Phoenix Rising – Modern Overview

Most Arizonans are on the way to finally hashing out their Modern decks for the upcoming PTQ this week at ManaWerx on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th. I’ve been playing Modern pretty frequently playing all sorts of different decks including Exarch Twin, Jund, Tribal Zoo, Gifts Twin, TwinPod, Gifts Reanimator, UB Delver, Yosei Lockout and Mystical Teachings. All of these different decks have various pros and cons to them. The first list that I want to talk about is Exarch Twin:

This is a fairly standard as of recently Twin list, Grim Lavamancer provides the Twin deck with another win condition as well as a way to clear out troublesome creatures that may be in play. For those that do not know Exarch Twin relies on getting a blue creature, either Deceiver Exarch or Pestermite into play with either the Splinter Twin enchantment or the legendary Kiki Jiki, the Mirror Breaker into play. Activiting either the enchantment’s ability or kiki jiki targetting the blue creature results in generating a hasty creature as well as untapping the targetted creature which will generate another hasty creature “infinitely” killing your opponent. This combo was incredibly strong in Standard and does see play in Modern but playing it for myself against various decks, the deck just doesn’t seem to be up to snuff in this format. Jund has far too many discard effects and once you run out of cards against them they will just Overwhelm you with card advantage off of Dark Confidant and Bloodbraid Elf. Affinity can have a hand that will just kill you before you ever reach 4 or 5 mana which is incredibly scary. There are also decks out there like the GW pseudo maverick deck that will make your combo incredibly expensive to cast as well as Qasali Pridemage insuring that you will only get one activation off Splinter Twin.

The next list that I am going to talk about is the old Standard public enemy #1: Jund.

Jund is the Red-Green-Black Shard out of the Shards of Alara block, known for it’s incredibly resilient and hard to answer Standard appearance, it is back in force and is difficult to defeat even if you are prepared for it: However, it is also one of the most expensive decks in Modern, utilizing I believe, the two most expensive non foil cards in the format: Dark Confidant, and Tarmogoyf. Jund originally was based around every card giving a 2 for 1 for you. Blightning and Bloodbraid Elf are two of the most prominent culprits of this strategy. Dark Confidant will continue to draw the Jund player extra cards unless answered as well as providing a 2/1 body to attack with if absolutely necessary. Liliana of the Veil off of a Bloodbraid Cascade is one of the most brutal things this deck can play on turn 4, not to mention flipping a Blightning, Maelstrom Pulse, or even Kitchen Finks to gain back some life and provide a blocker. Jund is a very scary deck for many decks to play against, and should not be taken lightly even though this menace is costly on the wallet to play.

I’m going to skip over Tribal Zoo really quickly to talk about a list that I first started playing when the format was announced: Gifts Twin/Gifts Lark.

This was a pretty interesting deck to play originally, but I never fleshed out a sideboard for this beast so I never really played it in a tournament. The Gifts Ungiven piles that you have access to are pretty hard to have your opponent make a good decision as well as Noxious Revival giving essentially giving you the card that you want every time. The Reveillark trigger can instantly get the Kiki-Jiki/Exarch combo into play and active as they are both 2 power creatures. Also, you can get Body Double off Reveillark to copy a creature you already have in the graveyard.

This last deck that I’m going to be talking about is the one that I’ve been playing recently, but due to certain matchups I will probably be rethinking my deck for the PTQ, this is Mystical Teachings:

This deck is a toolbox player’s dream being able to tutor for lands as well as spells and even creatures with flash, namely Snapcaster Mage and Vendilion Clique. There are other versions of the deck with Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir in it. When Teferi is on the board you can use Mystical Teachings to tutor for any creature you want because they now have flash, this is a very powerful interaction that allows players to drop a Baneslayer Angel or Grave Titan onto the battle field instantly to provide blockers and to attack immediately on the following turn.

These are just a few of the decks that I’ve had personal experience in playing, I tend to be a control/combo player so I lean towards those decks primarily then if I cannot get one of them to work I will switch to the more aggressive routes. There are decks in Modern that I haven’t even being to touch on such as Melira Pod and Affinity which every player should be prepared for. Certain decks in this list may feel a little clunky upon playing which is why I switched off of them, but they are still playable in this format. There’s also an entire archetype that I haven’t touched on, the ramp decks which are fueled by Tooth and Nail/Through the Breach that I will be talking about in my next article. Also if you’ve noticed already my favorite card is buried in one of these decklists and I have barely talked about it but I’ll also be unleashing that next time as well.