By rights this is the deck that should have won in Minneapolis last weekend and would have if that Scapeshift had not been peeled off the top. Jund has long been a bogeyman of the format, but the recent ban on Deathrite Shaman did a lot to suck the wind out of its sails. But it continues to compete as a tier 1 strategy because it has so many powerful pieces of disruption and removal, backed by a team of beatdown creatures.
The main strategy to victory revolves around two key monsters crashing the red zone with longtime all star Tarmogoyf widely accepted as the best two drop beater ever printed as it continues to scale up as the grave fills with different card types, and also manland Raging Ravine which continues to grow with each attack and as a land is able to dodge any sorcery speed removal. There is also Scavenging Ooze which has the ability to grow to epic proportions as well but is most useful as a way to control the opponents graveyard if they are operating with any recursion now that Deathrite is no more. There is also Dark Confidant which is the decks main source of grinding card advantage and newcomer Courser of Kruphix which is largely a brick wall with its four toughness but also acts as a form of ramp and those life points will often be very relevant in the end. The next key element of this deck is the disruption package and that is found with three trios of discard with Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize as amazing turn one pinpoint extraction also enabling you to see the opponents current plans, and also Liliana of the Veil which is a symmetrical discard but you are able to prepare properly in advance and often force early misplays from the enemy. Liliana also double as removal with her sacrifice ability and is able to rid the board of troublesome creatures especially Hexproof or Indestructible ones that you normally would not be able to destroy. The remainder of the deck is basically more removal of varied flavors including Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom Pulse able to hit many different problem permanents, Slaughter Pact and Terminate as pinpoint removal for creature threats, and Anger of the Gods which provides the deck a sweeper capable of exiling the many recursive creatures especially from Melira Pod decks. There is also the requisite set of Lightning Bolt, almost a given for any deck in the format running Red, which doubles both as removal but also as additional reach to close out games quickly. The final card is a one of Chandra, Pyromaster which with her ability to negate blockers will be a road to victory in many games that she hits the table and her second ability help provide additional draw to the deck which is one element that is not a strength.
Shaun McLaren has already proven his dominance of the UWR Control deck in Modern so it looks like he felt it needed a tweak to keep performing for him. And while it was not able to propel him to the top spot, it was good enough to push him into the top 4 of a very strong field. His deck still has the classic control elements of draw, permission and removal but adds an interesting creature twist to grind out all the value.
Let’s start from the top with the title card which adds the new spin with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker who is no stranger to Modern but has traditionally been found in either the Twin or Pod decks. Here we find him used to grind out some mega-value or even surprise combo for the kill. So looking first at that combo kill, when we pair Kiki up with Restoration Angel you create a possible infinite loop of tapping Kiki to copy Resto then blinking Kiki with the copies into play trigger to rinse and repeat. You can also flash in Resto as a blocker if Kiki is in play and create enough blockers to shut down an alpha strike from a Twin deck, very sneaky. The other key target for Kiki is Wall of Omens which works to shore up some ground defenses while providing a solid and steady stream of card advantage. There is also Snapcaster Mage which can continue to rebuy spent spells in the grave with Kiki. A singleton Vendilion Clique is extremely useful in the deck as a way to not only gain information about your opponents plan but also to help disrupt it as well. The manabase also affords us the inclusion of a set of Celestial Colonnade which are a key beatdown element and one of the main avenues to victory. As advertised this is a control deck and thus has a well rounded permission suite starting with a set of Mana Leak, a pair of Remand, and singletons of both Spell Snare and Cryptic Command. The removal is also very heafty including Lightning Bolt and Electrolyze to either burn creature or straight to the dome, and Path to Exile to decisively remove any creature threat in the way. The deck is also able to squeeze two Tectonic Edge into the manabase as an additional hedge against manlands or Scapeshift combo. The draw power of the deck lies primarily with the Wall, Electrolyze, Remand and Cryptic, but the are also singletons with a Sphinx’s Revelation and a Desolate Lighthouse to bolster the draw package.
Long has the tyranny of the awesome volcano Valakut reigned as a brutal strategy to incinerate opponents to ashes. This deck originally reared its ugly head in Standard using Primeval Titan to power out your Mountains to a quick and decisive victory. But once the Modern format was born the interaction between Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Scapeshift was too powerful to not be abused. There have been other variants of this deck as well which have used Prismatic Omen and Wargate to turn all your lands into Mountains but this straightforward style relying upon countermagic to control the game into a surprise combo finish is what has been most successful.
