Searching For The Right Creature List In Modern

With the release of Modern Masters 2015 last weekend and the trio of Grand Prix coming up this weekend that will mark the biggest single day of
competitive Magic ever, it is an exciting time to be a fan of Modern. Whether you’re looking to battle your way to a Pro Tour invite, be a part of Magic
history, or just open a Tarmogoyf or two, Modern Masters Weekend has something awesome in store for you.

In honor of this momentous occasion, this week’s Standard Super League shifted formats from the land of Siege Rhino and Goblin Rabblemaster to that of
Splinter Twin and Cranial Plating. Oddly enough, though, neither of those two pillars of the format found their way into any of the competitors’ decks this
week. Among the eight players, there were seven distinct decks, but neither Splinter Twin nor Affinity were among them.

With both the Season Two Invitational and Grand Prix Charlotte coming up featuring Modern, there are a lot of opportunities to play the format coming up
soon. I want to talk today about some of the decks I’ve been trying recently, what’s worked and what hasn’t, and some ideas that have caught my attention.

Naya Company

Brian Kibler

Test deck on 05-26-2015

Modern

Creatures (25)

Lands (23)

Spells (12)

Sideboard

I shared my exact list in my last article and video, and my performance in my league match wasn’t much
different from my poor showing in the videos. I was paired against Tom Ross, who played G/R Tron since he knew he was going up against me, and fair
creature decks are exactly what Tron preys upon.

I didn’t really put up too much of a fight, in part because my experimentation with an all creature sideboard plan to support Collected Company meant that
I was missing some of the key cards for that matchup, like Stony Silence.

While I was able to keep Tom from assembling Tron for a while in game 2 with some early Fulminator Mages, I didn’t have a lot of pressure to back them up.
Ultimately, his parade of colorless haymakers was too much, and I succumbed to the trio of Karn, Ugin, and Emrakul.

Even outside of my SSL result, I’ve been pretty disappointed in this deck so far. It’s possible that I’ve been coming down on the wrong side of variance
particularly often, but I’ve frequently found myself with too much mana and not enough to do with it. My original idea was that Collected Company would
offer long game power and resilience to removal, but so far I’ve often felt like it often just hasn’t done quite enough.

While Collected Company is powerful and offers a lot of tactical value, it’s also fairly slow. It’s replacing similarly costed cards from previous
iterations of my Naya lists, but those were always cards that had an immediate impact on the board- things like Thundermaw Hellkite or Ajani Vengeant.
Collected Company develops a lot of board presence for a single card, but all you’re able to do immediately is block with them. It’s not going to suddenly
win you the game out of nowhere like a hasty Dragon, and in a format as fast as Modern, that can be important.

Similarly, while Collected Company adds the ability to generate threats at instant speed, it doesn’t actually allow your deck to win from most board
positions from which it otherwise could not. If your opponent has something like a Wurmcoil Engine or Phyrexian Obliterator in play, digging for more
copies of big dopey ground creatures like Tarmogoyf isn’t going to do anything. But Thundermaw Hellkite? Stormbreath Dragon? Chandra, Pyromaster? Those are
cards that can actually allow you to win those games.

Basically, while Collected Company offers more power, it’s more of the same power your deck already has – just a little bit slower. While it clearly has a
home in more synergy-oriented decks like Elves and Melira that can leverage digging up pieces of their engine more immediately, I don’t think it’s what
Naya is really looking for.

What is Naya looking for, then? Well, I think it might be time to speed things up a little bit.

Zoo

Brian Kibler

Test deck on 05-29-2015

Modern

Creatures (29)

Lands (23)

Spells (8)

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile

Sideboard

I’ve generally been a proponent of the big Naya midrange style of Zoo deck as opposed to the all-out rush that’s historically been more popular. I like
playing a deck that can change gears based on the kind of matchup it finds itself in. I also don’t like playing a deck that is vulnerable to the kind of
anti-aggro cards people typically play, so I prefer to go a little bit bigger to give myself a stronger long game. In particular, when Birthing Pod was
legal, there were a lot of Kitchen Finks and Wall of Roots out there, which could make cards like Kird Ape really embarrassing.

