As I’ve been advocating the deck and playing it on MTGO for some time now, it comes as no surprise that I chose to play Bant Eldrazi at the Modern Grand Prix in Indianapolis this past weekend. I’ll spare the preamble and get to the decklist, and then we can discuss why your best bet if you are trying to fight fair is, ironically enough, the descendant of Modern’s last most unfair deck.

Without further ado, here is the list I played at the tournament:

Bant Eldrazi ? Modern | Ben Freidman

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 2 Eternal Witness
• 3 Drowner of Hope
• 3 Matter Reshaper
• 4 Eldrazi Displacer
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Reality Smasher
• 4 Thought-Knot Seer

• Spells (11)
• 1 Dismember
• 4 Path to Exile
• 4 Ancient Stirrings
• 2 Engineered Explosives

• Lands (24)
• 1 Plains
• 2 Forest
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Temple Garden
• 3 Brushland
• 3 Yavimaya Coast
• 4 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Eldrazi Temple
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Engineered Explosives
• 2 Ulvenwald Tracker
• 4 Stubborn Denial
• 2 Stony Silence
• 2 Blessed Alliance
• 3 Grafdigger's Cage

Buy This Deck

So, our story starts with the Wednesday night before GP Indianapolis. I was essentially locked in on a similar list to what you see above, but with the third Engineered Explosives and fourth Matter Reshaper in the main deck instead of the two Eternal Witnesses, and the fourth Grafdigger's Cage in the sideboard over the extra slot that the extra Engineered Explosives main opened up. I hadn’t found Ulvenwald Tracker yet, so I had some open sideboard slots that I was filling with a Worship and another Affinity hate card (Stony Silence, Fracturing Gust, Creeping Corrosion, whatever).

Now, I was concerned with the Infect matchup, and I started stressing out about how there was no good creature to hate on Infect’s X/1’s in my colors. I wanted to drop a hate creature that put the onus on Infect to close the game out immediately or risk being locked out, and there was no Grim Lavamancer or Izzet Staticaster or Night of Souls' Betrayal or Cunning Sparkmage in the Bant arsenal. I also wasn’t willing to settle for Spellskite, as it dies to Twisted Image, which is a common card in most Infect builds. I started searching Gatherer, looking at Icatian Javelineers and almost playing the extremely narrow Melira, Sylvok Outcast as a last resort, nuke-the-world strategy. For what it’s worth, Spellskite is way better than Melira because even though it dies to Twisted Image, it is colorless for Ancient Stirrings (which is a huge benefit for your hate cards with this deck) and has applications in other matchups.

I immediately started soliciting opinions on this card as a mirror breaker (eating opposing Noble Hierarchs in the early turns and allowing an exalted Reality Smasher to eat their Smasher, or just eat their Thought-Knot Seers, Eldrazi Displacers, etc.) I got mixed opinions on the card, but I was excited to find something that would be applicable in three tough matchups: the mirror, Infect, and Chord/Evolution/Company decks. None of these matchups are favorable, all are close, and having an angle, a piece of technology, something, anything to bring in against them would be really important. This is doubly true in the mirror, where games drag out forever when both players have Drowners and Displacers, and you get to see a large chunk of your deck. Hell, opponents would be boarding in Worship in the mirror when my plan would be to fight all of their creatures! Little did I know that a piece of technology I would come across on the car ride would actually eclipse the little fight instigator when it came to winning the (now-prevalent) mirror matches.

