MTG Salvation

I will list the cards I think have had a major impact in Modern printed in 2015. This means no love for Den Protector, Deathmist Raptor, Hangarback Walker, Dragonlord Ojutai and Silumgar's Scorn, although some of them have been tried in some Modern decks with moderate success. It might be curious to revisit this list in a year; who would have guessed Keranos, God of Storms would have become such an important card. Let's go in ascending order.

 

Honorable mention: Harbinger of the Tides

I hadn't thought of including this card in my list until I checked the list of most played creatures of the format at mtggoldfish and saw it in such a high position. The combination of Harbinger with Aether Vial gives Merfolks an instant removal spell that also counts as a creature and contributes with two blue mana symbols to the devotion of Master of Waves.

 

#10: Painful Truths

This card hasn't make an impact yet in Modern, but it's starting to see play in the sideboard of several mid-range decks and even some Twin versions. Drawing three cards is still a very powerful effect in Modern, and Wizards has found the optimal cost after the failed experiment of Treasure Cruise. Three mana are the maximum we are willing to pay for this, and 3 life seem easier to pay than a fourth mana to cast cards like Concentrate and Harmonize.

 

#9: Shaman of the Pack

While Elves are still less played than Merfolks, they've improved more since Origins came out, and this card is responsible for most of the improvement. Elves lack haste to surprise any opponent when playing an aggro plan, while the pure combo versions are too fragile due to the amount of removal of the format. However, Shaman of the Pack allows you to deal damage with your Elves before you get to attack with them, making the aggro plan more consistent and the deck more competitive.

 

#8 Rending Volley

Dragons of Tarkir brought a cycle of color based hate cards, from which only Rending Volley has become a format staple, replacing Combust as the favorite Twin hoser, although unable to kill Siege Rhino or Baneslayer Angel.

 

#7 Gurmag Angler

We already knew from Tombstalker that delve is a very powerful mechanic, and Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time certainly proved the point. Despite being just a common, Gurmag Angler has supposed an upgrade to the Future Sight demon, because costing just one mana is better than costing two, and Modern is filled of flying chumpblockers. Patrick Chapin tried to break the card since he saw it printed and momentarily succeeded with his Grixis deck, now obsolete. Gurmag Angler has also seen play in Dredgevine decks.

 

#6 Pia and Kiran Nalaar

This card looks like a worse version of Siege-Gang Commander, but it's actually better and I'm still surprised of its low price, probably because it's only played in Modern. Chandra's parents make the difference against mid-range decks, and are also a fantastic card against Affinity. Comparing them to Lingering Souls is a fairer comparison.

 

#5 Atarka's Command

It saddens me to see Burn getting new toys in a yearly basis, but 2015 has given red mages the ultimate tool for their decks. Life gain will always be a problem for Burn, and Skullcrack alone can't deal with it. A card like Flames of the Blood Hand is too expensive, while Rain of Gore is only sideboard material and requires a splash to an extra color. Atarka's Command solves the problem, while also being able to give +2/+2 to a horde of attacking Monastery Swiftspears.

 

#4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy

The newest Jace is responsible of the most expensive Standard format ever, and has been played even in Vintage. However, even without the Mind Sculptor in the format, it hasn't become a dominant force in Modern yet. So far, Jace has displaced Gurmag Angler as the card to build around your Grixis deck, in which it might be even more powerful than Snapcaster Mage, but still lacks the flexibility of the Innistrad card to appear in more archetypes.

 

#3 Collected Company

The banning of Birthing Pod was one of the most controversial decisions of the year. Many players cried out loud, signed online petitions and called for demonstrations. However, just a few months later, nobody misses the artifact from New Phyrexia. Collected Company doesn't just have a sedative effect in the community, but has allowed the Melira combo to be still viable in Modern, has revived Big Zoo and gave Elves its first push towards being a competitive deck. Collected Company offers these decks card advantage, resilience to removal and can even get some game winning combos into play at instant speed.

 

#2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Gurmag Angler's best friend has some advantages over the big fish that make for the lacking point of power; a lower converted mana cost and a relevant ability for the late game are factors that don't force you to go all in filling the graveyard to get a fatty. Tasigur has been played in almost any black mid-range deck, even replacing Dark Confidant in Junk, and also in control decks. It's been also one of the favorite alternative win conditions of Twin players. It has made Jund players cut some Abrupt Decays in favor of Terminates, and has made Doom Blade and Slaughter Pact unplayable cards in Modern.

 

#1 Kolaghan's Command

2015 started with Junk being the most popular fair deck and ends with Grixis being the most popular fair color combination. The main reason is the combination Snapcaster Mage + Kolaghan's Command. The same way playing without blue delve spells a year ago meant playing an underpowered deck, playing a fair deck without this combination of cards is starting to seem equally wrong. They can be found in the most diverse decks: with Delver of Secrets, with bigger beaters, with Jace Vryn's Prodigy or with Splinter Twin. Kolaghan's Command is a really versatile spell. When analyzing the card at first, many people just looked at the worst possible case, in which it's just a worse Blightning, forgetting so many amazing situations. It has turned Batterskull and equipment in general (outside of Cranial Plating) unplayable in Modern; those are big words that deserve the first place of my list.

