For a long time, control decks in Modern have struggled with closing out games. There are lots of efficient removal spells and value engines in the format. Lightning Bolt. Snapcaster Mage. Kolaghan's Command. Cryptic Command. All of these are great at making sure you don’t die or run out of cards. The problem is actually getting your opponent to zero. Sure, Vendilion Clique and Celestial Colonnade are fine. Sometimes Ajani Vengeant can Armageddon your opponent’s lands. However, those routes all give your opponent lots of time to draw out and find a Lightning Bolt or Tarmogoyf you can’t answer. That weakness is no longer an issue, thanks to Nahiri, the Harbinger.

Jeskai Control ?Modern | JeffHoogland 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (7)
• 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
• 2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• 4 Snapcaster Mage

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 4 Nahiri, the Harbinger

• Spells (23)
• 3 Lightning Helix
• 3 Remand
• 3 Spell Snare
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Mana Leak
• 4 Path to Exile
• 2 Wrath of God

• Lands (26)
• 1 Island
• 2 Mountain
• 2 Plains
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Rugged Prairie
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Seachrome Coast
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 2 Arid Mesa
• 2 Clifftop Retreat
• 2 Flooded Strand
• 4 Celestial Colonnade
• 4 Scalding Tarn

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Anger of the Gods
• 3 Crumble to Dust
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Magma Spray
• 2 Negate
• 2 Stony Silence
• 2 Timely Reinforcements

Buy This Deck

This is, by most metrics, a pretty typical Jeskai control deck. Some opt for Restoration Angel plus Wall of Omens over cards like Lightning Helix and Pia and Kiran Nalaar, but the Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt, Mana Leak shell is still there. This deck is very capable of stalling out the game against creature decks with efficient removal or by countering the first few spells opposing combo decks play to buy time to hit land drops. Then Nahiri comes down and everything changes.

Nahiri is a monstrously powerful card in Modern. It’s a great removal spell against cards like Tarmogoyf and a proactive answer to the likes of Blood Moon and Choke. It even has the upside of being able to hit cards like Springleaf Drum and Darksteel Citadel in cases where that matters. That flexibility is certainly valuable, but it’s not the real reason you play Nahiri over Ajani Vengeant.

The real power of Nahiri is she comes down and provides card selection while ticking up toward her ultimate. It takes just two turns before Nahiri has eight counters, which is much faster than any other Planeswalker Jeskai has had access to before. The ultimate is also a much more efficient way of closing out the game. Nahiri’s ultimate lets you drop a hasty Emrakul, the Aeons Torn into play to sweep away your opponent’s permanents and deal fifteen. When your deck is packed with burn spells and Snapcaster Mages, it’s not hard to find the last five points, especially when your opponent is likely to do two to five damage to themselves with their mana base.

Even better, Nahiri is her own solution to drawing the singleton Emrakul, since you can just discard Emrakul to draw a new card and shuffle your graveyard into your library. This means if you have to ultimate multiple times to close out a game, you’ll be able to do it as long as you can buy yourself sufficient time. All told, this seems like a powerful new take on control much more capable of actually ending games than before. Rather than leaning on cards like Sphinx's Revelation and Gideon Jura to more or less lock things up, you can just kill your opponent with Emrakul instead.