Last weekend, Grand Prix Chicago happened, and once again, Jund won. While there was a nice number of different decks in the top 16, people have been complaining about the Modern format. They say it feels like it has very little play to it: it’s hard to gain an edge by playing better than your opponent; all the decks seem interchangeable; and sideboard cards are simultaneously too relevant (if you draw them, you win easily; if you don’t, you die) and too narrow. There is too much variety in combo lists to adequately prepare for all of them. Thus, people play Jund, which just piles good cards onto good cards and then splashes a fourth color for even more good cards. (Spirit-Jund? Really? Someone please unban [card]Ancestral Vision[/card]s so we can make “A Confidant’s Lingering-Bloodbraid-Visions.”)

Jackie Lee wrote a good article [http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10831] on why these problems exist, and she also links some of these problems to the current Standard format. Basically, she is talking about Power and Synergy. Power and Synergy are both ways in Magic to beat your opponent. To give an example: say you want to beat the 20 [card]Forest[/card], 40 [card]Elvish Warrior[/card] deck. You could play a deck with more powerful cards, like the 20 Savannah, 40 [card]Watchwolf[/card] deck. Or, you could beat it with more synergistic cards that might be weaker on their own, like the 20 [card]Forest[/card], 40 [card]Muscle Sliver[/card] deck.

It used to be the case in Magic that the synergistic decks were “better” than the powerful ones, but that balance seems to be shifting. The power level of creatures has risen over time, and because Modern has such a large card pool, it is possible to play a deck that is chock full of cards so powerful, that the only way to beat it is by playing something extremely synergistic, which lets you ignore the power level of cards or helps make up for the difference. Except, right now, there are too few ways to punish the opponent for playing just powerful cards.

Look at Jund, for example. It is the major deck that stands for Power in Modern: all of its cards are very powerful on their own, and it has access to some of the most devastating sideboard-hate against other decks. And, because Jund barely has a “strategy,” it is hard to hate out itself; thus, if it draws well, it does well. It is not the only power-based deck though-something like the BUG deck that got third in GP Lyon uses a similar “strategy.”

People are trying to combat Jund with decks that strongly depend on Synergy, as they can’t beat Jund on Power. Decks like UR Storm, Eggs, Splinter-Twin and Infect can beat fair decks if those decks don’t draw or have hate, while they beat each other depending on who has the faster or more resilient draw.

Modern is a format where Power is too easily acquirable, at almost no cost, and people do not like that. It leads to people having to play extremely synergistic decks to beat the Power decks, and there are good answers against these often-linear strategies. The only saving grace is that there are a variety of Synergy decks viable, but at the same time that leads to the feeling that sideboard cards are simultaneously too powerful and too narrow.

Back when I started playing Magic, I would build decks full of my good cards, and I would lose to decks that had “worse” cards but better synergy. This was a good lesson, I thought, but it seems like it is a lesson you can almost forego in Magic right now, even in Standard. Look at the current Bant Control lists: the deck is 90% rares and mythics; all of their cards are obviously powerful; and it works! Their cards are so good, that resolving only a couple will catch them right back up with whatever they were trying to do. As long as you build your deck with a reasonable curve (which apparently can start at three or four if you play a couple of [card]Farseek[/card]s), you can just jam powerful cards and win games.

Standard is becoming like Modern, where you have to push your synergies to an extreme to be able to beat the Power decks. A deck that has become more popular the last few weeks is Adam Prosak’s UW Flash [http://www. starcitygames.com/magic/standard/25131-The-Rules-Of-Standard.html], which pushes Synergy to an extreme as well, moving the all-mighty [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] to the board so he could play the all-flash-all-the-time game. This deck embraces the fact that counterspells are very good when everybody is just trying to jam the most powerful spells.

I propose we take his deck one step further by incorporating another “bad” but synergistic card to try and beat the Power-decks: [card]Goblin Electromancer[/card].

[Deck title=The Chanting Goblin by Jay Lansdaal]
[Creatures]
*4 Augur of Bolas
*4 Goblin Electromancer
*4 Snapcaster Mage
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Thought Scour
*1 Unsummon
*1 Cyclonic Rift
*2 Essence Scatter
*3 Mizzium Mortars
*2 Runechanter’s Pike
*3 Searing Spear
*3 Desperate Ravings
*2 Dissipate
*1 Essence Backlash
*2 Thoughtflare
*3 Syncopate
[/Spells]
[Land]
*2 Hellion Crucible
*1 Izzet Guildgate
*7 Island
*3 Mountain
*4 Steam Vents
*4 Sulfur Falls
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*2 Cavern of Souls
*2 Tormod’s Crypt
*1 Dispel
*1 Cyclonic Rift
*1 Negate
*1 Thunderbolt
*1 Dissipate
*2 Talrand, Sky Summoner
*1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
*1 Thundermaw Hellkite
*2 Bonfire of the Damned
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

If your deck beats people by equipping a [card]Runechanter’s Pike[/card] to basically any creature, who cares that we give up a 3/4 flyer for a 2/2 without evasion? What we get in return is that all our spells become more than capable to compete with the power level of the other cards in Standard. Can you spot the (better) [card]Counterspell[/card]s, [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]s, and [card]Careful Consideration[/card]s and the Flame Slash/five-mana-Flame-Wave split card?

Another advantage is that you can play fewer lands, as your spells are cheaper and you have fewer cards that cost more than three. To negate the loss of some basic lands, I added a Guildgate to make sure our colors work and replaced [card]Moorland Haunt[/card] with [card]Hellion Crucible[/card], which works just fine in a deck filled to the brim with instants.

