Sam Black is well-known for his synergistic small-creature decks that generate incremental advantage, and this four-color Ghostway deck is right up his alley. Try it out this weekend at #SCGBALT’s $5,000 Modern Premier IQ!
Gerry Thompson has been showing us some awesome Chord of Calling/Ghostway decks lately, and it’s an archetype that’s intrigued me since I first found out about it and recorded a video. My concerns about that build were that it felt a little slow, but I liked the synergy the deck had packed into it. More recent builds have adjusted for that, and Martin Colding-Jorgensen’s update moved the deck in the right direction and landed him a solid Grand Prix finish.
I’m still fascinated by the deck. It plays a lot of the cards I like most, and it’s great at generating incremental value, which I love, but it also has the ability to easily win out of nowhere that I find necessary to being competitive in Modern. I wanted to try some of Martin’s innovations, but felt some of the numbers needed tweaking, so I’m playing:
This seems like a horrible matchup for my opponent. In general, a deck based on proactive or card draw two for ones is going to be a big favorite against deck based on attrition style card advantage, as it’s just so hard for the attrition deck to get to the kind of board state it wants, and all the removal elements are answering less than the full card they’re intended to answer. This played out as expected, and even when my opponent made me skip several turns by killing my only land, they just weren’t able to usefully take advantage of that, and lost even under their best circumstances.
Round Two
After winning game one I felt like I might be a close enough approximation of “twin” to have a chance, especially once I had a Magus of the Moon in my deck. I still felt disadvantaged overall, since I can’t disrupt them fast enough, but I think Chord for Magus of the Moon is good enough to give this deck a real chance in the matchup, which is way above expectation for a G/W value deck against Amulet Bloom.
Round Three
Jund is more proactive than my first opponent’s deck, but it’s still at a similar structural disadvantage. Their attrition plan can’t beat me, so they need to establish a fast clock, or potentially stick a Dark Confidant, but their pressure isn’t really good at finishing me before I can bury them.
Whisperwood Elemental, which had seemed otherwise unexciting, really looked awesome in this matchup, which is an interesting note for a card that hasn’t seen a ton of play in Modern.
Round Four
One of the things that draws me to these Chord decks most is how much instant speed play they have. I really love the way that their threats and card advantage work against the blue value decks. It seems like any spell I resolve is horrible for them, and between getting ahead on mana early with mana creatures and having a lot of instants to further tax their mana, it’s pretty easy to force enough things through to bury them.
Closing Thoughts
This is currently my favorite fair archetype in Modern, and I mostly like this build. I’m skeptical of four color decks in Modern, and I’m not sure the blue splash is worth it, but I like the rest of what’s going on here, except Trostani, Selesnya’s Vocie, who is great against Burn and looks awesome on paper with Ghostway, but I think just isn’t the right kind of thing to be doing here. I should have cut that from Martin’s list instead of Reclamation Sage, since the ability to get Reclamation Sage is just so big in a deck that has so many ways to blink it in matchups where that’s the effect you want.
