Modern Soul Sisters

~
Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

There are a lot of formats to our fav game Magic: the Gathering and were are certainly excited to have heard that Modern would be a sanctioned format for Friday Night Magic come January.  Modern has a very deep card pool and this game is certainly not stale with only a few prominent decks claiming top finishes.  We here at MTG Realm want to jump into this format but almost overwhelmed at all the choices to be had.  As a result RetroTech went with an Elf-ball (she loves her Elves) build and yours truly CopySix decided on a Soul Sisters build as we had most of the cards already.  Our latest order arrived fast from MTG Mint Card and we put our strategies to some real game playing tests.

We are still working on a final list for the Modern Soul Sisters but here is where we stand at the moment . . .
20 Plains (boring)
4x Soul Warden
4x Soul's Attendant
3x Serra Ascendant
3x Martyr of Sands
2x Path to Exile
4x Brave the Elements
3x Honor of the Pure
4x Squadron Hawk
4x Ajani's Pridemate
4x Spectral Procession
3x Ranger of Eos
2x Felidar Sovereign

The sideboard (a starting point):
2x Rhox Faithmender
2x Ajani Goldmane
1x Ghostly Prison
2x Mirran Crusader
1x Serra Ascendant
1x Ranger of Eos
2x Grand Abolisher
2x Stony Silence
2x Mark of Asylum
~

Some cards we are still considering for inclusion to mainboard or sideboard -

Suture Priest
Aven Mindcensor
Proclamation of Rebirth
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant
Chalice of Life / Death
Elixir of Immortality
Figure of Destiny
Journey to Nowhere
Leyline of Sanctity
Rhox Faithmender
Student of Warfare
Emeria, the Sky Ruin
Mistveil Plains
~
Some initial playtest results -
This build delivers huge fun and was very competitive against the Elf build. In each game, Serra Ascendant typically got that upgrade and Ajani's Pridemate was a monster.  Brave the Elements helped win games or save creatures from spot removal and we were very pleased with the performance of Felidar Sovereign as it delivered the alternate win conidtion on more than one occassion.

We want to know - Are you playing Modern and what is your build or strategy ?  Drop us a line in the comment thingy below.
~

Suture Sisters

~
Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

WoTC minion Jacob Van Lunen had an interesting article up today on the mothership in his regularily appear column, 'Building on a Budget'. We are regular readers as we are forever somewhere in the aether between budget and more competitive decks - we score a budget build and continually upgrade, and changing out cards when we can trade buy that choicer rare. Fortunately for us, we had come to a place were we were rather happy with our Soul Sisters life-gain deck - and then only had a limited opportunity to play until the one key card, Soul Warden, rotated out of standard.


Anyhwoos, do drop by Jacob's article on Soul Sisters 2011 and give it a read. Our previous deck used Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant with friends such Serra Ascendant and Ajani's Pridemate. Another card still in standard we had employed was Transcendent Master but found that it simply was too slow. Another noticeable difference is that we have a deckset of Solemn Offering in the sideboard instead of the 2 and 2 split Jacob has with Divine Offering. We feel the Solemn one provides more utility in our local meta-games over the Divine one.

The non-budget build that Jacob speaks onto is the redonkulous combo of Leonin Relic-Warder and Phyrexian Metamorph while a Suture Priest of Soul's Attendent is out in play to gain infinite life. A build featuring this combo from pro-player Conley Woods is present near the page bottom. We feel that with this huge arbitrary number, having a Felidar Sovereign hit and stick to the game table until your next upkeep wins you the game. Our future plans for this deck will likely include playtesting Batterskull to determine just how well a 4/4 lifelink / vigilence living weapon component ineracts with the rest of the cards in this soup. Perhaps we even go with a Stoneforge Mystic equipment package with swords and Batterskull.


Anywhoos, here's the build for now . . . please pipe in with your comments and help us out to make this deck a bit more viable.

