Overdriven! 61

Modern: Huge Tracts of Unexplored Land

It has been said of Modern: “The most important thing about Modern is diversity. It’s by and far the most open format right now, there are huge tracts of land no one has explored. It’s the new frontier of competitive Magic.” And “The nice thing about Modern is that the format is very open. There’s a lot of room to explore and find decks that can work.” And just to hammer that point, here are maps from some recent explorations:

Since Seething Song has been banned in Modern for a few months now, some of you who might have just recently gotten into Modern might have never run into a Storm deck before. The Storm mechanic works by making an additional copy of the spell in question for every spell that has been cast so far that turn. So if you play a dozen spells before you play your Storm spell, you’re going to get 12 copies of that storm spell, in addition to your original copy.

Pre-ban, this was usually Grapeshot. However, the ban on Seething Song made that proposition rather untenable. This deck uses Empty the Warrens instead. This allows one to utilize a lower storm count since it plops out 2 tokens for each copy. Try to leave 2R open tho! Because…

He kicks, he scores! Gooooooooooal!

This little guy does yeoman duty here, giving all those goblin tokens you just created from storming up Empty the Warrens +1/+0 and haste. This usually is enough to start a one- or two-turn clock, if not an outright strike for lethal damage.

 

While you don’t normally see Gifts Ungiven in storm decks, it does show up from time to time. This tasty little tidbit allows you to dig up the pieces you need to seal the deal. So what if you have to toss something into the graveyard? Pyromancer Ascension likes cards in your graveyard! If it’s something you really need, you can always Noxious Revival it to the top of your library.

Speaking of Storm – which is not a new deck, but has been “falling out of favor” recently – look what popped up at GP Portland!

If you see this guy sitting across the table from you, kill it immediately! Otherwise, all those rituals suddenly only cost R, and Manamorphose becomes a ritual, as well as being color filtering and card draw!

However, this does slow you down a turn if you’re looking to bash face, in effect giving the Storm player an extra turn to build his hand.

Whatchagonnado?

At first glace, this looks like it could be just another run of the mill Karn Tron (GRb) deck, which looks to dog out Karn Liberated as quickly as possible. But look a little closer! There is not a single splash of R in this deck. Not a one. So no Pyroclasm. This deck packs something much more lethal…

I so very much wanted to find some obscure Dusty Springfield album cover to use, but nothing I found would do.

All is Dust is the all-star that makes this deck what it is. Each player sacrifices all colored permanents he or she controls. This is usually quite the wipe, wiping out creatures, enchantments, and planeswalkers with nihilistic glee. Of course, it’s kind of useless when dealing with Robots, or in the mirror, but most of the time… devastating! While many Tron decks run one or two, this one runs the full four, along with the usual dig & draw one finds with Tron.

Freyd came home early while I was babysitting his kids, so we worked on his Modern deck for FNM this coming Friday. (Last weekend, Freyd took home the local Standard FNM at Tramps with a “stock” Naya Blitz deck that we had put together over the weeks.) Since the coming weekend is Modern, he was wondering what to bring. After poring through the cards he has right now, we came up with a reasonably gross Aggro Elves deck. We play-tested it against the Naya Blitz, and it blew it the Blitz deck out of the water a goodly number of times. Since he has the Naya Blitz deck, it wouldn’t be too hard for him to go GRuul Zoo, either, but cards would have to be gotten, and replacements for Goyf decided. As we were taking a break from playtesting, dissecting, and strategizing, I came over to check out today’s redacted #MTGOresults, and what do I see?

Elves are certainly nothing new; they’ve shown up in the #MTGOresults before. This one is a little suicidal in it’s manabase, with almost half (8 of 17) the lands being fetches. But I suppose it’s a necessary evil, because at some point you will want that U (or B post-board) mana so you can go off:

 

Is this the card that will push Elves back into the limelight? The new Modern legal Glimpse of Nature? Both are sorcery-speed. While worded slightly differently, they both do essentially the same thing: draw you lots of cards, which in turn allows you to vomit more elves onto the field.

 

Glimpse of Nature: G, Whenever you play a creature spell this turn, draw a card.
Beck: GU, Whenever a creature enters the battlefield this turn, you may draw a card.

The key difference in the wording is the addition of the word “may”. With Glimpse, you had to draw. This could sometimes lead to awkward situations.

Anyway, we’ll see if this is the Elvish Harbinger deck or not soon, won’t we?

