It feels weird writing a tournament report about a limited GP given that: (a) I didn’t make top 8, and (b) all Magic Fests are cancelled for the next two months because of the corona virus. For whatever it’s worth (likely very little), I’ll be discussing my overall experience with Magic Fest Reno, including my main event sealed deck and my Day 2 draft decks. I hope you enjoy it!
Reno is only about two hours from my house in Folsom, which is awesome. Waking up late is never a good start on tournament day, and this was no exception. Luckily, it was Friday, and the tournament I was about to play in was just the PTQ, not the main event. My best friend and original manatutor, Tony Benedetti, (he taught me how to play magic when we were about 10 years old) was meeting at my house and we planned to leave for Reno around 7:30/7:45. I usually get up by 6:30 but I accidentally slept in until 7. Oops. I was just getting out of bed and making a pot of coffee when he knocked on the door. Both my 2 and 5 year old daughters were fast asleep, and my wife looked at me with those big “WTF” eyes as she’d just woken up about two minutes earlier. “Better early than late” was not the response she was looking for, but it was the response she got.
Welcome back dear reader, oh how I’ve missed you! After a long holiday season, followed by three more weeks of stuff that wasn’t me writing another article, I’m back with the fifth installment of Madman, Genius or Both? This time I’ll be taking a look at a fresh take on two classic strategies that have been smashed together with a twist.
Before we get down to business, I have to briefly mention that the Modern metagame has been impacted dramatically by the recent bannings of Oko, Thief of Crowns, Mox Opal, and Mycosynth Lattice. And although I haven’t personally been playing tons of Modern since the bannings (or before then, to be fair), from perusing the 5-0 lists, the format looks much healthier to me. One of the things I like to check when I look at the 5-0 lists is whether or not multiple copies of Jund are 5-0ing. This is not necessarily scientific, BUT – I believe Modern Jund represents the middle of the archetype spectrum of a pure customizable mid-range value deck. If Jund can win in Modern, it usually means that lots of different decks can also win, which seems to be the case right now. The recent 5-0 Modern lists also reveal a wide variety of winning decks, which is fantastic. Sorry to all those #affinityforlife players whose hearts are broken, but you had a good run. The good news for now is that there are so many different decks and strategies in Modern that it makes constructing a good sideboard extremely challenging. Speaking of sideboards, the deck we’ll be looking at today offers an awesome plan post-board against decks that side out all of their creature removal. Without further ado, let’s get to the list!
Welcome back faithful reader to another installment of MADMAN, GENIUS, OR BOTH? This month’s deck comes to us from MTGO username PETYRBAELISH’ 5-0 list posted October 4, 2019. Littlefinger posted at least four other 5-0 results prior to October 4, 2019 with this exact 75 starting around the middle of July, possibly earlier.
“Know your strengths, use them wisely, and one man can be worth ten thousand” – Lord Baelish
This is one of those decks that keeps me com(b)ing back to the daily decklists to sift for gold. After scrolling through list after list of the usual suspects, I found this gem a while back and knew I had to write about it. As usual, I’ve played exactly zero games with the deck so all my thoughts should be taken with extreme caution. That said, I think this deck is absolute fire.
Welcome to the latest edition of Madman Genius or Both? For this article, I will be discussing a deck I found awhile back while combing through the daily modern 5-0 lists. This deck jumped off the page at me because I hadn’t seen it before and because it seemed so simple.
This list is from a July 23, 2019 5-0 list by DRDUB on MTGO:
“Do less, accomplish more.” – Every self-help charlatan on the internet
This is not the most complicated deck as combo decks go. It’s kind of like Tron in that you’re really just looking to assemble one of each piece of your three card combo and once you do, you basically just win the game. This is one of those decks that likely gets an advantage in game one because your opponent probably hasn’t played against it and may have no idea what’s going on.
(3) Play one of your twelve persist creatures and win the game. Your persist creatures won’t have counters on them when they come back due to either Anafenza or Solemnity, so you’ll either machine gun them out or mill their library and pass the turn depending on which engine piece you drew.
Yep, that’s the deck. Were you hoping for more? Sorry. There’s not more.
Given that I’ve played zero actual games with the deck, here is how I imagine the games playing out:
Turn one: Lead with Plains into Thraben Inspector. Your opponent should have no idea what is going on and may even wonder if they’ve been paired against someone who mistakenly queued some kind of standard Boros vehicles deck into a Modern event.
