefaces]

Wren's run packmaster?^^ Sry but i take serious only Julian Knabs actual elves list and i'm quite sure he never played that guy... And even if, it still can be sworded / revokered...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was actually Julian that came up with this piece of tech. The card is no joke, Packmaster can take over a game SO fast.

[Finn]

Marius, if you got 10-4 versus Elves and you are using the same cards/strategies the rest of us are using, this is not so much news an an anomaly. Everything you guys are all saying about the matchup is essentially true. It is just a matter of frequency of events turning out in such and such a way. Elves is not only hard because we are a turn slow - I am certain that this is true, and is so mainly because one piece of hate is not sufficient - but also because the frequency with which our good stuff is available is not especially high. But it is also because you so often have to guess the correct play based upon what angle you guess they are going to take. If you are wrong, it commonly means they go off in your face as soon as they untap.

I cast Canonist. He Natural Orders for lethal happens just as often as I cast Containment Priest and he ends up with eight elves on turn 3 after a double Glimpse or something.

Elves always feels like you are under the gun for these reasons. I have no reason to doubt that you are telling the truth. You would be wise no to think it is typical though.

[BearsandSquires]

Yeah I'm pretty sure it was Julian who first ran pack master and even turn 1 mom turn 2 canonist is most time still not good enough. Match up is just bad.

[LeoCop 90]

I don't remember if julian was the first to suggest packmaster (maybe was lemnear) , but julian definitely run him in the pre-cruise era. Packmaster is mainly there as a zenith target that doesn't require an incredible amount of mana but can win "fair" matchups on its own especially against decay decks. Death and taxes has swords though , but you need to have it immediately because the wolves tokens grow exponentially due to the fact that they feed cradle.

[Echelon]

Lol stop feeding the troll, people.

There are too many assumptions in his posts (because having card A, B AND C to win you the game happens every game, as everybody knows, and if you play a random hatebear Elves! will obviously never be able to answer/just ignore it) and his knowledge of Elves! is far from complete (Progenitus hardly ever sees play in Elves! nowadays and WRP has been around for quite some time now) so I recommend to just ignore the guy.

[laklota101]

DON'T RUN NAYA TAXES! Oh man I playtested against most of the popular decks in the formats for quite some time over the past two days and no matter what tweaks I made there is no hope for this deck as far as I can tell. The nonbo between yisan and magus is already hurtful, and the fact that the mana cost of the deck has been kicked up hurts the wasteland/port package. RW and WG are both good variants on DNT, but mixing them was an utterly failed attempt. If anyone somehow made it work please let me know!

[cursecatcher]

The Red splash continues to intrigue me. The way I see it from a high level perspective, is that it makes you way stronger against things like Shardless BUG and other 3 color strategies, as well as somewhat better against Elves.

The cost is that you are worse in the mirror, worse against miracles (where mangara shines), and in general worse against matchups where magus doesn't do much (omnitell, sneak and show, storm, reanimator, etc). Also, we are opening ourselves up a bit more to mana denial out of other decks by playing fetches and fewer basics.

If you ask me, mono-white DNT's worst tier 1 matchup is Omnitell, not Elves. And the red splash doesn't offer much at all for us against Omni. Elves certainly is an uphill battle, but Omnitell feels borderline unwinnable as so little of our interaction does anything at all to their even average draws. I suppose the Red splash is a metagame call (as is our entire deck), so taking the archetype in different directions makes sense. But from my perspective at the moment, I'm more focused on getting 4 Canonist into the 75 than any Plateaus (canonist helps against elves too!).

[Bahra]

Just played another daily event which I 4-0'd.

I beat R1-R4: Grixis Delver 2-1, Solidarity 2-0, UWR Stoneblade with 4 Basics 2-0, UWR Delver with no basics 2-0.

Highlights: UWR Stoneblade player FoW'ing my (through Cavern of Souls) uncounterable Magus of the Moon even though he had 3 basics out. Managed to beat an active Jitte (he got 6 counters through 3 turns and killed a bunch of my creatures). It was even early and it was not that I was swarming him, I just grinded my way through it by getting a Sword of Fire and Ice equipped (through the already active Jitte) and then slowly getting ahead. I also beat an active Jitte + True-Name Nemesis in game 1, again with Sword of Fire and Ice but it wouldn't have been possible if not for Imperial Recruiter for Fiend Hunter, to clear a germ token and let me gain enough of a tempo advantage to close out the game. Early Magus of the Moon winning the game against Solidarity by shutting off fetches and thereby preventing him from getting more than the 2 islands he had.

The only game I lost in the daily was on a mull to 4 (first game first round of the daily, made me feel like the daily was gonna go bad lol!) where I still almost won but in the end I drew too many lands.

The red splash was absolutely amazing for me this daily, and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to beat the UWR decks without it. Magus of the Moon was good in all 4 rounds, even against the mono blue deck

[Barook]

What's our plan now that Omnitell is going to be popular? It's a rather poor match-up.