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:
Blue Jund; Dzy (4-0) Modern Daily #5352372
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An interesting take on Jund! Instead of splashing W for Lingering Souls, etc, this build splashes U for extra value:
Snapcaster Mage shows that he’s right at home playing the Jund game, flashing in a body while allowing your spells to do double duty from the graveyard. Of course, this also means less mulch for Deathrite Shaman to recycle… but a mage’s gotta do what a mage’s gotta do.
A staple in the UWR (Midrange/Control) deck, Electrolyze is a very nice one-off in the main of this build. Not only is the damage distributable, it replaces itself in your hand by drawing you a card. This can be very handy mid to late game. Also an excellent flashback target for Snappy.
Predatory Wish; Dzy (4-0) Modern Daily #5352372
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Here’s another interesting take on Jund! This one takes the Ajundi deck in a nice sideways direction, and with Kavu Predator maindeck, I think Grove of the Burnwillows could find a home here, too. Since Grove gives your opponent life when tapped for color, it’s an auto-pump for Predator. I remember that “combo” being effective in Predator Zoo way back when in the Overextended days.
Glittering Wish is the all-star of this deck. I always enjoy seeing a wish deck show up in the lists. To be honest, I’m surprised I don’t see it more often! Being right “on color” in an Ajundi shell, it allows you to tutor up any card in your sideboard, albeit at sorcery speed. Still, with a toolbox of answers as large as this, it’s going to be pretty easy to seal the deal.
GB Suicide; osmanozguney (3-1) Modern Daily #5323538
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This isn’t a deck; this is a death wish.
Pay a life to fetch an Overgrown Tomb, and then another 2 life to bring it in untapped to play a Thoughtseize? Sure! Follow it up with a Turn 2 Bob? Not a problem! Let’s even pay Phyrexian mana to Murder a blocker. Why not? You’re paving the way for…
This bizarre 13/13 for the low, low cost of B is one of the coolest black critters out there. Yes, it’s a 13/13. But that low cost gives it a huge drawback: it gets -X/-X, where X is your life total. So it can’t even live until you’re at 12 life or less. The lower your life gets, the bigger Death’s Shadow becomes. This is where the tricky balancing act begins. It’s easy to get your life down to 12 or lower, it’s more problematic keeping it above 0!
Hmmm. I wonder if a W splash for Phyrexian Unlife could work in here. When the life loss from Bob starts taking you to negative life totals, Death’s Shadow becomes insane. Since it gets -X/-X, if X is a negative number, it becomes +X/+X! For example, it your life total were -10: 13/13 – (-10/-10) = 13/13 + 10/10 = 23/23! Food for thought.
Keep Portland Weird!
We have another Modern GP coming up this weekend in Portlandia! Woo hoo!
Oh yeah! Being the home of delights such as the Voodoo Doughnut shop, the Velveteria Museum of Velvet Paintings, the 24 Hour Church of Elvis, the Zoobomb cycling events, the popularity of yarn bombing, and the Portland Urban Idiotarod, I’m hoping some of this rubs off on the GP and we see some weirdness in the rank & file. I’m all aquiver in anticipa…
…tion! Dragon’s Maze tech is here. I’ve heard rumours of Combo Elves with Beck // Call being put through their paces. I’ve heard whisper of Breaking // Entering Cascade Reanimator making the rounds. We’ll see!
Keep Portland Weird!
Meta Madness
Blue-based “Control” remains at the top of the leaderboard, pinned up by UWR Control & 4c Loam Gifts. Jund, in 4 colors, is making a strong resurgence after a brief lull post-BBE ban.
Robots remain on the brink of moving up to the “big boys” chart, but can’t seem to seal the deal. 2nd Breakfast (Eggs) will be scrubbed from the charts after the next downtime. GRuul Zoo & Tribal Flames (Domain Zoo) have been putting up some good numbers.
I’ll be very interested to see if the Naya Domri Zoo/Midrange makes further inroads. It’s very reminiscent of Big Zoo.
Here’s an overall look at what’s what, appearance-wise.
