Tree of Tales – Modernizing Magic

Welcome back to the Tree folks. Let’s all gather around and we can begin our Tales of this brand new format we’ve been given. I plan on discussing a lot of Modern, but first I want to touch bases a little on Standard, as several people questioned me this week regarding what I would be playing.

So I recently listed all the major deck types that I saw as being upper tier contenders, but didn’t actually give my preference on what I thought would be my deck. This is because, as usual, I try to play against the better decks, not with them. While this strategy is often punished in Standard, I find it to be far more rewarding, as you get a much better perspective on what works and what doesn’t, as opposed to simply learning the nuances of a single archetype. This way, you keep improving your game, even when a format has become stagnant, regardless of whether you are actually successful or not.

That being said, I have been playing B-U-G mid-range, which has been a rewarding experience on the whole. While you don’t necessarily always have the most amazing game 1 match-ups, you truly learn the nuances of sideboarding and maximizing your post-board 60. Your sideboard gives you far more reach than in most archetypes, as these three colors give you access to basically every good sideboard card there is, minus additional red hate in the form of Kor Firewalker and Timely Reinforcements, which really aren’t necessary. Here’s the list:

As you can tell, this list is a little bit all over the place. Your turn 1 gives you lots of options, IoK and BoP both being excellent choices. With 10 come into play untapped sources of black mana and 14 of green, hitting those is fairly easy task, which can be a very big influence on control match-ups in particular. While they are laying tap-lands, you are engaging your strategy in a meaningful way. Even Preordain is a good choice for a turn 1 play if necessary, as when needed to smooth out mana. Preordain in particular makes this list very viable, as the specific ability to dig is far more relevant in many cases than I originally thought. The number of Preordains that have resulted in me shipping two, then grabbing one are astounding, and in like 99% of those cases, Ponder would have been significantly worse.

You couple Preordain with Sea Gate Oracle, and you find your way through your deck pretty quickly, picking and choosing the arsenal you will attack with. Vengevine is troublesome for many of the control builds, as there are not a lot of ways to permanently answer this recurrent threat.  Despite not running a mess of creatures, finding two to recur Vengevine has not been a problem. Grave Titan and Frost Titan each represent a different answer, Grave for aggro builds, Frost for Wurmcoil Engine. Metamorph answers Legendary critters quite well, and can become a Vengevine in a pinch.

While you might think that I wouldn’t see enough of my deck for this to be relevant, you would be mistaken. I regularly see a third (or more) of my deck in any given game. I expect my games to take between 8-14 turns, significantly more now than back when Jace 2.0 was a friend in times of need. All this being said, this rotation of Standard is all but over, so I probably won’t discuss it again until Innistrad brings us some new information to play with.

This Modern World

So Wizards of the Coast has formally announced the format of Modern, which will include every card with a modern border, or 8^th Edition/Mirrodin and forward. This was a welcome sight to most of us, despite the inherent price hike of rares (Grove of the Burnwillows jumped like 1,000% or so). While not quite as reaching as Legacy or Vintage, it should allow for a lot of innovation, which has been missing in the popular formats for a while now.

The first thing that was discussed in our groups was which decks were still viable and which weren’t. Obviously, several of the best decks (Rug Bloodbraid-Visions, Stoneblade, Depths, Genesis, Scapeshift) were completely neutered, making them completely unplayable. However, there are still lots of archetypes that fit neatly into this box, especially since cards like Dark Confidant and Tarmogoyf are still just as good now as ever.

The first one we talked about was the obvious choice, Zoo. For those of you who don’t know about this deck, it is a R-G-W deck that focuses on cheap aggressive creatures and cheap removal. Since you can now use a fetch-land to find a dual land again (at cost of life), cards like Wild Nacatl work double duty, usually as a 3/3 for G. Path to Exile, Lightning helix, and Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows make this deck hum. I will not bother posting lists for this, because all you have to do is look at the Extended Pro Tour from 2 years ago to get a very good list.

The next list we talked about was Affinity. Other than the artifact lands getting banned, nothing else really got touched, which is kind of scary. Obviously Skullclamp isn’t legal, but everything else is, and this deck can just get dumb. I’ve seen multiple turn 3 kills, and wondered just what Wizards was thinking allowing cards of this power level to hang out in Modern, unfettered and free. However, the problems with these lists is their inconsistency. I am experimenting to try to find the best permutation, and am heavily leaning towards this archetype myself. Here’s a sample list:

Lightning fast, and fun to play, I’m loving it. Ravager/Disciple is one of the most damaging and detrimental combinations in the format, and just brutalizes opponents in ways they can’t understand. Ravager himself is a one man engine for this deck, effectively drawing removal first, and powering creatures on the way out. Cranial Plating is officially the best equipment in this format, at least in the confines of this deck, regularly giving +7/+0 or better. On to the next archetype.

