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Main » Articles » Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Brandon Isleib
Posted on April 13, 2016
 Reddit

"In the 1980s, it was widely believed that the use of aluminum bats would ruin young hitters, and might cause another pitcher's era. This proves again that it is impossible to anticipate history . . . [W]hat the hitters learned from using the aluminum bats was not that they couldn't hit the outside pitch hard, but that they could."

— Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 308

Shadows over Innistrad comes out on Magic Online this week, and with it comes the Modern banning of Eye of Ugin and the unbanning of Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek. While it is incorrect to assume the non-Eye decks in the current metagame will all survive, the warped metagame of the last few months has encouraged experimentation with combos and synergies normally thought of as on the fringes of playability. Like aluminum bats to outside pitches—once people experimented, they found out something they hadn't expected—maybe a deck designed to fight the Eldrazi menace can fight the rest of the metagame. With that in mind, let's check out the last two weeks of online results.

But First, a Note about Online Results

Eye of Ugin
Magic Online is moving increasingly to a League-oriented setup. To that end, the decklists you can find posted everyday aren't from Dailies much anymore; they're just 5–0 results from Leagues. This should, over time, increase the quality of results—pulling from a particular Daily has the problem of leaving out several time zones' worth of players—but it depends on whether Leagues become the dominant play structure or whether a lot of the best players continue to play in Dailies.

With that change in data, as well as a change in this column to be every other week (though I'll always write on the week of a Pro Tour), it's time to reformat how I show the metagame. Leagues have 5–0 decks, but they don't have winners, so there's no more bolding of winners.

For this week's results, I also took out all Eye of Ugin decks. With those gone, there were still over forty archetypes over the past two weeks that 5–0'd a League. While we can't know how viable anything will be—after all, it's not just bannings/unbannings shaking up Modern; there's a whole new set as well—we at least can see whether the popular decks are good regardless of Eldrazi matchup and whether Ancestral Vision or Sword of the Meek strategies are likely to be good against them.

CONTENT HERE TO BE PROVIDED WHEN MONDAY'S RESULTS ARE IN

Combining a few archetypes, Abzan, Jeskai, Death's Shadow, Infect, and Flickerwisp strategies were the most prevalent decks that didn't use Eye of Ugin. Abzan had three different sorts of decks: the midrange Abzan that tends to play like Jund; Collected Company versions; and a couple that used Arbor Elf (with Utopia Sprawl) and Overgrown Battlement (with Wall of Omens and Wall of Roots) to power out either Chord of Calling or Elspeth, Sun's Champion. Here's Paul Cheon's Abzan Company list from April 4:

Abzan Company ? Modern | Haumph

Abzan Company best survived the Eldrazi menace. It was already a top deck before Oath of the Gatewatch in large part because of its toolbox flexibility coupled with its beatdown options. It can disrupt almost every deck but is itself hard to disrupt because few of its cards are essential to victory. Fiend Hunter and Big Game Hunter became part of the toolbox, Path to Exile came out of semi-retirement, and Abzan still had enough game against the Eldrazi. Paul has all those cards plus the combo of Viscera Seer, Kitchen Finks, and Melira, Sylvok Outcast; the Eldrazi can do many things, including making infinite creatures in the W/U builds, but they can't beat infinite life.

There's no reason to think Abzan Company won't be a major part of the next Modern metagame. It probably won't need Fiend Hunter or Big Game Hunter as much, and it's already running good answers to blue-based control decks (Voice of Resurgence) and Sword of the Meek decks (Scavenging Ooze and Orzhov Pontiff). It might be that the deck wants extra copies of those, or maybe even Wasteland Strangler would be useful to deal with a suspended Ancestral Vision. The deck's options are already great, and each new set makes them better. It's hard to see this deck losing any ground moving forward.

Jeskai decks were either traditional control or combo centered on Jeskai Ascendancy. The Jeskai Ascendancy decks seem to have succeeded because hand disruption was pretty low while the Eldrazi reigned, and the Ascendancy combo could assemble pretty quickly. Glittering Wish to find a sideboard Flesh // Blood is a popular combo kill in that deck now; Scarscale Ritual is making its way into the archetype for being a 2-mana draw-two. But it seems control will be better positioned moving forward, with this list going 5–0 twice:

Jeskai Control ? Modern | Vojd

Reid Duke noted last week that Celestial Colonnade and Ancestral Vision have a hard time coexisting. While true, I suspect Jeskai Control will find a way to insert Ancestral Vision in the deck. As with Abzan, being an established archetype that could bring back Path to Exile was an advantage, but this deck's reputation was made long before the Eldrazi, and gaining Ancestral Vision might help. It also can gain the combo of Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek if it wants to; I suspect it could be a sideboard package as a surprise win condition. Main-decked Shadow of Doubt is a nod both to the Eldrazi and to Abzan; it might stick around post-banning. Ajani Vengeant and Gideon Jura seem less likely to stick around—the metagame is less likely to need them. Goblin Dark-Dwellers might take their places to cast Ancestral Visions from the graveyard. Whatever changes happen at the margins, the deck will be recognizable and successful.