 

Is there any card I've missed? Feel free to point it out. Will this list look the same in a year? We'll see then.

The spoilers for Oath of the Gatewatch revealed cards with a new mana symbol whose meaning wasn't quite clear. Was it a new sixth color? A new snow mana that would only be used in this new set (and any upcoming set featuring Eldrazis)? It's been something actually better.

 

You just need to compare the cards in Alpha and Beta to those of the most recent editions to see the evolution of the terminology used in Magic: The Gathering to be more clear and precise. Subtle wording differences like "As ~ enters the battlefield" or "When ~ enters the battlefield" have completely different meanings within the game. Following this very same example, you can Stifle a Kitchen Finks etb trigger to prevent your opponent from gaining 2 life, but can't do the same against a Meddling Mage, because its ability isn't triggered. You can also read "enters the battlefield" instead of the former "comes into play". Even if the later wording is shorter (specially when translating the game to other languages), the new one allowed to put specific names to every game zone: library, hand, graveyard, battlefield (instead of play) and exile (instead of removed from the game). Precision might be at odds with language economy, but the priority should be the former, and then the later; in some cases, we might even improve both aspects, like with the term "exile".

 

However, there was still a grey area of confusion that has remained this way since the very beginning of the game: the meaning of the symbol 1. When printed in the top right corner of a card, it means "a mana of any one color". Any color. However, when printed in the text box of the card, it might mean "one colorless mana". Colorless. Or it could also mean the same as in the top right corner, if it appears in the cost of an activated ability of the card. How can a mana of any color be the same that a colorless mana? How can cards like Myr Moonvessel or Tectonic Edge have the same symbol in two different lines of the card with different meanings? Where are the clarity and precision here?

 

Even if Magic: The Gathering players have been smarter than the average population, the game popularity is increasing and it's expanding among some population segments who are closer or below the average. Before making the rules simpler with contested decisions like removing combat damage from the stack because Sakura-Tribe Elder, Mogg Fanatic and Arcbound Ravager were overpowered, or nerfing counterspells because new players don't like getting their spells lost in the stack, or just removing this whole stack stuff because you need a degree in Physics or Math to understand how it works, it would be better to remove sources of confusion like this one.

 

The new colorless mana symbol certainly fixes a problem we've been living with since Sol Ring was printed. There are hundreds of cards that will need an errata in the Oracle to be fixed, and the coexistence of cards with the confusing symbol 1 with others with the new one could create confusion among new players about what the old cards exactly do. However, new cards will have a clearer and more precise text; exactly the goal Magic: The Gathering should chase in their rules text.

Playing a deck that plays at instant speed can be tricky. After your draw step, you must think not only what you're going to do during your turn, but during your opponent's turn. Despite playing a few discard spells, you won't always know what your opponent has in his hand; and even if you knew, you don't know what he's going to draw next turn, so you'll have to guess. Let's show a couple situations in which you could have a hard time deciding the right play.

Cryptic Command and Mistbind Clique in hand

Let's imagine a game against Junk. Early game is a true attrition war, but after the dust settles both players think they're ahead: your opponent has managed to get a fattie (Tarmogoyf, Tasigur, the Golden Fang or Siege Rhino) onto the battlefield just after going hellbent, but after your draw step you're holding your two must powerful spells with just 5 lands into play, one of them being a Mutavault. How do you play next? How will your play change depending on life totals, estimate chances of your opponent drawing certain cards (Path to Exile, Lingering Souls, more Rhinos...), how many lands he has into play or the differences between facing a 5/6 Goyf or a 4/5 trampling Rhino.

Bluffing a counterspell with Vendilion Clique in hand

In terms of tempo, it's better to play counterspells than discard spells; if your opponent has two or more cards in hand you want to get rid off, with discard you'll manage to take one, but leave a free way for your opponent to cast the other; with the counterspell, he'll have to spend a whole turn casting his threat to get it countered. The same applies to Vendilion Clique, with the difference that it has flash, so if your opponent doesn't give you a chance to play your counterspell, you may still play the "discard" spell at the end of his turn. However, what if you only have the Clique but no counterspells? Let's imagine a game against Twin or Blue Moon, both decks with many counterspells and cards you don't want to get resolved, like Blood Moon, Jace, Architect of Thought or Batterskull. Vendilion Clique is your only form of interaction, but you're mana screwed, so won't be able to pay for a Mana Leak or recast it after Remand, while your opponent would be able to still cast his bomb after the counterspell. Is it time to put your cards on the table, or bluff you're holding a couple counterspells?

As of March 14th 2015

 

 

After many iterations, I've got back to something very similar to what I had almost a year ago. Brief comments on some choices.

 

Maindeck Batterskull: I had 16 sideboard cards and just 15 slots, so I moved Batterskull to main and cut my trustworthy Sword of Ligth and Shadow.

 

Snapcaster Mage: found it better than random planeswalkers. Probably Tasigur is still better, but Faeries fills its graveyard slower than any deck you could try to fit it in.

