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Main » Articles » Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Brandon Isleib
Posted on September 16, 2015
 Reddit

Welcome to Gathering Magic's weekly quintet of Magic Online decks you should be aware of this weekend, whether you're playing a major online event, going to a Grand Prix, or hitting Friday Night Magic. In an era of big data, Magic Online provides some of the biggest data, so even a quick-and-dirty snapshot of recent activity puts you ahead of the competition. This week, as Battle for Zendikar previews come in, we'll look at Modern, with a retro reminder of Zendikar's commons in Pauper.

What's a Mod Urn?

Here's what 4–0'd a Daily this week (Bold = won a Daily):

  • Abzan: 3 (won 3)

  • Affinity: 2 (won 2)

  • Ad Nauseam: 1

  • White-Blue Control: 1

  • Amulet Bloom: 1

  • Return to the Ranks: 1

  • Suicide Zoo: 1

Rhinos and robots continue to dot the landscape (nice stippling!). Winning Sunday's Daily:

Abzan ? Modern | Razielman

There's a Golgari Charm in the sideboard—hadn't seen one of those for a while—but the deck is mostly unchanged from last week's Abzan lists. Maelstrom Pulse and Kitchen Finks are the other changes, pointing at a slower game than Abzan's played of late. Kitchen Finks is considered well-positioned by people like Nathan Holliday who obviously know more than I do, and Maelstrom Pulse's flexibility has helped Jund and Abzan decks over the years the way Kolaghan's Command has done more recently—it's rare that you're completely dead to a strategy when you have catchall removal.

Another style of Abzan 4–0'd the same Daily, using Steve Rubin's fourteenth-place deck from Grand Prix Oklahoma City as the template for combo success:

Return to the Ranks ? Modern | _72

Liliana, Heretical Healer was not in Rubin's list, but it fits with the deck plan of milking every ounce of value possible from cheap creatures, their death triggers, and Return to the Ranks. Despite having unusual cards and being a combo deck, there's no infinite anything here, just a load of slight advantages typified by Blood Artist. Stain the Mind was in Rubin's deck, and the creature suite allows the card to be convoked in consistently on turn three, giving it a surprise factor that those cards rarely have. This version of the deck goes one further into the world of convoke with Sundering Vitae, a potentially 0-mana Naturalize in a format with very few free instants. Collected Company, Return to the Ranks, and Rally the Ancestors all bathe in the same cheap-creature waters, and while there might not be an abstract optimal build with these cards, the metagame might accompany some combination of them for quite some time.

The Ad Nauseam archetype won a Daily, and its sideboard choices were spicy:

Ad Nauseam ? Modern | epicdivine

Using fast mana, card filtering, and Phyrexian Unlife to dig deeper, Ad Nauseam decks intend either to amass lands for a lethal Lightning Storm or draw the entire deck plus one while Laboratory Maniac is on the battlefield. All-in cards like Gemstone Mine, Lotus Bloom, Pentad Prism, and, to a lesser extent, Pact of Negation give the combo aspect away, and the rest is just to find the combo. As with many decks of this type, the main deck can't change much; a combo is a combo is a combo.

But the sideboard has a few surprise choices in Ethereal Haze and Pure Intentions. Pure Intentions is an anti-discard card that lets you keep discarding it to cards like Kolaghan's Command or protect your combo pieces against precision discard like Thoughtseize; it's like the Obstinate Baloth of noncreatures, if that makes any sense. Ethereal Haze is here for the same reason Spirit Link is: Eidolon of the Great Revel. Ethereal Haze reads as though it's Fog, and it can be used as one if necessary, but it prevents any damage from creatures, giving it a broader scope. While Angel's Grace ensures Eidolon of the Great Revel, Ethereal Haze keeps the life total high, enabling easier digging with Ad Nauseam and Spoils of the Vault. Both cards' utility are pretty metagame-dependent, but the archetype's success is often metagame-dependent anyway. Keep Ethereal Haze in mind if you have a combo deck that doesn't handle Eidolon of the Great Revel well.

One Spicy Metaball

First, the Elves formed a Collected Company. Now they're taking an Evolutionary Leap and buying technology from Soul Sisters. Going 3–1 on Friday:

Elf Combo ? Modern| Demannic

The combo shell comes from Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Elvish Visionary, and Cloudstone Curio, similar to the Glimpse of Nature version in Legacy: Make a load of mana, draw cards, and do something with it. Here, the endgame isn't Craterhoof Behemoth, but Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, usually found by Weird Harvest and recastable for infinite turns via Cloudstone Curio or Temur Sabertooth. Evolutionary Leap is a fine card on its own, but joined by the singleton Proclamation of Rebirth, it becomes a new way to use the mana dorks for value. Ranger of Eos can side in for the same purpose. The other use of the white is for Mark of Asylum, a card with some popularity recently for creature combo decks just like this one.

It appears that Evolutionary Leap might make possible what several of us (including me) thought Beck // Call was going to do in 2013. Sometimes, it just takes the right combination—as Elves players already know.

Raiiiid!

Before raid was an ability word, it was most mentioned when discussing Raid Bombardment, a Rise of the Eldrazi Draft build-around. With the help of some Rebels and Birds, it's been built around in Pauper well enough to win a Daily. From a player featured two weeks ago in this very column:

R/W Aggro ? Pauper | madarameBK

Nightwind Glider
Using a light Rebel tutor package, a load of small flyers, Guardians' Pledge, and burn, this deck excels at applying constant pressure. Raid Bombardment gives the deck some finishing power even in the face of blockers, allowing an alpha strike to be lethal regardless of whether the strike actually hits, while Firebolt, Lightning Bolt, Journey to Nowhere, and the tutorable Bound in Silence provide a reasonable removal suite. I had to look up Nightwind Glider and Thermal Glider; they're among the bigger rewards for playing this deck, as they're 2/1 flying Rebels with protection from black and red, respectively.

The mono-black deck relies on Cuombajj Witches and no killable targets on its side, usually a bunch of x/2s, to break the Witches' symmetry. There are only four 2/x protection from black creatures in Pauper, and none bigger; given that context, Nightwind Glider is an unexpected and major pain for mono-black to handle. I love building decks that exploit a great metagame card, and that's what this deck seems to be, with the audible to Thermal Glider available as needed. And as we transition soon to Battle for Zendikar, whose commons could have a big impact (pun intended) on Pauper, seeing great commons from the last visit, like Raid Bombardment (Journey to Nowhere's from Zendikar as well) is a timely reminder for the brewing mind.

Conclusion

Grand Prix Oklahoma City doesn't have a lot of time to shape the format before Battle for Zendikar arrives, but its presence was felt in Dailies before it was even over. It seems that the winning Lantern of Insight control deck would require an incredibly fast Magic Online player to win with it; time will tell whether it collapses on its own timing out, whether the metagame will adjust to it, or something else. Along the way, plenty of cards from the last year are still being explored so, thankfully, Modern is a long way from going stale.

The Battle for Zendikar is coming. Order singles, booster packs and more at CoolStuffInc.com today!

TAGS articles, metagame, constructed, magic online, analysis, mtgo, modern, decklist, brandon isleib, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you'll play this weekend

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