So the game plan of this deck is to burn your opponent to death using multiple triggers from Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle with Mountains entering the battlefield. Valakut will trigger for three points of damage whenever a Mountain enters as long as there are five other Mountains already in play. And in Modern with the fetch/shock manabase that most decks are using this means that six triggers will often be enough to blast the opponent to bits. With Scapeshift you are able to combo out those triggers in one big shot by sacrificing any seven lands to it and searching your deck for a copy of Valakut and six Mountain cards, shocklands count as they are subtype Mountain, for a big finish. Now one of the golden rules of Magic is that you can play but one land per turn which when you are attempting to combo finish with seven or more lands in play can be a devastating restriction. So in order to skirt this restriction we have ways to search out more lands and put them directly into play with the decks main turn one play of Search for Tomorrow which can be suspended for just one mana and also perennial chump blocker Sakura-Tribe Elder which can often act as blocker to soak some damage then after it is declared as a blocker can still sacrifice itself to go and find a land to put into play. To ensure that you are going to hit your land drop each turn the deck has Serum Visions and Telling Time to dig through your deck, and also Electrolyze which does have damage attached to it as well but is used mostly for more draw. In fact, almost every spell in the deck has some sort of drawing effect attached to it and a solo Halimar Depths in the manabase will also help set up you next critical draw steps. The other huge facet of the deck is that it runs a very strong permission package with Remand, Cryptic Command and Izzet Charm to assure that even if it starts to stall that it won’t be falling behind and gets to continue digging with more draws. The removal is small but headed by Repeal which can get rid of any problem permanent such as the variety of hate bears that will thwart your plans, but also Charm, Cryptic and Electrolyze double themselves as additional removal. Finally we get to the last piece in this puzzle with Snapcaster Mage which is able to rebuy any of your spells in the graveyard especially a surprise counter when you need it most, and is also able to beatdown some life points if that’s what is necessary.
While the deck was said to be well positioned in the field due to the high concentration of Birthing Pod decks which it is a good match up for it I’m sure we will not see any major shift in the meta to specifically combat it. It is a very powerful but all in strategy which is rewarding only if you are able to master the Math of the Mountains. The decklist is very tight and the number of Mountains very specific where you need to be always wary of how many remain in your deck and how many you need to kill your opponent. But if you are a fan of Combo decks then this is definitely a deck that you should try. I guarantee that the results will not disappoint you, but remember to practice, practice, practice.
It seems like the GW Hatebears motif was out in full effect this past weekend. In addition to the winner of the SCG Cincinnati we also saw this port over to Modern at the Bazaar of Moxen. And with good reason as the overall theme of the deck is a very strong disruption with aggro beats. While there are differences of course since the Modern card pool and metagame is not the same as Legacy it continues to show dominance across formats due to its incredible power.
The Modern version also utilizes Æther Vial as a very key component to the deck and while countermagic is not nearly as prevalent as it is in Legacy gaining advantage by dropping basically free creature and doing so at instant speed provides a huge disruption element which is the focal point of the deck. The other first turn play in the deck is Noble Hierarch which serves the deck well as a mana dork providing both White and Green for the deck as well as a bonus power boost if you are sending in a lone attacker for the beatdown. Moving up the curve to the two drop spot there is the all-star of the deck Thalia, Guardian of Thraben which does as much in Modern as in Legacy to slow down all non-creature based strategies, pesky Leonin Arbiter which shuts down searching the library unless you pay the price, and Scavenging Ooze to nullify the popular graveyard based strategies most especially the rampant Birthing Pod decks. We then go to our three drop slot where we have disruptive Aven Mindcensor to effectively shut down any deck looking to search the library for tools, we can Vial in a Flickerwisp as a way to protect our important pieces which may get targeted by removal, and even Blade Splicer can be a shocking surprise as the Golem Token it brings along to fight can First Strike an attacker to death which had expected a free and clear passage. And finally we get to the angels of the deck at the four cost with added protective redundancy from Restoration Angel and the unique disruptive ability from Linvala, Keeper of Silence which will shut down manadorks along with any other activated abilities from opponents creatures. The deck also runs a full set of Path to Exile to have some pinpoint removal to take out those most important threats. To assist in the beatdown plan the manabase includes Gavony Townships for additional creature pump and for disruption there is a full set of Ghost Quarter which combine with Arbiter and Mindcensor to effectively become Strip Mine.