Turn two: If you look down at your hand and you don’t yet have the ability to win on turn four, you should probably hold up your mana and crack the clue on your opponent’s end step. Otherwise, you’ll have to run out one of your two drop persist creatures just to use your mana. Some opponents will figure out what is going on if you do that, which is unavoidable to a degree. Cards like Lesser Masticore and Safehold Elite are largely unplayable unless you’re creating an infinite loop by abusing the persist mechanic. The other turn two options you have are to run out Altar of Dementia or Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. Just be aware that once your opponent sees Altar of Dementia, Anafenza, Solemnity, or Blasting Station, the jig is up.
Turn three: Depending on what you’ve done thus far in the game, you have options. On the one hand, you can cast Kitchen Finks and continue the savage white weenie beats. On the other hand, you probably just want to cast whichever piece of the combo you haven’t already played yet and set up a win the following turn.
Turn four: Win the game, hopefully. Put those four beautiful Plains to work by casting Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit followed by Altar of Dementia. Then sacrifice whichever persist creature you have in play as many times as you need to mill your opponents whole deck. The loop works equally well with Blasting Station, if not better depending on whether they have any Eldrazi that shuffle their library when milled.
DECK GRADE: MADMAN
This deck feels like a test version of a deck idea that has not yet been refined. The good news is that this 5-0 list was posted during Hogaak’s reign, and it seems like it should only have gotten better now that Hogaak is banned (and, presumably, the environment is less hostile to graveyard shenanigans). I think adding a card like Aether Vial would be a very interesting experiment because it not only gives you something good to do on Turn 1, it also would speed up your high roll games to a turn 3 clock, and allow you to win at instant speed.
Next, while I do love the 20 Plains 2 Ghost Quarter mana base, we can almost certainly afford to run some number of Horizon Canopys as flood insurance, if not the full suite of four.
Last, I’d like to squeeze in some number of Pact of Negation here, probably two to start with. Faith’s Shield is a fine card, but with 22 lands in the deck, you’re going to be in an awkward spot fairly often where you have access to three mana, and also have to spend all three of said mana to complete your combo. Pact gives you the ability to beat cards like Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push even if its worse against Abrupt Decay.
If you like what you see, give the deck a spin and let me know how it goes. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to leave any questions, comments or suggestions below!
Welcome to another installment of Madman, Genius, or Both? This week’s focus is on another Modern deck that I came across about a month ago when I was researching my previous Nexus of Fate article. If you’re looking to play a Nexus of Fate deck in Modern, check out my previous article. If you’d rather smash people in the face repeatedly with hasty 6/1 creatures – well, I’ve got the deck for you.
This is the first iteration I came across, which was posted on July 16, 2019 as a 5-0 list from a Modern League. If the deck had been around before then, I was unaware of it.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson
I still remember the first time I lost to Ball Lightning as a kid. Even then it felt like a perfect, identity defining card for red (and still does). This was at a time when all I wanted to do was save up my allowance to buy the lone copy of a Revised Force of Nature at the local game store (which I ultimately did do).
Nostalgia aside, what does this deck do? Well, as I mentioned above (and Mike Tyson clarified), you punch your opponent in the mouth repeatedly with 6/1 trampling creatures until the game ends. Don’t believe me, check out the core of what makes this deck filthy:
Yep. Like most Modern decks that play red cards and win games of magic, we’ve got the full four copies of Faithless Looting. This is the most important card to have in your opening hand and the deck’s most powerful turn one play. This version runs the additional full suite of both Thoughtseize and Inquisition of KoziIek, giving the deck twelve turn one discard outlets if you take the all-in approach. What is that approach, you ask? Well, if you are lucky enough to have the option of playing your best and most important creature in Thunderkin Awakener on turn two, it will often be correct on turn one to Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek yourself to get a Lightning Skelemental or Ball Lightning into the graveyard. On turn two you can play Thunderkin Awakener, attack, and hopefully throw a 6 damage Blightning at your opponents face. The next turn you do the same thing. If they Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push or otherwise kill your Thunderkin Awakener, not to worry.
Just go ahead and cast Unearth on your Thunderkin Awakener, attack, and go back to throwing those six damage haymakers at your opponent.
With four Lightning Bolt and three Dreadhorde Arcanist to re-cast said lightning bolts, the deck has some reach to finish games off if you can land a couple of early six damage bursts. As additional removal, the deck also runs two copies of Fatal Push and a single copy of Kolaghan’s Command. The Dreadhorde Arcanist can also be used to Unearth the Thunderkin Awakener for the second or third time as needed, though this is less efficient because you can’t attack with Arcanist, cast Unearth, and attack with Awakener on the same turn.
