After actually playing with the updated Humans deck, it turned out Thalia, Guardian of Thraben was an enormous problem. If they cast Thalia turn two on the play and you don’t have a Tragic Slip, you’re basically dead. You can’t Doom Blade it or Mana Leak anything until their turn 4. God forbid you have to dig with your overpriced Think Twice into spells that you won’t have enough mana to cast. It’s hard enough to keep up with Zenith against Humans before Thalia made it nigh impossible.

We felt Humans was the strongest obvious deck in the format and expected it to be the most played archetype at the PT or at worst a close second to Delver. This made us quickly dismiss U/B, though I did not immediately move on to another control deck.

Huntmaster of the Fells seemed like the most powerful card in the set, and was in fact the only card I was sure to buy a playset of before leaving for the PT. I thought a G/R aggro deck with four Huntmaster, four Strangleroot Geist, and red burn could be sweet. We tweaked a list for a few days, and it was very strong against Delver but was not consistently beating Humans. The main problem with the matchup seemed to be that we were not going big enough.

Our creatures were similarly sized, but they had an anthem. Mirran Crusader and Hero of Bladehold were must kill cards, but there was only a finite amount of removal and sometimes an early Champion of the Parish had to die. One sweet play that came up often was to flip Huntmaster, Shock Hero, and then finish her off with another burn spell. But this was not a reliable way to kill a card that basically needed to be off the battlefield before it attacked. Both Orrin and Ant suggested playing Huntmaster and burn in a Wolf Run deck, but for whatever reason we never got around to it. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.

By now Shaheen Soorani had been bugging us for a few days to try out his Esper deck that he Top 16’d SCG Richmond with. You can find Shaheen’s write-up of his version right here on StarCityGames.com. While Shaheen’s expensive win condition-laden control decks have worked well for him over the years, I have until now avoided them. He managed to convince Ali Aintrazi to play his Mass Polymorph deck in Paris, where Ali promptly went 0-4. I did not want to end up like Ali. However, this time Shaheen’s deck had some strong cards against Humans: Day of Judgment and Gideon Jura.

After making Shaheen’s suggested changes, along with a few obvious ones of our own (needed more Tragic Slip), the deck was doing surprisingly well against Delver and Humans. We enlisted the help of Gerard Fabiano and Antonino DeRosa to play some more games and quickly added Lingering Souls. Gerard and Orrin both take credit for coming up with the card, and Shaheen also suggested I try it. All I know for sure is that it wasn’t my idea.

Lingering Souls might seem like an odd inclusion in a control deck, but think about all the things it can do:

• One-half of the spell will trade with either side of Delver or Geist of Saint Traft.
• Unless they have equipment, it’s a reasonable answer to Moorland Haunt. The four guys from one copy should close to run them out of creatures in their graveyard. Clearly this is no Curse of Death’s Hold, but it’s a lot less narrow.
• It provides chump blockers both to get you in the late game and to protect your planeswalkers.
• It lets you put a clock on other control decks. This is especially true if you have Sorin, Lord of Innistrad in play.
• Your Forbidden Alchemy have additional value, since you can pick another spell and cast Lingering Souls from the graveyard.
• Chumping with a Spirit token turns on Tragic Slip.

This is the list we ended up playing. Orrin did a Deck Tech on it, which can be found here. Gerard played a slightly different version that included a couple Grave Titans to end the game quickly. This idea wasn’t totally without merit going into the PT, but I think it’s pretty risky now that Delver decks are back to playing Phantasmal Image.

Esper Control

Orrin Beasley

81st Place at Pro Tour on 02-12-2012

Standard

Creatures (2)

• 2 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers (8)

• 2 Gideon Jura
• 1 Elspeth Tirel
• 3 Liliana of the Veil
• 2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

Lands (21)

• 5 Swamp
• 3 Glacial Fortress
• 3 Evolving Wilds
• 2 Seachrome Coast
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Isolated Chapel

Spells (29)

• 3 Plains
• 2 Island
• 4 Mana Leak
• 3 Think Twice
• 1 Oblivion Ring
• 3 Doom Blade
• 4 Day of Judgment
• 2 Forbidden Alchemy
• 4 Lingering Souls
• 3 Tragic Slip

Sideboard

• 2 Ratchet Bomb
• 1 Revoke Existence
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 2 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Azure Mage
• 2 Curse of Death's Hold
• 3 Geist of Saint Traft

Tragic Slip was about as good as advertised. Between Liliana, Gideon, Doom Blade, Spirit Tokens, and Snapcaster Mages turning it on was pretty trivial. And of course having a way to kill Delver of Secrets before it gets online is huge, since Delver decks do very little without an early flipped copy of the namesake card. At least old Delver decks, that is. Delver seems less important in the newer Spirits version.

