But I confess, I am not a natural brewer. I don’t necessarily come up with great ideas in a fresh, unexplored format, and what ideas I do come up with are often ports of existing ideas from previous formats. I tend to tweak and tune ideas for a format as I wrap my head around all of the major archetypes and strategies that comprise said metagame. My proudest moments in designing decks come from adding my own unique angle to an established archetype, finding a way to tuck in a new gameplan or unexpected end-game trump that upsets the mirror match or beats a “number one enemy” by itself. Historically, that has been with adding recursive engines combined with heavier card-selection elements to a stock deck, such as my inclusion of Snapcaster Mage in Legacy Delver, the addition of maindeck Den Protector and more scry-lands in old Bant Heroic, the Whip of Erebos and Obzedat, Ghost Council in B/W Midrange, and now replacing some number of Matter Reshaper with Eternal Witness in my Bant Eldrazi list.

So, while we wait patiently for the Opens and Pro Tour to give us a starting point for the new Standard format, I want to share some of my insights into Bant Eldrazi with all of you. The truth is, Modern is both a slower-moving format (granting more longevity to any analysis I might produce) and a now-settled piece of the puzzle for any player hoping to make it to the Pro Tour. I would hazard a guess that at this point, there are as many Modern PPTQs as there are Standard ones, and the upcoming RPTQ cycle is Modern as well. Point being, if you aren’t well-practiced in Modern, you’re probably dead money going into this round of qualifiers for the Pro Tour. But fear not! This guide will help jump-start your Modern knowledge with a deep dive into what I judge to be the most well-rounded deck in the format.

Let’s start with what should by all rights be at the end, the much-coveted decklist.

Bant Eldrazi ? Modern| Ben Friedman

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 2 Eternal Witness
• 3 Eldrazi Skyspawner
• 4 Drowner of Hope
• 4 Eldrazi Displacer
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Reality Smasher
• 4 Thought-Knot Seer

• Spells (10)
• 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
• 4 Stubborn Denial
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Stony Silence
• 2 Rest in Peace
• 1 Worship
• 2 Blessed Alliance

Buy This Deck

All that chatter about specific sideboard choices basically boils down to: Make sure you have a firm grasp on the metagame, an understanding of all of the benefits and drawbacks of the candidates for each segment of your sideboard, and understand that you aren’t going to be able to cover everything perfectly in contemporary Modern.

If you don’t expect significant numbers of Valakut decks, for example, you are perfectly safe removing your Disdainful Strokes for additional hate for Affinity, Infect, Burn, or Dredge. I’d be thrilled to register the following sideboard in a tournament where not many people are piloting Primeval Titan strategies:

2 Engineered Explosives

4 Stubborn Denial

2 Stony Silence

3 Grafdigger's Cage / Rest in Peace

2 Worship

2 Blessed Alliance

Enough circular discussions about sideboards, though! Let’s get into the core plan of the deck, mulligan decisions, the three-drop debate, and a very brief sideboard guide, because Modern has over forty viable decks you might face in a tournament, and it would take another article in its entirety to cover sideboarding against every archetype from Affinity to Zoo.

A seven card hand against an unknown opponent must have one of the following:

Two castable Ancient Stirrings (Simply one castable Stirrings isn’t enough)

OR

An Eldrazi Temple and a Eldrazi Skyspawner/Eldrazi Displacer or Thought-Knot Seer or an Ancient Stirrings to find one of your turn-two or turn-3 power hitters.

OR

A Bird/Noble and either one castable Ancient Stirrings, a three-drop to play on turn two, a Thought-Knot to play on turn three, or another Bird/Noble and a Smasher to play on turn three.

Two of Path to Exile/Engineered Explosives can justify loosening up a mulligan choice, though. I personally would keep Path, Explosives, three non-Temple lands, Displacer/Skyspawner, Witness, Thought-Knot Seer, for example. Against a large swath of the Modern format (Affinity, Infect, Death's Shadow, Jund, Abzan) this hand is pretty good, and I’d be willing to roll the dice with it. A lot of draws speed this hand up by a turn, and against most of the common decks, this hand seems to have an above-average equity.