More recently, Caleb Durward took a slightly modified version of the deck to a 5-0 finish in a Modern League posted on July 30, 2019. Then, on August 10, 2019, MTGO player LORDOFTHELOBSTERS took Caleb’s identical seventy-five for a spin into tenth place in a Modern Challenge:
These changes seems solid. Kolaghan’s Command feels like a worse, more expensive Unearth that doesn’t put Thunderkin Awakener directly into play. Meanwhile, Collective Brutality seems great because you’re only down one net discard effect, and you get some added utility all in one card. The ability to discard excess lands and/or dig for needed resources also sounds great with regard to the third and fourth copies of Seasoned Pyromancer.
The manabase is also upgraded. Caleb has cut the third Blood Crypt and two Mountains in exchange for a Cavern of Souls, a Fiery Islet, and the eighth fetch land. The takeaway here is that the original version had eighteen red mana sources and fifteen black sources, while Caleb’s paired down to seventeen red mana sources and fifteen black sources. He traded one red mana source for some modest flood insurance and a way to cast un-counterable creatures. Look, if we’re being greedy, let’s just commit to it.
DECK GRADE: MADMAN
While I like the changes to the deck and would recommend Caleb’s version if you want to give it a whirl, the fact that Dreadhorde Arcanist re-casting Unearth doesn’t allow you to attack with Thunderkin Awakener the same turn is something of a nonbo. This feels like the kind of deck where you’ll sometimes have to save up a bunch of resources and go all-in on a single turn to finish off your opponent. In that situation, Arcanist isn’t the redundant Unearth effect you need it to be.
That said, the larger issue here is that if you don’t draw Thunderkin Awakener, or if it gets exiled with something like Path to Exile, your plan kind of falls apart. Also, this deck feels extremely weak to graveyard hate, including Leyline of the Void, which is pretty popular right now in the current Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis era. Speaking of which, an 8/8 creature is pretty good at blocking 6/1s.
To be fair, this deck can kill on turn three with the right draw, which is fast enough to be competitive in Modern. This can happen in a few different ways. The first is where you cast Faithless Looting on turn one and discard two 6/1s. Then you untap, play the first Thunderkin Awakener on turn two, and attack for seven. If your opponent has 1 toughness or less to absorb damage, you can cast a second Thunderkin Awakener on turn three and bash for another 14 damage. If instead of Faithless Looting on turn one you have two one mana discard spells – this plan also works. You will still need two 6/1 creatures by turn three as well as two Thunderkin Awakeners. Alternatively, this deck can win with exactly lethal on turn three if you have double Lightning Bolt to close out the game after up bashing for 7 on your second and third turns.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the article! If you have any suggestions for decks you would like me to discuss, please let me know in the comments!
Introducing my new article series Madman, Genius or Both?, where I shine a spotlight on a deck list that I find interesting and attempt to solve the ultimate question of whether the deck creator is a madman, genius, or both. As the title implies, the first deck I’ll be talking about includes the much hated card, Nexus of Fate.
I started writing this article back in June, before we had a firm launch date for manatutors. At that time, I spotted a deck by FTZZ, who posted a 29thplace finish in a Modern Challenge from May 18, then another 5-0 result with the identical decklist on May 31, 2019. Here is that list:
I LOVE THIS DECK, BUT I NEVER WANT TO PLAY AGAINST IT.
I plan to try out the deck on Magic Online at some point and write a follow up piece, but it should be noted up front that I have played exactly zero games with the deck.
That said, it has the core of every blue deck I’ve ever sat down to build in Modern: 4 Cryptic Command and 4 Remand . Most decks I’ve tried to build are some version of Blue control and they never seem to be able to fit the full 8 copies, but FTZZ has found a formula that seems at least functional. In fact, this deck not only fits them, but it feels like it leans pretty heavily on both the Cryptic Commands and Remands just to stay alive long enough to win the game.
Next, you show me a deck in Modern that can actually make use of Mystical Teachings and you’ve already won me over. I love me some Mystical Teachings. I’ve tried to make them work in Modern, but as a grindy value card in Esper or Grixis it has never been good enough.
Wilderness Reclamation takes Mystical Teachings and makes it playable. A worse version of a one-sided Mana Flare, Wilderness Reclamation untaps all of your lands at the beginning of your end step, thereby effectively doubling your access to mana for each copy of Wilderness Reclamation in play. This allows you to cast expensive instants like Nexus of Fate at the end of your turn as early as turn 4.