Welcome back to Knight’s Booty. I’m sorry but I don’t have a short story for you this week. Instead I have a deck that I’ve been testing out in Modern that fills a gap that is missing in the current metagame. Now the reason for designing this deck is taken from Chapin’s “Next Level Deck building” eBook, which I highly recommend to anybody who wants to take that next step.
See, if we take a look at the current metagame (using mtggoldfish.com as our baseline) we are sitting in a very combo heavy environment. Splinter Twin is sitting at 13.26%, with Melira Pod at 12.14%. That’s only two decks and already we are covering a quarter of the metagame. After that we look at UR Storm at 5.43%, Scapeshift at 4.15%, Ad Nauseum at 2.24% and after that it peters off. So add all those percentages together and we are sitting pretty at 37.22%. Up from a quarter to a third of our current metagame is made up of combo decks. Which when you think about it is pretty amazing really.
So how do we go about punishing this combo dominant metagame? We could try going to go aggro and beat them to the punch. But most of the above decks are ready to “go off” by turn 3, and can aggro decks really beat that clock? I don’t know, but even with the power of Zoo and Affinity I can’t be comfortable in saying that they have faster clocks. And do we really want to try and compete with other aggro decks? I personally don’t.
So the next level up is control. In which we have UWR and Hatebears as your big bad guys. Combined however they only take up 7.98% of the metagame. Something is seriously lacking there, don’t you think? Even if you add in UW Midrange you are only looking at 10.86% of the metagame being control decks. This just doesn’t seem possible. Especially when you have Esper control eating the standard environment alive.
So what does this mean for us? It means that we can open up a whole new can of worms by moving into an area that is seeing very little love (control) and a colour that is notorious for it (black). That’s right, I’m talking about Mono-Black Control, with a focus on discard. But why discard you ask?
Because, just because. Seriously though, if over a third of the decks you are going to be facing are combo decks, you can easily pick them apart by removing their combo pieces from their hand. And aggro? Back up your discard with removal, another thing that Mono-Black Control is famous for, and you can take control of the board as well as their hand. Not to mention that the deck gets monumentally better whenever your opponent mulligan’s. If their deck punishes them before the game even begins, then we are going to be in an even better position to win.
Now, that is not to say that the deck doesn’t have it’s weaknesses because it does. It suffers in the fact that despite all of it’s abilities to disrupt the field and the hand, it can’t stop a topdeck. It also stalls out late game with a lot of dead cards in hand. But compared to the benefits, I am willing to overlook that little matter.
First off, the deck list as it currently stands:
The one card that it is missing is Thoughtseize, which can easily be put in place of Duress. But only if you have that kind of money. Now the one thing you might immediately note is that I am running a splash of Red in there. This is because Black has no inherent artifact hate, or nothing that is cheap enough to warrant being included in the build. But red does in the form of Smash to Smithereens, which in my past experience playing burn in Modern is a fantastic sideboard card. And having immediate access to Red does give some interesting options if we ever wanted to include a devastating card like Blightning, or Rakdos Charm. But I am focusing more on the Mono-Black version.
I want to talk about each card individually, but it will probably be easier if I break it down into each suite of cards, with the obvious Discard being the first.
First up is Inquisition of Kozilek. This card is a very powerful discard spell as the name of the game in any deck that isn’t control based is speed. Which means that cards are going to be cheap. Tarmagoyf only costs two, Kitchen Finks costs three, Pyromancer’s Ascension costs two, and so forth. So Inquisition of Kozilek has the ability to hit a lot of the cards out there that can cause problems.
After that I will address Duress. It’s not Thoughtseize, that’s for certain, but it can come in handy where Inquisition can’t. It can hit the higher costing cards, such as Splinter Twin, Birthing Pod, and Scapeshift. But because it can’t hit creatures it loses playability. That is the reason why I am only running a single copy in the mainboard, with more in the sideboard for when you do come up against decks like Twin, Pod, and Scapeshift. It can be an easy swap out of Inquisition for Duress and you don’t set off your card balance.