 

Removal suite: Dismember is my favorite removal spell, but lifeloss can hurt and you still want to kill Primeval Titan. Affinity is at a low rate at the moment, while Go for the Throat can kill Rhinos and dodge opposing Spellskites; Disfigure is another sideboard card I moved maindeck after trying maindeck Damnation and realizing that casting it after many turns with Blossom on board wasn't the best idea. However, Damnation is still a necessary evil and really necessary in your sideboard. I've tried Murderous Cut in the past, but you can't cast it until turn 3 and will compete for graveyard resources with Snapcaster Mage or Tasigur.

 

Manabase: I'm not completely sure about it. Faeries has very greedy mana requirements: B turn 1, UB turn 2, 1U(U/B)(U/B) turn 4 and all of this while playing 4 Mutavaults and 2 Ghost Quarter in my case (Go for the Throat isn't going to kill Inkmoth Nexus). The land that is closer to being cut is Secluded Glen. Games 2 and 3 I often just have 10 Faeries in my deck, so it's not uncommon to get it tapped into play after mulligans; however, the alternatives are losing more life with the fourth Delta and a second dual, or playing more River of Tears.

 

Sideboard Deathmark: I've never been a fan of the card, but now that Junk plays Siege Rhino and doesn't play Dark Confidant, Deathmark becomes better than Smother against them. Against any green or white aggro deck, Deathmark will be better on the draw than Smother, while they'll be even on the play, so Deathmark wins the point here. Against Burn, Merfolks and Affinity Deathmark will be completely useless, while Smother would be great; against Burn and Merfolks, a combination of Go for the Throat and Disfigure should be enough, while against Affinity you'll have to mulligan aggressively for early disruption or pray you don't face it.

After I saw Josh Utter-Leyton was playing a deck that combined Jeskai Ascendancy with Pyromancer Ascension, I really wanted to try out that idea myself, even if it was very risky because of the imminence of the banning announcement. As everyone expected, Treasure Cruise got the axe, but Jeskai Ascendancy didn't (guess Wizards had to choose between Dig Through Time and the enchantment, and given their hatred against blue control(lish) decks they chose the delve spell).



The main challenge now is looking for a replacement for Treasure Cruise. My initial lack of knowledge of the deck led me to think that just with Pyromancer Ascension you had enough draw power, so you could replace them with Sleight of Hand. Many times, Treasure Cruise wasn't needed once you were going off, and there was a high risk of getting decked if your Fatestitchers didn't show up early enough and/or got killed and had to dig for extra copies. However, actual tournament play proved me wrong, fizzling many times in games I'd have won easily with the original version. Moreover, given the rise of Junk, playing cards like Simian Spirit Guide or Faithless Looting that "provide" card disadvantage isn't the best idea.

The best Treasure Cruise replacement for this deck is Ideas Unbound. The other option many people have suggested is Visions of Beyond, but I wouldn't consider it. Ideas Unbound is a more reliable card: it always puts three cards in your hand; with Visions of Beyond you need 20 cards in your graveyard, something you can only achieve if the game has gone really long or after many Jeskai Ascendancy iterations, this later scenario unreachable if your draw spell only draws one card and not three. When not going off, Visions of Beyond is a really poor cantrip, while Ideas Unbound is card disadvantage; however, from a hand with three extra cards it will be easy to discard some Fatestitchers or duplicated spells to set up a Pyromancer Ascension, so having a discard effect in a card that is so awesome the turn you go off should be looked at as a plus. Finally, the converted mana cost would be the only advantage of Visions over Ideas, but 2 mana is a quantity that you can reach easily, and also helps you circumvent the evil Chalice of the Void for one.

With that in mind, this would be my updated list:



I tried to highlight the differences from the original decklist in bold, but seems it didn't work, so I'll have to explain them:

-4 Treasure Cruise, +4 Ideas Unbound: not a desirable change, but bannings oblige.

-2 Faithless Looting, +4 Sleight of Hand: I preferred an extra cantrip over a card that generates card disadvantage, although having some instant or sorcery spell with flashback could be interesting. That spell could be Looting, Desperate Ravings or even Think Twice (not really), but as discussed previously Faithless Looting is card disadvantage (even if you have 4 cards you'd prefer having in your graveyard than anywhere else) and the random discard from Desperate Ravings could be catastrophic in this deck (you need Jeskai Ascendancy to go off, while Storm doesn't need Goblin Electromancer to win, although it helps). Additionally, with this configuration I'm playing 4 copies of each instant and sorcery, so charging Ascension is easier than if I start including singletons.

-3 Simian Spirit Guide, -2 Seachrome Coast, +3 Faerie Conclave: this is the biggest change I've made to the deck: sacrificing a way of getting a Pyromancer Ascension turn 1 or Jeskai Ascendancy turn 2 for a land that enters the battlefield tapped. However, you're making your deck more resilient and getting some extra creatures that allow you to turn lethal your Jeskai Ascendancy. I would recommend leading with turn 1 Conclave almost always, unless you're playing against an aggro deck and need to cast Lightning Bolt asap; cantrips can wait.

