The very first Modern PTQ season is going into the final countdown, with a bunch of PTQs for my readers and GP Turin for me. I doubt Modern will be played during the entire year, but I’m looking forward to the GP with the high hopes. I’ll be very excited to play Modern next winter. Now, before finally switching my attention to Standard for some months, I’m going to provide some tech to fix the current state of two important decks in Modern: U/W/R Delver and Melira. This article will also be useful in the future to those of you who will be desperately searching for a deck to play at GP Columbus at the end of July.
This season was a sort of breakthrough for the Russian Magic community. It started with two Top 25 results at PT Philly for my teammate Egor Khodasevich (zinzinnat on Magic Online) and Ukrainian Oleksandr Onosov (drVendigo), followed by Mikhail Stroev’s (Backstreet) 10th place at GP Lincoln, Dmitry Zaychenko’s (RealDizzy) Magic Online PTQ win, and Dmitry Butakov’s (Butakov) win of the first season of the Magic Online Championship Series (MOCS). Russian players are still far from Nicolay Potovin’s past success, but I believe that the growing potential of our community will soon be realized.
Quick aside about name-dropping
I know that the names I mentioned (and will mention later in the text) don’t say much for the most part to my readers, but this season was a breakthrough for our community also in terms of Magic Online involvement. Many good players have started to play in online PTQs, so I have provided you some worthy nicknames to search for at mtgonline.com.
End aside
Moreover, Russian players not only scored about ten Magic Online PTQ Top 8s but were also involved in format evolution at a worldwide level. I covered the story of how U/W/R Delver aka BORemandOS was created in my previous article. Unfortunately, none of the three deck’s creators qualified for Barcelona (despite eight PTQ Top 8s on Magic Online and in real life), but some other people did it with the very first list. A whole month is a lot of time for such a fast-evolving format, so I have two more lists of the deck to share.
The biggest problem for the initial BORemandOS list was Jund. It was hard to beat, even with Kor Firewalker in the sideboard. So Alexander Privalov (PrEvil), Alexander Syomkin (_Blaze777_) and Ivan Koltsov (no Magic Online account as far as I know) used the following list, which they called Moscow Lightings, at a PTQ in Kiev, Ukraine:
Creatures (17)
Lands (24)
Spells (19)
You can note the powerful Lightning Angel instead of Steppe Lynx and perhaps more importantly the switch to Mana Leak instead of Remand. This deck is not purely tempo anymore; it likes to solve problems permanently more than to draw additional Lightning Bolts. This deck’s best play is turn 3 Vendilion Clique, turn 4 Lightning Angel (which tends to be unanswered due to Clique).
Another important addition is Kamigawa legendary lands. I’ve seen Eiganjo Castle and Minamo, School at Water’s Edge in action, and they were both very powerful with Geist of Saint Traft and Vendilion Clique. After this "forgotten" cycle of lands was added, it became clear that the singleton of Oboro, Palace in the Clouds is very good (because of Steppe Lynx and generally because of things like Liliana of the Veil). Island is claimed by some to be the most powerful Magic card ever printed. One Oboro in this sort of deck is even more powerful than an Island! Aside from the U/W/R Delver deck, Shizo, Death’s Storehouse really shines with Geist of Saint Traft in the U/W/B Delver deck.
The next chapter in my story about Delver is that Modern metagame shifted in favor of Tron decks (with Charles Gindy Magic Online PTQ win with G/R Tron), and players decided to go back to Steppe Lynx and to add Molten Rain in the sideboard. The new deck threw Alexander and Ivan into another Top 8 where one of them lost to U/R Tron and another beat him to lose to the mirror match in the finals.
Creatures (15)
Lands (23)
Spells (22)
Sideboard
This list again has a bad matchup against Jund (though "bad" doesn’t mean "unwinnable"), but Jund’s popularity has decreased now. The Tron matchup is very good, and there’s a lot of sideboard hate for the potentially bad Melira. Both U/W/R decks are great illustrations of metagaming, and you can choose the one that fits your needs best for an upcoming PTQ or GP Turin.
Another Modern deck with some Russian impact is Melira. The first industry standard of the deck was set by Andrew Cuneo’s list from GP Lincoln, while at the same time Magic Online user zwischenzug was one of the first players to adopt Noble Hierarch instead of Wall of Roots. No, he’s not Russian; he’s from the United States. Dear zwischenzug, I still don’t know your name, but I want to thank you for the great work that you did with my teammate Andrey Kochurov (Medivhre on Magic Online) to improve and test this great deck.
The deck itself was covered well in recent articles by Dan Unwin (found here) and Jeremy Neeman (found here, Premium), so I’ll present my list and cover some white spots and rebuttals.
First of all, you should clearly understand that Melira with Wall of Roots and Melira with Noble Hierarch are different decks, not just different builds of one deck. The first one is a combo deck with the option to win through combat damage; the second one is a Gavony Township-based beatdown with the option of a sudden combo kill. It’s really a seldom occurrence. I normally try to combo off in two cases: if my opponent somehow lets me do that safely and immediately or if I have no other way to win.
The second important point is mana base. Dan’s deck contains 22 lands with three Gavony Townships and a Dryad Arbor. Dan stated that he might want to play even one more Gavony Township, but my own colored mana availability restrictions are probably much stronger than his (and I still suffer more mulligans because of starting hands with Gavony Township and Swamp than I’d agreed to share), so I think that even his current mana base is impossible. The decision to play or not to play Dryad Arbor is debatable, but if you choose to play it I’d insist to include it instead of creature as a 23rd land. The difference between fifteen and sixteen lands producing green mana on turn 1 is important, and Dryad Arbor far more comfortably fits the deck with multiple Wall of Roots.