Sorin is obviously powerful in a vacuum, but seemed pretty unexciting in this format upon first glance. Both Hero of Bladehold and Geist of Saint Traft kill him in one swing, which isn’t exactly what you’re looking for in a planeswalker. But once paired with Lingering Souls and a healthy amount of removal, he becomes a lot better. We were down to one copy at one point in testing, but I think we actually should have played three.

Gideon did his normal job of protecting his planeswalker friends and sometimes going in for the kill. I was happy to have him as a potential draw, but one copy might be enough.

Elspeth was honestly underwhelming, and I would probably rather have another planeswalker or a Curse of Death’s Hold over her moving forward. Repeatable token generation is pretty appealing, but you get that for cheaper with Lingering Souls. Elspeth is at her best when you can tick her up, i.e. you already have several tokens in play and can threaten her ultimate. But if you have that many tokens alive you’re probably in okay shape already. I did have one game that I could not have possibly won without her: my opponent had two Sword of War and Peace and Gideon kept the Swords at bay for long enough for Elspeth to ultimate, killing both pieces of equipment and leaving me with tokens that could now trade with his.

Liliana is a card that just keeps growing on me. She was great in U/B and she might be even better here, since you have more flashback spells and more planeswalkers to discard extraneous copies of. Lingering Souls also makes her easier to protect. Obviously she is perfectly reasonable as just an edict, but ultimating her wins a lot more often than you would expect.

We took the Curses out of Shaheen’s main deck, since as mentioned previously Lingering Souls can perform a similar role with more versatility. Also, the card stinks against Humans unless you have multiples and can kill their anthems, and we expected a lot of Humans. I would move some back to the main deck based on the PT results, though. If Delver has their own Lingering Souls to go with Moorland Haunt, that is a ton of tokens to deal with. Curse is the most reliable way to take them out of the game. It’s also reasonable against Wolf Run, since it keeps them off of Inkmoth Nexus.

The mana base in the deck is probably a little off. Figuring out what mix of Scars lands to play with Core Set-type lands is pretty challenging. Since you have so many expensive spells you want to tap out for turn after turn, you really can’t afford to slow yourself down with a lot of come into play tapped lands after turn 3. But you also need some early lands to come into play untapped for removal and Mana Leak. If anyone has any suggestions for the mana base, or just general advice on how to figure it out, please let me know in the comments. I assume there is some kind of algorithm you could write to figure out the perfect mana, but that sounds like a lot of work. At one point Sharfman was shuffling up the lands saying, "You guys are playing three of this one," and pulling out a land at random. We did not actually go with this method, but it was weirdly close to the mana base we settled on.

If I were to play the deck again, I would go with the above list with the following changes:

+2 Curse of Death’s Hold
+1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
-1 Oblivion Ring
-1 Elspeth Tirel
-1 Day of Judgment

And the sideboard of:
2 Batterskull
3 Despise
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Azure Mage
2 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
3 Geist of Saint Traft

The Oblivion Ring was mostly just meant as a catchall, since we weren’t sure exactly what we would need to deal with at the Pro Tour. It seems less important with Delver decks moving away from equipment, though.

The Batterskulls and Consecrated Sphinxes come in against Humans, since unlike Delver decks they can’t really punish you for tapping out with Vapor Snag and they have few counterspells. The Geists, Azure Mages, and Swords are for control matchups. Despise is for Wolf-Run.

An Aside on U/B

I also think U/B is still a reasonable option, especially given the PT results. Humans will probably be on the downswing, due to a poor Wolf Run matchup. U/B has a reasonable Wolf Run matchup, thanks to a large number of counterspells and the possibility of Despise out of the sideboard. As mentioned previously, U/B is also strong against Delver. Of course, any control deck can be good against both of these archetypes if that is what you’re trying to beat. The main argument for playing U/B is that it smashes other control decks thanks to Nephalia Drownyard.