Next is Raven’s Crime, which I am honestly thinking of upping to three copies. The card is incredibly good in the late game when you’ve setup your win condition or are waiting to do so and you need to empty out your opponents hand. It turns every late game land draw into another discard spell, and it works in conjunction with Smallpox when you will have to discard something. I can’t tell you how many times I have been happy to have a Raven’s Crime in my graveyard and how many times I’ve been sorry to not have one.
Last, but not least in our spell slots for discard is Wrench Mind. This is about as close to Hymn to Tourach as we will ever see again. Sure, it doesn’t discard at random, but it is a straight up two cards for two mana. And when you can play this on turn two after your opponent has already played a land or two, plus an early drop from their hand, it seriously wrecks your opponents game. The earlier you can see this card the better your chances of victory will be.
The next section I am going to address is the removal suite, but first I need to talk about a card that fits between the two, and that is Smallpox. I don’t quite know how I feel about the card itself. It is very punishing to both players, but usually more so to our opponent. I mean I love the card. It has performed amazingly well in the early game against decks like Storm and Pod. As an aside, it is a fantastic turn two play against Pod as it removes two sources of mana available to them, and slows them down significantly. Storm is another matter, in that they need three mana to “go off”, unless they get a two mana “god hand”, and using Smallpox to slow them down to a crawl can hurt them more than it will us. Like I said earlier, we can discard a Raven’s Crime to it or any excess discard spells that aren’t doing us any good. And we are running a minimum of creatures so there is very little chance that we will be hurting our board state. Again, I love this card, but when I read it in a bubble it makes me cringe.
Now onto the removal suite.
Victim of Night is the first one up, and it can kill just about anything. In the current metagame there aren’t many Zombie creatures, nor are there Vampires or Werewolves. So there isn’t much that it can’t take care of, plain and simple, and because we aren’t worried about colour restrictions we can carry the two black in it’s mana cost with ease making it a superior choice to Doom Blade. There is only one other kind of creature that this can’t hit and that is one who has protection from Black, but we have a spell to deal with that.
Geth’s Verdict is the answer to “protection from black” and furthermore Hexproof. Now I’ve talked about Hexproof in a previous article and it is probably one of my favourite all-time decks to play. So I know how much of a pain in the butt it can be. Now, when I was regularly playing pauper and running Hexproof the worst thing in the world I could run into was Mono-Black Control because they had the one answer that could get around that restriction and that was Geth’s Verdict, because they were targeting me and not the creature. So unless your opponent is going to side in Leyline of Sanctity, you can be pretty sure that Geth’s Verdict will take care of what Victim of Night can’t. Oh, and it also hits your opponent for one life to boot. And yes you can kill your opponent with it, even if there are no creatures on the board, so it is never a dead card.
The last card in our removal suite replaced Doom Blade and has tested out fairly well so far. Sudden Death. It is more expensive, but it can do some things that a lot of removal cards can’t. It can take out creatures that are indestructible to start, as long as you can get their toughness down to four or less, which means that a few of the newly printed “gods” are even threatened by this card. And there is no fear about not being able to kill most creatures, because outside of Tarmogoyf and a pumped up Hexproof dude, there aren’t any creatures currently being run with more than four toughness. Four is the magical number in Modern because it can beat Lightning Bolt, and Sudden Death can go above that number. Now the last thing about the card, and by far it’s the most important aspect of it, is that it has an ability called Split Second.
This mechanic deserves it’s own little section. Split Second is a fantastic ability and a powerful one that isn’t utilized often enough in my opinion. First off I want to ask you a question. Have you ever been playing against a blue player and tried to kill their Delver of Secrets only to have them Counterspell or Mana Leak your spell? It sucks doesn’t it? Well because of the way Split Second works the spell can’t be countered. You see as long as the spell with Split Second is on the ‘stack’ no other spells or abilities, that are not mana abilities, can be played. Meaning no counterspell. And furthermore it can disrupt a combo like Deceiver Exarch and Splinter Twin. if by some chance they managed to land Twin you can kill the creature in response and they don’t have the opportunity to make their infinite army, nor can they cast a counterspell to prevent it from happening. The same goes with Pod and the infinite combo of damage and life gain through a sacrifice outlet. You can kill the outlet before the chain has a chance to go off and by doing so at least buy yourself some time. It can also affect Affinity, a deck I haven’t mentioned yet. Normally if you were to kill their powerhouse Arcbound Ravager they could sacrifice a bunch of artifacts to it to make it’s Modular ability huge and then when it died they could just redistribute them anywhere they wanted. Well, with Split Second they don’t have that option and Ravager just straight up dies.
