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Main » Articles » Gatecrash and Modern Bans

Gatecrash and Modern Bans

Jarvis Yu
Posted on February 1, 2013
 Reddit

With the recent bannings in Modern (of Seething Song and Bloodbraid Elf) and the release of Gatecrash, Standard and Modern both look to have interesting changes!

Starting with Standard

In Standard, aggressive red decks gain a lot of tools, especially for the Boros Legion. History shows us that the last time the Boros Legion was first introduced to Standard, it posted very good results with Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa making Top 8 in a Worlds with it in 2007 as well it doing well in the Extended portion of that same Worlds.

What might a current Boros deck look like now?

"Standard Boros"

Taking a book from splashing Kird Ape in old Extended Boros (that also happened at Worlds 2007), we can similarly splash Flinthoof Boar. You gain a lot in power by splashing Boar and Burning-Tree Emissary (resulting in extremely explosive starts). Credit to Flinthoof Boar splash and the Emissary idea goes to NicotineJones yet again. Frontline Medic into Hellrider is also very potent, and I expect to see this exact curve decide a lot of matches in the upcoming future. I honestly think burn spells aren’t very good, but Boros Charm shines here for the versatility of either stopping Supreme Verdict in its tracks or dealing the last points of damage.

Sideboarded, we gain access to Zealous Conscripts to have more haste creatures (which also line up very well against Thragtusk), Pillar of Flame for aggressive mirrors, and the potentially underappreciated Boros Reckoner, who does a great Stuffy Doll impression in aggressive mirrors. Skullcrack is a consideration for the sideboard, but I think it is not actually good enough since we don’t have very much burn in this Boros list.

Another list that I found in my discussions is a Gruul aggro deck, courtesy of Kurt Spiess:

"Standard Gruul"

A few interesting things to note here: I think this is one of the best Gruul aggro decks I’ve seen to take full advantage of Domri Rade as a Phyrexian Arena for Gruul. With a whopping thirty-three creatures in the main deck, it is well-positioned to win attrition battles via advantage granted by Domri Rade. Domri Rade also serves as a somewhat awkward removal spell, although the creatures are rather beefy here. In the context of Domri Rade and the sideboard, I think it’s slightly awkward that you board into a bunch of spells in aggressive mirrors, which affects the hit percentage quite a bit for Domri Rade.

Besides that, I would give this list my full backing, and it’s very clear to me that Kurt did a lot of thinking in constructing this list.

Separately, Bant control should still be a contender, and in fact, it has a better plan to dodge Slaughter Games.

"Standard Bant"

Before, Slaughter Games (from the Jund midrange decks) was a huge problem, and B/r aggro was a problematic matchup more often than not. With Prime Speaker Zegana, you can really justify playing more creatures in your main deck to both shore up the matchup against aggressive decks—with almost a full boat of Centaur Healer/Thragtusk/Restoration Angel—and to power up Prime Speaker Zegana to be at least a Tidings. It is very possible the second should be in the board instead of in the main deck, but I would like to give it a try. Terminus gets the nod as a three-of now to deal with Boros Charm, but this could easily change depending on the number of Boros aggro decks you expect.

The sideboard still contains the usual suspects, with a slightly heavier focus on beating aggressive red decks. For the record, I think Skullcrack is eminently beatable, especially with a list like this with so many life-gain cards that it is very difficult to contain all of them with Skullcrack.

With Respect to Modern

Jund is not dead. I repeat: Jund is not dead.

It obviously has to evolve. A potential list just plays Huntmaster of the Fells and Olivia Voldaren in the vacuum where Bloodbraid Elf used to be:

"Modern Jund"

I expect an uptick in “fair” creature decks and in non-Storm combo decks. Slaughter Games is fairly good against non-Storm combo decks, and Bituminous Blast is probably the next best cascade spell (besides Bloodbraid Elf) against fair creature decks. It also seems that Bogles will not go away, since Storm was one of its weaker matchups, and if people expect there to be less Jund (with Liliana), it seems that they have a perfect time to shine, so we still want a lot of Liliana of the Veil (three main-decked plus one in the board).

On another note: What might a fair creature deck look like?

"G/W/r Breach-Ramp"

Storm was traditionally a horrific matchup for this deck (and one that Ethersworn Canonist couldn’t solve). However, this deck can compete with most other creature decks (and in fact was good against Jund in its heyday).

Basically, the nut draws in this deck consist of the following sequence (or variations thereof):

Windbrisk Heights
Turn one: Fetch land and Noble Hierarch

Turn two: Nest Invader and Windbrisk Heights (exiling Emrakul, the Aeons Torn)

Turn three: Activate Windbrisk Heights after three attackers are declared, and bam, you have an Emrakul ready to attack the opponent on your turn four.

Alternatively, even if your mana guys die, you still have reasonable draws:

Turn one: Fetch land and mana guy (watch it be Lightning Bolted)

Turn two: Fetch land into Lotus Cobra (Abrupt Decay)

Turn three: Land into Knight of the Reliquary

Turn four: Knight up a man land.

Turn five: Primeval Titan by floating mana and knighting away a Forest or Plains.

Note that Primeval Titan can search up two of your hideaway lands or two lands that produce creatures (Mutavault and Khalni Garden).

You could splash black in this deck instead of red (for Lingering Souls and Gavony Township), but I am not convinced it is worth it.

Another deck that could gain traction is B/U/G midrange. It won third at Grand Prix: Lyon, even with Jund being a legal deck (and being a bad matchup for that type of deck).

I would play something like this:

"B/U/G Midrange"

There’s a lot of wiggle room in cards and card selection: four Snapcaster Mages versus three, Kitchen Finks versus Vendilion Clique, and so forth. I think I like going with this configuration at the moment since it is flexible and very good at grinding the opponent out with Snapcasters and Dark Confidant advantage. The sideboard mostly addresses aggressive matchups and green-based creature decks (Naya/Melira Pod and perhaps Mythic/Breach-Ramp decks).

 

So, to sum it up, in new Standard: I wouldn’t mind playing any of the above decks, albeit maybe with some tuning for the sideboards. I would lean toward Boros the most here since I think it’s a fast, punishing deck that has a lot of good options to beat anything at the moment.

In Modern, NayaPod and G/W/r Breach-Ramp look to be very strong in my book, although Jund isn’t dead.

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions (for articles) you might have, either here or on Twitter @jkyu06.

Thanks for reading!

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, analysis, deck lists, modern, jarvis yu, gatecrash

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