It’s hard to say if people will actually be playing control in the coming weeks, though. In general after a deck has a big finish, I try to play a deck that is reasonable against that deck (Wolf Run) and the deck that beats it (various control decks). U/B fits the bill here, but for whatever reason people seem reluctant to play control in this format. If you do expect control, you should play U/B. If you don’t need the Drownyards, I think it’s fine to branch into a third or fourth color.

This was our most recent iteration of U/B prior to Dark Ascension (with the obvious replacement of Virulent Wound with Tragic Slip). If you’re interested in playing U/B, this would be a good place to start:

U/B Control

Pat Cox

Test deck on 02-19-2012

Standard

Creatures (2)

• 2 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers (3)

• 1 Karn Liberated
• 2 Liliana of the Veil

Lands (20)

• 7 Swamp
• 3 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Drowned Catacomb
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 2 Nephalia Drownyard

Spells (35)

• 3 Dissipate
• 7 Island
• 4 Mana Leak
• 4 Think Twice
• 2 Doom Blade
• 3 Black Sun's Zenith
• 2 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 2 Curse of Death's Hold
• 3 Forbidden Alchemy
• 2 Tribute to Hunger
• 3 Tragic Slip

Sideboard

• 2 Negate
• 3 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Jace, Memory Adept
• 1 Phantasmal Image
• 1 Curse of Death's Hold
• 2 Nephalia Drownyard
• 2 Bloodline Keeper
• 1 Tragic Slip

Jund in Modern

The day before the PT, Sharfman asked me when I left Honolulu and when I was getting to Lincoln so he could plan his flight accordingly. I told him I left Friday and got there Friday, which he said sounded impossible. It turns out he was right, I left Friday and got there Saturday morning. Oops.

While this was admittedly my mistake, American Airlines was not very helpful in providing a remotely reasonable option to switch my flight. I would’ve gladly paid $200, but $1200 seemed like a lot. Instead I contacted the TO and head judge, who were gracious enough to agree to let me turn in my deck list early and miss the player meeting.

This meant I had some work to do, seeing as I had to lock my deck in a day early and couldn’t talk to anyone when I got to Lincoln. I enlisted the help of Reid Duke, since I was fairly sure he was one of the few pros who had any experience with the format due to his love of Magic Online. Plus, he always has pretty good decks regardless of format. Reid said he had lists he was happy with for Splinter Twin and Jund. I opted for Jund, having never played Splinter Twin before.

I spent Monday wandering around Waikiki with Gerard and Reid. We went to the zoo, which was about as unexciting as you’d expect, though we did see an orangutan pretending to read a magazine but actually just ripping out pages while a crazy lady talked to him like they were old friends.

I questioned Reid about the deck some, but hadn’t had a chance to play any games so really couldn’t provide much input yet. I played some two-mans and a Daily Event that night, losing only one match. I faced a ton of combo decks, and every time I cast a hand disruption spell I typed, "I don’t know what to take?", but my selfish opponents wouldn’t tell me! Still, the combination of Dark Confidant apparently never dying in the format and Bloodbraid Elf being absurd led me to victory.

The following day I got into the awesome routine of: hike in the morning, beach in the afternoon, test Modern at night. I hiked to the northwestern tip of Oahu, which was definitely the sweetest thing I did while there. The scenery the entire time was waves breaking on rock formations. At the end there were rocks that you could walk out on, which unexpectedly had seals chilling on them!

Reid came along for the next day’s hike and we talked about the deck, now that I had some games under my belt. The main talking points were:

• I wasn’t really sold on Blightning. Reid had only included two since the other hand disruption means that they’ll likely be out of cards when you cast a second copy. I never felt like I had a good window to cast them against fair decks, though. I was usually doing things to affect the board, and by the time I had a window for Blightning they had one or zero cards. I instead wanted to go up to three Liliana.
• We weren’t really sure of the right mix of graveyard hate. Grafdigger’s Cage is best at what you’re trying to do, but that it doesn’t replace itself meant you couldn’t side it in for any matchup where graveyard hate was just okay. Conventional wisdom seemed to be Relic of Progenitus was best, but I liked the suggestion of Nihil Spellbomb instead. Relic led to some awkward situations where I wanted to blow it but also didn’t want to shrink my Tarmogoyf to nothing. Spellbomb also didn’t force me to leave a mana up. Relic’s ability to keep their graveyard empty by activating it each turn wasn’t irrelevant, but came up less often I expected.
• What about some Huntmaster of the Fells as extra Bloodbraid Elves? I typically felt pretty flooded against fair decks if I didn’t have a Dark Confidant out, since the deck only had the four four-drops. Both the life gain and the two damage abilities seemed fairly relevant in the format, and casting a Bloodbraid guaranteed you could flip him back. I had no easy way to test the card, so I ended up only playing one. I would play at least two in the 75 in the future, though.

