All eyes have been on Pioneer for the Regional Championships and the glorious return for the Pro Tour this past weekend, but Modern is still the most popular paper format for competitive play, and the upcoming SCG CON Charlotte will serve as an excellent reminder of that. If you plan to compete for your share of $20,000 there, it’s worth catching up on recent news.
Phyrexia: All Will Be One has made its mark here, but there’s also the usual churn that has kept Modern engaging over the years. The addition of two more Modern Challenges on Magic Online (MTGO) every week means we have even more data to pore over, too.
Let’s start with the card I was thrilled to sleeve up from Day 1:
The Mycosynth Gardens
The Mycosynth Gardens was an exciting and dangerous pickup for Amulet Titan, a deck that has been dominant enough to demand a ban several times in the past and feels like it’s always just one missing piece away from being back there.
Amulet Titan has never been the best pure combo deck, but it has stood the test of time because of its flexibility. Your combo plan is an accelerated and enhanced version of your backup midrange plan of just casting Primeval Titan, with other routes to victory via Dryad of the Ilysian Grove + Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle or Constructs from Urza’s Saga. With Gardens, you can lean harder into being a combo deck, one enticing enough to bring former Amulet mainstays like Edgar Magalhães back into the fold.
For my part, I’ve had a lot of success with Gardens in a list that is mostly unchanged otherwise. Dryad has been so integral to the deck for the past three years that it’s easy to take it for granted, but once you cut it, you realize how much harder it is to win in games where things aren’t going perfectly. Dryad lets Primeval Titan either win immediately with Valakut triggers or clean up the battlefield to guarantee a safe win the following turn. Azusa, Lost but Seeking into a naked Primeval Titan is often underwhelming now that Field of the Dead is off-limits.
Taking Down Turbo
I also don’t believe this ‘turbo’ build delivers on its promise to be faster. The Turn 1 Arboreal Grazer >> Turn 2 Azusa/Dryad >> T3 Titan lines make up a meaningful amount of your best draws, and that list both gives up Dryad and has fewer green sources to lead on Grazer. In my view, living up to the ‘turbo’ title means cutting Explore – a solid card that has a fine floor and is strong against disruption – for more three-drops. Azusa and Dryad are both great. Why force yourself to choose? The successful lists from this first batch of results have kept Dryad, and I expect that to continue.
The sky isn’t falling here. Amulet Titan was a strong deck that just became even better, but the format has enough cards and strategies that can keep it in check. Blood Moon and Force of Vigor are always looming over Modern, and Phyrexia’s newest it-girl in Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines happens to be excellent against the entire deck. The finals of the first Modern Challenge with ONE cards saw Rakdos Evoke – Amulet’s worst matchup among mainstream decks – face off against Dimir Mill, a comically hopeless matchup for Amulet and any combo deck of that style.
Those decks both deserve further focus.
Jace, the Perfected Mind
The rise in Mill makes sense as a response to Primeval Titan, but the deck received a nice upgrade in its own right. I wrote off Jace, the Perfected Mind, as the deck already has a glut of three-mana options between Fractured Sanity and Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, which in turn seems to clash with Jace’s need for cards in their graveyard, but I underestimated how strong Jace as a bigger, badder Visions of Beyond would be in any slower matchup. Jace is also a fine mill spell by itself if you can cast it for four mana or tick it up over time – fifteen cards is a lot.
Mill occupies a curious position in Modern. Its matchups are heavily polarized and it’s likely to be an amazing or awful choice for any given tournament, without much in between. Despite that, most people playing Mill will play it in every tournament wherever possible, as the deck and its central gimmick have a very dedicated following. If you are more flexible and have time to kill learning a new archetype, Mill is an excellent ace to have up your sleeve for the right moment.
Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
Creatures (20)
- 3 Seasoned Pyromancer
- 3 Timeless Dragon
- 4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
- 4 Solitude
- 4 Fury
- 2 Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (22)
Spells (17)
No matter who you are, this hateful oddity has something just for you. Blood Moon might devour your manabase. Relic of Progenitus will nibble away at your graveyard, throttling any delirium or delve dreams. Teferi, Time Raveler is obnoxious for everyone, especially if you hope to cascade or counter spells. Fury and Solitude alongside Lightning Bolt and Prismatic Ending ensure most creatures will die on sight.
The most striking white card here is the newest. Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines ranges from a nuisance to an existential threat for most top decks in Modern, while being surprisingly difficult to kill – white’s best removal, from Solitude to Leyline Binding, won’t do it, and seven toughness survives Unholy Heat so you’re left with bouncing it or old-fashioned removal like Terminate. Elesh Norn’s popularity is self-reinforcing – the decks that run Elesh Norn also hope to pair it with their own enters-the-battlefield triggers, making them more exposed to an opposing Elesh Norn.
Here, Elesh is an eye-catching but ultimately unnecessary flourish. It has a more defined role in a familiar shell struggling to find its footing.
Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, Take 2
Creatures (16)
Planeswalkers (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (12)
There’s a type of Modern player who never quite recovered from the Yorion, Sky Nomad ban. Some register essentially the same bloated deck with no companion as a reward; some, freed from the rigid limits of 60 or 80 cards, try to find a happy medium in-between. Others try to make the deck bigger in a very different sense with Keruga, the Macrosage or return to a more conventional Four-Color Control list that just isn’t the same.
However you cope with that dilemma, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines is a breath of fresh air. One thing these lists with Eladamri’s Call sometimes lacked was a reliable finisher to find when Omnath or Fury wasn’t enough. Elesh Norn extracts even more value from all of your Elementals and other triggers like Leyline Binding or Abundant Growth / Oath of Nissa, is an ideal use of Omnath mana, and is a hate card of sorts to work towards proactively against those decks that are shut down by it.
These new Omnath decks are nowhere close to their final form, but various versions are seeing success and something in there will remain a real player.
The Classics
Beyond that, the rest of Modern’s ensemble cast is largely the same. Izzet is still the most popular deck at every tournament, which means Hammer is often still a good metagame call as well as being a strong deck in the abstract. If you felt comfortable with Modern a few months ago, most of those assumptions will carry over – just stay aware of these new developments!