1 x Exilir of Immortality
4 x Brave the Elements
3 x Serra's Ascendant
4 x Soul's Attendant
4 x Suture Priest
4 x Ajani's Pridemate
4 x Luminarch Ascension
3 x Survival Cache
2 x Ajani Goldmane
2 x Baneslayer Angel
2 x Elspeth Tirel
2 x Sun Titan
3 x Felidar Sovereign

2 x Kabira Crossroads
1 x Tectonic Edge
19 x Plains
~



We have played this current build extensively against Elf builds and mon-black control builds. For now, the current build performs good, winning about half the matches but does not quite go over the top to the next level. We also have solid feelings about Felidar Sovereign as an alternate win condition. We do like the token capacity with the Ascension as well as the potential board wiper with new Elspeth leaving on the field only tokens. We have had a faily tough time having Serra's Ascendant actually stick around long enough with games to date as it has a big target on it, which perhaps does serve a purpose by buying some time to work on other angles.


~

Soul Sisters

~
Good Day MTG peeps,

We wanted to yatter about the local meta game today which kind of went head over heels for that white weenie life-gain archetype using the M11 Ajani's Pridemate and Soul Warden / Soul's Attendant. We did have this sort of deck put together within two weeks after M11 came out and it seemed that everyone and their monkey were playing it. If there is something we really do not like, it is playing a stoopid mirror-match. To this end, we will consign ourselves to construct a deck which hopefully wreck havoc on everyone's fav mono-white life-gain deck.


First things first, let's yatter about the life-gain deck. This deck list was put togehter by MTG pro-player Conley Woods who went 3-1 in U.S nationals. The deck is named Soul Sisters for some obvious reasons - the 4 Soul Wardens and 4 Soul's Attendants in the deck. Basically, it runs 8 copies of a 1 mana creature that allows him to gain life for every creature that enters the field. Gaining life is pretty sweet in this build given the fact that Conley also ran 4 Ajani's Pridemates and 4 Serra Ascendants. Essentially, this deck is based off the concept "Life is power." The rapid tempo in which this deck gains life directly relates to just how powerful and effective his creatures will be.

Ajani’s Pridemate typically gets to rather an alarming size due to the fact that most of the decks in Standard play a lot of creatures to trigger the soul sisters.

Also, Pridemate can get big quickly. For example, turn one Soul Warden, turn two Pridemate, a few more creatures from you and your opponent could turn the Pridemate into a 6/6 or 7/7 creature by turn three which not a pleasant thing to be looking at across the game table.

The life gain from the sisters also helps you beat creature decks because you gain so much life that it’s hard for your opponent to kill you. Also, Serra Ascendant becomes a 6/6 pretty easily against those decks if you have one or two sisters on the battlefield. For example, against Mythic, Conley went turn one Soul Warden, turn two Soul Warden and Kabira Crossroads, and then turn three he cast 2 Ascendants that were both 6/6 (his opponent had played two creatures).

Here's the list . . .

Creatures (24)
4x Ajani's Pridemate
4x Soul Warden
4x Soul's Attendant
4x Serra Ascendant
4x Ranger of Eos
4x Kor Firewalker

Land (23)
15x Plains
4x Kabira Crossroads
4x Tectonic Edge

Spells (13)
4x Brave the Elements
3x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2x Oblivion Ring
4x Survival Cache

Sideboard (15)
2x Celestial Purge
2x Oblivion Ring
1x War Priest of Thune
1x Sun Titan
2x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
3x Path to Exile
4x Luminarch Ascension

Some of the challenges in beating this deck . . .

I have a Mythic Conscription build as well as a Cunning Sparkmage / Naya Collar build - either of these may have to face down a Linvala, Keeper of Silence in the life-gain side-board. Also, Path to Exile, Oblivion Ring, and Celestial Purge can deal with many of the threats which we are thinking about sliding in a buiild. Perhaps we double the volume of pingers in the mix, throw in some removal, etc.

One option is to get a Leyline of Punishment on board. Sure the last line of the card that says damage can't be prevented may be good but what is golden is the line before it which states Players can't gain life. So do you pack a four of and just mulligan until it is in your opening hand so you can play it for free?

Please fill our head with some ideas as to what we should be bringing to FNM - drop us a comment - we would love to hear from the lot of ya.

~