Advice for Salvager Combo deck

[Un4givenKnight]

Ive been playin this build for a week or two on workstation and its been ok to me so far. 10000 points to anybody who understands why I picked the deck name.

Lorenzo St. Dubois (but my friends call me LSD).dec
Combo pieces
4 Auriok Salvagers
1 Black Lotus
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
Protection
4 FoW
4 Duress
4 Disrupt
3 Chain of Vapor
Tutor/Draw
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Intuition
4 Serum Visions
Random Assorted Brokenness
1 Doomsday
1 Necropotence
1 Time Walk
1 Balance
1 Regrowth
1 Yawgwin
Mana Production
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Undiscovered Paradise
3 City of Brass
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
6 SoMoxen
4 Dark Ritual
SB
4 Oxidize
4 Choke
3 Chill
4 Oath of Druids

I'm sure this deck has been posted ad nauseaum (granted I havent been on TMD in a few weeks) The major changes between mine and the decklist used in a SCG that i used as a starting point:
* Serum Visions. I like the ability to get rid of useless cards from the top of my deck. Its not Brainstorm, but in this case its a lot more useful.
* Extra Spellbomb. Just makes things a lot easier overall. The draw ability along with the added benefit of getting it into the yard makes it better to have 2 of them.
* Chill in the SB. Dont remember what was there in the beginning, but this has been a lifesaver more than once.

All of that said, I want to know if there is any way to make this deck faster/more consistant/anything better than a solid casual deck. Any suggestions would be good.

[VGB]

You're playing Duress - why no LED?

[MrZuccinniHead]

LSD = LotusSalvagerDiamond?

[GoatFizzleChunk]

I don't think that Salvagers Combo is particularly strong. Dragon has a more efficient combo strategy. However I will concede that your disruptiong looks STRONG!

4 Force of Will
4 Disrupt (!!!)
4 Duress

Disrupt is very good against Draw-7 and decent against control. The weakness of the deck is that it runs slower against an agressive deck in which case the Disrupts and Duresses kind of stink.

Nice thought on Doomsday by the way. :lol: I am however, bemused by the lack of Lion's Eye Diamond in your build.

[AngryPheldagrif]

Disrupt is rarely all that useful against Draw-7 or much of anything in general. It costs mana (making it useless in the very early game), and you can't counter almost any of their mana, meaning they will often have either a spare colorless or an ESG for it. Chain of Vapor suffers from similiar issues, and they can just bounce it right back, which can be really unfriendly in some situations.

. . . What are you smoking?!?!? Now that I carefully read the decklist, I can't help but notice the glaring lack of Demonic and Vampiric Tutor, as well as Lion's Eye Diamond. The Tutors are just a basic inclusion. No excuse, just put them in. Now. Ditto for LED. This is Lotus #2 where your combo is concerned.

Also, Brainstorm>Serum Visions. For combo purposes, Brainstorm sorts through 3 while Visions only nets 1. Doomsday, Necropotence, Balance, and Regrowth are all unnecessary. They're all either inefficient or overkill.

Your sideboard needs focus and flexibility. Choke and Chill are both very outdated. Any decent combo deck should be able to go off and win before red decks can beat you, and Choke is extremely narrow and will rarely make a discernable difference, should it ever resolve. Oath of Druids is patently useless, as your deck should be more worried about getting your combo pieces in place than getting the four-of creature into play. Oath can also backfire, either by your opponent not playing a creature or by your opponent Oathing out something, say a Platinum Angel or a Darksteel Colossus, or even worse; a Psychatog. Oxidize is generic, so whatever.

You need to read more lists for combo in general to give you a better understanding of the way it works and the basic shell it should fill. As it is, your deck has no realistic advantages over Draw-7 and Dragon.

-Dan

[edit]: Fixed error.