Since I was about to spend the entire day before the GP flying, I had to lock in my deck list the next night. This is what I registered, or more accurately what Will Fitchko registered for me:

Jund

Pat Cox

34th Place at Grand Prix on 02-19-2012

Modern

Creatures (18)

• 2 Grim Lavamancer
• 4 Dark Confidant
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 3 Kitchen Finks
• 4 Bloodbraid Elf
• 1 Huntmaster of the Fells

Planeswalkers (3)

• 3 Liliana of the Veil

Lands (23)

• 3 Treetop Village
• 2 Swamp
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Graven Cairns
• 2 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Twilight Mire
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Verdant Catacombs
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 1 Copperline Gorge

Spells (16)

• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 2 Forest
• 2 Terminate
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 3 Maelstrom Pulse
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek

Sideboard

• 2 Duress
• 1 Terminate
• 1 Grim Lavamancer
• 3 Ancient Grudge
• 1 Kitchen Finks
• 2 Ignite Disorder
• 1 Obstinate Baloth
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Torpor Orb
• 1 Grafdigger's Cage

I only changed about five cards from what Reid gave me, so certainly all credit for this list should go to him. The only change I’d for sure make would be to replace the Obstinate Baloth with another Huntmaster, though it would be nice if space for a third could be made in the main deck as well.

Even if I wanted to bore you with a detailed match-by-match recap, I don’t think I could. By the time round 4 started I was operating on 3 hours of sleep on a plane in the last 35. My condition generally ranged from mentally sluggish to ill during this tournament. Here are the decks I played against, though (after three byes):

Jund: 4-0
Living End: 4-1
Splinter Twin: 5-1
Storm: 6-1
Jund: 7-1
Kuldotha Red: 7-2
B/W Tokens: 7-3
Bant: 8-3
Bant: 8-4
BUG Gifts: 9-4
Melira Pod: 10-4
U/R Tron: 11-4

Of these, the only match-up that felt truly bad to me was Living End. They have too many copies of their win condition to reliably stop with hand disruption, especially with all of the cycling. Against the other combo decks the hand disruption backed up by Liliana felt like enough, though I did miss all of the tools that white (aka Zoo) has to actually stop them from topdecking the win: Ethersworn Canonist, Rule of Law, Gaddock Teeg, etc. I lost a game to just a Past in Flames after ripping apart my opponent’s hand, for example.

As expected, Jund was great against other fair decks. Dark Confidant lives more often in this format than any I have ever seen. It’s pretty hard to lose to a deck that is trying to one-for-one you when you are drawing two cards a turn and have Bloodbraid Elf in your deck. The Bant deck I lost to was kind of an exception to this, as it killed me with Steel of the Godhead on Geist of Saint Traft. Outside of Liliana, there’s not much to be done about that combo and I died with a grip full of removal.

I’m not sure if the Kuldotha Red deck I lost to was good, but it had the element of surprise and was certainly interesting. It also ran Shrapnel Blast, Goblin Grenade, and Fecundity. I really had no idea what he was going to do next and probably was too conservative with my attacks because of this. Then again, he attacked me for ten on turn 2 of game 3!

I ended up 34th. It was a little frustrating to finish right outside of top 32, since most people with my record got there. A Top 32 would’ve locked me up for Gold, but oh well; hopefully I can accomplish that this weekend in Baltimore. Ultimately I was really happy with the finish given the circumstances: a week before I knew nothing about Modern, and I felt like crap the whole tournament. I think both of these facts point to how good Jund is. I wasn’t playing anywhere near optimally, but the deck is about as powerful and forgiving as (the deity of your choice). I don’t know that I will play any more Modern before PT Seattle, but if I do I will definitely play Jund again.

Nacatl-less Modern was more fun than I expected. I played against and saw some pretty wacky decks that were doing well, which is a good thing. Even Bronson/Cuvi’s winning deck was completely off the radar prior to last weekend.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this today. I’ll be back with an updated Legacy Zoo deck prior to Indy, and maybe sooner if Ben and I come up with a sweet control deck for Baltimore this weekend. Thanks for reading!

Pat Cox

@wildestnacatl on Twitter