About the sideboard choices, I think those 10 cards should be useful in any large tournament with an unknown metagame. I'm unsure about Dispel being better than Swan Song, but I certainly prefer Stony Silence and Path to Exile over Shatterstorm and Anger of the Gods, specially after removing Spirit Guides from the deck. Stony Silence is also useful against Urzatron (at least on the play, not so much on the draw), and against aggro decks you want to either delay them or be able to kill their "hatestick", even if its toughness is greater than 3 (like Eidolon of Rhetoric, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or a giant Scavenging Ooze). You shouldn't be sideboarding too many of these cards together (6 against Affinity would be the maximum I'd use).

The remaining 5 sideboard slots should be used to include any trump card against match-ups you're certain you'll find (could be extra copies of cards from my provisional sideboard) and some tech anti-Junk. Leyline of Sanctity seems like the obvious choice, since it protects you from their targeted discard, and it's useful against other archetypes. But Junk still plays Scavenging Ooze, Abrupt Decay, and will be bringing Fulminator Mage and Golgari Charm from their sideboard, so you should either prevent them from casting all those terrific spells or find an alternative win condition that is immune to (almost) all of them. Do you have any suggestions?

About the most popular versions of Jeskai Ascendancy we've seen during this "blue autumn", I think the mana dork version is still viable (many times you were casting Treasure Cruise for 2 mana anyway), while the control version should be forgotten; Ideas Unbound is a good replacement for the delve spells when you're planning to play a short game, but not when you want to reach a situation in which you grind out your opponent and still have gas to go off.

Will we see anyone playing any version of Jeskai Ascendancy at the Pro Tour? The card is still really powerful, but there are dozens of viable combo decks in Modern, and players will probably try to find one that doesn't fold to Abrupt Decay, is (even) less dependent on the graveyard and/or doesn't take so long to go off. We'll find out soon.

Short answer
After the bans, Modern seems once again the BG turf, with Siege Rhino being its most iconic card, although we shouldn't forget old classics like Tarmogoyf, Scavenging Ooze and Liliana of the Veil. Being ready for the mirror match will be crucial. Don't forget the power of an unanswered Dark Confidant; they'll probably be back at this PT.



Discard spells are bad in the BG mirror match, while green creatures with cmc~4 tend to be great. Some players could opt for a green-white shell with black splash for Rhino, Decay and Souls, that could be more suited against BG decks but be worse against blue decks and combo. And we shouldn't forget the combo Rhino+Restoration Angel Pod decks abused to get the artifact banned from the format; some players could try this combination, with the help of mana dorks to get it sooner, and Gavony Township to turn useless Birds of Paradise into finishers.

The last shell where Rhino could appear would be in Zoo decks, at the top of the curve. Don't know if maindeck Rhino would be better than sideboard Blood Moon, but some players in the disjunctive could choose the former option.



What about the non-Rhino decks? Before Khans, the rock-paper-scissor of Modern were Rock, Twin and Affinity, though at the last Japanese GP Burn won took the prize and Tron dominated the top tables. Since then, Burn has added Monastery Swiftspear to their arsenal, while Tron has Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. I think Burn is well positioned right now, and the loss of Cruise doesn't hurt the deck that much, since you were winning many games before you needed to cast it.



And what about the blue decks? Wizards has banned two blue cards and returned none to the pool. However, in a slower format old fashioned UWR Control decks like the one that took the previous Modern PT could be viable again. Electrolyze is the perfect answer to Lingering Souls, and Rhino keeps Mana Leak and Remand longer alive. However, discard and land destruction are too hard to overcome for this archetype, and Junk packs large amounts of both. I'm even more pessimistic about the chances of success of Delver without digging ftw. Probably the most efficient way of playing Cryptic Commands will be alongside Blood Moon and Spreading Seas, which is quite lame.

Finally, there are the combo decks. I don't think Jon Finkel is moving away from Storm, a deck that seems actually better without Cruise than with it. Black disruption is more powerful in Modern than blue permission, so I don't expect glass-cannon combo decks to be as successful as in previous GPs. However, graveyard based decks could make an appearance, and not because of Golgari Grave-Troll; Junk doesn't pack Rest in Peace nor Relic of Progenitus, and Scavenging Ooze isn't enough to stop Vengevines, Bloodghasts and Gravecrawlers.

Basically, the Pro Tour will showcase empty-handed players hoping for a miraculous top-deck to kill the Rhino that's killing them, or a Rhino of their own to kill the opponent.

Disclaimer: none of the decklists on this article (?) has been tested.

I had some brief thoughts on the old fashioned topic of how much the Planeswalker Points system sucks and so on, but even such a short review would look better if the forum had the option to include text written in $\LaTeX$ (dunno where I read such cool things could be done in php forums).

btw GP Omaha proved my conception of the Modern format wrong (or there has been an evolution since my preparation for GP Madrid I didn't follow thoroughly). No Rhino-Cruise-Dig triad with unfair decks lurking around anymore, but the third leg was missing. This should save Dig from the axe, while forcing Wizards to an unban of Bloodbraid Elf to give more options to mid-range decks than just choosing if you want to play with 4 Rhinos or 6 plus some Restoration Angels. Some players will advocate for disabling that second choice, and they have some arguments in their favor given the justifications Wizards has given to some bans in the past, so let's see what happens besides the presumable ban of Treasure Cruise.