Another important topic was mentioned in the comments of Dan’s article by Andrew Cuneo himself: the lack of maindeck discard. Two or three Thoughtseizes fit into the deck perfectly, and they solve a lot of problems at almost any stage of the game. You can know if you’re able to combo off safely, discard an opponent’s combo piece (for example, Through the Breach), etc.
Andrew Cuneo also stated that he found Gavony Township slow and unnecessary in Melira. I must disagree with this position. Township is super-important because it allows our mana dorks to become serious threats (I won a lot of matches with Birds of Paradise attacking over stalled ground). It’s even more valuable in the matchups where we’re going to side out combo and play a more midrange game. When you have Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap, and active Gavony Township against Jund, it’s almost impossible to lose the game.
For more about Jund, here’s Jeremy Neeman sideboard against it:
-1 Orzhov Pontiff
-1 Ethersworn Canonist
-1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
-1 Viscera Seer
-1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
-1 Murderous Redcap
-1 Noble Hierarch
-1 Qasali Pridemage
+4 Putrefy
+2 Obstinate Baloth
+1 Wurmcoil Engine
+1 Nekrataal
Jeremy left almost all the combo in the deck and sided in a lot of removal. My plan is very different.
-2 Viscera Seer
-2 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
-3 Birthing Pod
-2 Chord of Calling
All of the mentioned cards are singletons post-board, and it’s normal to side out all of them (excluding last Viscera Seer because of mana curve). I don’t side out the ways to kill Dark Confidant and Grim Lavamancer, I don’t side out cheap effective creatures like Qasali Pridemage, and I don’t side out a flier that doesn’t die to Lightning Bolt (Linvala, Keeper of Silence). Jund has a lot of removal post-board (including Jund Charm) and probably Grafdigger’s Cage, so it’s impossible to win with combo. This is the moment when our deck becomes true Gavony Township Aggro.
What I side in (I still didn’t post the list, I know. Please have some patience):
+1 Obstinate Baloth
+1 Wurmcoil Engine
+1 Nekrataal
+1 Harmonic Sliver
+1 Qasali Pridemage
+1 Fulminator Mage
+1 Maelstrom Pulse
And finally +2 Lingering Souls
I’m going to play with a lot of fast, advantage generating creatures, so I desperately need to have a lot of ways to beat Dark Confidant and Grim Lavamancer. After that, they’re almost dead because you’re in the far better position. Some of my friends even suggested not siding out Harmonic Sliver for Grafdigger’s Cage because their Finks become as bad as yours, but I believe that the ability to trade Murderous Redcap with Treetop Village is too important to ignore.
Lingering Souls fits into this plan perfectly. I can’t play six Kitchen Finks, but Strangleroot Geist and Lingering Souls do the same job. Moreover, Lingering Souls is better than Kitchen Finks against decks with Mana Leak (and it can trade with Delver of Secrets and Vendilion Clique). When I added Lingering Souls to the Melira deck, I fully understood why they banned in Block Constructed.
Now it’s decklist time (I call this Ban Lingering Souls in Every Format):
Creatures (29)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Wall of Roots
- 1 Orzhov Pontiff
- 1 Saffi Eriksdotter
- 1 Shriekmaw
- 1 Reveillark
- 4 Kitchen Finks
- 2 Murderous Redcap
- 1 Ethersworn Canonist
- 1 Ranger of Eos
- 3 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Qasali Pridemage
- 1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
- 3 Viscera Seer
- 3 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
- 1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (22)
Spells (9)
A few more notes: Ethersworn Canonist is a tribute to the recent success of Storm on Magic Online. This slot can be filled with a Spellskite (a weak option, sometimes it’s necessary but it’s the worst card in the deck), a fourth Melira, and even a Tarmogoyf (seriously, it’s good in this deck in contrast to the deck with Wall of Roots).
Saffi Eriksdotter is nice substitute to Spellskite with added bonuses like protecting Linvala in the mirror match and copying Fulminator Mage against Tron. Saffi also gives you additional combo (Saffi Eriksdotter, Viscera Seer, Reveillark, and Murderous Redcap). This combo is not the one you really want to assemble, but you can take an opponent in the mirror by surprise (most players think that they’re relatively safe with their own Melira on the table). You can also use Fulminator Mage instead of Murderous Redcap to destroy all of an opponent’s lands (I did it against Tron once).
Heap Doll and Withered Wretch’s roles are another important rebuttal I have for Dan Unwin. While both of these cards are technically graveyard hate, they’re very different and are not battling for the same slot. Heap Doll is solely for Gifts Ungiven—it’s the only realistic way to remove Unburial Rites from the graveyard in time. Heap Doll’s speed is also good against Storm combo. Withered Wretch is a lot slower (and hard to cast naturally early due to its BB cost), so it shines against Life from the Loam and the mirror. There’s nothing really wrong with siding in both of them, but you should understand that you’ll have one good card and one narrow in any case.
That’s all for today; good luck to everyone playing in PTQs this weekend!
And if you plan to play at Grand Prix Turin and see a short guy in a StarCityGames.com T-shirt there, don’t hesitate to come say hello!
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