[funmanguy]

disrupt is not good in any deck in any format, unless no less than 50 better blue counterspells have been banned.  It is not good against draw 7, EBA, Tog, Gro, Slaver(and variants), or any other top type 1 deck

[AngryPheldagrif]

disrupt is not good in any deck in any format, unless no less than 50 better blue counterspells have been banned.  It is not good against draw 7, EBA, Tog, Gro, Slaver(and variants), or any other top type 1 deck

For the love of god, please use capitalization and punctuation. TheManaDrain is not an AIM conversation. Grammar makes posts more understandable and easier on the eyes.

I have no clue what you're talking about with '50 better blue counterspells,' but the only time Disrupt is good is in some builds of Hulk or Gro for an extremely janky environment. Otherwise, utterly worthless.

-Dan

[LotusHead]

My salvager combo deck (SlapJack, in the (edit: Noobie Forum)) has these key combo pieces:

4 Trinket Mages
1 Conjuring Bauble
1 Shared Fate (Trust me on this...it's fun AND a kill card!)
1 Lantern of Insight.

The Conjuring Bauble (I feel) should be included in ANY Salvager deck.  It is a draw engine that alows you to draw your deck when it goes off.

The Trinket Mages, other than being 2/2 beatsticks bring with then other key components (Lotus, LED, Conjuring Bauble, Pyrite Spellbomb).  

Hope these ideas help.

Keep pushing for new deck types!  Go Salvagers!

[rozetta]

The Pyrite Spellbomb also allows you to draw your deck when you have the combo. Whilst Conjuring Bauble would be a plausible way of drawing a card for 2W every turn, if you're in that situation, you might be in trouble. Anyway, I'd suggest Chromatic Sphere over Conjuring Bauble, since it allows you to fix mana.

A local friend who, while doesn't play Type 1, is pro level in other formats, suggested the possibility of trying to build a salvagers deck by starting with a base of useful 1 or 0 mana artifacts. This way, the Salvagers themselves would be useful before the Lotus/LED was located. The trouble is, the best artifacts in that range aside from the cheap mana artifacts are things like baubles (too slow), black vise (not good as one off), Chalice of the Void (not useful in a combo deck), Engineered Explosives (ditto), and then things with less effect like Ivory Tower.

However, it set me to thinking that Goblin Welder might also be useful in such a deck, since you can bring back cheap artifacts and then, in turn, weld back more expensive ones (like Jar).

The next thing I noticed is the glaring omission of Tinker in all the previous posts. It's a pretty obvious way of getting the Lotus straight into play. In fact, with a combo like this, Transmute Artifact would not be all that bad either, since the Lotus is 0 anyway, so it's essentially UU + sac a random mox, go off. Edit Oh yeah, there's also Fabricate et. al. Duh!

Furthermore, the original list has some very off choices. Why 4 Intuition? And then, why not run either AK or Deep Analysis for card draw? Wheel of Fortune is missing, as is Memory Jar, Tolarian Academy, Timetwister and so on.

Even with a somehow optimized version of the starting list, such as the following example (Note this is an example only), this deck still doesn't, unfortunately, surpass other current combo decks, which is a shame, really.

        4 Auriok Salvagers
        4 Pyrite Spellbomb
        4 Goblin Welder
        4 Brainstorm
        4 Transmute Artifact/Fabricate/Whatever
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Necropotence
        1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
        1 Yawgmoth's Will
        1 Windfall
        1 Timetwister
        1 Time Walk
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Memory Jar
        1 Tinker
        1 Wheel of Fortune
        1 Tolarian Academy
        4 Gemstone Mine
        4 City of Brass
        4 Elvish Spirit Guide
        4 Dark Ritual
        1 Lion's Eye Diamond
        1 Mana Vault
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Lotus Petal
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Chrome Mox

Edit I forgot that they'd printed yet more tutors for artifacts recently, so I edited the example list accordingly.

[VGB]

Here's what I would play, if you're going to use the Belcher/D7 core:

// combo pieces
4 Auriok Salvagers
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
// enchantments
4 Artificer's Intuition
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
// spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Windfall
1 Mind's Desire
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Wheel of Fortune
// artifacts
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Memory Jar
// mana
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Dark Ritual
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
// sideboard
???