With a Modern Grand Prix coming up in Minneapolis, I thought I’d record some matches with my Modern deck of choice, Melira Pod. I didn’t play it at the last Pro Tour because I thought losing Deathrite Shaman was too much of a problem, but I think I was wrong, and in retrospect I wish I had played it.
My list:
Creatures (29)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Spike Feeder
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 2 Wall of Roots
- 1 Shriekmaw
- 4 Kitchen Finks
- 1 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
- 2 Viscera Seer
- 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
- 1 Spellskite
- 2 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
- 1 Scavenging Ooze
- 2 Voice of Resurgence
- 1 Archangel of Thune
Lands (20)
Spells (11)
Round One
Game one felt pretty representative of your typical game ones. I kept drawing different combo pieces to threaten to kill him and he didn’t have much to disrupt me, so eventually I got the combo through. As I mentioned later, I obviously sideboarded badly for the second game, and lost to enchantments that I really would have liked to Abrupt Decay. In the third game my draw was great except for the Thoughtseize vulnerability, which he exploited, but it was still a draw that put me in a very good position to topdeck my way to a win, which I did.
For my next matches I’m swapping Spellskite and Murderous Redcap between my maindeck and sideboard because I can’t actually gain an arbitrarily large amount of life on MTGO.
Round Two
Game one was incredibly awkward as I managed the infinite-life combo and still almost lost. I think it actually would have played out more similarly than I initially thought in paper Magic as he would have tried to ultimate Elspeth, run me out of creatures, and deck me with a wall of unkillable tokens. Fortunately, he came up just short on spot removal and I was able to combo him out. In game two, I stalled on lands and didn’t expect him to be as aggressive as Hero of Bladehold allowed him to be. Game three went a very different direction as he kept a land-heavy hand and I kept a quick threat with nothing else, but that threat went unanswered and finished him off.
Round Three
After we each took one turn I think my opponent was a favorite to win the game, but drawing Abrupt Decay changed everything and gave me time to Chord of Calling for all my combo pieces. It turns out I would have won game two if I’d just scryed one for time when I started doing that at the end of his turn. I’m not really sure if I should have known to do that. It would have required thinking through possible draws for a lot longer than I felt made sense under the circumstances. After, of course we discovered that I’m really rusty in Modern and have no idea what Grafdigger’s Cage does.
My third draw was great, and most good draws should win in this matchup after sideboarding as long as their hate doesn’t trump your good draw and go unanswered.
Round Four
Well, that was extremely embarrassing. The first two games were fairly normal blowouts. That third game was just a giant travesty. I mentioned that I pretty rusty with Modern, and I somehow decided that Grafdigger’s Cage turned off Eternal Witness. The turn after he killed my Angel I should have tapped properly to play Eternal Witness for my Angel and Scavenging Ooze and won a couple turns later. Every turn after that, I did stupid things instead of winning by playing Eternal Witness… and then when I finally built up a board that would let me win despite that, I attacked carelessly and should have died to a counter-attack but my opponent clicked through his chance to kill me with Scavenging Ooze and I ended up winning despite myself.
Somehow I managed to stumble into winning four matches through a bit of rust, which is related to why I think this is the best deck in the format.