After a few months with Khans of Tarkir around, we may conclude this edition has shaken the Modern metagame like none other had done since the format inception. Besides the new fetchlands, there are four new spells which are among the best of the format: Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Siege Rhino and Jeskai Ascendancy. When attending a Modern tournament, you can only pick up a deck with some of the above cards or some really unfair decks. Is this healthy?

Treasure Cruise can be played in Delver, Jeskai Ascendancy and Burn; Dig Through Time, in Scapeshift, Twin and UWR Control; Siege Rhino, in Pod and Junk, while Jeskai Ascendancy is the only one that has created a new archetype around it. From this list, those that can make a better use of the new Khans cards are more powerful (for instance, combo decks make a better use of Dig Through Time than control decks), so the list of viable choices for a tournament is even shorter.

Another trait is that now the decks are more proactive than they used to be before Khans. Is this due to the format being unexplored and players not knowing yet how to adjust, or just that the power level of some cards makes reactive strategies non-viable? While not being incompatible answers, certainly the second choice is true; you just have to see the Chapin-McLaren match at the World Championship. So should these four new cards be banned?

Treasure Cruise: the new Ancestral Recall has turned Delver, prior to Khans barely played, into the dominant deck of the format. The card can also be played in some unfair decks, like Jeskai Ascendancy or Storm. And we saw what happened the last time Burn splashed a new color for just one very powerful card they couldn't miss. It's very likely it will be banned in January.

Dig Through Time: supposing Treasure Cruise gets banned, Dig Through Time could only replace it in Delver (in Jeskai Ascendancy it has already done). In that deck it wouldn't be a problematic card. However, the problem is with Scapeshift and Twin. Now these two combo decks have an instant that can find whatever they need, being them combo pieces, protection or missing lands. It's quite sad that when blue control decks get good draw spells they're better used by combo decks.

Siege Rhino: the Rhino is a fair card. It would be silly banning it, although Wild Nacatl had been banned for years.

Jeskai Ascendancy: although the archetype is powerful, probably being right now the best combo deck in Modern, without the blue delve spells it would probably be too weak.

It's specially significant that Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise are legal while Preordain and Ancestral Vision are banned. The Cruise-Vision comparison is outrageous, while Preordain would be a better replacement for Treasure Cruise in Delver than Dig Through Time, but way worse in Twin and Scapeshift. Moreover, Ancestral Vision could put on the map some forgotten archetypes, like Faeries or Next Level Blue.

TLDR;If I had to take the decision, the blue delve spells would be banned and Preordain and Ancestral Vision unbanned.

A month ago, I talked about new control decks being powered thanks to the print of new fetchlands for the Modern format. Two weekends after the release of the whole Khans of Tarkir set, a blue card has proven to be the most powerful and with the greatest impact on the set: a modest common card, Treasure Cruise.

On weekend 1, the deck appeared in a combo deck built around another card from the new set, Jeskai Ascendancy, but after seeing its impact in Legacy, many players have been trying to fit the card in Delver decks. A bunch of cantrips, which power up creatures such as Monastery Swiftspear and Young Pyromancer, and cheap disruption (with Remand probably being too expensive to make the cut) surround Treasure Cruise to make the newest and probably best tempo deck in Modern. The discussion now is whether Snapcaster Mage can find its spot, or its anti-synergy with Treasure Cruise (a card you'd want to play as a 4-of) leaves it outside the deck.

The same way Ancestral Vision in the past helped aggro-control decks like Next Level Blue or Faeries, Treasure Cruise has found its first home in an aggro-control deck. However, I think the card could make its appearance in other archetypes, such as Zoo, Twin or even control decks. In the later cases, Treasure Cruise could even get to replace Snapcaster Mage. Prior to the release of Khans of Tarkir, Snapcaster Mage was the number one candidate to join the banned list of Modern, being the individual most powerful card of the format, present in all kind of archetypes (aggro, combo and control) and with the card they printed to keep it in check being already banned. However, if Treasure Cruise proves to be a superior card, its stay in Modern will be really short.

Updates to the control decks

There are a couple cards that could make it to the control decks I posted a month ago.

Utter End
Control decks like versatile answers, and Utter End is certainly one. Its high mana cost will prevent it from being played more than a 2-of, but being able to remove any kind of troublesome permanent, specially planeswalkers, at instant speed is good. The Esper deck will make good use of it.

Dig Through Time
The other delve draw spell of the edition fits better in decks trying to look for specific cards, like Scapeshift or Cruel Control. In the later deck, you may fill your graveyard with Forbidden Alchemy to be able to cast it sooner, leaving the old Mystical Teachings toolbox I proposed obsolete.

