Standard? Bleh. Standard is the O’Doul’s of Magic. It’s mayo and American cheese on white bread. It’s a garden salad at a mediocre chain restaurant. Give me something with a little more kick, you know? A format where we loosen the restraints a little bit. A format with turn-3 kills, where you have to sign a waiver to play. (Wait, that’s most tournaments. Forget I said that. But you get the picture.)

It’s no secret that Modern is a fairly broken format. Dredge, Infect, Burn, Affinity, and Death's Shadow set the pace for a landscape where, if you’re not careful, you’ll get your head chopped off before you even set up. Then, even if you do interact with your opponent, there’s often a second or even third wave before they lay down and admit defeat. Be warned, because Blood Moons lurk around every corner, and you might just get hit with a Lightning Storm or a turn-two Griselbrand if you aren’t prepared to interact on that axis. Oh yeah, and Lantern. Ugh, Lantern.

Some of you may say that I’m wrong, that the Dredge mechanic and associated unfun games where one player wins without casting a single spell are the furthest away from Richard Garfield’s original vision. Some may point to the Storm mechanic, or decks like High Tide. I respectfully disagree, because those decks all involve winning via attacking creatures or casting a flurry of spells culminating in a powerful finishing move. Lantern wins without doing anything remarkable. It just sits there once it’s assembled the lock, stoically and methodically ensuring that you cannot possibly win over a dozen or more mind-numbing, frustrating turns. I’ve quoted George Orwell before in my writing, but a Lantern lock truly is Magic’s equivalent of Big Brother. “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a [Codex Shredder] stamping on a human face — forever.”

 . . . 

Now, this isn’t quite regular Modern, but rather “Team Unified Modern”, which means that no decks on the three-person team can have any copies of the same cards other than basic lands. That means that you can kiss your dreams of an Infect/Affinity dream team goodbye, and no, you can’t all play Burn. But restrictions breed creativity, and Modern is a big format. It’s big enough to encompass decks from Affinity to Zoo, so it’s big enough for you. It’s so varied, in fact, that the permutations and combinations of archetypes are fairly imposing and intimidating. To that end, I’d like to prepare us well in advance by proposing a few basic tenets that we can take as the basic, level-zero strategy for how to structure your team. If you’re lucky enough to be playing in the World Magic Cup in a few weeks, hopefully you can make use of these guidelines just the same.

Two-thirds of your team locked? That’s awesome! These two combinations are going to be anchors of a good number of teams, backed up by a Lightning Bolt or Dredge deck in the third seat.

But what should that third deck be? If you’re playing Affinity and Bant Eldrazi, you may want to consider Death's Shadow as your Bolt deck, as that deck also uses the most powerful Delve and Phyrexian Mana spells in Gitaxian Probe and Become Immense. Affinity, Bant Eldrazi, and Death's Shadow . . . terrifying. If you’re using Infect and Lantern, you’ll probably want to play Burn or Bushwhacker Zoo as your third deck (should you choose to employ Lightning Bolt), both because Burn and Bushwhacker Zoo eschew Infect’s Gitaxian Probe and Become Immense, and because Burn/Bushwhacker Zoo has favorable matchups against a lot of the common aforementioned archetypes. Burn is strong against Infect, Death's Shadow, and Lantern, with a close matchup against Affinity. It’s a slight dog to Bant Eldrazi in general, and Dredge is . . . well, it’s Dredge, but you can fix that matchup with a healthy dose of sideboard hate.

So, as it currently stands, examining just seven of the most powerful archetypes in Modern, the best three-deck configurations are (in no particular order):

I can confidently say that you have a very good chance of facing some of these exact three-deck configurations when you attend the Grand Prix, and it gets even more ubiquitous if you look at configurations that include two of these decks and a rogue third deck. In fact, I’d go so far as to guess that two-of-these-plus-a-rogue-deck configurations will comprise fully half of your team’s matches, because at least one member of most teams will be drawn to these powerful, Tier 1 archetypes.

We can say with confidence that linear decks (or more precisely, hyper-powerful decks that only lose to specific hate cards) get better in a format where you must judiciously split up your sideboard answers. A one-in-three chance of facing Stony Silence in post-sideboard games each round? Sounds like an Affinity player’s dream, no? If I were an Affinity player, I’d be rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of such a clear metagame with Infect and Dredge as my big sideboard targets. Grafdigger's Cages, Spellskites, and Gut Shots, here we come!

(Note: Jeskai precludes Bant Eldrazi, Death's Shadow, and Burn/Zoo because of overlaps with Bolt and Path)

In Jeskai-Infect-Lantern, Jeskai-Dredge-Lantern, and Jeskai-Infect-Dredge, we see decks that are all capable of beating Affinity on their own merits, with one slightly rogue archetype as a hopeful target for the Level Zero metagame. If I were to play Dredge, I’d want a full complement of Leyline of the Void, as well as a pile of Ancient Grudges and Natural States. (Save the Nature's Claims for the Infect deck, please!)

Let’s wrap it all together in a TL;DR for a very premature look at the Team Unified Modern metagame:

You are going to see less diversity, in my opinion, because almost every team will want one or two unfair-ish decks on their roster. The powerhouse cards of Mox Opal, Ancient Stirrings, Noble Hierarch, Become Immense, Gitaxian Probe, Lightning Bolt, Inkmoth Nexus, and the entire Dredge mechanic are going to be present in basically every three-on-three matchup in some capacity. I believe that you can prepare for this heavy influx of certain linears by building a control deck, specifically Jeskai Nahiri control, as a spoiler to grant yourself an edge against these major poles of the format.

My frontrunner configuration? Oddly enough, Jeskai Nahiri, Lantern, and Infect would be my combination of choice. But this is a brand-new thought experiment of a metagame. What do you all come up with?

Ben