How Modern Prowess Qualified Me For A Magic Regional Championship

Howdy, gamers! I’m taking a departure this week from my normal Cube content to talk about Modern. I know, I know, there is a banning imminent, and you’re not interested in playing Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Well, I’ll have you know that I won a Regional Championship Qualifier (RCQ) on Saturday with a build of Prowess tuned to beat Nadu, and I’m here to provide the tools for you to do the same this weekend! And if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, perhaps my thoughts on where the deck goes from here will be of interest to you. Let’s dig in!

The Bird Is the Word

Shortly after the release of Modern Horizons 3, I experimented a little with the Unstable Amulet package that other players were trying in Prowess, and I liked it pretty well. It didn’t take long for the field to demonstrate how oppressively powerful that Nadu could be, though, and so I set the deck aside to see what the results of the Pro Tour would be, and, well…

In addition to the Nadu deck being confirmed as the most powerful thing going on in the format, other energy decks were rising to prominence, and along with them came a really obnoxious hate card in Suncleanser. I didn’t fear Hogaak, and I sure as hell don’t fear some stupid Bird, but that thing… it scares me. Which is all to say that Unstable Amulet didn’t seem like the way to go anymore. There was a successful Prowess deck to emerge from the Pro Tour as food for thought, though.

I think that there’s a lot to like about Brian Boss’s list as a metagame call to answer Nadu as well as Ugin’s Labyrinth decks, which are absolutely great targets to aim your sights on. My issue with the list is that it’s quite vulnerable to spot removal, and leans into some inherent weakness that Prowess can have against Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury. The general notion of trying to win as often as possible on Turn 3 makes a lot of sense and is appealing to me, though.

Custom Building

With Modern RCQ season starting up, I tried to put together a list that followed the Turn 3 win ambition without all of the pump spells that I would be loath to register. I landed on trying out Lava Spikes, which were okay and which took me to a Top 4 on my first attempt, but in retrospect didn’t really help close against Nadu in a meaningful way, while also being completely embarrassing against Boros Energy, the deck that ultimately dispatched me.

I also lost a three-game set in that tournament to the eventual winner Sam Beaulieu, who was playing Nadu (obviously), and it became crystal-clear that if there was so much as one Nadu player in the room, I would need to beat them to take home the invite. As such, trying something higher-impact in the maindeck just made sense to me, and after that outing I decided to just maindeck four Harsh Mentors for my next RCQ. As fate would have it, they carried me to a win at my next RCQ, defeating none other than Beaulieu on Nadu in the finals!

This list is actually incredibly similar to what I was playing before the release of Modern Horizons 3, so there’s not a ton to go over in terms of individual card choices. Let’s just get to the elephant in the room.

Harsh Measures

If you want to beat Nadu, you’ve gotta mean it. And four maindeck Harsh Mentors is sure meaning it! An active Harsh Mentor severely limits the number of times your opponent can activate a Shuko, though notably it is not just game over. You do need to apply some amount of pressure otherwise in addition to looking out for the maindeck Volatile Stormdrake. Once they steal your Mentor, they’re free to combo. An important trick to keep in mind is that if you kill the Stormdrake with the trigger on the stack, then the exchange cannot take place, allowing you to keep your Mentor.

Things get slightly messier post-sideboard as Burrenton Forge-Tender enter the equation, but the activation does at least cost them two life and you’ll have access to more ways to disrupt their combo setup as well. A second Mentor renders the single Forge-Tender ineffective, leaving you again to fade the Stormdrake as an answer to the second copy. Notably, Barbarian Ring can kill Burrenton Forge-Tender if you find yourself in a position where they control the Forge-Tender when they are not yet ready to combo, and Wild Slashing something else while you are ferocious does the trick as well if the Forge-Tender is a blocker.

Mentor Against Non-Nadu Decks

I don’t think Harsh Mentor being very strong against Nadu is a hard sell, but whether the card is worth maindecking otherwise is a valid question. Having a favorable Game 1 matchup against Nadu is a huge deal if you want to actually win a tournament in Nadu Modern, but I will also say that Harsh Mentor is often good for at least two damage against almost every deck.

The most common and obvious way this comes to fruition is when you cast Harsh Mentor Turn 2 on the play and your opponent’s second land is a fetchland. Then there’s stuff like Mishra’s Bauble, Psychic Frog, the odd Warren Soultrader, Expedition Map, sometimes The One Ring… nothing that really excites you to have the card in your 75 beyond Nadu and friends, but enough that it’s not just embarrassing everywhere else. You will sideboard it out often, but I don’t think you’ll regret maining it if you’re playing any Modern events before the Banned List update next Monday.