I still prefer Snapcaster Mage over Treasure Cruise in those decks, specially in the Cruel Control deck, where you not only can use it to recast Lightning Bolt, but also Cruel Ultimatum, and Treasure Cruise would be competing against Dig Through Time for cards to exile from the graveyard. Snapcaster Mage is less useful in Esper Control, but that deck already plays many draw spells.

Khans of Tarkir is going to bring a raise of blue in Modern, and it won't be (just) due to the fetchlands. Let's see how long will it last.

Control decks have been scarce in Modern since the format was born. There are two main reasons for this. One is the great diversity of viable strategies available in the format. Can you answer all of them at once? Counterspells are the most versatile answer and what makes blue the control color in any format with a large card pool, but even countermagic can be circumvented with cards like Æther Vial or by entire decks like Dredgevine. For such a great variety of threats, there is also a great variety of counterspells to choose, something that makes deckbuilding even harder. Cryptic Command is the obligatory choice, but the counterspells you cast before it are not that clear.

Even if you find the right configuration of spells to fight a determined metagame, you still need the lands to cast them. Before Khans of Tarkir, we've only had 5 available fetchlands, with the ones capable of giving us Islands looking for Forests or Mountains too. Certainly, red and green are not typical control colors, although red provides a good removal suite to fight the most aggressive strategies and alongside white has become the reference control color combination of the format. With the Onslaught fetchlands, control decks with black and white (without red) have a very stable manabase that makes them viable (if you manage to choose the right spells). Here are two draft decks with these new color combinations:

UBR Cruel Control


Cruel Control isn't a deck that wants the game to last forever, but just survive until a Cruel Ultimatum puts the game in your favor. I think Remand is the most suitable counterspell in this deck. The list of uses of Remand is long, but even buying you a turn in the early game is useful: one less turn for the Ultimatum, one more turn your opponent will need to beat you before you cast it. Using Mystical Teachings with Pacts is also interesting: Slaughter Pact may kill a creature out of nowhere, and Pact of Negation can win some counter wars unexpectedly. There are extra silver bullets in the sideboard for Teachings, although with just one copy I wouldn't abuse that plan. The other significant treat of this decklist is the lack of manlands. You don't want to attack with them before you cast any Ultimatum, and once you've cast one, Snapcaster Mage+Lightning Bolt should provide enough reach. Another advantage of playing with no manlands is that your opponent will never know what to do with his Tectonic Edges in the late game.

WUB Esper Control


This decklist is based in Guillaume Wafo-Tapa's deck at GP Boston, and the style is exactly the same. Instead of trying to survive to cast a Cruel Ultimatum, your goal is casting a lethal White Sun's Zenith, which is equivalent of staying alive forever. In this context, Mana Leak is a pretty bad card, but there are cards that require quick answers that don't cost 2 mana. The best card of the deck is Esper Charm, and not because of the Divination mode, but the Mind Rot at instant speed. I've added the Vendilion Cliques (which Wafo-Tapa must hate) to the sideboard for Tron, combo and control decks. You could even bring the card against BG/x, since they'll board out all of their Abrupt Decays. Even if Blood Moon popularity decreases because of fetchlands, I think that Choke will see more play, so you shouldn't trust just in Islands to produce your blue mana. The Cruel Control deck has 4 non-Island lands capable of producing blue mana, while this Esper deck has 7 (4 of them being Celestial Colonnades) and the first mode of Esper Charm to deal with it.

I hope control decks become more popular after the release of Khans of Tarkir. Will the new fetchlands be enough to achieve it? We'll see in a month.

The Faeries deck has proved to be a competitive deck along the summer Modern season, with some players qualifying for the Pro Tour and many others prizing in PTQs and other large events with it. However, no stock list has appeared, like there have been with some of the tier1 decks. The core of the deck is formed by Bitterblossom, Spellstutter Sprite, Mutavault, Cryptic Command and Creeping Tar Pit. Even the quantities of those cards are a matter of discussion and often below the maximum of four copies, with the exception of Bitterblossom, which is a clear 4-of. There are other frequent choices, like Mistbind Clique and Vendilion Clique as creatures, Mana Leak and Spell Snare as additional counterspells, Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize as discard spells, and a great variety of spot removal. However, some of those cards are often relegated to the sideboard, when not cut entirely from the deck, and their numbers are not clear. If you limit yourself to the cards mentioned above, you’ll end up with a very reactive deck that will have an extremely good match-up against most of the combo decks present in Modern, but lacking some powerful late-game plays to finish the game once you’ll brought it to that stage. You need to use some slots of the deck to include cards which are either powerful in the late game, or allow you to finish the game before a simple Snapcaster Mage+Lightning Bolt kills you with the help of your own Bitterblossom. I’ll analyze some of the cards you may use to fill those final slots of the deck.

