Modern

Everything Currently #TeamGeist

The last time I wrote any form of article was months ago on another website. I’ve been really busy this holiday season because I work retail and just didn’t have to drive to write anything or even stream. With the holidays over it’s time to shake off the rust and get back to the grind. I’ve started streaming again on Monday nights, which has been great. I’ve also recently been getting a lot of questions on social media about my current #TeamGeist list. What better way to get back into the swing of creating content than writing about my favorite Modern deck.

I have to be up front and honest. The deck is in a rough spot in the current Modern metagame. There are a bunch of Tron and GBx midrange decks running around the top tables. That isn’t where our deck shines. We want to pleasure of crushing Robots, Infect, and Twin. Affinity is certainly still seeing play, but it’s actually the hardest of those three for us anyway.

Luckily I’m here to tell you it is not all bad out there. The format is still filled with those players who want to just play their favorite deck, and the assortment of decks in any given field is widely diverse. This allows us with some luck and some skill to navigate our way through the rounds of an event to emerge victorious. I myself am still harboring a 60+ win percentage since October. I’ve adapted some changes to the list that I believe help give the deck some better legs currently.

#TeamGeist Current

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Arid Mesa
4 Celestial Colonnade
1 Eiganjo Castle
3 Flooded Strand
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
2 Sulfur Falls
[/Lands]
[Spells]
1 Cryptic Command
1 Electrolyze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
2 Mana Leak
4 Path to Exile
2 Remand
2 Serum Visions
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Aven Mindcensor
4 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Restoration Angel
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Shatterstorm
2 Dispel
2 Wear // Tear
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
1 Celestial Purge
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Crumble to Dust
2 Kor Firewalker
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I’ve gone back to playing mainboard [card]Aven Mindcensor[/card] over an [card]Electrolyze[/card] and [card]Cryptic Command[/card]. The Mindcensors provide some more disruption against Tron while also being another flying threat with flash that can pressure a [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card]. It also gives us a reasonable chance against Amulet Bloom. Even if it just messes with an opponent’s fetch activation the end result can be devastating. Losing the Electrolyze hurts our Affinity match a little, but not overly much as a Mindcensor can flash in to block in a pinch. Going back to the single Cryptic couldn’t have made me happier. I kept having these games where my hand was clunky by drawing more than the one.

The sideboard also sees a slight change. We lose [card]Negate[/card] and [card]Valorous Stance[/card] to pick up two copies of [card]Crumble to Dust[/card]. Cutting them from the board was hard, but they were the two cards of lowest impact when boarded in, where as we were gaining a pair of a high impact card. We need our sideboard cards to be as strong as possible when we’re boarding them in. Crumble to Dust is exactly that against Tron. There will still be those games where they natural Tron on the play and wreck your day with a Karn. You can’t prevent it without drastically changing our deck. But, a larger majority of the games consist of them not getting Tron active until turn 4, giving you the chance to disrupt them with a Clique, Mindcensor, or other interactive spell only to cripple them the following turn with a Crumble.

We still have enough tools in Keranos, Elspeth, Purge, and the EEs to really put up a fight against Jund or Abzan. But, if that style of deck is very popular in your area I would also recommend cutting the Staticaster for a [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]. It’ll give you a nice reset button for when their board state inevitably trumps your own. Afterwards it is just a matter of resolving a [card]Restoration Angel[/card] or Keranos/Elspeth to seal the game.

There’s been a lot of talk about [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] getting unbanned in Modern with Oath of the Gatewatch. While there are some good arguments for Misty being let out to play, I’m still not convinced. Even so, I’ve been getting a lot of questions asking me if I’d be changing #TeamGeist at all to incorporate [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card]. I’d change the deck in two possible ways.

First is the extreme. We cut our [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]s and [card]Cryptic Command[/card] for a package of [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card]s and [card]Batterskull[/card]. Maybe we even get a Sword in somewhere too. That’s right. We go from #TeamGeist to #TeamSFM. The way our deck is built is to be aggro-control. It functions well in that role because Geist is our only creature without flash. We can play everything else on our opponent’s turn to really determine the tempo of a game. Adding the SFM package while retaining Geist doesn’t allow us to play this style any longer, and our deck becomes weaker. However, it is possible that the SFM Package is better than Geist. The rest of our deck is really well equipped to carry a Sword of X and Y or a [card]Batterskull[/card]. I apologize for that pun…

Moving on, we have the second way we can adapt our deck, this time to beat the inevitable plethora of Stoneforge-based decks that pop up. The easiest way to stop Stoneforge is just to kill her before she can activate. That’s relatively easy for us already with the amount of efficient removal we have to throw at a 1/2. The real difficulty for our deck is what happens when our opponent resolves a Stoneforge on something like turn three with Dispel back-up. They then go on to sneak their equipment into play, likely a [card]Batterskull[/card], which is extremely hard for us to answer once it is on the table. [card]Aven Mindcensor[/card] helps a bit by interrupting the Stoneforge trigger and being immune to Dispel. The other option we have is to play some form of maindeck artifact removal in a Wear // Tear. I find we board the card in frequently anyway, and it will only gain more targets in decks if Misty is unbanned. The only card I really wish we could play in our deck in a Stoneforge metagame would be [card]Kolaghan’s Command[/card], but that requires splashing a fourth color.