The sideboard is a work in progress, but it lets you go bigger in the pseudo-mirror, utilizing [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] (which almost single handily beats the Flash deck when you have creatures to go with it) to resolve Talrand or [card]Thundermaw Hellkite[/card], which should make it easy enough for you to win, as the Flash deck has very few permanent answers to either card.

If you are really adventurous, you can even incorporate the super-synergistic combo of [card]Worldfire[/card] and Spelltwine: hope you mill or discard the [card]Worldfire[/card], and then cast the [card]Spelltwine[/card] targeting your [card]Worldfire[/card] and your opponent’s [card]Searing Spear[/card] or something similar.

If you are not someone who just wants to watch the world burn, the following deck, which “obv” took to a 4-0 finish in a recent Standard Daily Event online, is another synergy-filled diamond in the rough:

[Deck title=Gimme That! by obv]
[Creatures]
*4 Diregraf Ghoul
*4 Gravecrawler
*2 Rakdos Cackler
*4 Blood Artist
*4 Bloodthrone Vampire
*3 Treacherous Pit-Dweller
*4 Geralf’s Messenger
*1 Pyreheart Wolf
*4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
*2 Zealous Conscripts
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Mark of Mutiny
*1 Fling
[/Spells]
[Land]
*4 Blood Crypt
*4 Cavern of Souls
*4 Dragonskull Summit
*1 Mountain
*2 Rakdos Guildgate
*8 Swamp
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*2 Appetite for Brains
*3 Cremate
*2 Duress
*2 Ultimate Price
*2 Victim of Night
*2 Flames of the Firebrand
*2 Underworld Connections
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

Much like some of the earliest Zombie decks that Jesse Smith (@Smi77y) was championing, this list throws its creatures at the opponent, either through combat or with the help of [card]Bloodthrone Vampire[/card] and [card]Blood Artist[/card] or the one actual Fling when it’s outclassed on the battlefield. The combo that pushes this deck over the top in the current Standard format is the pairing of threaten effects ([card]Zealous Conscripts[/card], [card]Mark of Mutiny[/card]) and sacrifice outlets ([card]Bloodthrone Vampire[/card], [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card]s and Fling). These combined act like your removal spells, while dealing extra damage to your opponent. I like to call this move “the reverse [card]Thragtusk[/card].”

Speaking of [card]Thragtusk[/card], this deck does not need a second spear. If [card]Thragtusk[/card] is up for a little mutiny, he will leave his buddy behind on your side of the battlefield when he feeds one of your vampires. Just try to steal the ‘Tusk right when they cast him, not when your opponent has four mana open for a [card]Restoration Angel[/card]. While you can fling around your creatures like it’s nobody’s business, wasting your [card]Mark of Mutiny[/card] is a great way to shut the door to victory on yourself.

This deck still has all the elements you expect of a good BR Zombie deck, like a ton of one-drops, [card]Geralf’s Messenger[/card] and [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card]s, but it also includes some cards that you might not expect (besides the threaten- and sacrifice-effects). Let me give you a quick run-down on why these cards are good.

[card]Blood Artist[/card] has been slowly losing value over time, as there were not enough creatures trading to make him worth it, but in this deck, you don’t have to have creatures to trade with; you can just eat all your own creatures with the sacrifice outlets, providing your Artist with plenty of Blood to paint a pretty picture.

Treacherous Pit-Dwellers, up until now, you were most likely to find in a pile of Avacyn Restored draft leftovers, but they are actually quite good in this deck. Because you have so many sacrifice outlets, you can almost always sacrifice the Pit-Dwellers with the “donate”-trigger on the stack, thus negating their drawback. Even when you can’t, a 5/4 is a juicy [card]Mark of Mutiny[/card] target. (“Sure, you can hold onto my Pit-Dweller for a while, but remember, it is a Treacherous creature.”)

[card]Pyreheart Wolf[/card] is “tech” that’s been stolen from the mono-red decks, and it makes your creatures just as hard to block in this deck as it does in mono-red. That it is undying is icing on the cake, as sacrificing it twice to deal the last points of damage with a [card]Blood Artist[/card] or [card]Bloodthrone Vampire[/card] comes up every few games.

A single [card]Mountain[/card] is played over a [card]Rakdos Guildgate[/card], which I like. With the four [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] (once again, very good against UW Flash), you become very non-basic heavy, which can be awkward with the [card]Dragonskull Summit[/card]s. I would even try to shave another Cavern for a [card]Swamp[/card] or another Guildgate for a [card]Mountain[/card]. [card]Mountain[/card]s can be awkward with [card]Geralf’s Messenger[/card], but if you never find a fourth land, you are either drawing spells you can cast, or you’re in trouble regardless.

The sideboard still needs some work, and I’m not sure how well you can support the two five-drops with only 23 land and no card draw or filtering, but this deck has a lot of play to it and is blazingly fast. With the falling number of [card]Pillar of Flame[/card]s and other anti-Zombie cards (see: http://manadeprived.com/magic-the-gathering-standard-analysis-magic-in-the-metroplex/), this might be a very good choice in the current metagame.

The last solution to the Power versus Synergy problem is ignoring the problem altogether and playing your own game. This is what combo decks like Storm and [card]Second Sunrise[/card] do in Modern, and it is what decks like [card]Epic Experiment[/card] try to do in Standard. While I’m not so sure [card]Epic Experiment[/card] has what it takes right now, [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card] is another card that can let you mostly ignore what your opponent is doing, given enough resources. I still like the Red Green aggro deck I posted last week, as it is basically all creatures, lands, [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card]s, and cards like [card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card] and [card]Mizzium Mortars[/card] that take advantage of that fact.

Good luck trying to find your ideal spot on the axis of Power and Synergy,

Jay Lansdaal
iLansdaal on Twitter and mtgo