Modern

Week of Brews #4: The Modern Monster

Banning [card]Splinter Twin[/card] has opened up Modern in a way the format has needed for a long time. Before, tapping out as early as turn 3 to play a creature meant that you risked your opponent winning on the spot. With that anathema now regulated to Modern’s seedier history, creatures that cost more than two mana may start to see relevant play.

So, let’s play.

If Nahiri currently holds the title of, “the one true bae” then following close behind as my favorite pet card from Shadows over Innistrad is [card]The Gitrog Monster[/card]. The Fearsome Frog offers both a unique engine and a win-con sized body rolled into an efficient 5 mana package. He offers a sizeable body, larger than even [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] most of the time, and he’s fairly difficult to kill (outside of [card]Path to Exile[/card], but that’s why you run discard spells, yo).

[deck title=Travis Hall –The Modern Monster]
[Lands]
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
3 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
2 Horizon Canopy
3 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Dakmor Salvage
[/Lands]

[Creatures]
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Courser of Kruphix
3 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Oracle of Mul Daya
2 The Gitrog Monster
1 Primeval Titan
[/Creatures]

[Spells]
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtsieze
1 Raven’s Crime
1 Darkblast
1 Path to Exile
2 Life from the Loam
3 Edge of Autumn
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Dismember
1 Unburial Rites
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Stony Silence
2 Pithing Needle
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Path to Exile
1 Creeping Corrosion
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Sometimes, you just want to play all the lands.

Thing I’ve learned with this deck: [card]The Gitrog Monster[/card] combined with fetchlands is absolutely stupid. As such, I geared the deck around getting as many lands onto the battlefield as painlessly as possible. Once you get The Terrible Toad and [card]Life from the Loam[/card] going, it becomes a very real possibility that you could deck yourself if you’re not careful.

This has been a common play pattern: Gitrog in play, you dredge Life from the Loan (draw a card because you dredge into a land). You play [card]Life from the Loam[/card] returning 3 fetchlands from your graveyard to your hand. You play a fetch and crack it (draw a card) returning [card]Life from the Loam[/card] (dredge into a land, draw a card). Play your other fetch and crack it (draw a card). Replay [card]Life from the Loam[/card] to grab more lands. You basically drew 4 cards for 2 mana, AND, at the end of the turn, if you have more than 7 cards in hand, you can turn every one of those lands into a spell! When you discard due to the Clean Up phase, you draw a card. Since you’re still in the Clean Up phase you’ll keep doing this until you choose to stop discarding lands.

This is version 1.0 off the deck, but I wanted to maximize the land interactions with my creature package. [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card] may not seem like an all-star, but he holds off most early creatures until you can get Gitrog on line, smooths out your draws, and even nets you some life (especially if you get Oracle or Gitrog in play for multiple land drops a turn).

Lotus Cobra, if it survives even one turn, can accelerate you into your end game as early as turn 3. Seriously, it’s not all that uncommon to untap on turn three with Cobra and play both [card]The Gitrog Monster[/card] and Knight of the Reliquary/Courser of Kruphix.

In fact, this deck plays out so many lands and generates so much mana, that I’ve seriously considered running [card]Ob Nixilis, the Fallen[/card] as an alternate win condition. If feels like I have access to so many cards through Gitrog and so much mana, that I’m still missing out on maximizing the list. We’ll have to keep trying it out, but there is definitely a place in Modern for [card]The Gitrog Monster[/card].

If you like my suggestions, you can follow me on Twitter: @travishall456. I throw around random observations and deck ideas every day.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments