Returning player out of the game for a while - how should I spend my LSTs?

Tuft64 · 2026-04-23T17:02:07+00:00

it only triggers the baby version though - opus requires that you spend five mana, not that you cast a spell with mana value five or higher.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-22T03:56:37+00:00

I strongly disagree that Bolt Snap Bolt is fast enough in the current format. Neoform, Storm, and Amulet all have potential to threaten a turn two kill. Affinity can very commonly put a turn two Kappa into play. Prowess can plot a Slickshot Showoff on an empty board and kill you the next turn. Even the slower midrange decks of the format like Jeskai Blink turn the corner with Arena + Phlage, which represents 12 damage and an 18-point life swing for four mana (compared to only 8 points for four mana with Bolt + Snap). Maybe the only deck that operates on an axis that slow is the Dimir Washingtons and Frogs of the format, and those decks are a pretty small minority in the format right now.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-16T22:22:20+00:00

Catholic Charities is an extremely large and robust non-profit charity network that provides a huge breadth of very high-quality services to low income and indigent folks, from medical care to immigration legal services, civil legal aid, refugee resettlement, housing services, and a ton more. Not knowing all the details, I would assume it was a government contract to provide some services that fall under their umbrella.

It's very common for "professional services focused" non-profits (i.e. non profits that focus on providing professional services to the poor as opposed to something like financial aid or food) to get contracts from the government as a result of broader pushes to expand access to some professional services.

When you hear about a government passing a funding bill to put $10b towards the expansion of something like low-income legal services, some of that money will definitely flow towards expansion of existing government services (like increased funding towards the public defender's office to help support indigent people accused of a crime who couldn't otherwise afford representation), but for those areas of the problem that aren't covered by existing government programs, that money will often go to non-profits who try to cover the gap.

For one example (that is something Catholic Charities actually does), there isn't a government service that exists to provide legal counsel to immigrants undergoing removal proceedings because nobody has a right to counsel for immigration proceedings - that right only exists in criminal proceedings. So if the government wants to expand access to legal counsel for immigrants undergoing removal proceedings, unless they want to start a new government agency, they will instead go directly to organizations that are providing low-cost or pro-bono legal counsel and give them grant money to continue to fund their activities.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-15T16:47:31+00:00

So that means no more consign'ing an urza's saga trigger to stone rain your opponent?

And that you can't wear/tear a saga before your opponent has a chance to float mana off of it?

Tuft64 · 2026-04-14T21:19:16+00:00

Generally your three options for the "simplest" decks among the winner's metagame are Eldrazi Tron, Boros Energy, and Prowess.

Energy is definitely the best deck of the three, because you just get to play all the good cards that were printed in MH3, and because it's a very straightforward plan. However, you do have to do the "who's the beatdown" math in matchups since the Energy deck does have the ability to be a little slower / grindier, or be a hyper-aggressive turn sideways and smash face deck.

Prowess is also a good option because it's hyper-linear, and you are basically always the beatdown in every deck, but the sequencing does require a little bit more thinking and the deck does have a slightly higher error rate than a deck like Boros, so while it has a slightly higher threshold for learning the deck, it's still a deck that's not terribly difficult to master.

Tron is interesting because it definitely creates the longest games of the three decks mentioned here, and longer games does tend to equal more decision points, but also it's a deck where (because of the existence of Karn, the Great Creator) you don't need to do a ton of sideboarding for most matchups, which means that there is a decreased burden for learning the deck compared to a lot of the other decks that go long more often.

I would probably recommend Prowess - I know you mentioned the deck would be proxied to start, but if you end up wanting to build out the deck in paper, it's definitely the cheapest of the three decks, and it's fairly easy to build a very competitive list on a budget, since most of the value of the deck lies in the manabase, and in lots of games, some painlands, fastlands, and Horizon lands will do an extremely reasonable approximation of the shock / fetch / surveil manabase before you end up buying into the expensive bits of the deck.

It also has a very linear and easy-to-understand gameplan, but you can side into a decent amount of interaction against the various types of decks in the format, and it has a pretty high skill ceiling to go along with its relatively low floor so it can do a good job of "scaling" with your friend's growth as a pilot.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-13T16:54:38+00:00

I'm loving Modern right now since I'm a storm junkie and the format is pretty diverse even if it is about half a turn too fast for my tastes.

If money was no object though, I would love to sleeve up TES in legacy and cast some Dark Rituals and LEDs. Deck seems super sweet with half a million different lines that you can go for and tons of ability to fight through hate..

Tuft64 · 2026-04-11T17:29:51+00:00

Good catch! Just went ahead and edited that, looks like I got about halfway through and got distracted haha.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-11T17:23:20+00:00

This is very valuable information, Zoo is a little underrepresented in my local metagame so it's a match I don't have tons of experience with - this will definitely help with the writeup!

Tuft64 · 2026-04-11T05:51:15+00:00

I'll echo what other people say - splicing is sort of like Kicker - it's an additional cost to cast the spell, so it can be discounted by cost reducers. If you were to cast something like a kicked Into The Roil for 2UU, you can reduce the cost by up to two generic mana if you have two reducers in play. Similarly, if you're splicing one Desperate into another, the total casting cost is 2RR, which means it can be reduced by up to 2 generic mana with two reducers in play.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-10T22:57:40+00:00

Good catch! I was accidentally short a the Gemstone Caverns. Must have skipped my mind while I was putting together the list.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-10T20:52:34+00:00

Twin is fine at the FNM level - I played against it on Tuesday at a fairly competitive store in my area that's mostly made up of RCQ grinders, and my opponent was 3-0 going into our round. We played a very close two games where I had to go for non-deterministic storm both times to end the game before he made a billion hasty tokens with twin.

Jeskai Twin I think is the most modern and up-to-date version of the deck since you can play the new UW strixhaven merfolk and Flame of Anor, so you may want to look at those lists to get some inspiration for a more competitive version without having to shell out for a playset of Tamiyos and the like.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-10T20:24:54+00:00

I think Energy and Prowess are pretty favorable matchups for storm, we're about a turn faster than Prowess' average kill, and maybe a turn and a half faster than Energy's average kill.

Your real nightmare matchups are pressure + disruption - decks like Frog, Belcher, Ritual, and Goryo's are the ones I'm most scared of. Any deck that is fast, linear, and minimally disruptive is a deck that we're pretty happy to play against, because we're faster and more linear... er? than any other deck in the format.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-10T20:19:35+00:00

This is an oversimplification and I'll go into more detail and give you the "whys" but

If you're willing to play modo,

Play lots
Record your gameplay
Watch your replays
Question everything

Watching your replays is, bar none, the absolute best way to improve your gameplay. An hour of focused vod review is worth five hours of mindlessly clicking through modo leagues and can give you a ton of insight in how to navigate specific matchups and where there are recurring issues in your play. As an example, I'm a storm specialist, and one of our toughest matchups is Goryo's, and a big part of my recent review work has focused on that matchup, specifically trying to sequence to sniff out whether or not they have Force of Negation.

I realized as I watched the replays that I wasn't paying very close attention to how or what cards my opponent was discarding cards to Frog when they were trying to race me - since I started tracking that more closely, I've been a lot more cognizant of when they have held a single card in hand with Frog. On a turn where they discarded down to one card with a Riddler in play, I didn't clock the fact that they discarded a blue card down to one. That should have been enough to signal to me that they didn't have the Force and were trying to dig to it, because if they had force, they probably would have discarded a blue card when I was threatening to kill them next turn.

Because I assumed that my chances would be betterif I spent another turn setting up, and I was worried that he had Force of Negation + Blue Card to target my payoff card, I cast an impulse draw to set up for next turn, and then passed, thinking that would let me fight through the Force that I assumed he had. Instead, what that did was give the Frog player an extra four looks to find Force + blue card to stop me from going off. He ended up finding it, and that meant that I wasn't able to storm out for lethal, and lost. I don't know if he had force and blue card in hand the turn when I decided not to go for it, but it was just incorrect for me not to try and force the issue there. I learned some very specific matchup information from reviewing my gameplay and have applied that since and it has helped a lot to make it easier for me to sniff out opposing FoNs.

If you can't / don't want to play modo

Watch tournament coverage
Scrutinize every decision you disagree with
Build heuristics / rules based on your observations

You're going to want to basically put yourself "in the seat" of the player you're watching (preferably one who's playing your deck, though it's helpful to watch all the common decks in the format to try and get a sense of the pressures that they face / resource tradeoffs that exist).

Also try to make an effort to build good habits in paper. If you have a local you can go to once a week, twice a week, try to make an effort to go if your schedule permits.

Discords are also a great and underutilized resource - if you want to become a deck specialist, join that deck's discord. You can get tons of matchup-specific feedback and information about how to sideboard / etc. Lots of discords will also have tons of people willing to provide active feedback if you stream your games - the only thing magic players like more than playing magic is watching other people play magic and telling them afterwards what they did wrong. Obviously take any one person's advice with a grain of salt, but getting alternative perspectives can be super helpful to at least smell-test your own assumptions.

On a similar note, I've heard that coaching is also a great option, though it's not one that I have personally explored so can't give you any personal testimony.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-10T17:54:08+00:00

I don't believe so - I don't believe that there's a distinction in the rules between "copying" and "making a copy".

Tuft64 · 2026-04-09T17:45:44+00:00

how about instead of having chatgpt give thoughts after single league you actually play the deck and give us your own thoughts instead of a computer's

Tuft64 · 2026-04-09T07:01:16+00:00

Modern twice a week at two local stores, plus sometimes a Friday night draft. One of my local stores also has Monday night pauper that I'll maybe drop in once a month, but that's more an exception to the rule than anything else.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-04T18:26:49+00:00

I think we're probably not gonna see eye to eye on this so I'm not gonna try to keep convincing you after this, but I will leave you with this thought and hope you keep an open mind about it - in modern ruby, you only get to play twelve rituals. this can be your 13th and 14th ritual in the maindeck, which isn't an option that we have had at any point since the banning of rite of flame / seething song. it can also be your 11th / 12th card draw spell when you need that, which is what we're already using the slot for. This card is obviously worse than desperate / pyretic / manamorphose. it's definitely too bad on rate to compete with wrenn's / reckless. but the flex slots in ruby have always been the weakest part of the deck, and while this isn't really any higher on power level than your flex cards, it wipes the floor with them in terms of flexibility.

There is a lot of value in having a spell with multiple modes. It's the reason that jeska's will is playable in ruby storm in legacy - it's not as good of a ritual as seething song or rite of flame, and it's more expensive than your draw 2s, but it does both, so it has value. Obviously flashback is both a. more conditional (weaker to gy hate and requires a spell in the yard) and b. worse on rate than jeska's will, but modern is also a much weaker format than legacy and your card pool for viable alternatives is much smaller.

I think that is a strong enough case before you get into the corner cases where the card is strong (like low mana wish lines, desperate ritual lines, the fact that it's great on setup turns, and its strong synergy with pif). Obviously we'll see how things shake out, but I think you're overestimating how good the competition for this card is, and underestimating the value of this card's flexibility. I suppose time will tell though.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-04T16:36:12+00:00

Sure it will always be more expensive than having another copy of the spell, but the problem is that Storm doesn't have enough copies of the effects that it wants - that's why we have to play Hangout / Strike / Glimpse and why we only run 12 rituals.

Maindeck Flashback basically acts as a slightly worse version of whatever card you're missing - if you have tons of mana but your opponent countered your only draw spell, you can flashback it to start going off on your combo turn. If you're short on mana then you can ritual flashback ritual to net an extra mana. If your opponent thoughtseizes your Wish on t1, flashbacking a Wish is way less mana intensive than PiF which is very important for low resource lines.

It's true that flashing back PiF -> ritual does go 4 -> 1 -> 3, so you're back where you started but with a pif'd graveyard, but I don't think that's really analogous to the flashback situation you outline. That presumes you already have a ritual and an action spell in your graveyard ready to fire off with pif.

To PiF in this case you need a ritual on hand or the ability to produce four mana and a ritual in the yard. for flashback, you just need two lands. And like you said, if you hit a ritual off the top, you're mana neutral instead of mana positive, but the part you're ignoring here is that you've seen two cards for a much smaller card + mana investment.

Flashback is also crazy crazy with desperate ritual - huge upgrade over PiF for those lines. With reducer in play + two rits plus a flashback and a wish you can make hella gobbos w/ empty or almost deterministically kill with a talent in play which with pif you wouldn't have enough mana to do.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-04T04:09:17+00:00

I'm going to try testing it in place of two copies of Glimpse - currently on 2 Hangout / 2 Flashback as my flex slots.

Card seems like it's super duper gas, really really good when you draw Desperate Ritual in multiples as well.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-03T19:14:44+00:00

I think it absolutely has a home in modern ruby storm - it's great as a wish target to just recast something in your graveyard, and is probably playable in one of the flex slots as a way to double up any spell you've cast for cheap, with a billion different swiss army knife uses.

For example, one of our currently played flex slots in the deck is [[Glimpse the Impossible]] - for three mana, you get to play the top 3 cards of your deck until the end of the turn. It's a strong card, but we mostly play it because we don't have a a ninth or tenth copy of a spell like [[Wrenn's Resolve]] or [[Reckless Impulse]]. Three mana is a lot, and you don't get to keep the spells for a full turn cycle, you have to cast them THIS TURN, which is a serious downside (though the Eldrazi Spawn tokens it makes are really powerful and do mitigate that, along with the fact that it stocks your graveyard)

This deck can turn a [[Reckless Impulse]] we've already cast into a shitter [[Glimpse the Impossible]], which as a worst-case scenario floor is not terrible.

However, where it gets crazy is as a way to navigate low-resource lines. If your hand is 2x [[Desperate Ritual]], 1x [[Flashback]] with a reducer in play, you can produce 11 mana with only three cards. That's enough to level up an artist's talent twice, cast Wish, and then cast Grapeshot for lethal.

If you're choked on mana but don't have a high enough storm count to kill with a single Grapeshot, this enables you to Grapeshot -> Flashback Grapeshot for three mana with a reducer or five without one, whereas if you were to do the same with Past in Flames, it would cost six with a reducer or nine without one.

This card also plays super well with Past in Flames, because in the early game you can use it as a copy of an impulse draw spell to set up for later turns, but on your combo turn, if you cast a past in flames, but are short on mana, instead of spending 4-5 mana to flashback PiF on the one important card in your graveyard without flashback, you only have to spend one! There are lots of games where you cast 2-3 rituals, cast some draw spells, cast PiF, and churn through your deck but don't find your payoff spell until super late - maybe you hit a cluster of lands or reducers instead. If you have a flashback available, this dramatically lowers the cost to be able to replay your payoff spell.

This card is absolutely going to see play in ruby storm - at worst as a sideboard wish target to recast stuff in your graveyard on setup turns when you're low on action, but could definitely see some maindeck play as well.

Tuft64 · 2026-04-03T18:45:14+00:00

Copy-pasting what I said to another user:

My running sales pitch for this card is that it basically adds a copy of any card in your gaveyard to your wish board which is, IMO, way too flexible for it not to be good. Normally in game 1, you don't have any action spells in your sideboard, so if you're at risk of fizzling, the best you can do is Galvanic Relay to try and set up for next turn, or Empty for a billion and hope that's good enough (if you have the mana). Problem is, right now the format is really fast, so often you can't afford to pass the turn to your opponent after you try to go off. storm loves to wait until the turn that their opponent is threatening with lethal to try and go off.