Other than lands, there are only three cards in the deck that you want to cast during your main phase and they are all Wilderness Reclamations. In the early game, the deck simply wants to hold up remand mana and then cast growth spirals and opts on the opponents end step until you hit your fourth land and hopefully stick wilderness reclamation. Then you can immediately untap and hold up Cryptic Command mana until you’re ready to go off.
The key is to survive long enough to take multiple turns with Nexus of Fate until you have enough mana to either mill out your opponent with Blue Sun’s Zenith, or beat them to death with some combination of snapcaster mages and creeping tar pits. To get to that point in the game, you need a critical mass of lands, plus at least one wilderness reclamation. To really go off, you probably want two wilderness reclamations out at the same time. The minimum number of mana you’ll need to start taking several additional turns is 13. With only 11 mana, you can cast teachings for Nexus, but you need the full 13 mana to flashback teachings and cast Nexus on the same turn. The other important piece to this deck is Blue Sun’s Zenith.
If they don’t have counter spells, you can cast Mystical Teachings on their end step for Blue Sun’s Zenith, untap, play your fifth land, and then on your end step you have access to 10 mana to reload your hand if necessary with Zenith, or continue to hold up counterspells and removal until you’re ready to go off.
The removal suite of 3 fatal push, 1 abrupt decay, and 1 assassin’s trophy means game one against the super aggressive decks is likely not favorable. However, the combination of blast zone, pulse of murasa, and snapcaster mage means the deck is capable of sweeping the board potentially 3 different times and gaining 12 life in the process.
Post board the deck has access to 14 silver bullets and the 4thSnapcaster Mage. The combination of 3 Mystical Teachings and 4 Snapcaster Mage means the deck has 4 cards that represent the first copy of each silver bullet, plus 4 additional cards that represent version #2 of that silver bullet. That is some decent consistency. Death to the werewolves I guess.
On that note, I recently looked back through some recent online decklists because the article was getting stale and luckily found a more recent version of the deck by FTZZ. This was a 5-0 list from July 12, 2019:
Here, FTZZ has added another win condition in expansion // explosion and cut down to 2 Teachings. In doing so, they’ve changed up the mana base to support double red, and adjusted the removal suite accordingly, opting for 3 lighting bolt instead of fatal push. The mana base has also changed. Instead of two creeping tar pits and a Blast Zone, FTZZ has opted for Kher Keep, Lumbering Falls, and Kessig Wolf Run. Unclear whether Blast Zone was cut because it wasn’t pulling its weight or for color restrictions. They’ve also added a Minamo, School at Water’s Edge for what can only be style points. (Because untapping the newly added Ice-Fang Coatl doesn’t seem worth the cost of not running the 5th Snow Island when turning on deathtouch and eating a turn three Hogaak seems critical to the whole not dying plan.)
The sideboard has also changed to account for the color shift to red, and to add copies 2-4 of the Ice-Fang Coatl, which seems like it would be an all-star against the fair creature decks. And just when I thought I was done talking about this deck, I found a more recent version. This is a 5-0 list by DANADIN posted July 30, 2019.
The sideboard is similar but slightly less diversified than FTZZ. I personally like the second surgical rather than a 1-1 split of surgical/extirpate, just because sometimes you need all your mana to cast teachings. I would like to fit an assassin’s trophy into the sideboard, but without playing any games I have no idea what I would cut. (Though it’s probably weather the storm, since I have a feeling burn is unwinnable anyway.)
DECK GRADE: GENIUS
It may not be Tier 1, or even 2, but figuring out how to win games of Modern with 3 mystical teachings in your main deck along with the full suite of cryptic commands and remands is straight up badass.
Although it’s certainly not the fastest deck in Modern, it has inevitability against a lot of the field, and comes with a very customizable sideboard plan, which is always fun for people like me who like to tinker with their sideboards.
If I were to play this deck anytime in the near future I would start with DANADIN’s version because I think the mana is more consistent and the snow sub-theme and main-deck Coatls seems necessary in the current Hogaak era of Modern.
OPPONENTS WHO LOST TO THIS DECK: MAD!, man. Is there anything more frustrating and non-interactive then having all your spells remanded or cryptic commanded only to sit there and watch your opponent take 4 or 5 turns in a row off Nexus of Fate and then mill your face for 50 while you sit there waiting for the game to end? No, no there is not.
