Today’s deck looks more like a Standard brew than a Modern one. As much as we as a community harp on the power of planeswalkers, they haven’t made many waves in Modern, since the creatures are more efficient and the combo decks threaten to kill you if you’re too cavalier about tapping out on turns 3 through 5.
But incremental advantages are powerful no matter the format, and if you put some effort into answering your opponent’s threats early, you can reap some significant rewards. Nowhere is that commitment more evident than in the full four maindeck copies of Damnation. You might have to wait a bit to cast your Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, but few things clear the way for a planeswalker more thoroughly than a Wrath of God.
And if you’re fortunate enough to land a planeswalker on a battlefield where your opponent is just shy of answering it, you can reap the rewards of an overextension, a classic Standard maneuver.
With so many resources devoted to attacking creatures, you’d think there would be a healthy discard suite to fight opposing control and combo decks, but this list goes a different route and opts to play plenty of mana disruption between Spreading Seas and Tectonic Edge. This plan has a few advantages.
First, it coalesces with the rest of the deck, which wants to play a mana-heavy, resource-rich game of Magic where its powerful cards dominate, as opposed to trading aggressively and winning with cheap, efficient threats.
Second, it gives the deck plenty of answers to creature lands, which are among the best commonly played answers to planeswalkers in the format. That being said, I would like to explore a discard suite in the sideboard for combo and Tron decks, where you likely need more disruption and have plenty of poor cards to bring out.
Outside of Tron, we don’t see much battlecruiser Magic going on in Modern, and since Tron, not the love of money, is the root of all evil, it’s time to start looking for other options.
Creatures (1)
Planeswalkers (9)
Lands (24)
Spells (26)
