I find it really hard to brew for Modern. I’m not sure if that’s because the card pool is too big for me to keep everything in mind, or because I was on a break for a large chunk of the Standard heyday of the sets we can use. Without fail when I’ve tried to come up with a new Modern idea, someone has told me of a dozen cards I forgot or pointed out it’s basically just deck X from Y Standard/Extended season.
Although I really enjoy the format, it has led to me making some very bad choices for Modern FNMs. It also means that, with the Modern Pro Tour upon us and the Modern PTQ season a few short months away, I am ill-equipped to come up with nifty brews for your consideration. And really, what’s the point of a column about brewing if the brewer can’t, well, brew?
Fortunately I have an answer to that question. A while back I wrote an article on inspiration and brewing, in which I mentioned that you can come up with ideas from reading people discussing a card or from old deck ideas that are suddenly viable again due to reprints, new prints or metagame shifts. While I might find coming up with decklists to be a daunting challenge, I do have a list of cards that just aren’t seeing any play in Modern right now but that dominated formats in the past or are just objectively powerful. Hopefully something in this list tickles your brew bone (which is totally a thing, and is not at all dirty) and gets you on the format-breaking path. Who knows, maybe some pro team somewhere is working on the same thing, and we see one or more of these ideas in Valencia.
Aether Vial
[draft]Aether Vial[/draft]
People have tried, but the card just hasn’t stuck. It’s a key player in Legacy (Death n Taxes, Goblins, Merfolk) but we have yet to see the Vial really take Modern by the short and curlies. Brian Kibler tried it in one of his midrange green decks (narrow it down, Lansdell!) and Merfolk has been on the fringe of the top level for a while. The card is just too powerful to be kept out for much longer.
Merfolk I think is a few good matchups away from making a splash. With Jund taking a huge Deathrite-shaped hit to its curve, removal-heavy midrange decks might slip out of favour and leave something like this in prime position. It can play light disruption, it can win fast and it can grind you down too.
With the printing of [card]Spirit of the Labyrinth[/card] it’s entirely possible that Death n Taxes might finally see a successful Modern port. [card]Mirran Crusader[/card] is a serious clock and the disruption of [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card] in combination with [card]Leonin Arbiter[/card] and possibly [card]Grand Abolisher[/card] and/or [card]Imposing Sovereign[/card] can help you stay in board control.
Back at the first Player’s Championship Shouta Yasooka innovated an [card]Aether Vial[/card] deck known as Eternal Command which recurred [card]Cryptic Command[/card] by using it to bounce [card]Eternal Witness[/card], which could then be Vialed back in. The deck also ran [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card] to take advantage of the fact that Vialing in a creature is not casting a spell, allowing the Huntmaster to flip almost immediately. Locally we had a player try a Bant version of the deck, using [card]Mystic Snake[/card] for additional Vial-and-counter shenanigans. I’d love to see something like this on the big stage.
Disciple of the Vault
[draft]Disciple of the Vault[/draft]
Multiple people have told me that Disciple is banned in Modern when I’ve mused out loud about how little play it sees. Nope, it’s legal. It was banned in other formats though, and is a very powerful card that has been getting no press whatsoever. Before the banning of [card]Second Sunrise[/card] I was playing the Eggs deck, and Disciple was one of my kill conditions out of the sideboard. It might look vulnerable to removal but most of the process of going off with Eggs can be done at instant speed anyway, and it comes back with Sunrise or [card]Faith’s Reward[/card]. It also makes your combo kill a lot faster in the deck. Is it still viable with [card]Open the Vaults[/card] instead of Second Sunrise?
It could also be a kill card in a reborn [card]Time Sieve[/card] deck. Both Tezzerets are around to help you find the pieces, you can use [card]Thopter Assembly[/card] to give you the five artifacts you need to recur turns and the deck can even run some silver bullets like [card]Torpor Orb[/card] and [card]Ensnaring Bridge[/card] to keep you alive while you find the combo. Redundant bullets or ones that do nothing in the matchup can also be sacrificed to the Sieve for damage and a turn.
There might also be a Dark Affinity deck that main decks [card]Thoughtseize[/card] and Disciple(s) and sideboards things like [card]Illness in the Ranks[/card] and [card]Go for the Throat[/card]. That version has a little more play against combo but loses to a resolved [card]Stony Silence[/card]. There’s a happy medium somewhere.
Squelch/Trickbind
[draft]Squelch
Trickbind[/draft]
I’m not sure which of these cards is better, but they both fill similar roles and both have been very good for me when I’ve tried them. I started looking at these two after a series of events: first I gone blown out in an EDH game by a timely [card]Squelch[/card] on my [card]Mindslaver[/card] activation, then one of the local guys (Goober) started playing [card]Trickbind[/card] in his Modern deck and blowing people out with it, then [card]Shadow of Doubt[/card] started seeing some play in UWR decks at the highest level.
[card]Squelch[/card] has the obvious upside of drawing a card, and the inability to hit triggers isn’t as important as you might think. All the combo decks in the format, with the exception of Storm, need an activated ability to go off as well as a trigger. Countering a Colonnade activation, a fetchland, a [card]Splinter Twin[/card], [card]Birthing Pod[/card] or Kiki activation…all of these can be game-breaking if timed correctly. [card]Shadow of Doubt[/card] has the upside of not needing a target, but also is harder to cast and can’t stop a combo as effectively. [card]Trickbind[/card] however can stop all of that AND things like a modular trigger from [card]Arcbound Ravager[/card]. It also has the benefit of split second, which can only be an upside.
