For many years, the only Planeswalkers we really saw in Modern were Liliana of the Veil and Karn Liberated. Occasionally, Elspeth, Knight-Errant or Gideon Jura would make an appearance, but Planeswalkers which didn’t cost three and proactively trade with your opponent’s cards just weren’t fast enough. Nahiri changed that somewhat. The power of the combo finish with Nahiri incentivized people to find ways to use Snapcaster Mage and Lightning Bolt to protect Planeswalkers. Now that Fatal Push has come to the format, these lessons can be extrapolated to color combinations that don’t include Lightning Bolt:

Esper Planeswalkers - Modern | Bornich, 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (3)
• 3 Snapcaster Mage

• Planeswalkers (6)
• 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
• 1 Gideon Jura
• 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
• 1 Jace, Architect of Thought
• 2 Narset Transcendent

• Instants (11)
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Blessed Alliance
• 3 Esper Charm
• 3 Fatal Push
• 3 Path to Exile

• Soreceries (16)
• 1 Collective Brutality
• 2 Supreme Verdict
• 3 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 3 Lingering Souls
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 4 Serum Visions

• Lands (24)
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Island
• 2 Plains
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 1 Watery Grave
• 2 Creeping Tar Pit
• 2 Godless Shrine
• 2 Hallowed Fountain
• 2 Marsh Flats
• 2 Shambling Vent
• 3 Flooded Strand
• 3 Polluted Delta

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Baneslayer Angel
• 1 Blessed Alliance
• 1 Collective Brutality
• 1 Disenchant
• 1 Vendilion Clique
• 1 Wrath of God
• 2 Countersquall
• 2 Runed Halo
• 2 Surgical Extraction
• 3 Geist of Saint Traft

Buy This Deck

What I like most about this take on Control in a post-Fatal Push format is the density of Planeswalkers. Modern isn’t a format where you can spend a bunch of time messing around. Instead, this deck looks to answer the first few threats, stick a Planeswalker on turn four or five, and start pulling far ahead on resources as early as possible. It’s not unreasonable for this deck to be able to curve out with Fatal Push, Discard Spells, and Snapcaster Mage into a Planeswalker, which seems like an incredible place to be against most of the fair decks in the format.

Of course, there’s plenty of unfair decks, and that’s where the rest of these card choices come into play. Lingering Souls is still incredible against Affinity and Infect, particularly in conjunction with cards like Narset Transcendent to let you double up on Spirit tokens. Similarly, the high density of cheap removal spells backed up by sweepers is very powerful in these matchups, especially with Jace, Architect of Thought allowing you to force your opponent to commit cards to any attempts to deal substantial amounts of damage.

Fatal Push may not look like much in this deck, but it fundamentally changes how this deck gets to play against key cards like Tarmogoyf and Death's Shadow. Suddenly your Path to Exiles aren’t under quite as much duress, and you don’t have to give your opponent extra lands early if you don’t want to die. This makes it harder for your opponent to active key creature lands like Hissing Quagmire and Raging Ravine later in the game. All this, and it can still fight the likes of Inkmoth Nexus and other creature-lands.

If you’re looking for an opportunity to play a more attrition-oriented Planeswalker control deck, the suite of interaction in this deck seems very well-suited to the current Modern format, and is definitely a reasonable alternative to the Nahiri control decks we’ve seen in recent weeks.