After our removal suite we throw in a splash of utility with Sign in Blood. A good little pay two life draw two card spell. Or at least that is how it is read most of the time. And it is a good payoff. Late game it can let you dig for the answers you want or need and early game it can simply refill your hand after annihilating your opponents. Not to mention that because it reads “target player”, you can use it to finish off your opponent as well. And a lot of players out there will agree that there isn’t much out there that is more disgusting that being killed with a Sign in Blood.
Now a deck wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t have creatures. Well, that’s not entirely true as there are creatureless decks out there, but this isn’t one of them because if we ran only discard and removal we would easily lose any ground race. Now we aren’t running a lot of creatures, but the ones we are running have an immediate impact on the game.
Ravenous Rats is the first one that I’m going to address, and it is the weakest one by far. We are paying two mana for a 1/1 body that isn’t good for a whole lot other than chump blocking. But it can chump block like a champ! What’s special about him is that when he enters the battlefield he makes your opponent discard a card. It’s not random, but it’s still something. So early or late game this creature can disrupt the hand, clog up the board for a turn, or maybe even eek out a few points of damage on the attack.
After the rat we have Liliana’s Specter, a flying rat one could say? She does the same thing as the Ravenous Rats, in that she forces your opponent to discard a card, and sadly she also shares the same toughness quality seeing as she is only a 2/1 body. But she does have flying which can help gum up the air if you need a easy blocker there, or she can fly over anything on the ground that is waiting to eat your face.
The last creature to enter into the fray is a personal favourite of mine, and he is none other than the Chittering Rats. Yes, another rat. But he is a good rat. Well, for a common he is a good rat. Correction, he is a great rat! I mean, he is below the power curve of being only a 2/2 bear for three mana but when he enters the battlefield you Time Walk. Not familiar with that card? It’s an old card that was printed only up to Unlimited and it is banned in everything, except in Vintage in which it is restricted. Because it gives you an extra turn for two mana. That’s powerful, no matter what stage of the game you are in. An extra turn? Hell yes, I would love to take two turns in a row! It can be a huge tempo shift! But now you are asking how does the rat give us an extra turn? Well when he enters the battlefield he forces your opponent to take a card from their hand and place it on top of their library. Effectively making them ‘re-play’ their previous turn. This is even more effective when you have already chewed apart their hand with your suite of discard spells. And it’s even more effective when you work it into our “win con”.
Shrieking Affliction. A single black mana for an enchantment that will punish our opponent for playing their hand out too fast, as Aggro decks are known to do, and reward us for emptying out our opponents hand. The best part about this enchantment is that if you can empty their hand entirely, and this is if they do not have card draw in their suite of spells (but nobody runs Divination), then there is an almost guaranteed six damage over two turns, in which they either allow the clock to continue or they buff up their hand in hopes that they can outlast the effects of the Shrieking Affliction. This of course only works if you don’t draw up into one of our many spells that force our opponent to discard.
Now, you might be asking yourself why we aren’t using something like Liliana’s Caress (a strictly better Megrim). Well because with the way that our deck is designed we don’t want our opponent to have any cards in hand, and in order for Caress to affect our opponent they have to have those threats. Once we get our opponent into “topdeck” mode, he is simply going to play out whatever cards he draws into without fear of taking the two damage from the Caress. Making it a dead card on board once we are done destroying their hand.
And the last card to make it into the deck is one that I’ve been experimenting with as a real late game kill card, and that is Haunting Echoes. See, the deck will regularly go into the late stages of the game with ten and twelve turn games, as we either wait or dig for our win con or beat our down slowly with creatures. What this means however is that we will usually be filling their graveyard with a ton of cards, either from hand removal or board removal. Now imagine if their graveyard is full and you are now both playing the top deck game and you pull Haunting Echoes. You cast it targetting their graveyard and suddenly their deck has shrivelled down to almost nothing but basic lands. I’m pretty confident that at that point your opponent won’t have enough answers in their library to deal with you.
