The full spoiler for
Modern Masters 2015
is out, and all of the cards exist on Magic Online, maybe even in your physical collections (most likely some or many, but not all of them). The set will
release just a week before Grand Prix Las Vegas, so players who wait until they can get packs of Modern Masters 2015
will have very little time to prepare.
GP Las Vegas is going to be a huge event. If you want to succeed, just like at any Magic tournament, you should be looking for every edge you can legally
get. Many players will have already played with most or all of these cards in Limited before, and that will help a lot with their initial evaluations, but
context is everything, and you don’t want to over or underrate cards based on how good they were in their previous format.
I strongly recommend finding an online sealed deck generator, creating a pool, and either importing it into Magic Online or putting it together with
physical cards, building a deck, and playing some matches against friends who do the same. You can practice for this event starting now, and if you have
the cards online, it’s actually very easy to do.
I haven’t played enough sealed yet to have a sense of what the best archetypes are or exactly how good each individual card is, moreover, as always, I
think Limited preview articles that try to rate each card are of very low value. What I want to do is look at the set on a macro level and figure out what
kinds of things are going on here, what tools exist to fight them, and how some matchups might play out to try to get you a head start on learning this
Sealed format in your own practice. To that end, I’m going to try to find major themes that are pushed in the set and what synergies and strategies I think
each color pair are designed to focus on, and then draw conclusions from there.
W/U
White and blue both have artifact synergies, so Affinity is a deck that makes sense here. Direct support includes:
White:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Blue:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Mythic:
Gold:
Uncommon:
W/U once again is the clear artifact color pairing in this set. Every artifact that uses colored mana in the set uses white or blue mana (Sunforger also
uses red mana, and some use all colors). The “affinity” deck is pretty straightforward, you just want as many artifacts as possible, and then colored cards
that are absolutely great or that pay you off well for having so many artifacts. Obviously, the nature of the artifacts in the set will heavily inform what
a deck based around them does. The artifacts in this set are almost all either creatures, most of which want other artifacts or otherwise support W/U
artifacts matter decks, and a few of which support five color/sunburst decks, equipment, and mana. Culling Dais, Long-Forgotten Gohei, and Tumble Magnet
are the exceptions. White has strong connections to equipment in Sunspear Shikari and Taj-Nar Swordsmith, especially because it also has several double
strike creatures, which seems to be a major theme of W/R, which I’ll get to later.
So many cards in this deck care more about raw number of artifacts than anything else, so most W/U artifacts matter decks will end up playing almost every
artifact in the pool because cards like Rusted Relic are great if they’re always on, but blank otherwise, and while the swings might be worth it, you
really need to do everything in your power to make sure they work if you’re going in that direction.
The W/U artifact deck looks very aggressive. The payoff you’re getting is mostly undercosted/over-statted creatures, and you have to play equipment, much
of which is very aggressively focused. This is the W/U aggro strategy.
I suspect that a less artifact-focused, more controlling W/U “good stuff” deck with loose synergy and no real mechanical focus exists, but it will be less
common, and it will just look like a traditional W/U control or skies deck. This would come together in Sealed if you don’t have enough playable artifacts
to support the artifacts matter themes but have good rares in those colors. I don’t think that deck is likely to be great unless it’s all individually
outstanding cards because of how powerful the synergy based decks are, and counters and removal to break up opposing synergies will be extremely important.
That said, going this way if you have to is better than forcing artifacts if you don’t have enough, as all of your cards likely stop working then.
W/B
W/B is the spiritcraft/Spirit and arcane matters color pair. The nature of soulshift is that this is going to be a very grindy controlling deck, where
you’ll want to trade off your cheap cards and then get them back by trading off your more expensive cards, looking to have inevitability, and the deck
looks awesome and extremely fun to me.
Metalcraft and affinity for artifacts both heavily rely on having a critical mass of artifacts in play, and all of their cards fall apart if they can’t
keep multiple cards on the table. This deck has a bit of card advantage, but it doesn’t have anything like Sanctum Gargoyle in the first Modern Masters that makes it good at trading or grinding value going long. Affinity here really has to be an aggressive deck, and the best way to
beat them is just to destroy enough of their cards that they can’t keep metalcraft. When sideboarding against an artifact deck in this format, you likely
want to become whatever deck you have that’s best at removing as many of your opponent’s artifacts and creatures from the board as possible.
White:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Black:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Gold:
Uncommon:
*The other gold card is Pillory of the Sleepless, which is obviously a great card that fits very well with this strategy, but it doesn’t have explicit
Spirit synergies.
Rare:
Artifact:
Uncommon:*
*Neither of these say “Spirit” on them, but I think the sacrifice outlet and grindy nature of the cards play well with Spirits, and the cards fit well
here.
Rare:
This is definitely a control deck, but it’s worth noting that Devouring Greed is an extremely powerful card. Between that and Thief of Hope, if your deck
is mostly Spirits, it can be easy to win while dealing very little damage to your opponent in combat. Waxmane Baku also plays well at letting you lock up a
board and then set up a turn where you tap all their blockers, attack for half their life, and Devouring Greed away the rest of their life. When playing
against Spirits, you need to be sure that you don’t let their board get too crowded because of this, but you’re in an awkward position, because
aggressively trading turns on soulshift and Death Denied. This exact dilemma is part of why their inevitability is so strong and why you’ll be best served
against them by finding a threat they can’t trade with and ending the game as soon as possible.
I’m already seeing interesting tension in these matchups. On the one hand, W/U Affinity should be great against W/B Spirits because it has big creatures
and evasive creatures, and it will be good at ending the game quickly. On the other hand, black and white have a good amount of removal, and they can break
the artifact synergies pretty well. In this case, the black and white creatures are horrible at trading with the artifact creatures, so it’s basically just
going to be a function of how much removal the white and black deck has. The more it’s focused on Spirits and building a board full of creatures, the worse
its matchup will be, and the more it’s focused on killing the opponent’s stuff, especially with Nameless Inversion and Terashi’s Grasp, the better it will
be.
Removal is atrocious against this deck. I’m not saying you should side out all of it, but you want to choose a strategy that isn’t highly reliant on it.
W/R
This is a weird archetype that we haven’t really seen before. This color pair is very much about double strike and pump spells:
White:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Red:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Gold:
Uncommon:
Artifact:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
There’s a surprising amount of support for this, so I’m very confident it’s what these colors are designed to do. Apostle’s Blessing looks outstanding in
this deck. When playing against this kind of deck, remember that they have multiple ways of giving a creature flying and that they have a ton of pump.
Don’t tap out against a double striking creature you can’t block and expect to live, and try to use removal on your turn when they’re tapped out.
While they have some counterplay against blockers, for the most part, blockers are very good against them. You don’t want to try to block with big
creatures, those will just die to pump spells; what you want is to be able to chump block their double striker every turn and go wide around them. Spirits
should be pretty good at doing this, tokens should be even better. They should be well-positioned to race other aggro decks except that they’re vulnerable
to swarms, and like W/U (and unlike W/B), basically any removal spell is great against this deck, as the dream is just to strand them with useless pump
spells.
For the most part, anything you know about playing against decks like W/U Heroic in Standard should carry over here.
W/G
This pair is about going wide, and it’s great at it.
White:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Green:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Gold:
Uncommon:
Rare:
This deck looks like a slightly better version of the M15 Limited-dominating G/W Convoke deck, and play patterns should be very similar. To beat them, you
want to focus on sweepers of any kind and aggressive evasive creatures. Other than that, blockers with low power and high toughness are good if you have a
plan for dealing with their Fortify-type cards. One surprisingly important note: This set doesn’t have anything that resembles a fog effect at any rarity
in any color, except Cryptic Command, which only really works against the sorcery portion of the “pump my team” cards (or as any counterspell would). I’m
really disappointed by this fact, as I think they offer important counterplay for this strategy, but that’s the world we live in. This actually makes this
strategy much safer and more powerful than it would otherwise be in Sealed. Shrivel is the most important common in the set for fighting this strategy.
U/B
This is a proliferate strategy, but there’s no infect to go with it, and it doesn’t have a central creature type like Faeries in the last Modern Masters.
Blue:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Black:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Artifact:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
The gold cards are just good control cards and don’t support the explicit synergy of the overlapping mechanics here, and I think that correctly points to a
color pair that doesn’t have to focus strongly on its explicit synergies. I think some portion of U/B decks will care a lot about proliferating, but I
think Steady Progress is a card that will get cut pretty often, and that this color pair will most often be about the synergies that naturally exist
between good removal spells and card draw, and this should generally play out like a traditional control deck. The bloodthirst + graft + proliferate
interactions do allow for a more synergistic aggro deck to come together some portion of the time, but even then, the nature of proliferate (that it takes
time to get going) is going to force the deck into a more controlling position against most of the true aggro decks of the format. Still, the ability to
turn the corner and close the game out quickly is going to be critical in some matchups. For example, it gives U/B some hope of beating W/B, which it
wouldn’t have if it was just relying on removal and card draw without a dedicated end game plan.