No matter how hard you look, you won’t find any Eggs in the Modern Meta charts anymore. The new ban list is now in effect online, which means: no more Eggs! Woo hoo! I’m such a happy camper! While I haven’t had the misfortune to be sitting in the stench, I have had my tournaments run overly long because of those rotten eggs (low hanging fruit, I know. So what? I’m lazy today). I, for one, am so glad that Eggs is no more. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Speaking of bad rubbish… Are we ever going to get our full results back? Six months ago WotC made the (IMO half assed) …..decision to stop posting all event results, citing that formats were being solved too quickly.

Also that they didn’t like us “amateurs” to do any kind of number crunching with real numbers.

They then waited until two full weeks after the fact to tell us. They probably wouldn’t have told us at all if we hadn’t started screaming about the lack of results.

*shoves the comatose horse back into the corner and brandishes a stick threateningly*

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s go on about our business. Which in this case, is taking a look at the current online Modern meta. Despite WotC’s continued practice of redacting ~2/3 of event results.

The Big Boys

GRuul Zoo and Robots have both finally pushed their way up to the grownups’ table.

There’s some interesting stuff happening behind the scenes here; it’s not as cut and dry as it looks at first glance. Let’s take a peek at how some of these “big boy” archetypes are faring…

Jund

When Bloodbraid Elf got hit with the banhammer, the Jund archetype was set back on its heels for a few weeks as brewers experimented with various replacements for the iconic elf. That question seems to have been resolved, and Jund is back at the “Top of the Pops”.

The major difference between W Thundermaw & Ajundi is, of course, the presence of Thundermaw Hellkite mainboard. W Sorin is Ajundi w/Sorin, Lord of Innistrad mainboard. Blue Jund and Predator (Wish) Ajundi were covered in Overdriven! 60.

Blue

The U/x/x Control archetype was sitting pretty at the top for quite a while until Jund got it’s legs back. Most of the credit for this can be attributed to 2 decks: UWR Control, and 4c Loam Gifts. This archetype seems to be slowing down recently.

Valakut (Gesundheit!)

I remember back when Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle became unbanned, and a large portion of the Modern community started screaming “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” Well, the sky hasn’t fallen, and no one is wearing blue hats. Although to be fair, it’s been giving Jund a run for its money lately!

Middle of the Road

Look, ma! No Eggs!

R(x)DW

Burn, baby, burn! R(x)DW is doing same as it ever was. Not really too much to say here.

Wannabes

These are the archetypes that have made a solitary showing, then scuttled back into the woodwork.

Overdrive! is the original Modern format Player-Run Event! In fact, it’s even older than Modern, having started out as an event in the Overextended format. Overdrive! is free to enter, and happens every Monday evening at 8:30PM Eastern time. Eurodrive!, a Euro-time friendly Overdrive! clone, happens every Saturday at noon UTC.

Overdrive! #91 Champion: pk23 / Kiki Pod
Overdrive! #92 Champion: ChineseNotebook / Scapeshift
Eurodrive! #72 Champion: fatkiddestroyers / Bant Restoration
Eurodrive! #73 Champion: romellos / Bump
Decks from all Overdrive! can be found here.
Decks from all Eurodrive! can be found here.

 

Where Angels Fear To Tread is a limited seating Modern format Player-Run Event that follows the same structure as the MTGO daily Scheduled Events: 4 rounds of Swiss pairings, with prizes going to all 4-0 and 3-1 players. As with all of my events, it is absolutely free to enter! WAFTT happens every Sunday at 1800UTC. (2PM Eastern, 11AM Pacific)

Where Angels Fear To Tread #52
Players: 10
4-0: N/A ~ 3-1: olioolli, pk23, fliebana, raf.azevedo
Where Angels Fear To Tread #53
Players: 22
4-0: romellos, SBena ~ 3-1: dain23, pk23, The_Raging_Flump, magicoptimus

Decks from all WAFTT events can be found here.

Interesting Tidbits

Modern Masters will be released on MTGO on June 14! This announcement also tells us that MOCS 6 will be Modern Masters Limited. Spoilers are scheduled to start May 27.

MTGO will host a Modern Masters Limited PTQ for PT “Friends” on July 6.

Speaking of Modern Masters, June is coming up quick! Due to my recent netless period, Overdrive! #100 is now ending up to be July 8, corresponding roughly with Overdrive!‘s second birthday. (Overdrive! premiered on July 4, 2011.) I will be looking to put together a Modern gala of some sort in celebration.

I wasn’t able to track attendance during my enforced absence, hence the gap.