When there are a lot of aggro and anti-aggro decks out there, I prefer to be firmly in the camp of Loxodon Smiter. Smiter is a totally solid card against
aggressive decks like fast Zoo as well as many of the decks built to beat those fast Zoo decks, since it doesn’t die to Lightning Bolt or Lightning Helix,
and happens to be bigger than most other creatures around his cost, including Kitchen Finks. Being able to sneak in under countermagic and having
resilience against discard isn’t bad either.

Now, though, the metagame has sharply shifted. While there are still Kitchen Finks out there, they’re not as omnipresent as they once were. And without
those Finks holding decks like Burn at bay, it seems like the Modern format has gotten even faster. Failing to make a play in the first couple turns is
almost a death sentence, as I’ve discovered many times as I sat with a hand full of three- and four-drops. Smiter is only good in matchups where it can
actually attack and block – against decks like Affinity, Infect, or Pyromancer Ascension, it’s just a big dumb elephant who barely does anything.

This take on the deck still has many of the most powerful elements of the Naya shell, but seeks to play lower to the ground instead of going bigger. The
addition of Kird Ape dramatically increases the number of proactive turn 1 plays available, allowing you to apply pressure in the crucial early turns much
more often, while Knight of the Reliquary still offers a strong lategame with Kessig Wolf Run to break through stalemates.

Ghor-Clan Rampager is probably the most surprising inclusion since it’s usually only seen in the most aggressive Zoo decks. With the popularity of not only
Tarmogoyf, but also Siege Rhino and Tasigur the Golden Fang, I felt like the deck wanted some more ways to break through against big ground creatures
besides just Path to Exile. I actually hate playing Path since you rarely want to use it early in a lot of creature-based matchups, and against combo or
control opponents it often just sits in your hand. Rampager is a way to help push past opposing blockers that can also double as a kind of burn spell to
help close out the game, so it’ll rarely end up just stuck in your hand. It can also act as a sort of double combat trick when you have a Scavenging Ooze,
pumping it with both the bloodrush and the Ooze’s activated ability.

Noble Hierarch may seem out of place in a deck with no cards that cost more than three mana (barring a hardcast Rampager), and it’s possible that some
number of them should get cut. But as I mentioned before, it’s extremely important to be able to get on the board as quickly as possible, and Hierarch’s
mana acceleration certainly helps with that.

On top of that, exalted is also possibly the most underrated keyword out there. In a world full of Tarmogoyfs staring one another down, Exalted allows you
to continually push damage through, which makes both Hierarch and Qasali Pridemage much more valuable inclusions than they may appear at first blush.
Pridemage itself is a card that receives a lot less respect than it deserves, acting as maindeck Affinity hate that can also help take out everything from
Splinter Twin and Batterskull to Daybreak Coronet and Ensnaring Bridge. Modern is a big format, and it’s good to have tools that can handle a wide range of
opposing threats.

That universal effectiveness is a big part of why so many decks in Modern start with a core of discard spells and Abrupt Decays. While Wild Nacatl and
Lightning Bolt are both very powerful cards, it’s possible that they’re just not as well-positioned in the Modern field as they have once been. While I’m
not a fan of the typical removal-heavy and threat-light Abzan builds out there, I did stumble across this interesting list while I was digging through
Modern decks from Magic Online events:

Abzan Aggro

KelmasterP

Test deck on 05-29-2015

Modern

Creatures (25)

Lands (23)

Spells (12)

Sideboard

MTGO player KelmasterP played this deck to a 3-1 finish in a recent daily event. While there are certainly a number of elements of this list that I don’t
understand or agree with, like the choice to play only three Tarmogoyfs while making room for Warden of the First Tree, running three copies of the
triple-color Anafenza with multiple colorless lands, or the full eight mana creatures with a relatively low curve, I do like quite a bit of what’s going on
here.

