So, assuming you’re reading this article on the day that it was printed, it’s been seven days since the Banned and Restricted announcement in which Punishing Fire and Wild Nacatl got das boot. As I’m sure you’ve read by now, this opens up a plethora of possibilities in Modern, both bannings having a similar effect (for different reasons) on the “other” possible aggro decks of the format.
The banning of Wild Nacatl has a couple of effects. First, it eliminates the question “why play (Insert Random Aggro Creature other than W.N.) when I could just be playing Wild Nacatl?” Let’s be honest; in a format with duals/shocklands, there isn’t a better aggro creature to be had. There is no good answer to the above question. With that in mind, if someone wanted to be attacking in Modern prior to last week, they were playing with the mean kitty from Naya.
Now, people have the option of looking elsewhere (well, “have the option” should probably say “are required” instead). The second reason why banning Nacatl helps other aggro decks is that they don’t have to worry about their one- and two-drops being outclassed by a one-drop on turn one. Seriously, can you imagine going through all the hoops to drop a Goldmeadow Stalwart only to have it outclassed immediately? Why go through the trouble of leveling up a Student of Warfare or Figure of Destiny? How bad is a Goblin Guide when it can’t even win a battle early in the game (when it’s supposed to be at its best)?
Punishing Fire has an obvious effect; you can now play tribal strategies. By this I mean that your “lords” aren’t in as much peril as they were before. Now, admittedly, lords are inherently fragile, in that they pump everyone else but not themselves, but with Punishing Fire / Grove of the Burnwillows running rampant, it was like trying to run a marathon in a heat wave as a snowman.
Now, your Lords of Atlantis and Adaptive Automatons have a slightly higher chance of surviving!
In all seriousness, these changes do open up the possibilities in the format a bit. Since the next PTQ season will be Modern, as we all know, it seems prudent to start looking into possible decks moving forward, as even though it seems like it was two cards that were banned, in all reality, a slew of other cards became viable (at least for now, while there’s no real established metagame). Today we’re going to focus on aggressive-to-midrange creature decks.
Keep in mind, however, that these lists are incredibly rough and meant solely to both stir the creative juices and to also remind the folks out there what possibilities exist that they may know but have forgotten in the stream of Nacatl dominance (in the red zone, that is). You need to be prepared come PTQ season, so think of this as your “Cliffs Notes!”
Affinity
The “only other viable aggro deck” during the Days of the Nacatl, Affinity now has the unfortunate luck of being “Public Enemy #1.” Know what that means?
A lot of Ancient Grudges. No, more than that. Probably even more than you’re thinking now. Now, add a couple more.
Seriously though, if you’re thinking about running this deck, you better have a sweet backup plan. The amount of artifact hate that’s currently available in Modern means that, while Affinity still has the bull’s-eye on its back, the deck will be suppressed. At first, I predict that people will proclaim the death of Affinity and how oh-so-bad the deck is, yet once people go to sleep on the deck, someone will come along and whop you upside your Cranial Plating.
Luckily, I don’t have to “make up” a list for this one! Here’s a great starting point by Tzu-ching Kuo, who went 6-0 in the Modern portion of Worlds with this list:
Creatures (26)
Lands (15)
Spells (19)
Sideboard
Another direction one could go would be Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. The deck wouldn’t be so hyper aggressive (with some lists going all the way into Fling territory) but would have more long-game capabilities, though the possibility may exist that you don’t even want to make it to the late game and should just stick with the Galvanic Blast versions.
Zoo
Yes, even though Wild Nacatl is no longer available to Zoo lists, that doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to beat down and burn with cats and apes and knights and such. People proclaim that there are versions that could easily survive without Wild Nacatl, pointing to the Big Zoo lists like Richard Bland’s list from Worlds:
Creatures (18)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (14)
However, there are two issues with this.
First off, this deck also loses one of its biggest draws, the Grove/Fires combo. Second, the reason Big Zoo was successful was because it preyed on Little Zoo. Unfortunately, with Little Zoo being much less viable now that Wild Nacatl is gone, that means that Big Zoo is going to have a hard time picking on as many decks as it did before.
