Interested in this?
What about a little of that?
Maybe one of these?
Would not mind me some of that.
All right, that’s enough. If I show any more of these pictures, we’re going to need to come up with a name for people who enjoy looking at pictures of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn annihilating the opponent’s battlefield.
Here we go again.
Nahiri, the Harbinger continues to pop up in different Modern decks, reviving and rejuvenating old archetypes and spawning new ones.
My journey with the deck started here:
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (23)
Sideboard
Finally, a deck that can represent Canada without all those pesky blue cards getting in the way!
The deck is basically what you get when you smoosh together a pile of great land destruction cards with a pile of great removal.
Nahiri, the Harbinger really helps tie the whole deck together. The rummage effect is particularly great when so many cards in the deck can be redundant or ineffective. You can cycle through extra Blood Moons, useless Emrakuls, excess land, or unnecessary burn spells, depending on your situation. Her -2 also acts as much-needed hard removal in a deck full of Lightning Bolt effects to deal with creatures sporting larger booties. Using Nahiri’s ultimate to search up Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is the perfect way to quickly close out the game after Mooning an opponent’s nonbasic lands.
Boom // Bust is one of the most powerful cards in the deck. It is capable of being a two-mana Stone Rain when you’re targeting your own Flagstones of Trokair. You can also cast a lopsided Boom when you have a fetchland on the battlefield by choosing it as a target to destroy and then cracking it before passing priority, leaving your opponent with one fewer land and you with a smile on your face. It also works nicely to attack pesky basic lands once you’ve resolved a Blood Moon.
Bust can be cast as a six-mana Armageddon if you’re in an advantageous position. Finally, Bust can be cast off of Goblin Dark-Dwellers. Don’t ask me why it works. Just know that it does.
Simian Spirit Guide is great for ramping into a turn 2 Blood Moon or turn 3 Nahiri, the Harbinger, or whatever you need to cast ahead of schedule. This plays perfectly into the gameplan of surprising the opponent and crippling their manabase before they can fight back.
Winning through land destruction can be a risky proposition that leads to lopsided games. Often your land destruction will be fantastic or terrible. You might have a fast start and catch the enemy with their basics down before they can act, or they’ll deploy early threats and your land disruption plan will self-destruct.
It is a volatile deck that can lead to swingy games.
Naturally, I wanted to try to smooth the draws out and took the deck in a much more controlling direction. Here’s where I am now.
Red, White, and Boom!
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (25)
Spells (23)
Instead of being all-in, the deck is Wall-in.
We’re losing the explosive starts that Simian Spirit Guide provides and cutting some Molten Rains for more defensive cards and card draw. This does come at a cost.
Land destruction usually works much better the more you have of it and the faster you have it. Chaining together multiple Molten Rains can end the game, and stopping to cast a Wall of Omens instead of another Molten Rain might prevent us from locking out opponents.
But there are benefits as well. The deck now plays about as much like Jeskai Control as it does a land disruption deck.
Instead of being filled with countermagic and removal, we have land destruction and removal, which is going to be just as good at attacking many decks in the format, if not much better. Sure, we’re going to be slower than the original version, but it will still often be a great plan anyway.
Turns out a large chunk of the format plays lands, and we’re going to take advantage of anyone foolish enough to do so! Seriously, though, a number of decks rely on lands as their primary strategy, namely Tron and Scapeshift, and we’re going to have a massive natural advantage against them.
The differences between R/W and Jeskai Control will hurt the most against decks like Burn, Merfolk, or U/R Storm. Those decks can usually just shrug off our attacks on their manabase and carry on with their lives.
We do have the other half of the deck, the “bunch of Lightning Helixes” part, that will be bailing us out against aggressive decks.
The Invisible Edge
Last week I advocated cutting Emrakul, the Aeons Torn from Jeskai Control (or at least starting it off in the sideboard).
I’m not certain this is the correct decision, but I think it demonstrates an interesting difference in the way many players look at the game differently from how I do.
AlphaGo is an AI designed to play Go that beat one of the best Go players, Lee Sedol, in a best-of-five match.
AlphaGo acted differently from the best human Go players in a number of different ways, and one of those ways was that it made seemingly strange moves when the “correct” move was fairly obvious to top pros.
The reason why it made those moves is because AlphaGo had one very specific goal, to win the game, and it thought those moves would help it achieve that goal. The moves AlphaGo was making did not look to be the correct moves for maximizing points while maneuvering to a strong position to the human eye.
But AlphaGo didn’t care if it won by a small amount or a massive amount, sooner or later. It was just trying to win.
That meant AlphaGo sometimes made strange moves, as long as it thought it would lead to even a 0.001% increase in its chance to win compared to making the “correct” move, even if it made its current points and position look worse at that moment, as long as it thought it could achieve victory more often, even if that meant barely squeaking it out.
The games we get Nahiri, the Harbinger up to eight loyalty and don’t have Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in our deck make it look like we’ve made a huge mistake.
But what if we’re winning the vast majority of those games anyway and giving ourselves a better chance of winning the games where we would’ve drawn Emrakul?
