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Modern is tough.
There's a million different decks, almost all of which are looking to put you in a very tough spot as early as turn three or four. Is impossible to prepare for everything, as even if you have an excellent read on the day's metagame you still may play against the one player in the room playing Dimir Mill or 8 Whack Goblins.
As such, Modern favors proactive strategies rather than reactive ones. If you're not sure how to answer what powerful thing your opponent is doing, the best thing to do is to just do your own powerful thing and hope it's better. In Modern, the best defense is a good offense!
But what if I told you that you could have some disruption and interactivity with your offense?
Time Stamps
Match 1 - 00:11:03
Match 2 - 00:38:14
Match 3 - 01:00:33
Match 4 - 01:27:01
Match 5 - 01:50:22
Humans | Modern | Jim Davis
- Creatures (37)
- 2 Militia Bugler
- 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- 4 Champion of the Parish
- 4 Kitesail Freebooter
- 4 Mantis Rider
- 4 Meddling Mage
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Phantasmal Image
- 4 Reflector Mage
- 4 Thalia's Lieutenant
- Artifacts (4)
- 4 Aether Vial
For a solid while Humans was considered the best deck in Modern. The format reacted, however, with a resurgence of fair decks like Mardu Pyromancer and Jeskai, and this coupled with confusion over Militia Bugler saw the decks numbers decline. Now things are very linear again and Humans is still great.
I played Humans at SCG Regionals the weekend before last to a top four finish (as well as last weekend in the Modern seat at SCG Tour Las Vegas) and I'm constantly surprised and impressed with the deck. The only other tournament I've played it in was SCG Tour Indianapolis earlier this year, where I also made Top 8.
Maybe I should play Humans more often!
Modern can be frustrating because if you choose to play a fair deck like Mardu Pyromancer or Jeskai there are some really bad matchups, like Tron, out there waiting like land mines to ruin your tournament. However, forgoing interaction and just slamming Burn or Dredge can leave you feeling out of control of your games. Humans offers the best of both worlds.
As we saw in our league we struggled a big against the two fair Thoughtseize + removal decks we played against, but neither is a huge factor in the metagame and a few tough mulligans limited our options. If your metagame contains more fair decks, adding more copies of Militia Bugler will slow the deck down a bit, but it'll do wonders for winning attrition battles.
When it comes to both being proactive and interacting, no Modern deck does it better than Humans. I'm not sure why I ever put it down!