Now, that’s not to say we can’t have a Naya-colored deck that attacks/burns and does well. Quite the opposite. I love the concept of a slightly more midrange version featuring Bloodbraid Elf. I’m assuming most of you know what I’m referring to here, but for those that don’t, I present Boom / Bust Zoo:
Creatures (22)
Lands (22)
Spells (16)
Once again we see the issue of replacing Wild Nacatl. What are our options?
Well, we could just go simply and stick with a one-drop, the obvious one being Kird Ape. Is Kird Ape as good as Wild Nacatl? Of course not. Is it good enough for what we’re trying to do here? I can’t say for sure honestly. With this deck, we’ve gone more into the midrange sector of decks; we’re not trying to be hyper aggressive and burn them out on turn four. What Wild Nacatl gave to us in this deck was the capability of incredibly fast starts that could give you free and easy wins. Nothing wrong with that. It also provided us something to play out before we Armageddon all of our (and their) lands away so we can win before they recover, which is also important. It even gave us a way to recover after Armageddon, with a simply sandbagged land doing the trick.
On the other side of the equation, Blood Moon is a clear nonbo with Wild Nacatl.
So we could make ourselves a dedicated Blood Moon deck with Bloodbraid Elves. The question then becomes, do we still want the white? I’m thinking yes because having an active Knight of the Reliquary when you hit Boom / Bust off of Bloodbraid Elf seems amazing. Not to mention, we’re going to be playing with Noble Hierarchs (and possibly even Birds of Paradise), so white isn’t so much of a tall order.
If we want to drive more towards the “midrange” category than before, here’s a possible (read: probably bad and completely untested) starting point:
Creatures (22)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 2 Magus of the Moon
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 2 Woolly Thoctar
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
Lands (22)
Spells (15)
Remember; if you cast the Boom portion of Boom / Bust, you can target one of your fetchlands and one of their lands and sacrifice the fetchland in response, turning the card into a veritable Sinkhole (as the spell will still try to resolve as much as possible). You can do this as early as turn two with a mana accelerator like Hierarch or Birds, providing you with ten ways you can start disrupting your opponent’s mana as early as turn two (provided you hit the turn-one mana accelerant).
While this list is rough, it’s a decent starting point. Woolly Thoctar? Yeah, it’s just a big, dumb beater. But that’s just it; it’s a big, dumb beater. If you curve from Hierarch-to-Thoctar-to-Bloodbraid Elf (hitting Boom / Bust), you’ve basically just won the game. A Bloodbraid alone gives them time to recover, but setting them back to the Stone Age with eight power on your side of the board gives them all of two turns to come up with something.
The Magus gives you the option of hitting a “moon effect” on turn two without Blood Moon.
Once again, this list is rather raw and untuned. You may want two Qasali Pridemages over the two Thoctars (as they didn’t ban Splinter Twin, so you might want to be ready), and Elspeth, Knight-Errant is a very good card. You could also go with Lotus Cobra as well, though I don’t know how well this would work out in actual practice.
Merfolk
This is one of the decks most helped by the loss of Punishing Fire. Merfolk is a deck that wants to get its lords online (Lord of Atlantis, Merrow Reejerey, Merfolk Sovereign, Coralhelm Commander) and overwhelm the opponent with large super-pumped fish-men. With Punishing Fire in the format, you were probably never going to hit a second lord effect to get your men out of Punishing Fire range, at least not at a reasonable rate.
Now, while you still aren’t guaranteed to keep all your lords, you’re also guaranteed that your opponent won’t have a recurring shock to keep hitting your guys over and over and over. Lightning Bolt is still a very real card though, so keep that in mind, but at least Stomping Ground doesn’t allow you to recur it turn after turn for next-to-no cost.
Another card that I’m probably going to start picking up in trades, where feasible, is going to be Aether Vial. Basically this card was nigh-unplayable before, and even though I still believe Zoo will still exist in some form (honestly, you can replace Wild Nacatl and still be fine), it won’t be as oppressive as before. Which means that people will start picking up decks like Merfolk (which traditionally have terrible Zoo matchups) and rocking them at upcoming PTQs.