Sounds fair enough, doesn’t it? Well, I’m not done yet. I’m going to do something that I don’t normally do and go into the sideboard.
If you go back and look at the list there is red splashed in there, and I think I said something about Black not having any inherent artifact hate. A simple splash of Smash to Smithereens works to alleviate that problem, and this card is good against several decks. Obviously you want to side it in against Affinity and Pod, but you can also use it in the fringe match ups where Aether Vial shows up, as in Merfolk and G/W Hatebears. The other card that isn’t in the main board is Leyline of the Void. An enchantment that gets around Abrupt Decay and can destroy several different decks at the same time. Storm is one of the key matchups as both Pyromancer’s Ascension and Past in Flames require the graveyard in order to function. That’s not to say that a storm deck can’t “go off” without them, but you would be smart to mulligan into seeing this in your opening hand. Another big deck that it can come in against is Pod. It shuts down the infinite damage and infinite life combos, and forces them to move into a mid-range beatdown deck. Not the best of solutions, but it makes the matchup very playable. The last one I’ve added in is a personal preference in Echoing Decay, which is fantastic against tokens, but it really should be traded in favour of Infest or another “sweeper” type effect.
And so there you have it. A deck that is reasonably affordable compared to other decks that are in the metagame right now (I mean, come on… Pod is almost $2100?) and is suited to fight a lot of the popular decks.
Until next time,
~ Gerald Knight
Extra Booty: Now this is purely speculation, but there is another reason why I am investing in building this deck and that is because of a card that is being released in M15 which I think can put this deck over the top. Waste Not. The community designed card. For those of you who haven’t heard about it or don’t remember what it does, it is a two cost black enchantment that has three different effects when an opponent discards a card, depending upon the card type. A creature card will net you a 2/2 zombie token, a land card will net you two black mana, and if they discard anything else you get to draw a card. All said and told I don’t know how this card wouldn’t be a beast in the deck and I am planning on pre-ordering at least four of them.
Panic sets in as you are told by the pretty lady at the airport terminal that your luggage has been lost. It’s unthinkable. How could your luggage be lost? You need that for this weekend. Your clothes were in there. Your hygiene products were in there. Your Magic cards were in there!
How are you to compete at the Grand Prix without them? You plead with the lady to find out if she can do anything to help you, but all she can do is shake her head and say that they should be able to recover it tomorrow. But tomorrow will be too late. You need to register your deck in a couple of hours. How can you play without a deck? You hang your head dejectedly and pace for a few minutes as you try and think of something. Some sort of solution. Hey! Maybe someone at the venue will lend you a deck? That’s feasible, right? Might as well give it a shot.
So you call a cab as you take a look in your wallet. Not much there, but enough for entry into the Grand Prix, the cab ride, maybe a meal or two. Might even be able to pick up a chase rare that you had been intending to find.
The cab pulls up to the venue and you hand him the toll. That’s some of your hope gone. You start walking around among the masses of people, noticing a few Pro players signing autographs and a few MTG Personalities talking with other players. Vendors have setup and are already hawking their wares. Everything from cardboard crack, to sleeves and playmats, dice, and tokens. You open your wallet again to see what measly amount you have. But of all the things you see, your friends are not amongst them. You pull out your cell phone and try calling them. Long distance charges be damned. One of them picks up, but it’s so loud where you are that you can’t hear anything.
An announcement comes over the speaker that Deck Registration for the Grand Prix will be ending in an hour. Last chance to get in. That panic starts creeping from your heart to your stomach. You flew all this way to compete. This was your vacation. You spent months planning this, tuning your deck, and all for what? To not be able to enter? You couldn’t let that happen.
You make your way over to the vendors and start looking in their showcases. Everything is through the roof! You check your wallet again. Definitely not enough for a single fetch land, let alone a playset of Past in Flames, or Birthing Pod, or even a Scapeshift. How could you imagine to compete with anything in the field without the heavy hitters? But you are desperate and keep looking, until your eye falls on something shiny. A vendor has a FNM Promo of Armadillo Cloak in their showcase, four dollars. Not that it would help you much, because the card isn’t Modern, which is what you came here to play.
