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Main » Articles » Return to Modern

Return to Modern

Max Sjoeblom
Posted on September 6, 2012
 Reddit

The Magic Players Championship was held last week, and it was a spectacular event, even though I didn’t get to follow it live due to the bad scheduling for us living in Europe. The Magic 2013 Draft portion was a bit of a drag after the awesomeness that was Cube and Modern. It would have been much better to have three more rounds of Cube or maybe some other Limited format. With Modern having a fresh influx of ideas from the top pros in the game, I thought it might be a good idea to look at what’s going on in the format.

In this article, I’ll be giving my recommendations for decks based on different archetypes. I’ll also speculate on what kind of cards Return to Ravnica might bring along that would shake up the current decks.

Aggro

If you just want to smash creatures into the red zone and have thirty minutes left in the round after your match is finished, I recommend Affinity. Even though Zoo was a very played deck at the Players Championship, I feel that Affinity is still a bit better as a dedicated aggro deck. Zoo has a better sideboard, but Affinity is able to play Blood Moon, which is very good against many decks. The list Tzu-Ching Kuo played seems very good, and as I am no Affinity scientist, I recommend sticking close to the list he played.

"Tzu-Ching Kuo’s Affinity"

It will take a small miracle for this version of Affinity to find any good cards from Return to Ravnica, since as far as I know, not many artifacts will be in the set. If some new card makes it into this deck, it will probably be some sort of tutor or removal spell. The red-based version of Affinity has been the most popular by far, but it’s also possible to play a white version based on Tempered Steel. The white version is perhaps a little bit slower but more resilient, with the Tempered Steel being huge in so many matchups.

Aggro Control

I had to do a bit of Modern testing as part of Team Finland for the World Magic Cup, and we ended up playing R/U/G Delver. I think this is the best aggro-control strategy at the moment since the colors offer quite a variety of good tricks. The deck played by Shouta Yasooka at the Players Championship was an interesting take on the R/U/G strategy, but I feel that it lacks the aggro component and easily just loses to some strategies since the clock is actually pretty slow.

So, here is the list I suggest you play if you enjoy switching gears midgame and like having your opponent play around every potential spell you might have.

"R/U/G Delver"

The sideboard is pretty flexible, of course, as the only cards I really think you need are the Huntmaster of the Fells and the Blood Moons.

This deck really needs a better cantrip than Serum Visions, but I am doubtful that Return to Ravnica will bring one. Wizards has said that they are looking quite strictly at cheap library manipulation, so I doubt we are receiving another Ponder or Preordain in Modern anytime soon. Of the cards spoiled so far, Izzet Charm is the only one that looks even remotely playable. But then again, the spoiler season is just starting.

Control

All right, this is a bit of a tough one. There really isn’t a dedicated control deck—in the traditional sense—that is good in Modern at the moment. Control decks face the dilemma of too many different threats, which means diluting your deck with a bunch of different answers. When you are playing against a storm deck, you don’t want to see those Doom Blades, and Thoughtseize is not the hottest card against Zoo. The deck played by Finkel and Kibler at the Players Championship is the closest you’ll see to a real control deck, along with the deck Shouta played.

These decks are, however, closer to aggro-control, and I really wanted to find a true control deck for this article. I turned to the Magic Online Daily Event results, and I found this beauty played by the user zangief.

"zangief’s Gifts Control"

Lingering Souls
This deck features a full four Lingering Souls, not something you see too often in Modern, but I think the card has huge potential. Against decks that try to attrition you out such as Jund, Lingering Souls is an all-star, sometimes winning the game single-handedly. This deck runs the Gifts Ungiven reanimation package in the sideboard, allowing you to bring in some silver bullets in certain matchups. This deck is very weak to R/G Tron, so I would consider adding a Realm Razer to the sideboard even though it sometimes isn’t even enough—not to mention that R/G Tron plays Relic of Progenitus in the main. But you have to try something, right?

I mainly present this deck as a proof that it might be possible to do all right with a control deck in Modern. You just have to metagame very carefully and choose the right mix of answers. You might also want to avoid playing this in any meta heavy with Tron decks, as those matchups are practically unwinnable before sideboarding, and they’re very rough even after. As this deck is mostly here just to show what is possible, I haven’t had the time to try it out for myself. It does look like a deck that I would enjoy, as grindy control decks are a bit of a personal favorite.

Since control decks can be very easily modified, I am quite certain that Return to Ravnica will bring something juicy to the table. Some kind of huge monster that you can reanimate and that helps in the Tron matchup would of course be ideal, but various cheap answers are what you really are looking for.