While I’m not Merfolk expert, here’s a starting point for what you could expect in Modern Merfolk lists:
Creatures (23)
- 4 Lord of Atlantis
- 4 Merrow Reejerey
- 4 Silvergill Adept
- 4 Cursecatcher
- 1 Merfolk Sovereign
- 4 Coralhelm Commander
- 2 Phantasmal Image
Lands (23)
Spells (14)
Once again, a very rough list meant to stir some creative juices. This seems like a great home for Moorland Haunt in Modern, since this list will be able to put it to great use late game. I don’t know how many I could fit without messing with the mana/curve. I’m not sure if Seachrome Coast would be better than Mystic Gate here, but I don’t like the thought of having too many lands that don’t produce blue mana on turn one by themselves (though that’s only relevant for Cursecatcher, so maybe it’s not even a legitimate concern). Also, Cryptic Command and Seachrome Coast probably don’t like each other, so this is an idea that would need testing to thoroughly flesh out.
Will this be the list you see others rocking in PTQs? For those people’s sake, I hope not and completely doubt it. I like the concepts though; Phantasmal Image gives you a chance to copy whatever lord you need to, even giving you another veritable “lord” at the two casting cost slot for Aether Vial. Mana Leaks may be better served as some number of Spell Pierces, but you probably need something to answer certain threats like Tarmogoyf that you otherwise would have issues with. Path to Exile can only do so much!
Boros
After the loss of Wild Nacatl, why are we even worried about playing green mana anymore? Tarmogoyf? What if I told you you could win long before Tarmogoyf becomes a formidable threat?
Petr Brozek broke out Brozek Boros last year and showed that hyper-aggressive landfall strategies are at least somewhat viable in older formats than Zendikar Block Constructed. Also, with Punishing Fire gone, it’s almost like the DCI is taunting us now, kind of like they’ve stuck the neck of Modern out there and are daring us to try and take it off. Well, why not try?
Here’s yet another rough list. As a starting point, I used Brozek’s list, but thought I’d try out something in the list:
Creatures (15)
Lands (20)
Spells (25)
This list is almost identical to Petr’s because I don’t know how much more I could ratchet up the aggro factor here. This is about as fast as it’s going to get. However, something I really wanted to try was the synergy between Hellspark Elemental / Zektar Shrine tokens and Brimstone Volley. Unfortunately, you’re probably never going to hit five mana to be able to pull of the Hellspark side of the equation, but curving from Steppe Lynx (using Flagstones of Trokair) into Zektar Shrine (using fetchland, opponent down to at least 16) into another Flagstones (fully powering your Shrine, making Steppe Lynx a 6/7) allows you to have a turn-three kill. Even if your opponent blocks your Lynx here, they’re still going to be at all of four life against a deck full of burn as early as turn three.
Obviously this is a “nut draw” in the highest order considering the deck only plays 20 lands (Brozek had 19, but I’m not as adventurous), but the deck is truly capable of some nutty draws. I like the Ghost Quarters even though the format doesn’t have Dark Depths; it gives you another “fetchland” while also dealing with problematic manlands if they so happen to show up.
Conclusion
These are just a couple of the aggro decks that are at least viable come PTQ season. There are plenty of routes we can take, such as White Weenie, Doran, Ancient Ziggurat Aggro, Goblins, Elves, etc… but these are some of the decks I feel will be at least respectable come PTQ season. I’ll be testing some of these lists out in the coming weeks, and I’ll hopefully be able to provide you guys with some real spice here soon. I’m also going to look further into the midrange lists, not just aggro, and start looking into how newer cards interact with the other cards available in Modern (I’m looking at you, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas) that haven’t been explored yet. I’m sure there are exciting things waiting to be discovered, and I’m ready for the challenge!
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m really looking forward to Modern season. There are going to be some rather large changes in my life coming up soon, which means I’ll have more time to game and playtest, so hopefully I can bring the tech soon enough!
Hope all of your Christmases were merry!
@mikemartinlfs on Twitter