Enter the Ring

My four copies of Barbarian Ring have raised some eyebrows, though it’s consistently impressed me since I called it out as a contender during preview season. With so many copies of Wild Slash, it’s just nice to have spells hiding in your manabase as a way to just “philosophy of fire” your opponents out of the game. There’s some random tagging a pro-red creature equity, too. The biggest point in favor of Barbarian Ring right now, though, is that regular Burn is wildly unplayable, and in general you will be able to burn a handful of your own life points pretty willy-nilly. Fetching the Stomping Ground untapped on Turn 1 is close to free against every deck worth playing currently.

Skip the Crypt

I also do want to call attention to my sideboard Soul-Guide Lanterns over the Tormod’s Crypts that I was playing pre-Modern Horizons 3. Back then, I wanted a free card both because the Goryo’s Vengeance deck was so fast and because zeros just play better with Seek the Beast. Currently, the Soul-Guide Lanterns are pulling double-duty as a way to combat opposing copies of Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury in addition to embarrassing Prowess opponents who dare to step to me with Dragon’s Rage Channeler.

Picking Poison

I will also say that the role of Pick Your Poison in the sideboard has shifted some in the post-MH3 pre-ban world, with the intended target no longer being Leyline of the Guildpact but rather the current boogeyman, Nadu! Ben Ungar suggested it to me for the matchup as a potentially solid piece of interaction for Urza’s Saga, bestowed Springheart Nantukos, and sometimes Shuko or Nadu itself. Four might be overkill, but the card has seemed solid as a supplement to the Harsh Mentor plan to continue pressuring your opponent to need to achieve multiple things in one turn to win.

I played a couple of games sideboarding Destructive Revelry in against Nadu as well, though costing two and hitting fewer things had them feeling kind of mopey. I think they’re fine on the play and pretty weak on the draw. Instead, I like just sideboarding out Crash Throughs for Pick Your Poisons and looking for a hand that either threatens a very fast win or a Turn 2 Harsh Mentor.

Other Matchups

As far as sideboarding against other matchups, the Harsh Mentors make this even easier than it often is. You bring out Mentor against almost everything else, and then you either have some kind of hammer, like relevant graveyard hate, or you bring in the additional Questing Druids and a couple of cards that function. Soul-Guide Lanterns play against anything using the graveyard, Disruptor Flute is your ace against combo decks, the artifact and enchantment removal does what it does, and you’ll probably sideboard in Blood Moon more often than I do. Notably, Wild Slash is typically the second card you reach for to sideboard out, as it’s weak when your opponent does not present creatures that it can destroy.

Going Forward

I think that we’re all fully expecting Nadu to be banned come Monday, though it remains to be seen what other changes, if any, will be made to the Banned List. I expect a modest approach, just targeting Nadu, and then the rest of the Modern RCQ season dictating if further action needs to be taken. A Nadu ban obviously entails that maindeck, or even sideboard Harsh Mentors will no longer be relevant. So where does Prowess go from there?

I think that the difficulty presented by Phlage and Suncleanser in energy mirrors is reason enough to just load up on Questing Druids and to round out the deck with a few more functional cards. Dragon’s Rage Channeler or Light Up the Stage would be where I would start, with my preference at this time for the latter.

I haven’t tried it yet because of how awful I think Light Up the Stage would be in the deck in the current format, but a shift to Boros Prowess to play your own Phlages is on my radar to experiment with as well, though I suspect that Prowess is at a disadvantage in the Phlage mirrors, and that the other Phlage decks will keep the decks that Phlage totally rocks to a minimum in the field.

Lockdown Pieces

The big fear is that Ugin’s Labyrinth in conjunction with Trinisphere and/or Chalice of the Void will see a steep rise in popularity in the post-Nadu format. Chalice is beatable with Slickshot Show-Off as well as sideboard cards, but Trinisphere is more obnoxious than you might think. The card I’m currently considering as an answer is Cindervines, which is a little inefficient but solid if you sneak it in under the Trinisphere. It also doubles as a strong hate card for Storm, which has been seeing good success on Magic Online (MTGO) lately.

If you’ve been hesitant to play Nadu Modern but you’d like to play some Magic this weekend, then I think Harsh Mentor Prowess is a great choice for an RCQ. It certainly worked for me! I’ll be playing the deck at the NRG event in Madison this weekend if you’re seeking any further endorsement. It’s hard to say where the deck will fit in the post-ban world, but it’s very much a contender now, and I suspect that at least one version of Prowess will remain solid after Monday.