Recently, the Banned & Restricted Updates have been significantly more active than historical trends would indicate. Wizards of the Coast’s (WotC) design philosophy of FIRE (that’s Fun, Inviting, Replayable, and Exciting) has pushed a lot of cards that bend the traditional guidelines for balanced Magic cards out the window.
It’s certainly driving excitement, but not all of it is positive. Repeated bans drive down player confidence when it comes to purchasing the new chase rares and mythics in new sets, and eventually folks may lose patience with plowing money into cards that they (sometimes accurately) predict they’ll no longer be allowed to play with in a few months’ time.
With the most recent announcement this week, Pioneer saw no changes, which was surprising to those of us who appreciate broken cards like Dig Through Time. I could have sworn something out of the Dimir Inverter deck was headed for the Banned List, but it looks like we’re going to get to play with it for a bit longer.
In Modern, though, WotC finally took out the mind-boggling Once Upon a Time. This is a card that has been at the forefront of social media chatter for quite a while now, most often with the appended descriptor “not a real Magic card.” And it’s true. The card doesn’t cost any mana and finds you a land or a creature on the first turn. It’s fairly astonishing that it even made its way to print, but now it’s been relegated to Legacy along with many of the other busted cards of 2019 and 2020.
Zooming in on Modern after the ban, it seems a bit perplexing that just Once Upon a Time got hit. After all, the egregious Underworld Breach was taken out of Legacy, but the powers that be have decided to let it stay in Modern for a little while longer. Just last week, I predicted that both of these cards would be banned in Modern, but didn’t quite expect a reprieve for Breach while it was hit in Legacy. Regardless, there are a few high-powered strategies remaining, and it seems like the format is moving a step or two closer to where it was just a year ago.
There are a few decks that may step up to claim a space at the top of the format, but it’s remarkably open for the time being. Everything from Grinding Breach and Amulet Titan (despite a big hit due to the loss of Once Upon a Time, Ancient Stirrings can step up to the plate) to Mono-Green Tron, Eldrazi Tron, Mono-Red Prowess, Jund decks of varying sorts, Dimir Whirza, Grixis Death’s Shadow, and even smaller players like Burn, Dredge and Bant Snowblade have a chance to make an impact.
Here are the best options:
1. Grinding Breach
This deck is doing busted things, as we all know by this point. It’s the new hot archetype in Modern, and it will continue to improve with refinement over time. It’s not shocking that it didn’t get hit with a ban yet, but StarCityGames.com resident control master, Shaheen Soorani, took the deck out for a spin this past weekend at the Regional Championships and took home the trophy.
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (21)
Spells (28)
His innovations are quite interesting to digest. Everyone else is preparing for Metallic Rebuke (which is pretty obvious to the skilled opponent, as the telegraphed play pattern is very apparent). Shaheen decided to swing the other way and is now packing black spells in his maindeck, the ever-powerful Thoughtseize and Fatal Push. Thoughtseize is a stellar way to clear the path for the combo and certainly merits a look in any deck that wants to push through an instant win.
Now, unlike the stock lists, Shaheen has also seen fit to blend in a hint of his old Dimir Whirza deck with two copies of Urza, Lord High Artificer. No more Dance of the Manse – Urza mixes in a brand-new different angle to start bringing in beatdown as well as a peerless mana advantage. It’s also a legendary creature, which is important for turning on Mox Amber.
This is one of the innovations that’s likely to push Grinding Breach over the top. Backup ways to win with creatures like Urza’s friend, the Construct token, are always welcome. This plan is absolutely perfect when an opponent hits you with disruption like Stony Silence or Karn, the Great Creator.
I’ve seen some people bring in Stoneforge Mystic or Monastery Mentor as alternative plans to beat down when the main combo just won’t cut it. Urza is more synergistic while providing the same battlefield presence as a Stoneforge Mystic for Batterskull.
Blood Moon is another excellent piece of sideboard juke technology. It does very little against your own Arcum’s Astrolabe deck chock-full of basic Snow-Covered lands, but it can be devastating against archetypes like Eldrazi Tron and Jund. It’s amusing to see Shaheen play with Thoughtseize, Teferi, Blood Moon, and Archmage’s Charm, but the man is incorrigible. I don’t necessarily endorse everything going on in this particular list, but the plan to cast Urza to turn on all the blue mana needed while using Blood Moon to harm an opponent’s manabase does make some sense. Bravo, and may I suggest to WotC that if they ban anything else in the near future, something from the final evolution of this deck may be what they need to hit.
