The more things change, the more they remain the same. While over a year without paper events has been rough for Magic's most popular tournament format, the reality is that it's still very alive and well while maintaining its reputation as a brewer's paradise.
One such brewer is fellow content creator Moughon Evart, also known as aspiringspike. Moughon is constantly brewing up awesome Modern lists and when I saw Spellstutter Sprite and Venser, Shaper Savant in his latest I knew I had to give it a spin!
Time Stamps:
00:04:37 - Match 1
00:26:05 - Match 2
00:38:19 - Match 3
01:01:35 - Match 4
01:39:52 - Match 5
Faerie Blink | Modern | aspiringspike | MTGO League 5-0
- Creatures (29)
- 1 Brazen Borrower
- 2 Glasspool Mimic
- 2 Vendilion Clique
- 2 Venser, Shaper Savant
- 3 Elite Spellbinder
- 3 Soulherder
- 4 Skyclave Apparition
- 4 Spellstutter Sprite
- 4 Wall of Omens
- 4 Watcher for Tomorrow
- Planeswalkers (2)
- 2 Teferi, Time Raveler
- Instants (4)
- 4 Ephemerate
- Artifacts (4)
- 4 Aether Vial
- Lands (21)
- 2 Snow-Covered Island
- 4 Snow-Covered Plains
- 1 Seachrome Coast
- 2 Hallowed Fountain
- 4 Flooded Strand
- 4 Mutavault
- 4 Windswept Heath
- Sideboard (15)
- 3 Auriok Champion
- 3 Damping Sphere
- 3 Force of Negation
- 4 On Thin Ice
- 2 Rest in Peace
As we saw in the matches the deck is very good at grinding, drawing cards and interacting, but it's not particularly fast.
Large parts of the Modern format are built around super cheap spells, which makes both Spellstutter Sprite and Skyclave Apparition standout cards. We did lose our match to Jund Death's Shadow, but I'd imagine it and other decks like it have to be a very solid matchup with all the cheap interaction and card draw.
On the other side of things, cards like Elite Spellbinder and Venser, Shaper Savant are good against the format's bigger spells, which we saw playing against Tron lands twice in the league. Elite Spellbinder wasn't too impressive, as the big mana decks often have enough mana to just pay the tax and the cheap decks can afford to pay three mana for a Lightning Bolt, but Venser was just awesome with Ephemerate and should probably go to at least three copies.
Ephemerate is a card that is secretly very powerful and is starting to catch on more and this deck makes great use of it. The deck draws a bunch of cards and has a lot of play to it, putting you into interesting spots over and over again, while playing a whole pile of sweet cards.
Sounds like a fun Modern deck to me!