Which is my super-secret third option!

4c Secret Geist

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Arid Mesa
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Celestial Colonnade
1 Eiganjo Castle
3 Flooded Strand
1 Godless Shrine
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Island
1 Marsh Flats
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Swamp
1 Watery Grave
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Crackling Doom
2 Kolaghan’s Command
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
1 Murderous Cut
4 Path to Exile
2 Remand
1 Spell Snare
1 Terminate
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Restoration Angel
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Vendilion Clique
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Lingering Souls
2 Wear // Tear
1 Shatterstorm
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Dispel
1 Keranos, God of Storms
4 Fulminator Mage
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Hoooo boy. This is a spicy one. The deck loses a few manlands, but gains other ways to play a longer game in [card]Kolaghan’s Command[/card] and Tasigur. It also gains some much needed tools to combat the BGx midrange decks in [card]Crackling Doom[/card] and a [card]Murderous Cut[/card]. Unfortunately, what the deck loses is the ability to interact with our opponent’s spells while on the stack. We only have two lowly [card]Remand[/card] in the main alongside a single [card]Spell Snare[/card], which is the card in the maindeck I’m least sure about keeping. Originally it was a single [card]Lingering Souls[/card], but I was worried about having too many three costed cards. Snare has a lot of great targets currently, and even more if Stoneforge is unbanned, but it is a terrible late game topdeck. It is very possible it should just be a [card]Serum Visions[/card] or [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card]. Probe gives us information, which is great with this style of deck while Visions has the ability to smooth draws and dig for specific cards.

In the board we have a pair of Dispels to help fight against other blue decks or decks with a lot of removal. They were actually the first card I immediately added to the sideboard. The [card]Lingering Souls[/card] in the board are absolutely stellar against the likes of Abzan and Jund. Since those decks just want to grind, Souls gives us a way to do so that is also evasive to pressure [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] and marginalizes their removal. We also pick up sideboard [card]Fulminator Mage[/card]s to really put the screws to Tron. Then if you get to [card]Kolaghan’s Command[/card] one back it’s basically slamming the door closed for them.

While testing this version of the deck I’ve noticed a few practices that need to be changed when changing from good old regular #TeamGeist to this dark version. Suiciding [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] for four damage is much more acceptable. Kologhan’s Command allows us to easily rebuy the Ghostfather. Playing him like a Char with suspend is just fine given the extra chips of damage we can get in off K Command and [card]Crackling Doom[/card].

Fetching our lands is actually much easier against non-Blood Moon decks, but much harder against decks containing that monstrous enchantment. The last time we tried a black splash Khans of Tarkir had just come out and we didn’t really understand what it meant to have access to the full ten fetchlands in Modern. Thankfully BFZ Standard has shown us how to diversify our fetches and duals to achieve the best possible mana base. The only time that is threatened is by [card]Blood Moon[/card]. We actually now have six fetchlands that can find our basic Plains, because of how important it is against the decks boarding Moon in.

Finally, the deck is much grindier than it was as straight Jeskai. We can play to a much better long game thanks to K Command and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]. Don’t worry about aggressively trading resources with an opponent if you have the ability to recur those cards in a few turns down the line.

Where this deck really has faults is its game against Amulet Bloom and [card]Goryo’s Vengeance[/card]. We don’t have the [card]Ghost Quarter[/card]s any longer to really put a strain on bounce lands, nor the [card]Aven Mindcensor[/card]s to help prevent the decks tutors. Losing [card]Mana Leak[/card] really gives us less ability to interact with [card]Goryo’s Vengeance[/card] targeting [card]Griselbrand[/card] or [card]Borborygmos[/card]. A couple of [card]Relic of Progenitus[/card] could go a long way to stem this, but they really do not interact favorably with our own Snapcaster/K Command plan.

I’m actually just hoping that a piece of both those decks get banned this time around. I understand that they maybe aren’t consistent enough to really target with a banning, but when they do go off on turn two or three it’s very disheartening to be on the other side of. I’d be just fine with them leaving format for some time to let the rest of us play some more interactive and fair Magic. But, I’m not getting my hopes us as I think WotC is just going to surprise everyone and announce no changes. The format isn’t unfun, and is still very popular among players to play and watch.

No matter what happens it won’t stop me from attacking with my favorite Legendary 2/2 and his angel sidekick.

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