Scion of Oona
Scion of Oona is the most synergistic choice with the rest of the deck. However, to get the maximum value of the card you need to play the full set. Scion has many utilities. Most importantly, it pumps all your Faeries, making your Bitterblossom a faster clock. In the vacuum, playing Scion the turn after dropping the Blossom will allow you to kill two turns earlier than with the enchantment alone (from 7 to 5); not an impressive improvement. Scion of Oona can also be used as an overcosted counterspell against spells like Abrupt Decay destroying our Bitterblossom or Electrolyze trying to destroy our first couple of tokens before turning the Blossom life loss sideways. However, in order to make those plays, we’ll need to keep three lands untapped, and our opponent will try to force them in our turn to then resolve some big threat in their own turn. Moreover, these two uses are quite incompatible. Another use of Scion of Oona is as a combat trick, pumping your team when blocking. This works fine specially against Affinity, since you can make your Mutavault larger than their Etched Champions or your Faerie tokens capable of killing Ornithopters or surviving unequipped Vault Skirges. The card is really bad when you don’t have other Faeries on the battlefield. By itself, it’s just a 1/1 for 3 mana. By playing more copies, you may use them to protect and pump each other, but certainly Scion of Oona won’t be capable of overcoming an unfavorable board state. I wouldn’t play them.

Snapcaster Mage
Snapcaster Mage is more of an extra control card than a threat. Its main ability is being able to become an instant or sorcery spell you have already played, something that doesn’t work specially well game 1 because you might need an extra removal spell but haven’t drawn any in the whole game, but better after sideboarding, since you’ll make sure all the instants and sorceries you leave in your deck are good in that match-up. Snapcaster Mage may also be a mediocre beater against some blue decks if you’re afraid of losing your Bitterblossom to a counterspell, and a surprise blocker in some desperate situations (although killing an adventurous Dark Confidant with it is a good deal). I’ve been playing that aggressively my Snapcaster Mages for months, trusting in the power of Sword of Light and Shadow to recover them from the graveyard later on and turn them into Cryptic Commands or extra removal spells. The right number of copies for Snapcaster Mage would be 2, unless you design a deck with many cheap instant spells (Disfigure is the only one that comes to my mind and I see it more as a sideboard card) and want to fill in more copies.

Liliana of the Veil
So far I’ve talked about blue cards with flash, which are compatible with the plan of playing turn 2 Bitterblossom and sit on that playing counterspells all game long. Liliana of the Veil would fit a slightly different plan, in which you trust in the speed of your deck and try to drain your opponent’s resources, while threatening with her scary ultimate ability. Liliana might not work well with counterspells, but it does wonders with Mistbind Clique. You may set up an opponent’s upkeep where he doesn’t have any card in hand to answer your Clique; then he will have a hard time attacking Liliana through a 4/4 flier, and in your following turn her +1 ability will hit some card in your opponent’s hand. Liliana’s -2 ability turns the Boggles match-up from nightmare to favorable, and it may also be helpful against BG decks, that usually will have just one creature onto the battlefield to attack you. However, the addition of Lingering Souls to that kind of decks makes Liliana a weaker choice than it used to be. If you want to include Liliana of the Veil in your deck, two or three copies would be the right number.

Sword of Feast and Famine
From all the available Swords, Feast and Famine has been the most popular in Faeries, although I personally prefer Light and Shadow for its protections, life gain and recycling etb triggered abilities from dead creatures. The main advantage of Sword of Feast and Famine is that it allows you to cast and equip it turn 5 for free… if your opponent doesn’t have any way to stop you from doing so, something you might avoid by casting a Mistbind Clique the previous turn. In that situation, the discard trigger will work and you’ll have your mana ready to cast a new Mistbind Clique or counter your next opponent’s spell with Cryptic Command. If you’re not in such a good situation, the Sword won’t be that effective and you should evaluate the risks of trying to play and equip it. Playing the Sword turn 3 after a turn 2 Bitterblossom is also an interesting play against fair decks that will allow you to get full value of the Sword, although you’re also letting your opponent go rampant with his own game plan. Without creatures to equip, Swords are bad, but Feast and Famine isn’t impressive also if your opponent has run out of cards in hand or you have nothing to cast with the untapped lands, so the card loses its value in the late game, unlike Sword of Fire and Ice or Light and Shadow. In order to draw the Sword either after a Bitterblossom or a Mistbind Clique often enough to make it relevant, you should be playing more than a single copy, although three might be too many, because there’s very little gain in having a second Sword.

Time Warp
Time Warp is the best available spell to turn the tiniest advantage into an automatic win. In order to get that, you’ll need to previously have put a huge amount of power onto the battlefield, in the form of Mistbind Clique and Creeping Tar Pit mainly. Once you find yourself in that ideal situation, Time Warp has a more devastating effect than Sword of Feast and Famine. The other advantage of Time Warp over the Sword is that additional copies become better, and being able to chain Time Warps will usually lead to the victory. However, unlike other 5-drops, like the Swords or the last card I’ll talk about, Time Warp actually costs 5 mana, and you can’t split that cost in 3+2, so the card is pretty bad in your opening hand. Moreover, Time Warp is a completely useless card if you don’t have any board presence, or if your opponent’s board position is better than yours (something that typically may occur against Affinity and other aggro decks), when it will just become an overcosted Cryptic Command in tap+draw mode. Even if Time Warp is a very powerful card, the fact that it needs some previous setup and forces you to play too many expensive spells doesn’t make it an advisable choice.

