Modern Post Philly: What's Next?

Happy Labor Day! First and foremost, I would like to thank Tony for letting me contribute to the site. I am by no means a professional player but I enjoy playing and looking for ways to exploit metagames. I have been playing Magic continuously for about seven years but I first started back in Fallen Empires.

I am very excited about the Modern format although I must admit; I was hoping Overextended would have been the new format. Nevertheless, Modern allows me to play some of my all time favorite cards like, Gifts Ungiven, Dark Confidant, Ninja of the Deep Hours, Troll Ascetic, etc.

This past weekend, Modern had its debut during Pro Tour Philadelphia. There was no truly defined meta as the format was brand new. A brewer’s paradise if there ever was one. The banning of multiple staples pushed people to find new and broken synergies. Attack with Inkmonth Nexus, play Blazing Shoal discarding Dragonstorm. Take 10 poison, next game? Shuffle up and let’s play again. Of course this is the perfect hand but it did happen. In fact this weekend had many combo decks and made aggro decks play the unusual role of control. The dominant aggro deck of the weekend was Counter Cat, a Team Channel Fireball innovation. Combine aggressive 1 and 2 drops backed by some creature disruption in the form of Qasali Pridgemage and Gaddock Teeg and a splash of blue for counters and you get a hybrid of Zoo and Merfolk. The deck ended up in the finals but lost to the Type II strategy, Splinter Twin.

The Splinter Twin archetype was able to achieve an enormous amount of redundancy with Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker playing copies 5-6 of the deck's namesake and Pestermite being Deceiver Exarch copies 5-7. This was one of many U/R based combo decks this weekend. There were also copies of U/R Pyromancer Ascension and U/R Pyromancer’s Swath. All the decks had 4 Preordains and 4 Ponders to help find combo pieces. The final “combo deck” was very different and wanted to drop a giant monster to win.

TwelevePost was the most represented deck at the tourney. It was thought this deck could out race the traditional Zoo decks by playing 8 mana generating walls, gaining massive amounts of life thanks to the new locus Glimmerpost, and Primeval Titan to ramp into the scariest creature of them all, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. The TwelvePost archetype had its fair share of innovation with Through the Breach tech to get your Emrakul out faster than your opponents in the mirror match or just set your opponent back multiple turns with his Annihilator ability.

At the end of this tournament, we started to see a Modern metagame start to form. All the decks were extremely powerful and left unmolested, could kill at remarkable speeds. When Zoo/Counter Cat is one of the slowest decks in the room, you know you are playing against a room full of combo. What I also noticed was the clear lack of Swamps in the Top 8 and in the decks who achieved 18 points or higher in the Modern format. If you ask me, Swamps seem well positioned.

If you are fighting creatures, no other color give you access to more removal. Sitting across a combo player, they better hope they can still combo with only three cards in hand at the end of turn two. The deck I am suggesting is reminiscent of Eva Green in Legacy or B/g Discard from Time Spiral/Lorwyn Standard. The deck plays some cheap discard, Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, Wrench Mind, Rise // Fall and some of the best removal in Dismember, Gatekeeper of Malikar, and Putrefy. Once you have erased the memory of your opponent, you drop the aggressive All-Stars Tarmogoyf, Nantuko Shade, and either Nyxathid or Tombstalker. With your opponent’s hopes and dreams in their graveyard, you go to town and kill them in short order. Below is a list I am currently playing.

Lands:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
2 Twilight Mire
2 Dragonskull Summit
3 Swamps
4 Ghost Quarter
22 lands
Creatures:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
3 Nantuko Shade
2 Nyxathid
17 Creatures
Spells:
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
4 Wrench Mind
4 Rise // Fall
4 Dismember
2 Putrefy
21 Spells

SB:
4 Augur of Skulls – comes in against combo
4 Dark Confidant – comes in against combo and control decks
4 Vampire Nighthawk – comes in against creature based decks
3 Ancient Grudge – comes in against Affinity

This is a very rough list but I think discard based decks are well positioned right now.

Another reason many professional magic players decided to play a combo or aggro deck was the lack of card draw. Ancestral Visions and Jace, the Mind Sculptor have been banned. Probably one of the best card drawing spells in Modern, Harmonize, is not even blue. Until a control deck comes along with ample card drawing, I can see a discard based strategy doing well.

Until next time, let me know what you think about the deck and thanks for reading.

E17