In four short days, Modern Weekend will be upon us as players descend on simultaneous events on each coast to Collect some Companies, Burn some Zoos, and…Ad some Nauseam, I guess? I never took Latin. Either way, #GPCharlotte and #GPLA promise to combine to bring a whole load of fun Magic in our most brew-tastic format to our Twitch apps. I will be in Charlotte myself, either getting my judge on or standing in line to get every one of my Richard Kane Ferguson cards signed (seriously, the man is incredible). Come say hi! I am kind of hard to miss.
Aside from amazing artists and mad brewer judges, what can we expect to see at #GPCharlotte this coming weekend? What does a more settled post-banning format look like? What decks might surprise us? What brew would I bring? What beats Abzan Company? What question should I end this paragraph with?
I call Modern the most brew-tastic format for a reason. Legacy can overwhelm with the enormity of its card pool, making it difficult to come up with a brew. It’s also been around for so long as a format that most decks and ideas have been tried before.
Standard of course is a lot smaller than Modern, and as such limits our ability to brew and is more about finding edges. Recently we have seen a lot more innovation than normal in Standard, which is great, but Modern just gives us much more room for activities. It’s still relatively new and has for most of its existence been dominated by six or seven top decks, most of which have now been heavily nerfed. The format has only just started to recover from a three-month period that saw three top decks get banned into oblivion and two very powerful cards get unbanned for the first time ever, opening up all sorts of possibilities.
The last two SCG Tour® stops have both been Modern and have helped establish a metagame, which should inform some choices for the weekend. Although Abzan Company has been the most successful archetype at these events, the MTGO metagame has been far more varied. There is a school of thought that attributes this to the difficulty of executing unbounded combos on a less-than-cooperative client, but there is no doubt that decks like Jeskai Control with Nahiri, the Harbinger and Dredge with Insolent Neonate are powerful contenders. If new decks are being discovered still that can win an event, then the brewer in me is raring to go!
As a bonus, I have themed each of these decks after something you can find at #GPCharlotte this coming weekend. The flavor overload is too real, my friends.
How Many Combos in One Deck?
Way back in Return to Ravnica / Theros Standard, I brewed up a fun and powerful deck filled with triggered abilities that win with the combo of Horizon Chimera, Fathom Mage, and Archangel of Thune. In case you’re not seeing the combo: drawing a card gains you life from Horizon Chimera. Gaining a life makes Archangel of Thune put a counter on your team, which includes Fathom Mage. Fathom Mage then triggers, and you can choose to draw a card…and so on.
The fact that Fathom Mage’s draw is optional is the only reason we can play the combo, of course. I had a fair amount of success with it, but for me, the best part was getting to cast Karametra, God of Harvests and actually win games with it. Yes, seriously. I do not for one second think that Karametra is good enough for Modern, but the other three cards are okay, bad, and strong, respectively. Archangel of Thune also has the advantage of providing a combo with Spike Feeder, which is conveniently good with Fathom Mage as well.
Such a deck would clearly benefit from Chord of Calling, which allows us to play a typical toolbox in what apparently will be Bant colors. Sadly, those colors do not give us an easy way to add in the Kitchen Finks combo. Although Finks can combo off with Master Biomancer; Melira, Sylvok Outcast; and Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit in these colors, we are lacking an efficient sacrifice outlet to complete the combo. Blasting Station and Bound by Moonsilver both exist but cannot be tutored for in this deck, although technically we could play Tallowisp to help us find Bound by Moonsilver. The sorcery-speed activation on that one makes me balk at the idea, though.
At the core this is basically a Bant Good Stuff deck, so Knight of the Reliquary seems like a reasonable inclusion. By adding Courser of Kruphix, we get some insurance against aggressive decks while also helping out our early land drops. I actually think Courser is an underrated Modern card, even if it does make opposing Tarmogoyfs that much better.
No Bant deck of this sort should be seen without Noble Hierarchs, of course, which is featured on the deckbox, sleeves and playmat you can get with the Premium Rewards bundle. I got these at last year’s GP Charlotte and they look sweet.
Here’s the list I like right now.
Creatures (30)
- 3 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Spike Feeder
- 2 Eternal Witness
- 2 Wall of Roots
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 2 Knight of the Reliquary
- 2 Scavenging Ooze
- 1 Fathom Mage
- 2 Voice of Resurgence
- 3 Archangel of Thune
- 2 Horizon Chimera
- 3 Courser of Kruphix
Lands (18)
Spells (12)
Go Away, Lands
Possibly my favorite piece of Richard Kane Ferguson artwork is on Pillage. I really hope the autocard tagging shows you the Alliances version, because the other one is bowling shoe ugly. Although the playability of that beautiful artwork has waned in recent years, it does belong to a class of card I absolutely adore: land destruction.
Modern design has all but eliminated one-drop mana creatures, but there are plenty of powerful mana-generating creatures in a format like Modern. As a result, even with plenty of three-mana land destruction spells available to us, land destruction has not been a popular or successful strategy. However, by adding one of my favorite cards printed in recent years, we find ourselves with the ability to beat one of the biggest problems the archetype has (running out of land destruction spells) while also giving us a reasonable way to win.
