Some people can go off faith, trust, or devotion to believe something. Other people need a little more proof, and there is nothing quite better than seeing it yourself. In fact, seeing something so great being done will usually inspire us to do something great ourselves. Today, I’m going to show you some decklists that went undefeated on Magic Online. These decks are wild and you would’ve never thought such sweet decks could do so well. Thanks to Magic Online picking varied decklists that are different to showcase, I can bring you these beauties. In fact, these decks have inspired me to build my own sweet Modern deck. I’ve always wanted to play Emrakul, the Promised End in Modern, and I take a crack at it at the end of this piece. These decks were all the inspiration I needed. My hope with this article is that it inspires you to tap into your hidden potential and brew around something you really love playing. It could be a card, a certain archetype, or even just a certain format. Don’t wait for someone else to maybe do it. You can do it yourself! You just have to believe!

Nobody is born an expert brewer of decks. It takes practice, passion, and lots of patience. However, once you get going, you’re potential for making sweet and powerful decks goes up.

First let’s go ahead and look at a sweet brew in Standard with The Scarab God.

Grixis Scarab Control ? Hour of Devastation Standard | TINGFENGWAN

• Creatures (7)
• 3 The Scarab God
• 4 Torrential Gearhulk

• Instants (24)
• 1 Commit // Memory
• 2 Abrade
• 2 Essence Scatter
• 2 Magma Spray
• 2 Negate
• 3 Censor
• 4 Disallow
• 4 Glimmer of Genius
• 4 Harnessed Lightning

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Hour of Devastation
• 2 Sweltering Suns

• Lands (26)
• 3 Mountain
• 6 Island
• 2 Canyon Slough
• 3 Fetid Pools
• 4 Aether Hub
• 4 Spirebluff Canal
• 4 Wandering Fumarole

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Canyon Slough
• 1 Hour of Devastation
• 1 Magma Spray
• 1 Negate
• 1 Sweltering Suns
• 2 Battle at the Bridge
• 3 Chandra's Defeat
• 1 Crook of Condemnation
• 1 Dark Intimations
• 2 Dispel
• 1 Summary Dismissal

Buy This Deck

When I first saw this list, I got excited. It’s doing everything I want to be doing in Standard except casting Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh. However, I can let that slide since we do have three The Scarab God in this list and if we really wanted to, we could slide Nicol Bolas somewhere in the 75.

The deck has proven its worth by going 5-0 in a competitive league. I’m not really surprised since it has an answer to almost everything. Let’s look at little closer at it.

The Counterspell Suite

Censor is one of the best Counterspells we’ve seen in Standard. It’s almost like you have a Static Orb for your opponent. Then, when they continuously play around Censor, you can just cycle it and counter their spell with a hard counter. Control decks usually don’t play too many Essence Scatters since they can deal with creatures with something like Wrath of God. Things have changed, though, and creatures do so much more and we need to counter some before they come into play and trigger abilities. Disallow is just a solid way to stop anything for control decks. Being able to counter a spell or stop a Planeswalker ultimate, or any number of other things is essential for control decks right now since every other deck attacks you from so many different angles.

The Removal

What resolves must die. Harnessed Lightning and Spray are great early on. Obviously, you’ll want to try and save Magma Spray for creatures that have Eternalize or can come back to the battlefield like Scrapheap Scrounger. Abrade can kill creatures too but you’ll want to hold it for artifacts if you’re playing against a deck with a very powerful artifact like God-Pharaoh's Gift. Sweltering Suns is great for when your opponent gets too wide or is generating a lot of creatures through other means like Nissa, Voice of Zendikar or Cryptbreaker. You can’t afford to trade one for one, and this is where Sweltering Suns really shines. Hour of Devastation is similar, in that regard, to Sweltering Suns but has the big benefit of also damaging Planeswalkers which is important because a resolved Planeswalker is hard for this deck to deal with early on before you can start flashing in Torrential Gearhulks.

The Good Stuff

The quickest way to start closing the game out is with the big Blue creature himself, Torrential Gearhulk. The Scarab God is also another excellent win condition and even gives you a chance to win against extremely tough matchups like ramp since you’ll be able to counter Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and then you can reanimate it with The Scarab God to exile your opponent’s deck instead. See how it feels Ramp! Wandering Fumarole is old faithful. Once we attrition our opponent out of cards we can start taking huge chunks out of our opponent’s life total turn after turn. Memory is a solid way to rebuy everything if we really need to or if we need to turn off Delirium and other Reanimator strategies like Liliana, Death's Majesty decks or God-Pharaoh's Gift decks.

Staying on track with The Scarab God, our next decklist has the God in it. Except this one is Modern . . . 

Esper God Control ? Modern | ShivanSliver

• Creatures (4)
• 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
• 2 The Scarab God

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 4 Liliana of the Veil

• Instants (6)
• 2 Shadow of Doubt
• 4 Fatal Push

• Sorceries (16)
• 3 Collective Brutality
• 3 Damnation
• 3 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 4 Lingering Souls

• Enchantments (6)
• 2 Detention Sphere
• 4 Spreading Seas

• Lands (24)
• 1 Island
• 1 Plains
• 3 Swamp
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Shambling Vent
• 2 Godless Shrine
• 2 Watery Grave
• 4 Marsh Flats
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Tectonic Edge

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Collective Brutality
• 1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 3 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Flaying Tendrils
• 2 Grafdigger's Cage
• 1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
• 2 Stony Silence
• 2 Surgical Extraction

Buy This Deck

This is another deck that did well in its respective competitive league on Magic Online. Never thought I’d see The Scarab God in Modern so quickly and it’s not even one copy, it’s two!

