I used to brew. If only you knew just how much I used to brew.

I used to brew all the time. I’d brew what I knew, I’d brew decks that were blue, and I’d brew something new. I’d be given a clue what to brew, too, and I’d slew dudes with my brews. Over time, my brews grew so few that I knew one day a new brew would be due.

So, it’s high time I renew my love of the brew.

And while I’d love to continue writing this article Dr. Suess–style, we’ll save that experiment for another (surely highly annoying) day. Besides, that was pretty much the point where I had to virtually reach for a rhyming dictionary, and that seems like a slow writing process.

Plus, what rhymes with Reveillark?

When the Modern format was announced, I was initially incredibly excited. I could once again play with some of my favorite decks, I thought. I could revisit the likes of Greater Good/Yosei, the Morning Star locks and Cruel Ultimatum decks and, yes, even Reveillark. I figured it would be a greatest-hits format that let me positively swim in my favorite cards and decks.

Only that didn’t really happen. Pro Tour Philadelphia showed us that most former Standard decks couldn’t hack it (save Splinter Twin). Even a few rounds of bannings refused to let some of my favorite decks shine. Where was Momentary Blink? Where was Dralnu, Lich Lord? Where was freaking Mulldrifter—only the best card ever!?

So, I mostly abandoned Modern, resigned to relive the glory days only in my mind and the Magic Online casual room.

But now that my local store is running regular Modern tournaments, I’m a bit more inclined to mess around in the format. I tried R/W/U, a deck that has a ton of my favorite cards, but it didn’t tickle my fancy. It was dull and uninteresting. The various Pod decks are cool, but if it’s just a local tournament and not a Grand Prix, why not try something new?

. . . Or, rather, a new take on something old.

"Modern R/W/U Reveillark"

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Body Double
• 1 Mirror Entity
• 2 Greater Gargadon
• 2 Restoration Angel
• 2 Wall of Omens
• 3 Mulldrifter
• 3 Reveillark
• 2 Venser, Shaper Savant

• Spells (21)
• 1 Lightning Helix
• 2 Gifts Ungiven
• 3 Izzet Charm
• 3 Lightning Bolt
• 3 Mana Leak
• 3 Path to Exile
• 1 Unburial Rites
• 2 Faithless Looting
• 3 Izzet Signet

• Lands (23)
• 1 Island
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Plains
• 1 Cavern of Souls
• 2 Glacial Fortress
• 2 Hallowed Fountain
• 2 Sacred Foundry
• 2 Steam Vents
• 2 Sulfur Falls
• 3 Arid Mesa
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Flagstones of Trokair
• 1 Miren, the Moaning Well

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1 Restoration Angel
• 2 Celestial Purge
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Imposing Sovereign
• 2 Ethersworn Canonist
• 3 Aven Riftwatcher
• 1 Vendilion Clique
• 2 Stony Silence

Buy This Deck

Before I go into the deck, how I arrived at this point, and some advice on piloting it, let’s go over exactly what the deck does. As I found out while testing the deck—while looping through my deck with Wall of Omens and Body Double/’Lark with a suspended Greater Gargadon—not everyone knows that this is actually something of a combo deck.

So, if you loop in Mulldrifter, for example, you can draw two cards every time you go through the loop, and Wall of Omens nets one.

There are obviously a million ways to do this. Black has Viscera Seer and Cartel Aristocrat as top-tier options, red has Greater Gargadon as an uncounterable sac outlet, and white has . . . Mirror Entity.

The Gargadon and Mirror Entity outlets were the primary ones used back in Standard when the deck was first a hit. Gargadon works as such: You sacrifice to the Gargadon’s suspend ability, and with the remove-a-counter trigger still on the sac, you can continue to sacrifice again and again, never letting any of the triggers actually resolve till you’re done looping. Because it’s cheap and not something easily interacted with, it was often the preferred outlet.

Mirror Entity is a little wacky, and I remember the first time I saw a Japanese list (they were the first to innovate using Mirror Entity), I didn’t understand it. The trick is that you can activate Mirror Entity for 0. That kills your whole team, but like Gargadon, you can stack a million of these abilities before letting any of them resolve. Then, when they do resolve, it kills your Body Double/’Lark and your other 2/X creature, letting you bring them back before the next trigger resolves. And so on and so on . . .

