Since the banning of Eye of Ugin and the unbanning of Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek, Modern has regained its place as a wide-open competitive format. New sets are creating new decks and strengthening old ones. Today we’re going to look at the results of recent Magic Online competitive Modern Leagues and talk about some interesting decks that went 5-0.
Creatures (8)
Lands (19)
Spells (33)
With nineteen lands, Snapcaster Mage, and 33 noncreature spells, Delver of Secrets would feel right at home in this deck. But the little blue flier is nowhere to be found, replaced with delve creatures like Gurmag Angler and Tasigur, the Golden Fang powered out by early interaction and Thought Scour.
With threats as large as the delve creatures, this deck gets to run three copies of Stubborn Denial and will often have ferocious active, making it a cheaper Negate.
Early interaction like Spell Snare, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Disfigure stall the game until the graveyard is full enough to cast a threat, while cards like Path to Exile, Doom Blade, and Mana Leak clear the way for the relatively small number of attacks required for the huge creatures to finish off the opponent.
In control decks that want to go to the late-game, including both Path to Exile and Mana Leak can be somewhat short-sighted. Every time you Path an opponent’s creature, you reduce the amount of time until your Mana Leaks are useless. However, this deck is looking to take an aggressive role quickly, so the opponent often doesn’t get to live long enough to reap the benefits of the extra land.
The most interesting thing here is the choice of white over red. While this does mean you lose powerful spells like Lightning Bolt and Terminate, you gain access to Lingering Souls, Path to Exile, and powerful sideboard options. Plus, Lightning Bolt’s loss is somewhat mitigated by the inclusion of Disfigure. While you can’t Disfigure your opponent’s face (though the art suggests otherwise), it is still pretty great at removing the same early threats as Lightning Bolt.
Creatures (16)
Lands (19)
Spells (25)
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Serum Visions
- 2 Lava Spike
- 3 Spell Pierce
- 4 Gitaxian Probe
- 2 Vapor Snag
- 4 Thought Scour
- 2 Temporal Trespass
Sideboard
If you want to play an aggro-control deck that has its roots in the classic Delver decks but the Esper Delve deck didn’t intrigue you, check this out. This deck stays U/R and leans on more the traditional threat suite of Delver of Secrets and Monastery Swiftspear while adding the newly printed Thing in the Ice to take advantage of its 25 instants and sorceries.
Unlike traditional Delver decks, though, it’s extremely aggressive. The only pieces of countermagic in the entire deck are four copies of [card name="Spell Pierce"]Spell Pierce[/card] and one [card name="Remand"]Remand[/card] between the maindeck and sideboard. In fact, the deck is so aggressive that you’ll find [card name="Lava Spike"]Lava Spike[/card], [card name="Mutagenic Growth"]Mutagenic Growth[/card], and [card name="Gut Shot"]Gut Shot[/card] instead of more counterspells. When you can largely rely on [card name="Thing in the Ice"]Thing in the Ice[/card] to return your opponent’s threats to their hand by turn 3 or 4, you don’t have to worry as much about countering them.
The really spicy inclusion is [card name="Temporal Trespass"]Temporal Trespass[/card]. With “free” spells like [card name="Gitaxian Probe"]Gitaxian Probe[/card] and the graveyard-filling [card name="Thought Scour"]Thought Scour[/card], this deck can pay only three mana to take an extra turn more often than not. Do you remember when U/R Delver took over the metagame after [card name="Treasure Cruise"]Treasure Cruise[/card] was printed, and how [card name="Dig Through Time"]Dig Through Time[/card] was a huge boon to [card name="Scapeshift"]Scapeshift[/card] and [card name="Splinter Twin"]Splinter Twin[/card] decks? Well, [card name="Temporal Trespass"]Temporal Trespass[/card] is one powerful blue Delve card that wasn’t banned. Perhaps it isn’t as overcosted as people thought!
[deck id="104540"/]
For a long time, G/W Hatebears was the de facto Death and Taxes-style deck in Modern. Recently, Eldrazi and Taxes began to usurp its throne with the help of value cards like [card name="Wasteland Strangler"]Wasteland Strangler[/card] and [card name="Tidehollow Sculler"]Tidehollow Sculler[/card]. Now people have started taking the best of both decks and shoving them into one aggressive, value-oriented, creature-heavy deck.