Unlike Naya, which is generally built for a more aggressive gameplan thanks to Wild Nacatl and Lightning Bolt, KelmasterP’s deck has a lot of tools to play
a game of attrition. Here, the same Collected Companies that I was disappointed by in the Naya shell have a lot more value due to the inclusion of Eternal
Witness. Hitting Eternal Witness off of Collected Company can give you a seemingly never-ending string of threats.

I actually briefly considered playing Witness in the more midrange Naya version of the deck to recur threats and removal, but in many matchups, the deck
just didn’t feel like it had enough high impact cards to justify returning. Much like Den Protector in Standard, Eternal Witness is at its best when it is
returning cheap, powerful spells, since you can leverage their efficiency again right away. Bringing back a midrange threat can be valuable, but it’s also
very expensive, and takes time to impact the board. And while using Eternal Witness to return Lightning Bolt is certainly quite effective in some matchups,
there are a lot of matchups where Bolt just doesn’t do very much at all. With an array of removal spells including Abrupt Decay and Thoughtseize in
addition to Path to Exile, the Abzan shell feels like a better home for Eternal Witness.

The addition of Abrupt Decay also makes the Abzan version much better suited to dealing with Scavenging Ooze, which is a serious thorn in the side of the
more aggressive Naya deck – and also happens to make Eternal Witness nearly useless. Ooze can often grow out of reach of anything but Path to Exile against
Naya, and can chow down on your graveyard to make both Knight of the Reliquary and Tarmogoyf nearly useless. This can be a major problem for Naya,
especially without something like Thundermaw Hellkite to fly over it. Having more ways to kill Scavenging Ooze – especially ones that don’t give your
opponent card advantage in the form of an extra land in play – definitely helps improve your matchup against other Abzan and Jund decks.

I talked before about the impact of Collected Company on deckbuilding and sideboard choices (including the problem of valuing creatures too heavily
compared to higher impact spells), and I think this list hit a happy medium. I’m a little confused by the decision to play four copies of Arashin Cleric,
however, over something higher impact like Kor Firewalker. Maybe KelmasterP was worried about the double white mana requirement keeping Firewalker from
coming down early enough to have an impact, but with eight mana creatures that all produce white along with the fetch-heavy manabase here, it seems to me
that Firewalker would be the stronger choice.

One of the important things to keep in mind is that you do actually have to kill your Burn opponents, and cards that just gain life often just buy you a
little bit of time. Firewalker helps by not only blunting the impact of every future spell your opponent plays, but also chipping away at their life total
steadily so you can close out the game before they draw into enough Boros Charms to kill you even through the lifegain. Arashin Cleric’s lifegain pretty
much just negates one future spell, and while the 1/3 body does help buy time by blocking Goblin Guide and Eidolon of the Great Revel, that doesn’t seem
worth losing the potential longer term upside of Firewalker to me.

I do like the inclusion of Orzhov Pontiff in the sideboard quite a bit. Pontiff is a card that has mostly seen play in Birthing Pod decks as a tutorable
sweeper against small creatures, and here it’s playing a somewhat similar role. As I’ve mentioned before, Collected Company increases the relative value of
creatures as sideboard cards since you see a significantly higher percentage of your deck each game, assuming what you’re looking for has power and
toughness. Pontiff is essentially a spell attached to a body, and it provides a strong insurance policy against decks full of small creatures like Elves or
Melira, as well as helping push through Lingering Souls.

I’m sure this deck could use some work, but I definitely like the core of what’s going on, which probably comes as no surprise since it’s a green creature
deck playing Noble Hierarch and Knight of the Reliquary. What can I say? I like what I like. And with Modern Masters 2015 out now, a whole lot
more people are going to be able to get their hands on enough Noble Hierarchs to join me – so come on board!

What do you think? What’s the best deck for an honest man playing honest creatures in Modern right now? Does Collected Company have what it takes outside
of combo shells, or is it too slow for the format?