Combo

I don’t know about you, but I sure enjoy playing decks with which you can just kill your opponent on turn three after having only played a couple of cantrips. I had a tough time deciding on this one since both Splinter Twin and some version of storm seem to be good options. Twin is a more straightforward, as it is a two-card combo, but it is easy to disrupt if the metagame is full of Path to Exile. Storm, on the other hand, comes in various flavors, either focused on storm or on Pyromancer Ascension.

"Ascension"

As I have a bit of a soft spot for Pyromancer Ascension, I’m going to go with that one. However, I do not recommend playing the deck on Magic Online, as the deck features an infinite combo that is pretty troublesome to execute online. If you have a Pyromancer Ascension with 2 counters in play, you can basically generate infinite mana with a Noxious Revival and a Manamorphose in hand along with one of each in your graveyard.

Pyromancer Ascension
If you are not familiar with the interaction, first you play a Noxious Revival, putting back another Noxious Revival and a Manamorphose. After this, you play the Manamorphose from your hand, and you end up in the same situation as when you started, but you have netted 1 mana. You can then repeat the cycle as many times as you want, substituting the Manamorphose for a Serum Visions or Thought Scour every other iteration to win the game. Serum Visions helps you find Grapeshot, and Thought Scour can be used to just mill your opponent out. If you try this on Magic Online, you will have to use many minutes clicking through the motions. I tried this once, but it became irritating as I had to use a minimum of five minutes each time I wanted to combo, and it often it took closer to ten minutes to actually win.

The sideboard here is super-rough, as I have not really played the deck recently. I would like playing it in tournaments, but since it has the aforementioned problem with Magic Online, I never have the chance to try it out. You could also try splashing black for Dark Confidants from the sideboard. If you were to do that, I would cut the green splash, even though it doesn’t put much of a strain on the mana base.

I have my gaze fixed on the Izzet guild when it comes to Return to Ravnica’s additions to this deck. Izzet Charm looks like it might almost be playable since it is so versatile. Having access to a card that is a counter, a removal spell, and card filtering is a pretty sweet proposition. It also doesn’t take much to be better than drawing a card for 1 mana, so if there is any kind of 1-mana cantrip, it will probably be better than Visions of Beyond in this deck.

Go Big or Go Home

One of the decks that is pretty huge on Magic Online but was completely missing in Seattle is the R/G Urzatron deck. I feel that it would have been a really good choice for the metagame, and it would probably have swept the field quite handily. It would probably have had a very good matchup against all the decks except the numerous Zoo decks, and even that matchup is quite favorable. Against any of the slower decks such as Shouta’s Aether Vial special or the W/U deck played by Finkel and Kibler, it’s pretty difficult to lose since you have late-game inevitability. And in Modern, the late game can start very early.

"R/G Tron"

As mentioned, most of the fair decks are very good matchups. What you are really afraid of are the fast combo decks, and that’s primarily what the sideboard is against. Affinity is also a deck that can be problematic, since they present a fast clock and usually play Blood Moon to slow you down. I feel that the split between Pyroclasm and Firespout is the right call at the moment, as Zoo decks are playing a lot of 3-toughness creatures. If Zoo starts waning in popularity, switching back to the four Pyroclasms seems like a good idea.

This is another deck that probably won’t be seeing much in the way of good stuff from Return to Ravnica. Most of the cards in this version of Tron are colorless, so the only effects that are replaceable are the sweepers. But you never know; maybe there is some mythic 6- or 7-mana artifact that fits this deck perfectly.

Spoilers, Spoilers, Read All About It!

It’s that certain time of year again when I eagerly refresh DailyMTG and the MTGSalvation Rumor Mill each morning, looking for new cards that have been spoiled. The spoiler season for the big fall set is especially exciting, as you get an idea of that the following year will look like as far as Standard and other formats go. Next week, I’ll be taking my first look at the cards spoiled so far, trying to figure out how they fit in the coming Standard environment and looking at potential playables in other formats. So be sure to check back next week and get the lowdown on what’s happening in the city of guild this time around.

As always, be sure to hit me up on Twitter or in the comments section if you have any ideas, complaints, or other things you want to say. If there is some certain format or deck you would want me to write about, I’ll try to make it happen.

Thanks for reading,

Max

@thebloom_ on Twitter

Maxx on Magic Online

You can find my music on: http://soundcloud.com/bloomlive

TAGS articles, constructed, analysis, deck lists, modern, max sjöblom, magic players championship

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