This deck is tuned to beat the Magic Online meta that Shivansilver was playing against. Main deck Shadow of Doubt is fantastic against Valakut decks and is also fine against Chord of Calling decks or just fetchlands in general. One of the best things to Shadow of Doubt has to Summoner's Pact right?

The deck functions very like Control in Modern. The Black splash goes a long way though allowing you to be a lot more proactive and never having to hold mana up for countermagic, which can get out with strong sorcery speed spells like Planeswalkers or even The Scarab God. As much as I love The Scarab God, Lingering Souls must be the best pick up for the Black splash. Lingering Souls is fantastic at attacking, trading, buying time, and generating value. It’s such a powerful card against decks that aren’t trying to combo you out.

I really Shivan’s sideboard too, it could just be because of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver but you’ll never know! He seriously has a nice variety of cards against the best decks. Disdainful Stroke is great against Tron and Scapeshift where Ceremonious Rejection is only good against Tron, so I really like that he’s playing three of those. Sorin is a solid way to gain life against midrange and even burn decks. It’s pretty apparent that Shivan is preparing a lot more for the unfair matchups then the fair ones. Honestly, it is hard for fair decks like Jund to outgrind The Scarab God. You really need to get under it or go very wide if you’re playing a fair deck like Jund.

All right, so like I said earlier seeing these decks really made me want to build my own list for Modern. If The Scarab God can see play in Modern why can’t Emrakul, the Promised End?

Sultai Emrakul ? Modern | Ali Aintrazi

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Architects of Will
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
• 4 Tarmogoyf

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Liliana of the Veil
• 1 Liliana, the Last Hope

• Instants (7)
• 1 Nameless Inversion
• 2 Abrupt Decay
• 4 Fatal Push

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 3 Traverse the Ulvenwald

• Artifacts (3)
• 1 Nihil Spellbomb
• 2 Mishra's Bauble

• Lands (23)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Hissing Quagmire
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Watery Grave
• 2 Overgrown Tomb
• 3 Polluted Delta
• 4 Blooming Marsh
• 4 Verdant Catacombs

• Sideboard (0)

Buy This Deck

The object of this deck is not to cheat Emrakul into play but to just cast her like she was meant to be cast. The deck has access to reduce Emrakul’s cost in every way, reducing her cost to as low as five thanks to having tribal. Getting Delirium is easy in this deck thanks to a lot of the cards being two types. Things like Nameless Inversion, Courser of Kruphix, and Architects of Will allow you to get delirium very quickly. Not only will this reduce the cost of Emrakul very quickly but it will also make our Tarmogoyfs huge in the process.

We have a lot of ways to control the flow of the early game with hand disruption and removal. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is our Dark Confidant here. We can get a ton of value out of Jace, Telepath Unbound. Traverse the Ulvenwald, while not Demonic Tutor, it will still get you almost anything you need. We can even kill an Eldrazi by tutoring up good ole Shriekmaw. Traverse the Ulvenwald does so much throughout the game and being able to buy it back with Jace can be backbreaking.

The sideboard has more bullets for whatever matchup we are facing. Chameleon Colossus is great against Death's Shadow decks. Tooth Collector is fantastic against small creature decks like Affinity. Glen Elendra Archmage is sure to shut down any combo or control deck. Ramunap Excavator can allow us to play a Ghost Quarter every turn to hinder Valakut and both pieces can be fetched up with Traverse the Ulvenwald. Big Game Hunter isn’t flashy unless you’re discarding it with Jace but it gets the job done against Eldrazi. You have so many options with this deck!

A few cards I considered but ultimately didn’t make the cut are:

• Eldrazi Temple
• Mulldrifter
• The Scarab God
• Alchemist's Refuge
• Damnation
• Nissa, Steward of Elements
• Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
• Ishkanah, Grafwidow

Eldrazi Temple seemed sweet to help us cast Emrakul quicker. Even just one can help. If we play Eldrazi Temple, though, we’d want to play less colors and start playing some Thought-Knot Seers. I’d also be tempted to cut Nameless Inversion in favor of Crib Swap since it is technically an Eldrazi spell. Alchemist's Refuge seemed sweet to me to flash in a Thoughtseize on our opponent’s draw step or an end of turn Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. I need to test it before committing. The rest should be pretty straight forward. One card that could be just good here is Whispers of Emrakul since we turn on delirium so quickly. Hymn to Tourach sees play Legacy, so if Whispers is turned on by turn three, it would be very powerful. It would take a lot of Mishra's Baubles and Street Wraiths to turn it on by turn two.

My hope with this deck is to have game against every matchup. I love playing games of Magic that don’t end on turn four and I’m hopeful this deck can do that. That’s all I have for you today! I believe Emrakul, the Promised End can be a real player in Modern; we just gotta figure out the right build.

As always thanks for reading!

Much love,

Ali Aintrazi

@AliEdlrazi on Twitter