But wait? Wasn’t there a card that was recently printed that acted like Armadillo Cloak? Sure was! It’s Unflinching Courage! Your mind starts racing as cards run through your head. Rancor, Ethereal Armor, Daybreaker Coronet, Kor Spiritdancer. Reid Duke’s deck from last year! But we can’t afford Daybreaker’s, Kor Spiritdancer’s, nor the Leylines of Sanctity that have to be in the sideboard to even make the deck possible, let alone the fetch lands that make white available to play the important pieces. So how could you even manage to make the deck? Pauper. That’s how. You ask the vendor if he has bulk commons and begin rifling through long boxxes.
The announcement comes over the P.A. system again letting you know there’s only fourty-five minutes left to register. Panic has begun to subside as you’ve figured out your plan. Now to just get the pieces in place. You got this!
So, I never intended to write a series about transitioning diffrerent format’s to and from Pauper, but it looks like that’s what I’ve done. I started writing an article about Standard and how new players can get into the scene with a collection of commons, and then I wrote about Legacy. Well, this time I am here to write about Modern showcasing one of My favourite decks. Hexproof. AKA Bogles.
The deck is pretty straight forward as far as decks go. You play down one of your hexproof creatures, play a bunch of auras on it, and smash your opponents face in. Sounds easy enough, right?
Well if you don’t have the money to run Reid Duke’s version, which includes the aforementioned Kor Spiritdancer (which will usually run you about $10 a piece) or the Daybreak Coronet’s (again another expensive card at a high of $25), not to mention the fetch lands, then you can turn to Pauper.
The first thing we need to do is establish our Mana Base. Now we can’t afford fetch lands, obviously, so how do we make our lands tap for white? Because we can’t run this without Ethereal Armor or Arma… sorry, Unflinching Courage. Well, this deck is based off of enchantments, so why not start looking there?
The best aura’s that will fix mana for a deck like this, at the common level, are Abundant Growth which will let us tap for any colour and it also cantrips. The other one is Utopia Sprawl, which will ramp you up a colour on top of the mana generated by the land itself. And if you feel adventurous enough you could spring for the recently printed Selesnya Guildgate. They are almost like Temple Gardens or Sunpetal Groves, but not nearly as expensive. And since we aren’t running the Coronets, these auras can fill that slot. Not to mention they both synergize well with the Ethereal Armor.
Now to replace the Kor Spiritdancer we have to do a little bit of looking. I mean nothing can really compare to the card drawing that this creature is capable of, nor the Ancestral Mask like ability built into it. But what if I told you there was another option? One that in some cases might even be a little bit better? What could be better than having a playset of Gladecover Scout and Slippery Bogle’s to annoy your opponent? What could be better than eight hexproof creatures? Why twelve of course! That’s right, Silhana Ledgewalker can easily replace the Kor Spiritdancer. And sure, it isn’t as pumpable and it doesn’t have the card draw bonus, but it’s another creature your opponent can’t touch. Plus it has the upside of conditional unblockability. If our opponents can’t stop it in the air then they are really in trouble. Even if they can they still have to deal with Trample and First Strike!
Sounds pretty simple eh? Let’s go one step further. If you have a little bit of cash, but not a lot, you can find a replacement for the Leyline of Sanctity (A $15 dollar rare!). Ever heard of the True Believer? And no, I’m not talking about the kid Henry from Once Upon a Time (Good series by the way!). True Believer (a $1 rare if you are lucky, $2 if you are not) was a creature printed in Onslaught that gave you Shroud. But it was printed again in Tenth Edition which makes it Modern legal. Now, yes it will die to Doom Blade and Lightning Bolt. But it’s a step in the right direction. Especially if you want to modify your deck a bit and run Alpha Authority, but I’m getting off topic.
Let’s see what this might look like, shall we?
Enchantments (28)
Creatures (12)
Lands (20)
And so there you have it. Without getting into Sideboard cards you have a functional (if a little underpowered) Modern deck made out of mostly commons. And if nothing else? It’s a great place to start!
