In this experiment, we raise the tide and realize a weird trip to paradise.

For this week, I wanted to build around something from Modern Masters 2015 Edition. Well, I did it, but the card I selected ended up being cut down to two copies. It’s a card I really like, but it just never seems to really pull its weight.

The card is Inexorable Tide. I don’t expect all my pet cards to be tournament-viable combo staples, but I do want them to fit snugly into the archetypes I build around them. Here’s the conundrum with the Tide:

It encourages me to play a lot of spells in order to proliferate the counters on certain permanents. And since Inexorable Tide costs 5, I need to wait a bunch of the game until I can resolve it—and only then can I start casting my spells in earnest for the proliferation bonus. With a bit of Tarkir block to help, I’ve built around the theme of Inexorable Tide without needing it on the battlefield to do my thing.

Proliferating without Proliferate

However, Dragons of Tarkir brought back prowess without the keyword, creating different triggered effects when we cast our noncreature spells. One such card is Myth Realized, which gains a counter for each spell cast. In essence, Myth Realized is proliferating itself—and it only costs 1 mana instead of the Tide’s 5.

Fate Reforged’s Scroll of the Masters has a similar effect, though it’s not quite as strong. Still, it can be nice to have some more self-proliferating cards on the battlefield.

Academy Elite synergizes from a completely different angle. Instead of gaining a counter whenever we cast a spell, it gains the counters from us having cast the spells prior to its casting. It’s as big as the number of instants and sorceries we cast before we cast it. Oh, and if we do later resolve an Inexorable Tide, we can make the Elite bigger.

Tamiyo, the Moon Sage is among my favorite cards to proliferate because of her super-sweet ultimate ability. We’ll need the Inexorable Tide to fully take advantage of her abilities, but if we can pull off that ultimate, we’ll have an endless supply of spells to cast in order to continue the prowess and proliferation.

Draw a Card

And thus, I found a bunch of -cost spells that replace themselves so that I can just chain them, one into another, while growing Myths and setting up for massive Academy Elites. We’ll also be able to churn through our library in search of the endgame cards we need.

I settled on four copies of Preordain to start. Spells that cost 1 and draw a card vary wildly in power, and the strongest of them are banned in Modern. Preordain is one of those, but that loosens its price a bit. That said, if you prefer to play Ponders or Serum Visions or the like, go ahead.

Brainstorm just may be the strongest, and it lets us push 4- and 5-mana cards deeper into our deck for when we’ll need them while keeping the lands and copies of Myth Realized we want to play early.

Cerulean Wisps may be the weakest included option here, but it does interesting things with some stuff we’ll be getting into in a bit.

The last set of cards includes Mental Note, Thought Scour, and Visions of Beyond. The first two mill for two cards when we cast them, allowing us to beef up our Academy Elites we play later. They also work great with a Tamiyo, the Moon Sage emblem, as they become Ancestral Recall. Thought Scour works doubly well with the emblem, as it becomes a win condition on its own—we gain the ability to mill our opponent out fairly quickly. Finally, the first two of those cards set us up for the third. Visions of Beyond also can be a virtual Ancestral Recall, but it can do so without the Tamiyo emblem.

Weird Stuff

With Paradise Mantle equipped, the Weird becomes a one-stop source for cantrip mana, allowing us to keep triggering prowess and proliferate effects until we have a hand of zero card-draw spells. The Weird will have grown with each one, so with that and maybe a Myth Realized or Scroll of the Masters, we should be able to deal a good amount of damage that turn.

Let’s take a look at a possibility for a third-turn kill:

Turn one: Cast Myth Realized.

Turn two: Cast Blistercoil Weird and Paradise Mantle, trigger Myth Realized; equip Paradise Mantle to Blistercoil Weird.

Turn three: Tap the Weird for to cast a draw spell, triggering the Weird and the Myth. Repeat a lot of times, activate the Myth, and attack for a lot of damage.

You can see where Cerulean Wisps might come in there: It can untap the Weird an extra time, essentially generating mana. We can use that mana to pay for cycling Lonely Sandbars we draw, as cycling those brings us to more spells we need, but it doesn’t actually trigger the Weird, prowess, or the like.

Inexorable Myth ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Academy Elite
• 4 Blistercoil Weird

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

• Spells (32)
• 2 Brainstorm
• 2 Cerulean Wisps
• 4 Mental Note
• 4 Thought Scour
• 4 Visions of Beyond
• 4 Preordain
• 2 Inexorable Tide
• 4 Myth Realized
• 2 Scroll of the Masters
• 4 Paradise Mantle

• Lands (18)
• 2 Mystic Gate
• 4 Adarkar Wastes
• 4 Hallowed Fountain
• 4 Lonely Sandbar
• 4 Seachrome Coast

Buy This Deck

If you want to proliferate on the cheap with Myth Realized, if you want to pay full price and proliferate Tamiyo, the Moon Sage with Inexorable Tide, or if you just like the idea of cycling your library with twenty cantrips, give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com