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By: dwarshadow, David Warshawsky
Jul 03 2013 1:05pm
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For those of you who aren’t familiar with this small but amazing format, Modern SilverBlack’s card pool consists of all cards printed as either common or uncommon in the Modern era.  It is the most wide-open format I have ever played in and is perfect for people like me who like brewing powerful, competitive decks, on a budget.

Tournaments are held every Wednesday night at 8PM EST through www.gatherling.com. Entry is free and real prizes in tix and bot credit are given out. There are also Standard and Legacy SilverBlack tournaments each week as well.   

I started working on the deck about two months ago, and after taking 1st in SilverBlack 3.17 with my brew, I started seeing it placing well in later events. Then, come the season 3 championships, I took my deck to 2nd place after 9 grueling rounds, and I figured that I should explain some of my card choices, and give a quick tournament report of the biggest event in the format.    

Just consider,

TURN 4

pelakka wurm

That will shut down almost any aggro deck in the format and putting you far ahead against midrange. The life gain and the body are huge so unless your opponent is running path to exile they will have no good way of getting your wurm out of the way permanently. There a few other decks that try to ramp into big threats, but this deck is the only one I know of that does it without tons of ramp spells, has a slew of other utility creatures, and does it all while generating tons of card advantage.

This is a good place to be against a huge percentage of the format, especially since on an average week, aggro and midrange make up about 50% of the metagame. Just to rub the point in more, in my first three events with the deck I played against zero control decks, only losing to burn which it turns out is fast enough to beat the slower draws of this deck and only became a winnable matchup after some improvements.

Deck Breakdown

Core of the deck

Pelakka wurm  unburial rites

Pelakka wurm is the largest creature in the format with an ETB affect. It stabilizes the board, provides a huge threat, and even provides value when it dies.  You win most games where you get to resolve this guy, and any game where you get to recur him multiple times is pretty good for your win chances. 

trostani's summoner

Before Dragon’s Maze, the deck was good, but struggled against white based control decks that could answer each pelakka wurm with a path to exile leaving you stuck beating down with utility creatures.  Alternatively I tried running two artisan of Kozilek, but I found that they didn’t impact the board enough against aggro, provided no value when reanimated, and were too expensive to hard cast if they got stuck in hand. Therefore, they got moved to the sideboard to be brought in against control matchups. However, Trostani's summoner, while not putting you out of burn range, still completely gums up the ground, and provides a huge and hard to deal with threat against control, making her the ideal supplemental reanimation target in the main deck.

Mulch  grisly salvage

These are the graveyard enablers. They let you stabilize your mana base, and fill your graveyard with value. Most of the time casting these will be like drawing 2-3 cards. I am currently running a 4/3 split in favor of mulch since the mana base is shaky and grisly salvage is harder to cast despite being a better card. 

Value creatures

shriekmaw  skinrender

This is the backup plan if you cannot find a (pellaka wurm) early on against aggro. Shriekmaw is easily castable on turn two as a doom blade when necessary, but on turn five you can keep it’s perfectly reasonable 3/2, nearly unblockable body as well. Meanwhile skinrender is frequently shriekmaw  #5-7, however there are a decent number of utility black creatures in the format that need to be killed and skinrender has a beefier back end to block with, making it a little better against aggro decks, especially against kitchen finks. I am currently running a 4/3 split in favor of shriekmaw since it is necessary against the various artisan of Kozilek decks, where skinrender is nearly useless. Additionally it turns out that there are some matchups where it is correct to simply kill all your opponent’s creatures by recurring these two and beating down with 3-power dudes. 

Lingering souls  Kitchen finks

Lingering souls was originally in the deck to provide additional value off of mulch and grisly salvage, to provide a road block against aggro, and a resilient threat against control. It does all that and more, since it turns out that the best main-deckable answer to lingering souls is your own lingering souls, thereby making the various token and WW matchups very good for you. Kitchen finks also provides most of the above benefits, but was added as a concession to making the burn matchup remotely winnable. It also makes all other aggro matchups much better, since it will soak up a bunch of damage, buying you enough time to land a pelakka wurm.

Additional utility

Utopia sprawl

It fixes the mana and ramps. While making the manabase heavily weighted towards forests is unfortunate, sometimes being a turn faster is huge in a lot of matchups. I caution that one should not run a more consistent two-mana alternative instead, since there are already enough two-mana spells in the deck and virtually no one-drops. Additionally the deck has very few four-mana plays worth ramping to other than flashback unburial rites which cannot be played on turn three without a turn two mulch anyway, whereas there are several three-mana spells worth playing on turn two.

Disfigure

This could easily be a sideboard card, but is a metagame choice against all the aggro decks.

Sideboard

Lone missionary – Additional anti-aggro early plays.

Acidic slime – Mainly to combat tron, but also good against other control decks.

Sin collector – Anti-control, anti-combo

Ray of revelation/ancient grudge/purify the grave – Mulch it and use when needed.

Duress – Should be another sin collector.

Artisan of kozilek – Big threat and uncounterable reanimate versus control.

Disfigure – See main deck.

I don’t want to go into an in-depth sideboarding guide, since the format is so diverse, but I will give a basic idea of what the plan is. Against aggro, you bring in lone missionary and disfigure, and take out the summoners and an extra mulch or two. Against control you bring in the sin collectors, acidic slimes and eldrazi in exchange for some of the removal package and the kitchen finks. It should be noted that the exception to this rule is the UW Tron matchup where kitchen finks are better than lingering souls, because of mulldrifter. It should also be noted that there are a lot of singletons in the sideboard. The reasoning is that versus control you end up seeing nearly 2/3 of the deck, therefore having a bunch of silver bullets is extremely relevant.