Collected Company and Aether Vial allow creature decks to gain card and mana advantages as they power out creatures in a deadly onslaught. Value creatures like Eternal Witness, Flickerwisp, and Tidehollow Sculler ensure you’re getting as many two-for-ones as possible. Hatebears like Qasali Pridemage, Scavenging Ooze, Spellskite, and Kataki, War’s Wage hose specific strategies. And solid cards like Path to Exile, Gavony Township, and Voice of Resurgence round out the strategy quite well.
A particularly fun trick is to process the card exiled under Tidehollow Sculler with Wasteland Strangler to get rid of it permanently. If you haven’t found a Tidehollow Sculler but you still want full value from your Wasteland Strangler, Path to Exile or Scavenging Ooze can provide you with exiled cards, and the Ooze can even take the processed card back out of the graveyard when you’re done! Looping cards between your opponent’s graveyard and exile zones to kill their creatures and grow your own is just great value.
Creatures (28)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 2 Eternal Witness
- 1 Whitemane Lion
- 4 Kitchen Finks
- 4 Flickerwisp
- 4 Wall of Omens
- 1 Stonehorn Dignitary
- 4 Restoration Angel
- 4 Siege Rhino
Lands (21)
Spells (11)
This Abzan Blink deck forgoes the Hatebears strategy, though it does keep Aether Vial around to cheat on mana. Instead of going for specific strategy-hosing creatures, there is a bigger focus on recurring enters-the-battlefield effects to gain value against any deck.
Wall of Omens, Siege Rhino, Kitchen Finks, Stonehorn Dignitary, and Eternal Witness all provide value when they enter the battlefield. Whether you need card draw, lifegain, extra time, or a bit of reach, there’s a creature in the deck with that effect stapled to it. Flickerwisp, Restoration Angel, Whitemane Lion, and Eerie Interlude make sure those effects keep on coming.
If you’ve never soft-locked your opponent out of the game by flickering a Stonehorn Dignitary while you attack with a Siege Rhino every turn, you should try it. It’s great fun… at least for one of you! Another fun trick is to loop Eternal Witness and Eerie Interlude to get every enters-the-battlefield effect of all your creatures every single turn.
I’m a bit surprised at the lack of Eldrazi Displacer in this list. Its activated ability provides another way to recur your creatures’ enters-the-battlefield effects as-needed, at instant speed. However, it’s possible that it was just too hard to stretch the three-color manabase to support the colorless cost.
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (25)
Spells (22)
This deck has started being popularized by our very own Shaun McLaren on this very website. [I don’t think he’ll ever win anything important–Ed.].
During Eldrazi Winter, plenty of land destruction decks popped up in the hopes of beating the awesome mana advantage provided by the combination of Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. They often focused on grinding out excruciatingly long wins using Ajani Vengeant while hiding behind multiple copies of Ghostly Prison and could take far too long to end the game.
However, the recent printing of Nahiri, the Harbinger provided a more proactive game plan, a win condition that could end the game quickly after helping you find the cards you need to stall the game. Because it is still a control deck, you’ll find Wall of Omens, Wrath of God, Anger of the Gods, and targeted removal. Goblin Dark-Dwellers also provides great value, allowing you to recast spells from your graveyard while presenting a very menacing clock.
And in case a removal-based control plan with a clock to finish the game isn’t enough, this deck is packed full of land destruction! Blood Moon makes the opponent’s nonbasic lands useless, while Molten Rain and Boom // Bust take care of the rest. Chalice of the Void and Ensnaring Bridge out of the sideboard help shore up the matchups where the land destruction is just too slow.
By the way, I think Boom // Bust is an underrated Magic card. If you cast Boom targeting your own Darksteel Citadel, you get a two-mana Stone Rain. If you target your Flagstones of Trokair, it can fix your colors by fetching a Sacred Foundry. If you target your own Arid Mesa, you can hold priority and fetch in response to Boom; because Boom still has your opponent’s land as a valid target, it resolves without destroying anything of yours. Finally, you can choose a Boom // Bust card in your graveyard with Goblin Dark-Dwellers and cast the Bust half for a 4/4 Armageddon.
Wrap-Up
Modern is such a great format! #SCGDFW just ended, and the Day 2 Metagame Breakdown shows just how diverse it can be. If you’re looking for a new deck to break into the format or just to shake things up, there’s always something new poking its head up and asking, “How far can you take this deck?”
I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for more cool decks to share with you! Let me know in the comments what your favorite was this week. Have a wonderful week, and as always: happy gaming!