U/R
The most explicit overlapping mechanic here is Elementals, but that’s not the only thing that can be done. Still, to keep a consistent pattern, here are
the cards that explicitly support that strategy:
Blue:
Commons:
Uncommons:
Rare:
Red:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Gold:
Uncommon:
Rare:
The Elemental synergies are actually supported by relatively few cards when compared to the synergies in the other colors, which makes me think it might be
hard to really focus on them in Sealed. I’m guessing U/R will often end up playing as a more traditional U/R control deck, much like I expect from U/B. I
think sealed decks with strong blue and red cards will often want to be R/G splash blue and the others, as I’ll get to later, and that the dedicated
Elemental decks might be more likely to come together in Draft, where they’ll fall apart if people are competing for them.
Another option with U/R is to use the blue proliferate shell with the two common and two uncommon bloodthirst creatures in red. Those creatures are great
and pair very well with Helium Squirter and Thrummingbird.
It’s hard to say how best to attack U/R, because I think it can be built in a lot of different ways, so it’s better to just see how what it’s doing lines
up against the more consistent patterns of the opposing deck.
U/G
Blue has proliferate synergies with every color but white, and green shares graft with blue, which makes up the mechanical focus of the pair.
Blue:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Green:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Gold:
Uncommon:
Artifact:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
The support here is pretty deep, and this definitely has a very Simic feel (both original Ravnica and Return to Ravnica). The gameplan is
to lock up the board and start growing your creatures, or occasionally, to very quickly make your creatures bigger than your opponent can deal with and
start attacking with monsters. This is definitely an aggressive deck rather than a control deck, but it goes big rather than going wide, and it plays long
rather than building a critical turn like W/R.
B/R
B/R as a color pair is a little unfocused. They overlap on bloodthirst and Elementals, with black’s Changelings helping out with the Elemental count. The
mana fixing from Smokebraider, and to some extent Incandescent Soulstoke, makes me think Grixis might be a common pairing, and it could focus on any
combination of Elementals or bloodthrist/proliferate or card draw + removal. Cards I’m listing here are cards that support either bloodthirst aggro or
Elemental synergies, as I think this is usually looking to be a somewhat generic aggro deck that combines those elements:
Black:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Mythic:
Red:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Gold:
Uncommon:
Rare:
This seems like a deck that W/B is looking to prey on, but I think it might be big and mana efficient enough to be well-positioned against G/W, especially
as it has access to Shrivel.
B/G
This deck is about grinding and killing its own creatures for benefit, and it borrows the entire token engine from W/G (which is very well-supported just
in green), but it uses those tokens a little differently.
Black:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Green:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Gold:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Artifacts:
Uncommon:
It’s noteworthy that this color pair has all the Eldrazi spawn and is looking to grind much more than W/G, which is looking to end the game with an
Overrun/Trumpet Blast effect. This deck is likely the best shell for playing Eldrazi, though they’re also good in any control or ramp deck.
This deck is less vulnerable to removal of any kind than W/G, but it’s also less capable of ending a game quickly, which makes it more vulnerable to bombs
or otherwise powerful lategames, especially Devouring Greed.
G/R
The shared mechanic here is domain, so this is likely often going to be a G/R/x/x/x deck.
Red:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Mythic:
Green:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Mythic:
Gold:
Uncommon:
Rare:
Artifacts:
Common:
Uncommon:
Rare:
I really like this direction for G/R. It’s a welcome departure from Gruul, and I think there’s actually plenty of fixing to actually make things like
Dragonsoul Knight work. This seems like a pretty solid core for a lot of sealed decks since it lets you play all your (non-synergy based) bombs and a lot
of removal, and it’s highly customizable in game 2.
I think it’ll likely be weakest against blue control decks with counterspells and aggressive decks that don’t give it time to set up, and it should be able
to go over the top of other board control decks like W/B and B/G.
Further testing will tell how good each of these seeded archetypes actually are, but with a set that’s handpicked to support a few specific archetypes like
this one, it’s important to have a solid foundation on the intended fundamentals of the format, which I hope I’ve illustrated here.