Death's Shadow Zoo has been a tier-two deck all year, a generally underrated one, but it received a lot of coverage at the last Pro Tour for not being Eldrazi. There are a couple ways to build it depending on how threat-dense you want to be; I suspect that if this deck survives, it will be in the wider form due to hand disruption probably rising in popularity post-banning. Here's a good example:

Death's Shadow Zoo ? Modern | drinkard

Using cantrips and a low land count like it's Alan Comer with Quirion Dryad all over again, this version supplements what appears to be the core creatures—Death's Shadow, Gurmag Angler, and Kiln Fiend—with Monastery Swiftspear. When the deck is looking to go more all-in, cards like Tainted Strike show up; here, it's more about the basic interactions dealing enough damage to win, backed by Temur Battle Rage (who pegged it as one of the most widely played cards from Fate Reforged? Neither LSV nor his article's comments noticed it). As with Infect, Gitaxian Probe is critical to seeing when it's safe to combo out. Unlike Infect, because this deck is centered in black, Thoughtseize is another way to ensure safety; the deck also has enough room to run Mishra's Bauble, which augments hand knowledge, draws a card, and fuels delve for Gurmag Angler.

The sideboard for this version is the first time I've seen Natural State over the usual Nature's Claim. Nature's Claim is fine for Infect because it doesn't care about the life-gain drawback, but since this deck cares, it's not as viable an option. Natural State's drawback—converted-mana-cost restriction—doesn't matter as much now that Splinter Twin's banned; they never coexisted in Modern, but if they had, Natural State would be a lot less useful.

This deck was on the rise before the Eldrazi; it's not a metagame deck by any stretch. It has enough Peek effects to be okay against a presumed increase in control decks with Ancestral Vision. Thopter Foundry with Sword of the Meek seems much more worrisome, in part because of the blockers (though Temur Battle Rage gets around that) but more so because of the life-gain inherent in the combo. If that combo pervades Modern, I expect Distortion Strike and/or Slip Through Space to show up, probably in the sideboard.

Two Spicy Metaballs

With Eye of Ugin running around, Death and Taxes decks have had a larger spot in the metagame than usual, as Leonin Arbiter and Ghost Quarter can strand many an Eldrazi in the opponent's hand. While many of those decks were regular builds, a few incorporated Eldrazi themselves. This one went half-and-half, and as it uses Eldrazi Temple rather than Eye of Ugin, it remains intact:

W/B Eldrazi and Taxes ? Modern | becle918

Eldrazi Displacer has been showing up in some Death and Taxes builds for being an extra Flickerwisp/Restoration Angel effect. With the trigger-stack trick of cards like Tidehollow Sculler (making the return-of-card happen before the exile-of-card), Eldrazi Displacer can do nasty things with non-Eldrazi. Here, the ante is upped with Thought-Knot Seer and Wasteland Strangler. If Eldrazi Displacer isn't around, curving Tidehollow Sculler into Wasteland Strangler is rough enough—nabbing the opponent’s best card and killing a creature. Eldrazi Temple speeds these shenanigans up while allowing a deck with 4-mana and 5-mana creatures to run twenty-two lands.

While the Death and Taxes foundation has been stronger than usual because of its mana disruption, it has enough of a Modern resume and enough new ideas in this version to move forward in the metagame. This might become the premier Eldrazi deck—which is not what anyone expected a few weeks ago.

This one probably doesn't survive the metagame change, but the archetype did have two posted 5–0s last week, and the cards are so sweet:

Green Moon ? Modern | mpgumble

Using the green devotion style of ramp—Arbor Elf on a Utopia Sprawled Forest—the deck's plan is to disrupt mana heavily with Blood Moon, Stone Rain, Beast Within, and possibly my favorite card in Modern, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, before going over the top with Inferno Titan and Stormbreath Dragon. Mwonvuli Acid-Moss lets you find any Forest, so Stomping Ground is fetchable. And if Blood Moon turns it into just a Mountain, those top-end threats don't care. Stormbreath Dragon is a great metagame call in a world of Path to Exile; if its popularity fades post-banning, maybe Thundermaw Hellkite becomes a better option.

Some decks just won't care enough about the land-destruction angle and will win because they're not being otherwise disrupted; Burn is the most obvious one, as Blood Moon still lets it cast most of its spells. The combo of Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek might present enough of a life-gain threat that Burn loses metagame share; if it does, maybe this land-destruction deck has a longer shelf life.

Bonus Decks Presented Without Comment

Since there've been a lot of ideas thrown at the Eldrazi wall recently (not to be confused with an Eldrazi Wall, such as Chameleon Colossus), there are more 5–0 League decks I want to mention than there is word count to discuss them. So I'll leave them here, and you can decide what you think of them.

Temur Prowess ? Modern | EntrerisBlade

Red Burn ? Modern | BubblingBeeble

Naya Knightshift ? Modern | clemageL

R/W Soul Sisters ? Modern | Lachisula

Angelsong Moon ? Modern | Kyriakos20

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TAGS articles, standard, metagame, constructed, magic online, analysis, legacy, modern, decklist, brandon isleib, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you'll play this weekend, shadows over innistrad, #mtgsoi

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