B-G-W presents an interesting mix of cards in this format. While not having access to cards like Vindicate or Pernicious Deed, you still have many of the best cards in the format. In fact, that becomes precisely the problem for this deck. Refining your list to 60 cards requires numerous cuts of superior cards, since so many of your choices are equally optimal. Start with Tarmogoyf, Knight of the Reliquary and Dark Confidant, add some Path to Exiles, season with Elspeth 1.0 and fill in the remaining slots. More notable choices are Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, Maelstrom Pulse, Noble Hierarch, and Doran, the Siege Tower. Here’s what I would probably run:

My choices don’t necessarily reflect the norm, but I really like this list. It has amazing game 1 utility, which only gets deeper post-board. Before the banned list was formally announced, I was trouncing caw-blade with this list, as they just couldn’t produce enough early control to be effective. I trade games pre-board with Zoo, then bring in Kitchen Finks and take out the Thoughtseize, and this becomes a pretty painful match for them, as I am flush with answers and they are not.

I’m never going to be able to list all the good decks, but hopefully this will give you the basic idea of what looks like an effective list. Here are a couple basic rules to understand and follow when constructing in this kind of format.

1. You don’t need four copies of a shock-land. I know that in Legacy, many players play multiple copies of the duals they plan on fetching into, but this is for several reasons that don’t apply here, most notably the fact that Wasteland dominates the Legacy format. You will almost never see early land destruction in this format, so having 1-2 copies of the shock-lands you need will be plenty.
2. Converted Mana Cost 2 will be the most important slot in this format. With cards like Dark Confidant and Tarmogoyf being the heavy hitters in this format, cards like Inquisition of Kozilek will be amazing relevant, as will cards like Smother. Understand and use this idea to your best benefit, and it will translate into wins.
3. Accept that you will see things you are not prepared for. Much like in Legacy, if you plan on playing mid-range/control, make sure the 75 you bring has general answers to potentially problematic cards. Things like Thoughtseize, Maelstrom Pulse, and Beast Within are good examples of these types of answers.
4. Have fun. You want to play an Enchantress deck that wins with Sigil of the Empty Throne? Go for it. I would not be surprised to see off-the-wall decks doing quite well in this format. Besides, with this much space to maneuver, you could come up with the next truly amazing thing.

Editorial

I know that of late my opinions have been a bit colored (mostly red for anger, but hey). This is largely because I do not like the direction that Wizards has been taking their product. Their actions throughout the last 18 months have baffled me in so many ways I cannot even begin to list them. Survival of the Fittest gets banned, but a card that is in literally 80+% of winning decks (Mental Misstep) is just fine? Mystical Tutor got banned, and I don’t believe for even a second that Mystical Tutor was as damaging for the environment as MMS has become. The same could be said for Dismember in Standard, as 72% of top 16 decks at Open Series events have included Dismember since it was printed. 72%!!!!!!!!

While I love this game, I cannot in good conscience support a company that leaves their product in such a state of disarray. I understand the push for them to provide new mechanics and keep the game fresh, but if your new mechanics are destroying literally every format you have available, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the R&D process has been quite lackadaisical in it’s evaluations of some of these cards. That being said, if they are going to continually print overpowered cards that force us to all coincide with the meta in order to be successful, then I will simply opt out, as this does not provide me with the fun that it used to. At least in prior formats I wasn’t fish-slapped for thinking that I could play an alternate and still have success (in both of the PTQs last year, I played rogue builds and ended at 5-3, a respectable finish).

So I will be taking a hiatus from Magic AND from writing articles for at least some time, if not indefinitely. I would like to thank Jeff and Jason for giving me the opportunity to air my opinions, and also for their continued support of the site and the Arizona Magic Community in general. I would also like to thank the community for their support and encouragement throughout my time here. Also, the owners of our shops throughout this city have been great, helping to provide a fun environment for me to reap content for my articles week after week. Thank you all for having me, I hope that you have enjoyed this as much as I have.

-Mike