I have written about Alesha, Who Smiles at Death many times. I cannot get enough of her triggered ability, and I have spent considerable time trying to break it. Hornet Queen, Golgari Grave-Troll, Master of Cruelties, Flame-Kin Zealot…I have tried them all. In this deck, though, we are using that ability to blow up lands…with Fulminator Mage and Avalanche Riders. It’s an interaction that has been around for a while, but it recently got a couple of upgrades that we’re only too happy to slide into the deck.
Creatures (27)
- 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- 4 Avalanche Riders
- 2 Reveillark
- 3 Fulminator Mage
- 4 Wall of Omens
- 4 Restoration Angel
- 1 Angel of Serenity
- 3 Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
- 2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- 3 Eldrazi Displacer
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (8)
Since we already want to be able to blink Avalanche Riders, Eldrazi Displacer is a natural addition. It also works particularly well with Nahiri, the Harbinger, which is another pretty obvious addition in my mind. Not only can we discard extra land destruction or redundant copies of Alesha, Who Smiles at Death to draw into a threat, but her ultimate can dig us up the Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker we need to combo out. It’s worth pointing out that Kiki-Jiki also comes back from the graveyard with Alesha. Our other addition, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, is quickly becoming a Modern staple, combining the speed bump of Lingering Souls with the ability to fire off some direct damage if needed. Blinking Mom and Dad is also not terrible, and once again the card is Alesha-eligible.
The one-of Angel of Serenity has a couple of roles here. Although we cannot blink it with Restoration Angel, we can certainly do so with Eldrazi Displacer. If we target our own creatures in the graveyard on the first cast, when we blink Angel of Serenity, we can get those back and target the opponent’s creatures before blinking Angel of Serenity a second time. Mana-intensive for sure, but the main reason for running it is as a juicy thing to fetch for Nahiri’s ultimate.
It’s possible this deck wants to do something with Boom // Bust, a few more fetches, and some Flagstones of Trokair, but to do that, I think we would need to cut the Eldrazi Displacer package. I am loath to do that.
Vintage Michael Cole
Since we’re on an artist kick, Eric Deschamps will also be in attendance in #GPCharlotte. Eric has an uncanny ability to make his characters, especially the female ones, stare into your soul, as witnessed on Beguiler of Wills. He also did one of my favourite cards in Assemble the Legion. His contribution to this deck, though, is neither female (as far as we can tell) nor a game-breaking enchantment, but it is one of my favorite cards that I think is just on the verge of breaking out: Grand Abolisher.
A couple of weekends ago, Bazaar of Moxen held a Vintage tournament in Annecy, France that contained many of the usual suspects in the Top 8 when it comes to archetypes. Winner Michael Ruppon, however, played a deck that was twelve cards away from being Modern-legal in the maindeck, and eight of those were part the Power Nine. In a format where Storm decks can and do kill on turn 1, this guy was playing Scab-Clan Berserker and Grand Abolisher. No, seriously. I could not resist the temptation to modify the deck for Modern and see what it could look like.
Creatures (33)
- 3 Dark Confidant
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 2 Qasali Pridemage
- 2 Grand Abolisher
- 4 Champion of the Parish
- 4 Mayor of Avabruck
- 4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- 2 Anafenza, the Foremost
- 3 Mantis Rider
- 2 Reflector Mage
- 3 Thalia's Lieutenant
Lands (20)
Spells (7)
That sideboard is a total guess, by the way. And I don’t think we can ever beat Tron, but that’s not uncommon. Yes, we are playing Tribal Humans in Modern with three “lords” to reward us for our…well, let’s call it bravery. If nothing else, your opponent will have no idea what you are doing. Ever.
Although the manabase is slightly terrifying, the power level of the cards it enables is extremely high. It hurt me to do so, but I had to cut the Scab-Clan Berserkers because of that double red in the mana cost. However, while watching #SCGINDY coverage this past weekend, I had the thought that Anafenza, the Foremost was pretty good in Modern right now, so she slots right in. Goldfishing has shown the deck is capable of some turn 4 wins in ideal conditions, though of course that’s easier said than done. Some of the Collected Company hits we can get are truly disgusting.
Be Ready
One thing about this Modern format seems to be that any reasonably-tuned deck can do well as long as it does two of four things: avoid bad matchups, hit good matchups, draw key sideboard cards, avoid opposing sideboard hate. That we can boil the format down so simply is what makes Modern a poor choice for a high-stakes, focused event like a Pro Tour, but a Grand Prix is a much more diverse environment with a lot less at stake.
Be ready to lose some games just because your opponent is playing a deck you cannot beat and did not prepare for. Much like Legacy, the angles of attack are so varied that you can’t possibly be prepared for everything, even with fifteen singletons in your sideboard.
With that said, brews are better-positioned in Modern than perhaps in either of the other popular constructed formats. Knowing your deck and testing against a gauntlet are rewarded more in the more stable Modern metagame, and the surprise factor can often just win you some games because the opponent took lines that don’t interact with what you’re trying to do.
Whatever else you do this weekend, whether you are grabbing BBQ in Charlotte or stargazing in LA, make sure you have fun.
As always, thanks for stopping by, and until next time…
Brew On!