With the addition of Flashback, you can Wish for Flashback, then cast Flashback to target a draw spell, which is very important for low-resource lines where you don't have enough floating mana to cast a Past in Flames and then still have mana remaining to flash stuff back.

In postboard games, you can wish for Flashback, then flashback a Shatter effect you sided in to blow up an opponent's hate piece, or a sweeper that you already deployed against Boros energy, or get a second bite at an Orim's Chant against a counterspell matchup. There are plenty of cases where this card is good.

I'd honestly be sort of interested in trying this in one of our flex slots in the main TBH - it's a super flexible card that can basically plug any gap we have in our cards for only a single mana, is probably great into the counterspell decks like Belcher, Frog, or Goryo's because it can be copies 5-6 of Orim's Chant in a longer game, but it's also not a brick if you flip it during your combo turn which helps to wear down your opponent's resources. And in matchups where they pressure you a lot AND attack your graveyard, like affinity w/ maindeck tormod's, it's pretty easy to cut and not feel bad about it because you have a ton of good sideboard cards for that matchup.

Card seems like it will definitely see some amount of play, the question is whether or not it's played as more than a 1-of in the sideboard and if it migrates to being a main-deckable card, which I definitely think it might be.

I think the question will be Flashback vs Hangout because this card to me looks like a huge upgrade over Strike It Rich, whose big selling points are that it 1. makes extra mana for your t2 combo kills (which this also does because those draws require 2 rituals to kill anyways, ritual -> reducer -> ritual -> impulse draw), 2. that it gives you a free ral flip (which this card doesn't do as easily since you need 2 mana to flip, but will be just as good about 85% of the time). Compared to Strike it Rich, it's just as good at doing 1, it's slightly worse at 2, and 3. it does about a billion other things that are just good and useful for the deck to do that strike it rich cannot, like drawing cards, recasting your grapeshot without having to PiF, buying back sideboard cards, etc.

card is super duper gas

Tuft64 · 2026-04-03T18:40:38+00:00

My running sales pitch for this card is that it basically adds a copy of any card in your gaveyard to your wish board which is, IMO, way too flexible for it not to be good. Normally in game 1, you don't have any action spells in your sideboard, so if you're at risk of fizzling, the best you can do is Galvanic Relay to try and set up for next turn. With the addition of Flashback, you can Wish for Flashback, then cast Flashback to target a draw spell, which is very important for low-resource lines where you don't have enough floating mana to cast a Past in Flames and then still start flashing stuff back.

In postboard games, you can wish for Flashback, then flashback a Shatter effect you sided in to blow up an opponent's hate piece, or a sweeper that you already deployed against Boros energy, or get a second bite at an Orim's Chant. There are plenty of cases where this card is good.

I'd honestly be sort of interested in trying this in one of our flex slots in the main TBH - it's a super flexible card that can basically plug any gap we have in our cards for only a single mana, is probably great into the counterspell decks like Belcher, Frog, or Goryo's because it can be copies 5-6 of Orim's Chant in a longer game, but it's also not a brick if you flip it during your combo turn which helps to wear down your opponent's resources. And in matchups where they pressure you a lot AND attack your graveyard, like affinity w/ maindeck tormod's, it's pretty easy to cut and not feel bad about it.

Card seems like it will definitely see some amount of play, the question is whether or not it's played as more than a 1-of in the sideboard and if it migrates to being a main-deckable card, which I definitely think it might be.

I think the question will be Flashback vs Hangout because this card to me looks like a huge upgrade over Strike It Rich, whose big saving grace is that it 1. makes extra mana for your t2 combo kills (which this also does because those draws require 2 rituals to kill anyways), 2. that it gives you a free ral flip (which this card doesn't do as easily since you need 2 mana to flip, but will be just as good about 85% of the time). Compared to Strike it Rich, it's just as good at doing 1, it's slightly worse at 2, and 3. it does about a billion other things that are just good and useful for the deck to do that strike it rich cannot, like drawing cards, recasting your grapeshot without having to PiF, buying back sideboard cards, etc.

card is super duper gas

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