~ Gerald Knight
Extra Booty: Now there are a few things I want to address in Extra Booty today. The first is if you are going to upgrade the deck, do so with the lands first. An easy way to modify the deck when you can acquire lands (such as Sunpetal Grove and Temple Garden) is to remove one mana fixing aura per land added. From here you can add in other auras that you think might work well. If you can get the Spiritdancers then you can let the Ledgewalkers go and replace them with this bomb of a creature. And if you can find the Coronet’s then I tip my hat to you and you can replace them with whatever makes you feel most comfortable.
Now, the xtra special thing I want to talk about, which I don’t normally do, is a sideboard (or mainboard) “tech” card that is good against pretty much every deck out there.
Suppression Field. It has been seen as a singleton, or in pairs, in a couple of sideboards. But I think that it deserves some special attention from a sideboard standpoint, if not from a mainboard. The card makes activated abilities cost more to play. So this means that your opponents Birthing Pod is going to cost more. Your opponents Arcbound Ravager won’t be the sacrifice engine it’s supposed to be. And Ad Nauseum will generally fold as Lightning Storm counts as an activated ability, even while it is on the stack. Now you’re going to argue back that there are plenty of decks that it doesn’t hit. Such as Storm or Zoo. And you are right on that, except that if you read everybody’s favourite fetch lands properly, they are not mana activated abilities. I’ll let you think on that until next time.
A huge part of the functioning of this deck comes from that newly legal enchantment which provides every turn a new 1/1 Flying Faerie with which to either continue a beatdown strategy or defend your life total, which can be very important as it slowly bleeds you one life each turn. The other Fae in the deck are not just aggressive creatures but are efficiently equipped with additional abilities and all are able to appear at will with Flash. Starting with a look at the permission package we have Spellstutter Sprite which with so many Faeries around to support it will more often then not be able to counter any spell threatening you. It is complimented by Mana Leak, Spell Snare and Cryptic Command to ensure dominance over the opponent. Next we look at the disruption which is rooted in the legendary Vendilion Clique which can appear out of nowhere to remove a key piece of action from their hand and then move into a beatdown role. There is also a mix of Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize which coming out turn one plays to the harsh opening into Bitterblossom turn two which can often spell doom for the opponent. Our last true Faerie is Mistbind Clique which is used as a virtual Time Walk by flashing out on the upkeep of your opponent to tap down his lands for that turn. The Champion ability can also be your savior in a long game where Bitterblossom, which is coincidentally also a Faerie, is taking down your life too low and you’re able to make it disappear for as long as Mistbind is around. To round out the creatures there is also a pair of Snapcaster Mage which help take full advantage of the decks instants and sorceries, and also manlands in the form of the evasive Creeping Tar Pit and Mutavault which when active is also a Faerie to help either Spellstutter or Mistbind if necessary. A bit of spot removal is found in the form of Tragic Slip and Go for the Throat to contain the most important of threats. Finally there is the powerful Sword of Feast and Famine which will allow you to play spells or activate manlands before combat and then untap your lands to keep up mana to counter the enemies plans as well as forcing incidental discard.
While the main combo finish involves enchanting an Exarch with a Twin there is a redundancy package which includes Restoration Angel that can interact with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker as a secondary plan to create infinite token creatures. One way the White splash helps in this deck comes from Wall of Omens which is part of the decks draw engine and especially abusive if you Twin in, but more importantly in a new meta which is partially defined by recently unbanned Wild Nacatl a four toughness two drop can be the sole difference between holding off a ruthless assault and holding on to combo the win. Additional draw comes from format staple Serum Visions with its Scry ability to not only draw valuable cards but also filter unneeded cards away and a one of Desolate Lighthouse allows you to dig through the deck to find answers or missing combo pieces. For removal with this deck having access to both Red and White we find the requisite format all-stars Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile both efficient and effective for their purpose. There is also Swan Song as a light permission suite to handle at an very cheap cost many of the problems that the deck might face and the token you give usually not problematic, with the removal able to handle most other problems. A full set of Snapcaster Mage are able to rebuy all of your used instants and sorceries to effectively double the amount of draw, removal and counters in your deck. As an alternate beatdown plan the deck sports a full set of Celestial Colonnade to bring the ‘death from above’ should the game stall into a draw out affair. Finally a one of Spellskite in the maindeck is there as a hedge preboard in the mirror and also a way to draw removal away from your combo creatures so you can go off unhindered when you’re ready for the kill.