To sum it all up here is my decklist

SilverBlack Junk Rites
By Dwarshadow - 2nd in Modern SilverBlack Season 3 Championship
Creatures
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Pelakka Wurm
4 Shriekmaw
3 Skinrender
2 Trostani's Summoner
17 cards

Other Spells
4 Lingering Souls
4 Mulch
4 Unburial Rites
3 Grisly Salvage
3 Utopia Sprawl
2 Disfigure
20 cards
Lands
9 Forest
5 Swamp
4 Golgari Guildgate
4 Selesnya Guildgate
1 Plains
23 cards

Pelakka wurm

 
Modern SilverBlack Season 3 Championships

The tournament took the 16 highest ranked players from season 3 and put them in a double elimination bracket. This means you play until you lose twice.

Round 1 vs WBr midrange – Win 2-0

Both decks run early kitchen finks and lingering souls, but my late game is much bigger. Most of his creatures are black so I sided out the shriekmaws.

Round 2 vs Gruul aggro – Lose 0-2

In game one he got a fast start and I mistapped my lands when casting utopia sprawl intending to chain into kitchen finks while facing lethal. I don’t know if I could have won that game anyway but it would have been much closer. I would have had 11 life and two finks versus firefist striker plus 7 other power. I still lose to a bunch of things but at least I would've had a chance. This matchup is generally very much in my favor (I've played against it five times now and this is my only loss) but in game two I got stuck on mana and lost.  Bad beats I guess.

Round 3 vs Rakdos aggro – Win 2-0

Life gain and 2 for 1 creatures all day long put this match away easily.

Round 4 vs 5 color control – Win 2-1

His deck is built around cascading into value off of bituminous blast, such as electrolyze, concentrate, path to exile and lingering souls, while eventually winning with (Urza’s factory) and loxodon warhammer. Game one was a very long and grindy game, but unfortunately he had four path to exiles for my four pelakka wurms and a few (wall of omen)s was enough to slow down a hoard of Trostani's summoner tokens.

Game 2: two acidic slimes took out (Urza’s factory) and orzhov basilica, followed by two quick pelakka wurms, put him pretty far behind. He eventually stabilized at one life with the help of three path to exiles and an aetherize to buy several turns. However, this just allowed me to replay all my acidic slimes to wreak even more havoc on his shaky manabase, which earned a concession.

Game 3: he got the beat down started early with lingering souls and loxodon warhammer, while I had little action except my own spirits to block with. A Well timed sin collector stole a bituminous blast, until I could cast a Trostani's summoner.  Despite the game lasting several turns after that, it was those three tokens that eventually got there.

Round 5 vs RG wall ramp – Win 2-1

Game 1: A turn 4 artisan of Kozilek forced me to dig frantically for a shriekmaw to evoke, which in turn put me in a position to kill all his axebane guardians and overgrown battlements, until I could start casting pelakka wurms. He found his own wurms and eldrazi, but eventually my superior card advantage engine overwhelmed him.

Game 2: He decimated my manabase with wreak havoc and creeping mold.

Game 3: I returned the favor with acidic slimes and a well timed sin collector took a harmonize to keep him from doing anything at all.

Round 6 vs WBr midrange – Win 2-0

Finals of the loser bracket!!

This was essentially the same as my first match except I brought in ancient grudge to try and blank the tidehollow scullers that I hadn’t seen until game two of the first match.

Semifinals vs Soul Sister – Win 2-1

This matchup is generally won by recurring shriekmaw and skinrender.  However, in game one he showed me chalice of life when he already had me dead on board, so I sided in ancient grudge. In game two we have a situation where I am trying to survive an active chalice, and I flip my ancient grudge off of a grisly salvage to earn a concession on the spot. For game three I also sided in the ray of revelation since he showed me journey to nowhere in game two, and I used it on circle of protection: green to win the match.

Finals vs UW Tron – Win 2-1 then Lose 0-2

Since my opponent had not yet lost a match I needed to beat him twice to take 1st

This matchup is difficult comes down to a few things

  1.  Acidic slime vs Urza lands
  2.  Shriekmaw vs artisan of kozilek
  3.  Playing around firespout
  4.  Pelakka wurm vs mystical teachings + path to exile

W Game 1: Trostani's summoner went unanswered

L Game 2: I sideboarded incorrectly and fail to put enough pressure on

W Game 3: early kitchen finks beat down followed by turn 8 artisan of Kozilek

L Game 4: I failed to disrupt tron and he proceeded to stick two eldrazi

L Game 5: I once again failed to disrupt tron and he gets the spell burst lock 

Congrats to Cl3m on winning the season 3 championships

Moving forward

I pretty much like the main deck configuration except for the two disfigures which are dead in the control matchups.  I am thinking of switching one of them for a path to exile which is still good against aggro, but also works against opposing pelakka wurms and artisan of Kozileks. The other one I want to replace with a cloudshift, since not only can it blink any of my value creatures, but evoking a shriekmaw then blinking it seems insane, and saving a pelakka wurm from path to exile also seems relevant. It may just be correct to run two path to exiles though. As for the sideboard I want to make room for the second artisan of Kozilek for the control matchups, and I am leaning towards cutting purify the grave, though if this deck becomes popular that is probably wrong.  

I am excited to start brewing with some of the new M14 cards that have been spoiled so far, but until then,

May your graveyards ever be full of value,

-DW

dwarshadow on MTGO

2 Comments

Having never played it I by Paul Leicht at Wed, 07/03/2013 - 15:43
Paul Leicht's picture

Having never played it I can't say for sure but Path to Exile seems like the strongest removal card in the format. Grats on 2nd place.

originally I was simply by dwarshadow at Thu, 07/04/2013 - 16:50
dwarshadow's picture

originally I was simply trying to pre-sideboard against aggro, where disfigure is easier on the manabase.