I really am expecting some shakeups from GP Portland and Dragon’s Maze, so I’m not going to do any Wall of Voodoo presentations this go ’round. The next issue should have some interesting stuff to show you, tho!
VHS vs Beta
Either Way, It’s Still 80′s Tech!
After the coming downtime, the Wide Beta Spotlight goes into effect for a few days, and we’ll be forced to use the Wide Beta client for a few days. If you want to play in the early pre-release online, you’ll have to use the Wide Beta. The “old” client will resume service Friday morning. The carrot & stick analogy has already been touted numerous times. I shan’t beat on that horse corpse.
Instead, let me look at the flip side. The Wide Beta client that I opened after downtime to claim the full/alt art Dryad Militant is so much better than the very first closed Beta client I opened oh so long ago, in so many ways. Those of you out there who have also been in the closed Beta for a long time know what I mean.
While the past few builds of the Wide Beta have left me less than impressed, this current build does not disgust me. It allows me to log in, go to the Just For Fun room, load a deck, and start and play games.
WARNING: The audio for this video is NSFW (Not safe for work)!
There will be another update to the Wide Beta this coming downtime, and I’ll once more record the results.
I often disparage the (MTGO/WotC) coding teams, and still would like to come over there and kick some (management?) chairs over the NM025 thing (which is still going on!), but they do an awful lot of good work considering the conditions they have to work under: 2 active clients, the closed beta, cards, rules, bugs, management, people like me screaming, etc.
I have to give them props. I want to play, prima facie. And this build delivers.
Respect.
Overdrive! #89 Champion: LeviatanCL / Death & Taxes
Overdrive! #90 Champion: rittmeyer / Martyr Proc
Eurodrive! #70 Champion: Psparks10 / GR Tron
Eurodrive! #71 Champion: olioolli / Melira Pod
Decks from all Overdrive! events can be found here.
Decks from all Eurodrive! events can be found here.
Where Angels Fear To Tread #50
Players: 18
4-0: andres_1995, Gonzzy ~ 3-1: ellmaris, FistAlpha, pk23, olioolli
Where Angels Fear To Tread #51
Players: 19 (I played to even the pairings)
4-0: raf.azevedo, bdgp009 ~ 3-1: pierakor, pk23, olioolli, Teylian
Decks from all WAFTT events can be found here.
Interesting Tidbits
MTGO will host a Modern Masters Limited PTQ for PT “Friends” on July 6. Woo hoo! So now we know that at the very least, Modern Masters will be available online at that time. I’m hoping that the online release is a little sooner than that, tho! It’d be nice to get some practice in before a PTQ…
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! started 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.
Anyone running casual over extended events still?
Uhhh… casual over extended? Huh?
AFAIK, no one is running anything in the Extended format these days.
Also, PREs, while not being as “cut throat” as sanctioned events, are still not all that “casual”. After all, there is $$ on the line. When there’s chum, there’s usually sharks.
I’m personally getting frustrated with Modern these days. Blue Tron resilience is more than annoying, and I am not in the mood of going xMiMx way and playing infect just to prey on it.
The Glittering Jund deck has 4-0ed at least one event, but I have found it disappointing: the Wish itself is a sorcery and you often want to play something more immediately impactful, and you seldom have 2 white on board early in the game to play some of the sideboard cards. I also feel it outlines the pros’ biggest peeve against modern: “if I can’t get my sideboarded silver bullet, these matchups are impossible for me”.
But hey, I have been playing so poorly lately, maybe a few wins will make me excited for Modern again. That and getting my hand on a play set of Varolz!
For me at least, the audio portion of the beta testing video somehow is off by about 1:06 once you get to the 5:12 mark in the video. It must become un-synced sometime before that, but that is the first time I can tell the audio is delayed.
Hmmm… We’re not hosting this vid (unlike usual), so I can’t quite explain it or access it to provide a fix. Blippy, do you think this is fixable?
Errors are in the source vid, not uploaded copy.
I tried a few ways in the original, but everything I tried to sync audio/video on the source made it worse. I think it was because I was capturing the whole screen instead of just the window. It was so much easier in the old client.