As for the sideboarded Trackers, I am unfortunately not quite as sanguine on their continued inclusion. Because Tracker demands that you hold up mana in occasionally-awkward ways against Infect (while being a little slow against Affinity), going forward I like Gut Shot better against that pair of terrifying linear decks. After playing a few matches against Infect this weekend, I found that you were usually losing when you allowed the Infect player to develop a board in the early turns, which put you in the awkward position of having to hold up removal while still trying to develop your board. A critical mass of cheap removal (which can be re-bought with Eternal Witness, too!) is the key to keeping Infect down while you deploy your more expensive beaters, and there is no removal spell in Modern cheaper than Gut Shot. Additionally, Gut Shot also shows its worth in the Affinity matchup against Steel Overseer, Signal Pest, Vault Skirge, Nexi of various stripes, and even the occasional Memnite. You lose some equity in the mirror match due to this change, but it’s not too bad, as Displacer can disrupt Ulvenwald Trackers to dull their effectiveness. (I also don’t think we’re likely to see Ulvenwald Tracker pick up steam as a sideboard staple in Bant Eldrazi, but you never know). It is a bit worse against Chord/Company decks, to be sure, but Gut Shot is fairly reasonable there as well. Picking off an opposing Noble Hierarch or Birds of Paradise on the draw is probably fine, although not as game-winning as dropping a Tracker.

Essentially, you are trying to answer your opponents’ threats in most post-board games, and Chalice of the Void doesn’t lock out any deck firmly enough to justify its inclusion at the present time. In the old Colorless Eldrazi deck you had no 1-drops, fewer real removal spells, and Simian Spirit Guide allowed you to lock people out a turn earlier. That deck was Modern’s equivalent of a Legacy Prison deck, or even a version of Vintage Aggro Workshops. Where that sort of hyper-efficient deck can’t realistically exist in a healthy Modern format, this neutered version of Eldrazi actually occupies the role of an odd sort of Jund deck, policing the various hyper-linear strategies that comprise Modern with such comparatively fair plays as Noble Hierarch into Thought-Knot Seer into Reality Smasher. Why can Bant Eldrazi succeed where Jund fails to cover all the bases of Modern’s huge metagame? Well, the fact Eldrazi is not actually all that fair in and of itself is a start, but the key lies in the consistency offered by Ancient Stirrings.

I have been trying to build my Bant Eldrazi deck to be able to play as strong of a “fair game” plan as possible in order to not be reliant on drawing a busted opener, while not diluting the power of the deck. To that end, the flex hate slots in the deck have evolved from Spellskite to Engineered Explosives and Grafdigger's Cage, while the other sideboard options like Blessed Alliance and Stubborn Denial cover ground in a wide variety of aggressive or combo matchups, respectively. I also have Eternal Witnesses where others have Eldrazi Skyspawner in order to have an angle in the mirror and other fair matchups, while being almost as good (with the high density of post-board removal) against the format’s Inkmoth Nexus boogeymen of Infect and Affinity. Then again, I’ve got two Stony Silence as my last targeted sledgehammer sideboard card because (despite the dis-synergy with Engineered Explosives) sometimes you draw it against Affinity and make them be quiet. (Additionally, it covers Tron and Ad Nauseam a little more, which makes it worth it over Fracturing Gust or Creeping Corrosion, in my opinion.)

Very briefly, I will go over some quick sideboard tips for those of you who are looking for a leg up as you start learning the ropes with this deck.

Never board out Ancient Stirrings. That is the only sacred cow, and the biggest reason the deck even exists.

Bant Eldrazi is Modern’s fair deck that beats the other fair decks heads up, while still covering the unfair decks via great hate cards and Ancient Stirrings to tie the room together. Even if you play against a tough matchup with the deck, you can always just run out an early Thought-Knot Seer or Reality Smasher, and put them on a clock, which many decks are unprepared for. The removal-light creature decks lose to the Displacer-Drowner combo, and you can sideboard into a high enough removal density to cover almost anything your opponent can throw at you. No deck in Modern is unbeatable, but it’s your job as a player to find the deck that has the fewest strategic vulnerabilities. Right now, that deck is Bant Eldrazi, and I’m going to keep tweaking and tuning it in order to keep it on top. I invite you to join me, because it’s a bold new Modern format out there, ripe for innovation and exploration, and it isn’t going to police itself!