ModernNews

The case for Blue Moon

If you’re anything like me, and I sincerely hope for your sake that you’re not, then you’re always looking for an excuse to play [Card]Cryptic Command[/Card] in Modern. More often than not, Jeskai is the best option, pushed to the forefront by a stellar Humans matchup, but Modern, as it loves to do, threw us a curveball recently: the finals of a Modern SCG was two Amulet Titan decks. This was a fairly predictable reaction to the prevalence of Dredge decks as of late, which leaves Jeskai in a difficult position, as it’s not well set-up to beat either of these strategies. But do you know what can be? Blue Moon.

As Team Face to Face Games member and AmuLIT all-star Edgar Magalhaes often says, the Titan deck has “no bad matchups.” Except [Card]Blood Moon[/Card]. [Card]Blood Moon[/Card] beats Amulet Titan. Especially [Card]Blood Moon[/Card] with a clock — something that one of the most consistently overlooked Modern cards, [Card]Thing in the Ice[/Card], handily provides. So do you want to beat a metagame rife with Dredge, Humans, and big mana decks trying to avoid the graveyard and creature hate that forms the natural reaction to a rise in Dredge popularity? How about Blue Moon with maindeck [Card]Anger of the Gods[/Card]?

Blue Moon aka Tarmotwin — Daniel Fournier

[deck]
[Lands]
3 Steam Vents
7 Island
1 Mountain
3 Sulfur Falls
3 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Thing in the Ice
1 Vendilion Clique
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Opt
4 Serum Visions
1 Abrade
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Elecrolyze
3 Blood Moon
2 Logic Knot
2 Negate
4 Cryptic Command
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Anger of the Gods
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Ancestral Vision
1 Abrade
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Dispel
2 Negate
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

This list isn’t doing anything particularly interesting beyond being metagamed heavily against the current best decks. After years of [Card]Remand[/Card] worship, I’ve finally decided to bite the bullet and get rid of the card. In this era of Modern, where people are cheating all their spells into play either off of an [Card]Aether Vial[/Card] or not really spending mana for them, trying to finagle a [Card]Time Walk[/Card] with [Card]Remand[/Card] is becoming borderline impossible. It’s time to accept that it’s no longer a playable and fully replace it with copies of [Card]Logic Knot[/Card] and [Card]Negate[/Card] — real counterspells in this era of Modern.

As much as how it’s become wise to maindeck mass removal in Jeskai decks in the past year, it makes a lot of sense to move some number of [Card]Anger of the Gods[/Card] to the main in Blue Moon. It’s no [Card]Settle the Wreckage[/Card], but it is eminently more castable, despite our high basic Island count. In fact, I think it’s so good at the moment, between [Card]Arclight Phoenix[/Card], Humans and Dredge, that it merits the inclusion of a full play-set in the 75.

I also can’t speak enough words of praise for this deck’s lord and saviour, [Card]Thing in the Ice[/Card]. People constantly play Blue Moon variants with Kiki-Jiki or [Card]Through the Breach[/Card] combos, which provide a fun combo finish, but occupy so many slots that can no longer be used to interact with the opponent. Here’s the thing: If you’re playing this deck, it’s because you think Blood Moon is good in a specific metagame. If your [Card]Blood Moon[/Card] plus counterspell deck needs a combo finish that doesn’t fit in with the remainder of the deck’s game plan in order to compete on power level with the format, maybe it’s best to just play a different deck. Right now, the [Card]Thing in the Ice[/Card] plan operates at an acceptable power level thanks to the density of creatures running around, so Blue Moon is in a good place.

Ultimately, this really is a metagame deck, and I would argue that it’s time for Blue Moon to make an appearance in Atlanta this weekend. Join me next week as I preview Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica’s Standard and Draft formats to improve your viewing experience!

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