We’ve started to see the repercussions of Eldrazi domination in Modern. Decks have started to polarize, with controlling decks going bigger than before in order to play sweepers like Supreme Verdict and Damnation. We’ve also seen faster decks like Affinity go even lower to the ground to race the Eldrazi deck more effectively. Take a look at how Spijker has decided to sneak in underneath all but the most aggressive Eldrazi draws:

R/G Land Destruction ? Modern |Spijker, 4-0 Standard Daily Event

• Creatures (16)
• 2 Birds of Paradise
• 2 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 4 Arbor Elf
• 4 Inferno Titan
• 4 Stormbreath Dragon

• Spells (23)
• 3 Beast Within
• 3 Bonfire of the Damned
• 4 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
• 4 Stone Rain
• 3 Blood Moon
• 4 Utopia Sprawl
• 2 Batterskull

• Lands (21)
• 1 Mountain
• 8 Forest
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 3 Stomping Ground
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 4 Wooded Foothills

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 1 Beast Within
• 3 Ancient Grudge
• 3 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Relic of Progenitus
• 2 Spellskite
• 3 Sudden Shock
• 1 Tormod's Crypt

Buy This Deck

The game plan here is simple. The Eldrazi deck needs to hit a critical mass of two-mana lands like Eldrazi Temple early on in the game, otherwise they risk falling behind to the more aggressive draws of decks like Burn and Affinity. This deck takes advantage by destroying those two-mana lands to keep the Eldrazi deck low on resources.

You do this by utilizing the combination of Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl to generate up to four mana on turn two. This lets you pull ahead early with something like Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Stone Rain, or even a straight-up Blood Moon. In matchups where the mana denial strategy is less effective, you just power out giant midrange threats capable of ending the game promptly. Something like Inferno Titan is particularly difficult for Infect and Affinity to beat, while Stormbreath Dragon is great against decks leaning on Path to Exile. Finally, the ability to power out Batterskull early on gives the deck a huge edge against more controlling decks.

Traditionally, land destruction is not a powerful strategy in a format like Modern because most decks don’t need a lot of mana to function. However, when the top deck in the format requires not only a certain number of lands, but also specific lands, suddenly the prospect of killing lands is much more interesting. This is doubly true when the decks which beat the Eldrazi deck are so weak to Inferno Titan. All told, this deck looks like it may have what it takes to compete in Modern for as long as the Eldrazi deck remains a large portion of the top tier metagame.