So, what do you do with all of those loops? Venser, Shaper Savant.

The core of the deck is all white and blue, and, hypothetically, you don’t actually need to splash. I considered going straight W/U, I considered a black splash (for Cartel Aristocrat and discard primarily), and I considered green (Noble Hierarch, Voice of Resurgence, and maybe even Birthing Pod or Chord of Calling).

But two cards swayed me to red. The first was Deathrite Shaman, oddly enough. Deathrite Shaman, no bones about it, ruins our day, and it is common enough that we have to respect it. The best way to remove it is Lightning Bolt.

The second card that convinced me to go with red was Izzet Charm, which is basically the perfect card for this deck. You can discard combo pieces, protect your spells, or kill small creatures . . . including Deathrite Shaman. It does basically everything we need it to do. I started with four, but I ended up shaving one to fit in another Restoration Angel.

From there, I filled out the deck with some technology that wasn’t available on the first go-round, mostly Gifts Ungiven and Unburial Rites, giving me access to the full multi-card combo in essentially one card. I want to play more, but the second and third have diminishing returns.

Faithless Looting lets us dump combo pieces in the ’yard, but this version is less focused on the combo than an earlier version. A few subtle shifts make us more likely to win through the combo than value. To wit:

"Modern Reveillark with Red"

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Mirror Entity
• 2 Body Double
• 2 Greater Gargadon
• 2 Wall of Omens
• 3 Mulldrifter
• 3 Reveillark
• 2 Venser, Shaper Savant

• Spells (22)
• 2 Gifts Ungiven
• 3 Mana Leak
• 3 Path to Exile
• 4 Izzet Charm
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Unburial Rites
• 2 Faithless Looting
• 3 Izzet Signet

• Lands (23)
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Plains
• 2 Island
• 1 Cavern of Souls
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 2 Glacial Fortress
• 2 Hallowed Fountain
• 2 Steam Vents
• 2 Sulfur Falls
• 3 Arid Mesa
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Flagstones of Trokair
• 1 Miren, the Moaning Well

Buy This Deck

An extra Body Double makes it easier to draw and discard, and Izzet Charm goes up to the max for the same reason. We drop the Lightning Helix because we’re less likely to Gifts for point removal, and Restoration Angel goes away as well since it doesn’t have any real synergy with the combo.

As for some of the numbers, Mulldrifter is pretty much the best card ever printed, but it can be tough to tap out for. Cavern of Souls helps against the R/W/U control decks (on Elemental, it hits both Mulldrifter and Reveillark, your best ways to beat those decks), but you’re still spending 5 mana for a 2/2. In Modern, that can often put you on the wrong end of a combo player knowing the coast is clear. The same reasoning goes for Reveillark and Body Double . . . 5 mana is a lot in Modern.

Two Wall of Omens is all I could fit, though I’d like a third. Three Izzet Signets give us a faster Gifts Ungiven, though I could see cutting one for a twenty-fourth land (probably another Cavern). Faithless Looting smooths out draws, dumps combo pieces, and lets you play Unburial Rites and not want to shoot yourself when you actually draw it. I don’t know that I would play more than two, but you definitely want access to some.

The sideboard is something of a mess. It doesn’t address Torpor Orb, which it should, and Aven Riftwatcher would love to be something else, but without it, we probably can’t beat red decks. I would suggest adapting the sideboard as you see fit. Chances are high that mine won’t stay the same even between when I write this and the tournament two days later.

And if you’re feeling adventurous, there are a ton of ways to take this deck. You could go for pure value and downplay the combo with cards such as Blade Splicer, more Wall of Omens, Riftwing Cloudskates, and the like. You could go really deep (as I almost did) and play Aethermage's Touch (another sweet old Standard archetype), but that requires more creatures and probably green cards; plus, it doesn’t lend itself as well to the combo shell. Or you could be a reasonable human being and play a Bant Birthing Pod list. It might even be respectable.

The point is that Modern is so far beyond what most people see it for. The metagame is established but relatively open. With such a deep card pool unconstrained by Legacy’s power (Brainstorm, Show and Tell, Force of Will, etc.), you actually have a ton of opportunity to mess around and come up with something fun, unique, and good. This week, this is what I came up with.

What new brew will you do?