It’s easy to forget the 10% of opening hands with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in them. It’s easy to forget the quietly mulliganed Emrakul hands or the reluctant keeps. It’s easy to not notice the number of games where Emrakul is drawn. No big deal, right? That’s the price of doing business.
Well, that is the price of playing this particular powerful combo. But that doesn’t mean we always need to pay it.
Those Emrakul draw percentages add up quickly, and drawing Emrakul hurts your overall chances of winning the game just that tiny bit.
We remember the games where we ultimate Nahiri and get Emrakul to win from a seemingly unwinnable position. We remember the crushing embarrassment of defeat if we decide to side out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and proceed to lose despite having the option to ultimate Nahiri.
We remember the epic wins, the epic mistakes. We remember the epic stories. It’s easy to forget the smaller wins, or that Emrakul stuck in your hand as you barely lose a close game.
It would feel terrible to lose because you sided out Emrakul, but no one would blame you if you played it safe, kept it in your deck, and barely lost because you didn’t have one more useful spell to cast.
It could be compared to buying a lottery ticket, though not nearly as simple. Logically, you know buying a lottery ticket is terrible expected value. But can’t you imagine how sweet it would be to win? Or even remember seeing the smiling faces of lottery winners on TV? Maybe it would happen to you. Who cares if you’re one of the quiet thousands losing a couple of bucks every now and then.
AlphaGo has patience. AlphaGo makes the moves it thinks will optimize its chance of winning.
Humans don’t always work that way.
Surely a massive win is better than a winning by a little?
Nope.
The match slip doesn’t care what life total your opponent was at, how many of these you still had, or how many permanents they had left.
The invisible edge. A slightly tighter manabase. Slightly smoother draws. One less win condition, but you still end up winning in a drawn-out game. That’s the invisible edge.
What AlphaGo is maximizing isn’t necessarily what’s going on when you do or don’t cut Emrakul, but it’s something to think about. Who knows, I could be way out to lunch and the option of cutting Emrakul should never be used. The clock is a good reason to keep it when winning faster with Emrakul is an important factor. That’s the beauty of Magic; it’s often hard to tell what the correct move is.
Make no mistake, though. Nahiri, the Harbinger and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn go together like peanut butter and jellyfish, and are very powerful against a lot of decks, especially in R/W Land Destruction. If you’re unsure whether to cut Emrakul post-sideboard, err on the side of keeping it.
Here are my thoughts on how strong Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is against some of the decks in Modern:
Good – Emrakul should usually be kept in.
Abzan Company, Abzan, Jund, Tron
Medium – Consider siding out Emrakul some of the time, especially if your opponent prioritizes burning or attacking Nahiri.
Burn, Affinity, Merfolk, Infect, Scapeshift
Poor – You’re usually just winning with Blood Moon and land destruction, or if you’ve gotten into a position where you can ultimate Nahiri, you’re probably going to win anyway.
Zoo, Jeskai, Bant Eldrazi, Eldrazi Taxes
Card Choices
Proactive removal that works in the early-game and the late-game. We don’t care about giving our opponent three life, since we’re Emrakuling them anyways. I prefer Oust over Condemn because I like to have the option to interact with problematic creatures like Birds of Paradise and Dark Confidant that gain value without attacking. It’s also nice to strand a dead draw on top of an opponent’s deck once you’ve had your way with their manabase.
Tormenting Voice is not a particularly powerful card but it’s a nod to the deck’s lack of card draw and willingness to discard redundant or useless cards. It’s a reasonable target for Goblin Dark-Dwellers as well. Faithless Looting is another consideration, but it doesn’t work well discarding Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (since it gets shuffled away).
Perfect for delaying against aggro decks and protecting Nahiri.
The Spirit of the Simian lives on inside of Gemstone Caverns. The manabase is already very tight and it’s an excellent way to get a jump on your opponent if you’re on the draw and you can count on luck.
Purely a card that works well with Boom // Bust. It’s even anti synergy with your Stony Silences, but it’s actually overperformed for me and earned its slot in my mind.
Beware the anti-combo of Ensnaring Bridge and your own Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Usually, against the decks you want to bring in Ensnaring Bridge, you’re wanting to take out Emrakul. Ensnaring Bridge is fantastic against some decks and fits the theme of the deck (frustrate the opponent the maximum amount).
Ajani Vengeant complements the rest of the deck perfectly and is basically the planeswalker form of Lightning Helix and Boom // Bust. The only thing going against it is that Nahiri, the Harbinger shines brighter and they’re competing in the same mana division.
A great card against Infect, and once again, our goal here is to make our opponent cry in sadness and rage.
It’s nice to be able to clean up any problem permanents, especially ones like Pithing Needle or opposing planeswalkers.
And Boom Goes the Dynamite
So what’s the verdict if you’re interested in playing some Red, White, and Boom? How does it stack up against the Modern metagame playability-wise?
Playability Verdict: Viable!
It’s still a rogue deck right now, which actually helps it as well, but I think the deck has plenty of potential. It’s very strong against certain parts of the metagame and has a decent chance versus pretty much everything.
If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for me or the deck, don’t hesitate to share below or stop by my stream sometime and let me know.
Okay, okay, just one more for the road.
Wait a minute, that isn’t right.
Much better.