Pack Rat
Pack Rat is the last technology in Faeries and the one I’m more excited about at the moment. If Scion of Oona was the most synergistic card with the rest of the deck, at the expense of being the least powerful, Pack Rat lies in the opposite side. You should see Pack Rat as a 5-drop with a flexible cost rather than an extra 2-drop, although it may perform that role in those match-ups in which Bitterblossom is bad (like Burn) or against decks against which our ideal game plan is bad (like Birthing Pod). Unlike Time Warp or the Swords, Pack Rat needs little setup to become a card capable of dealing large amounts of damage, although it won’t be a very helpful card in the Blossom games like all the other options. The right amount of Rats isn’t established yet. Even if you consider it a 5-drop, protected with discard spells you may cast it earlier than that, and multiple Rats help each other, so you may play the full set of them with no problems, but 2 could be fine in this particular deck.

My last piece of advice would be not to just jam 4 copies of any combination of cards of this list in your already defined 56-card deck. Every card of this list works better with other cheap spells than others, so the choice of any of these cards will affect more than just 4 slots of your decklist, and even might induce subtle variations to the general game plan of the deck.

I know my last report has drawn the attention of many of you wanting to improve your skills playing Faeries in Modern, but some sideboard tips would've been useful. So let's share some of my post-board plans with you. Sideboarding with Faeries is sometimes counterintuitive, but once you realize what your game plan is, you'll find out some cards you considered good actually don't help you at it.

Usual tip: when on the draw, you may take out the 26th land, specially when playing against non-control decks.

Against Storm

+1 Thoughtseize, +2 Engineered Explosives, +2 Grafdigger's Cage, +2 Glen Elendra Archmage

-4 removal, -1 Sword, -1 Bitterblossom, -1 Cryptic Command, -some beaters

You cover all their game plans and take out some inefficient spells. Cage isn't the best answer (it shuts down Caster and Archmage's persist), so you may try without them. You don't need Blossom too early, so consider it a cuttable beater. MClique on the upkeep isn't a timewalk if they have Electromancer in play (actually it's suicide).

Against Twin

It depends a lot on their plan for post-board games. If they're playing the All-In version, bringing in Spellskite, Smother and Thoughtseize is interesting. The UR Tempo Twin would require Disfigure and Batterskull. The RUG version can be fought just with Smother. Cryptic Command is the first suspect to go out, and will be definitely cut if we're smelling Blood Moon. Cliques are worse against decks that can play their threats with flash, so you may cut some of them, specially if we're replacing them with Archmages.

Against Affinity

+2 Disfigure, +2 Smother, +1 Damnation, +1 Batterskull, +1/2 Engineered Explosives

-1 Go for the Throat, -2 Thoughtseize, -3 Cryptic Command, -1 Mistbind Clique, -1 personal choice

Affinity has two plans: swarm and doped guy ftw. Blossom shuts down the later, bring in removal to stop the former. IoK does wonders at stopping it on the play, but you'll be at least one game on the draw.

Against Living End

+1 Thoughtseize, +2 Glen Elendra Archmage, +1 Damnation

-2 Spell Snare, -1 Sword, -1 Vendilion Clique

Make sure you don't leave any Spell Snare against them and the Cages are left in the sideboard. Play tightly, always around Violent Outburst or Beast Within out of nowhere, so Vendilion Clique will be harder to cast. Don't board out the 26th land on the draw.

Against Scapeshift

+2 Glen Elendra Archmage, +1 Thoughtseize, +2 Spellskite

-2 Dismember, -1 Sword, -1 IoK, -1 MClique

The version with Commands is a tough match-up. If I'm playing Glen Elendra Archmage in the sideboard is because of that pairing. If Scapeshift is a popular deck in your metagame, play Tectonic Edge instead of Ghost Quarter. You may push them early, although countering some ramp spells will slow them down. Once they've gathered 7 lands, they can go off, so you'll need resolved Archmage, or Cryptic Command with some back-up in hand. Beware of Teferi...

Seeing those match-ups, Nihil Spellbomb would've been more useful than the Cage, but Pod is still a popular deck. You also must evaluate Cryptic Command correctly. Against mid-range decks is a brutal card, but against fast aggro or combo it's too slow or expensive, and against other blue decks it isn't the most efficient spell as well.

Lacked time and persuassion to make it to the single-elimination top16 of a 169 people Modern tournament.

Decklist

Round by round recap:

Round 1: 1-1-1 vs Storm

Damn it, should have kept mana open for that Spell Snare g1, how could I guess?

Round 2: 2-0 vs Tarmotwin

That deck is a cakewalk.

Round 3: 2-1 vs Affinity

Was pretty lucky.

Round 4: 2-1 vs Tempotwin

If not manascrewed g1, would've been 2-0 as well.

Round 5: 2-1 vs Living End

Tap out for Blossom on the draw and lose.

Round 6: 1-2 vs Scapeshift

Teferi powned me... twice.

Round 7: 1-1-1 vs Scapeshift

Deserved more, but opponent was a jerk and rounds were only 45 minutes.