2. Amulet Titan
Look, it’s not like Once Upon a Time was going to stick around forever. Now Amulet Titan has to go back to Ancient Stirrings like old times, though with the new tools at its disposal, it’s not clear exactly what the new list is going to look like. Will it be more oriented towards Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove? Will it go back to Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion and Slayers’ Stronghold? Hanweir Battlements is the new tech for giving a Titan haste, which makes a lot of sense. Perhaps that’s going to have to change back in order to get more one-shot kills?
Regardless, Dryad did incredible things for the deck revolving around bouncelands, enabling it to play with zero actual Mountains but still win games easily with Valakut triggers. Truly an unsustainable upgrade, and one that makes Azusa, Lost but Seeking look like a has-been.
WotC will not likely ban Primeval Titan. They might just ban Summoner’s Pact as a more egregious bending of Magic’s rules. They might also ban Amulet of Vigor to knock the deck back a peg. As it currently stands, though, this is an incredibly flexible and multifaceted archetype for something that might ordinarily just look like “big mana.” It’s possibly the most complex deck in Modern, which says something, because the other archetypal big mana deck is just about the simplest…
3. Mono-Green Tron
If I had no time to practice for a Modern tournament, this is what I would play. Good old Mono-Green Tron. It’s powerful, it has the tools to beat both Amulet Titan and Grinding Breach, and it wins games for free. It also abuses the heck out of the London Mulligan. You can easily win games with four cards with Mono-Green Tron. Get Tron out and all of your problems evaporate. It’s that simple.
Some builds of Mono-Green Tron played Once Upon a Time. Some did not. It’s a moot point now, but the fact that there were numerous lists having success without the card means that we can safely assume that it will be a strong deck in a format devoid of the fixer.
I’m looking forward to playing something like the following for when I want to take a Tron Vacation for a tournament or two:
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (10)
Lands (19)
Spells (23)
But what if you want to just play fair Magic like it was 2013 again?
4. Jund
The deck for those of you that want to fight fair is Jund (of course!) Willy Edel is the Jund king of Twitter these days, so his word is law:
The one thing I can’t argue with Willy on is this: Wrenn and Six is indeed broken. It’s completely replaced Dark Confidant in Jund, and the addition of Kroxa is just another nail in Bob’s coffin. There’s a part of me that wants to bring back Jund Death’s Shadow, looking at this list. After all, Bloodbraid Elf is just not a card I want to be playing anymore. I want to play with as few lands as possible to maximize Wrenn and Six’s power in dragging them back from the graveyard. I also want to play more Nurturing Peatlands to synergize with the powerful two-drop and use them to power up my Shadows.
Willy’s deck is also not particularly strong against Burn, with no way to gain life in the maindeck. Why not lean in and give up a bit more against a deck that isn’t likely to see much play right now, and pick up some free wins with Death’s Shadow?
To be honest, Grixis Death’s Shadow is probably not that bad right now either, but it’s not playing any remarkably broken cards from the recent sets. I find myself reminiscing for simpler times whenever I pick it up and get smacked around, and that’s never a good feeling. Pick up something with more of the pushed new cards. The FIRE philosophy of R&D demands it.
My pick for fighting fair in the new metagame, then, is as follows:
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Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (19)
Spells (23)
The alternative is a little more aggressive, but no less attractive. A more all-in version, with Mutagenic Growth and Become Immense, might be the way to just get under all the nonsense and win with an all-out face punch. Inspired by up-and-coming SCG Tour player Dylan Gellis, this deck can kick in the teeth of the combo decks before they know what’s coming. This is my backup fair(ish) deck. If you like doing math with Mutagenic Growth and Monastery Swiftspear, look no further:
Creatures (16)
Lands (18)
Spells (26)
It’s a refreshing new world out there in Modern, and I’m ready to dive back in. Hopefully the format doesn’t get too stale with one of the other near-bannable cards, because ban fatigue is real. But if Underworld Breach has to go, I won’t be crying on the next B&R announcement date!