If there is a blue tempo deck to be played, that would be the ideal spot for these cards. Such a deck would probably include [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] and cards like [card]Remand[/card], [card]Boomerang[/card] perhaps, [card]Blood Moon[/card], [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] and any of a dozen other effects that set the opponent back to some degree. [card]Squelch[/card] or [card]Trickbind[/card] on their first fetch is a really filthy play, and if you follow that up with a [card]Boomerang[/card] on their next land drop you’re already so far ahead.
Protean Hulk
[draft]Protean Hulk[/draft]
It’s banned in EDH. It was half of a disgusting combo deck in Legacy that lead to Flash getting banned. It still sees some degree of play in that format. The only thing keeping [card]Protean Hulk[/card] from being a Modern staple is, in my mind, the lack of an instant kill combo with it. We can cheat it into play with [card]Chord of Calling[/card], [card]Through the Breach[/card] or even [card]Birthing Pod[/card]. The last two also have the advantage of making it easy to kill the Hulk, giving us more potential shenanigans.
Podding away a Hulk lets us get [card]Bogardan Hellkite[/card], [card]Hellkite Overlord[/card], [card]Griselbrand[/card], [card]Tidespout Tyrant[/card], either Akroma, [card]Stormtide Leviathan[/card], [card]Sundering Titan[/card], [card]Terastodon[/card], [card]Platinum Emperion[/card], [card]Ashen Rider[/card], Avacyn, [card]Borborygmos Enraged[/card], [card]Verdant Force[/card] or any of a host of fatties. Because of the way timing rules work, the death trigger from [card]Protean Hulk[/card] will resolve before the Pod activation, which makes one card a standout here: [card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card].
Let’s assume you had two creatures on the board: a [card]Wall of Roots[/card] and [card]Protean Hulk[/card]. You Pod out Hulk, resolve its trigger and fetch 4 [card]Dryad Arbor[/card], two random one-drops (let’s say [card]Birds of Paradise[/card]) and an [card]Ogre Battledriver[/card]. The Battledriver gives you 4 hasty 3/1 [card]Dryad Arbor[/card]s and 2 hasty 2/1 Birds, which is OK. Then Pod resolves and you get [card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card]. Nine creatures, so you now have a huge, hasty, trampling army.
Bringing it in [card]Through the Breach[/card] doesn’t give us as much bang for our buck perhaps, but we can still get infinite life immediately with [card]Kitchen Finks[/card], [card]Viscera Seer[/card] and [card]Melira, Sylvok Outcast[/card]. Or you could just go for value and fetch up some utility creatures, a Titan…your possibilities are numerous.
Trash for Treasure
[draft]Trash for Treasure[/draft]
Tinker is broken, nobody doubts that. I’m not even going to try and tell you that [card]Trash for Treasure[/card] is as good as Tinker, but it CAN do some very broken things that are reminiscent of Tinker. We’ve seen both Todd Anderson and Jan van der Vegt display the power of turn 1 [card]Faithless Looting[/card] in this format, but they were playing an all-in combo deck with very few ways to win. [card]Trash for Treasure[/card] lends itself to a fast win no doubt, but it also has the potential to play a grindier game with lockdown effects and the also underplayed [card]Tezzeret the Seeker[/card].
A quick look at the format reveals [card]Sphinx of the Steel Wind[/card], [card]Sundering Titan[/card], [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card], [card]Spine of Ish Sah[/card], [card]Platinum Angel[/card], [card]Platinum Emperion[/card], [card]Mindslaver[/card], [card]Magister Sphinx[/card] (in the board perhaps), [card]Myr Battlesphere[/card], [card]Inkwell Leviathan[/card] and perhaps [card]Memnarch[/card] as potential reanimation targets. Any of those on turn 3 would be very difficult to beat, and cards like Wurmcoil and Spine even lend themselves to being sacrificed to a second [card]Trash for Treasure[/card]. We also get the ability to play [card]Thirst for Knowledge[/card], one of my favourite draw spells that in this deck is even more powerful, and artifacts like [card]Pentad Prism[/card] for ramping and [card]Ichor Wellspring[/card] for the valuetown sacrifice. There might even be a case for [card]Lotus Bloom[/card] as well.
Another option is to go the toolbox route with both Tezzerets in a Grixis build, swapping out the silver bullets you draw but don’t need for the ones you do need. This build could also play [card]Reshape[/card] to find the cheaper bullets, making the deck a true toolbox.
And the rest…
We could have talked about [card]Baneslayer Angel[/card] or [card]Troll Ascetic[/card] here, but you all know how good they are and they are relatively uninteresting in their applications. Similarly I left off cards like [card]Sovereigns of Lost Alara[/card], [card]Arcanum Wings[/card] and [card]Polymorph[/card] because they’re one-trick ponies that appeal mainly to durdles like me. I mean come on, don’t pretend you haven’t dreamed of swapping an [card]Eldrazi Conscription[/card] on to a [card]Birds of Paradise[/card]!
I almost included [card]Zur the Enchanter[/card], but Larry Swasey has already done a fine job showing us how good THAT card is. Now that it can fetch [card]Herald of Torment[/card], [card]Eidolon of Countless Battles[/card], [card]Spirit of the Labyrinth[/card] AND Thassa, it might be worth looking at him again.
The domination of BGx decks in Modern has really prevented people from exploring the diversity of this format. I think with [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] gone and that weakening the viability of a bunch of top-tier decks, the Pro Tour this weekend might see a bunch of stuff being tried that never made the grade before. I’ve been an intermittent fan of Modern because of the way it lends itself to innovation, but then stifles that innovation with crippling attrition decks and consistent combos. Only a few short days until we find out if creativity is back.
Well, we all know what I want to see. Brew on!
Chris is a deck brewer, podcaster and lover of bacon. He’s recently realised he isn’t completely terrible at this game.