On six cards you can loosen up your range a little bit, of course. I’d keep a Stirrings, three lands, Thought-Knot, Displacer on six, where I wouldn’t necessarily keep a similar seven-card hand. Of course, in post-sideboard games or when you have prior knowledge of what archetype you’re facing, you should adjust your mulligan choices accordingly. I’d keep almost everything with a castable Rest in Peace against Dredge, or a castable Stony Silence against Affinity.

Repetition with the deck will help make you more confident in your own choices, but if you’re a bit inexperienced and you’re on the fence with a seven-card hand, you should generally default to mulliganning.

The most popular decks in the recent StarCityGames Open in Orlando were Bant Eldrazi, Infect, and Affinity. I love Skyspawner against Infect and Affinity, and I recognize that it’s a necessity to trade with opposing Skyspawners in the mirror match. You are at a significant disadvantage in the mirror if you have to contend with opposing Skyspawners pecking you to death, as you can’t really blink them with Displacer to save yourself. You really don’t want to build up your opponent’s board, do you? If you get yourself in Displacer/Drowner board clogs, having to sacrifice a token every turn to nullify the opponent’s Skyspawner can quickly erode your board position when both players are making tons of Scions.

The fact that Eternal Witness brings back Path or Engineered Explosives against hyper-linear decks like Affinity and Infect is icing on the cake. Playing with a virtual six Paths is awesome, and the first Path often buys you enough time to resolve a Witness to buy it back. This is a major upgrade over Reshaper, which never blocks against all of Affinity’s flyers or Infect’s Blighted Agents and Inkmoth Nexuses. Plus, if you ever assemble the full machine gun of Witness and Eldrazi Displacer against a deck like Abzan Company, Merfolk, or Elves, you’ll never go back to Reshaper again. Eternal Witness is just too much fun!

As for a brief sideboard guide, I’ll paraphrase and amend my previous advice from my last article dissecting the Eldrazi menace:

You want to board out Reality Smasher against hyper-linear decks, since you can’t race them. The exception is Burn, where you can sometimes race them and where Drowner of Hope doesn’t do much in the way of controlling the board, because they don’t make much of a board.

You can cut Engineered Explosives against decks like Tron, Ad Nauseam, and Through the Breach/Valakut.

Thought-Knot Seer actually comes out against Affinity, especially on the draw. A ground body is so astonishingly useless against them, it’s crazy. Plus, half the time your opponent will dump their hand before Seer even hits the table.

You can board out the Birds of Paradise against removal-heavy decks, if you want to try to increase your threat density. Against a Jeskai control deck, for example, I’d cut a Birds, two Path to Exile, and the Engineered Explosives for a set of Stubborn Denials and a Cage/Rest in Peace.

Stubborn Denial and Skyspawner are your keys to beating Blood Moon decks. Skyspawner allows you to get colorless mana to cast Smasher or Seer if you can stick the Spawner on turn two. Engineered Explosives will also answer Blood Moon if you are able to fetch for basic lands ahead of time, as a Plains, a Forest, and a pile of Mountains will get your Explosives up to three counters. I’d board out some mix of Eternal Witness, Drowner, and Smasher against a Blood Moon opponent, depending on how aggressive they are. U/R Delver with Blood Moon is way different from R/W or U/R Prison Blood Moon.

There are tons of archetypes out there in Modern, so again, I can’t cover every niche matchup in one measly article. I will say that as a final general rule of thumb, you can cover about 90% of matchups in Modern by basically understanding that your three game plans are to either try to lock out your opponent with Displacer/Drowner, beat them senseless with early Thought-Knots and Smashers, or try to not die to their linear nonsense before you are able to turn the corner with just enough power to kill them. The last type of matchup is the hardest (although still perfectly winnable), which is just par for the course, as Infect and Affinity are the toughest linears for any deck to beat, aside from being the other best decks in Modern.

If Bant Eldrazi overload isn’t a concern for you, feel free to leave a comment requesting the full, encyclopedic sideboard guide for every deck I can think of in Modern, as well as one or two fake decks that sound almost real that I’ll try to sneak in to make sure you’re all paying attention. (Four-Color Vehicleshift, anyone?)

Until next time, may your opponents grumble about how turn-two Thought-Knot Seers were supposed to be banned!

— Ben