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By: R Koster, Rob Koster
Mar 04 2021 1:00pm
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After the bannings last week, Modern has been in a constant state of flux. Everyone has been trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. While there were some early murmurings of GW Heliod being the best deck, the early results don't agree with that all.

We had two Modern Challenges this weekend, and here are their top 8's:

27th of February Modern Challenge

  1. Amulet Titan
  2. Jund
  3. Jund
  4. Boros Burn
  5. Azorius Spirits
  6. Polymorph
  7. Izzet Prowess
  8. Mono-White Hammertime

 

For the 28th of February, we had the following top 8:

28th of February Modern Challenge

  1. Orzhov Hammertime
  2. Dimir Mill
  3. Azorius Control
  4. Azorius Control
  5. Izzet Prowess
  6. Amulet Titan
  7. UrzaBlade
  8. Mono-White Death and Taxes

 

First off, I want to congratulate everyone that did well this weekend.

 

What can we learn from this?

First off. Burn didn't win. Burn is usually the deck to beat after a rotation. Red Aggro is just consistent and robust and thrives in chaos.

The second thing we see here is that many different things are doing well in Modern. In these top 8, we have Ramp, Midrange, Aggro, Tribal, Combo, Mill, Control, Stoneblade, and Death and Taxes. That is nine different archetypes between the two of them. That is amazing.

 

The only lesson we can learn here is the one that Modern players have always wanted to be true. Learn your deck and learn it well. It doesn't matter what you play; as long as it's inherently powerful and you know what you are doing, you should be fine.

 

One of the biggest problems I had with the Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath decks was that they kept out many brews and the midrange spice. People had been complaining about it for a while, and when they finally got to take their decks out of the box and into the red zone again, the spice showed up. In the Midrange category, we have a few Jund decks in there that had been absent, with Uro out there to beat their entire deck with one card. Look at the other beauties that people managed to get a top 32 finish with.

 


I understand that this deck is quite a weird thing to look at. This deck aims to use Dwarven Mine and Cloudform to make either a token or a morph, and then change those into Emrakul, the Aeons Torn with the help of Polymorph or Transmogrify. The rest of the deck is just protection for the combo. The easy part here is getting a token on the board. You can use a fetch land to get a Dwarven Mine. The hard part is getting that token to stay on said battlefield and then target it with the Polymorph. Between Teferi, Time Raveler, Force of Negation, Remand, Mana Leak, and Spell Snare, I feel like the deck has a very real chance of doing this. I had seen this deck before a while ago but dismissed it as a meme. But a top 8 finish in a challenge is nothing to scoff at. I highly recommend giving this one a try for yourself.

The next piece of spice that I found was:

 


I haven't seen a Living End deck for what feels like since the beginning of time! The archetype always felt like a more vulnerable Dredge deck to me. But here, we have a very different take on the deck. Cutting Black gives way to Blue (Yes, that is an Alice in Chains reference.), and that gives you access to Force of Negation. Force of Negation is such a significant upgrade for Living End. You can just End of Turn go for Violent Outburst with Force backup. I don't know if this was a thing already, and I just missed it, or it's something new. Either way, I'm happy to see it. I love having decks like Living End around.
 

Let's move to the next Modern Challenge. This one also had some serious spice in it.

 
JustBurn420 (nice) has been going at it with this deck for a while. I have seen their name countless times on the 5-0 dumps, and just looking up their past finishes gives me more results on the Slivers archetype than I ever expected to see in Modern. You know what you are getting into with this, it's Slivers. Slivers grow, grow some more and then claw your face off.  I love to see it! These are precisely the kind of brews that I missed during the reign of our previous overlord. May our next overlord be Sliver Overlord. 

The final deck that I would like to point out here is this one:

 

TSPJendrek is someone who, if you like control decks, you probably know. They consistently do well with control brews. I have copied their decklists many a time to varying success. I'm betting the problem is between my monitor and my chair, not in the decklist. It's great to see a wild control brew out there performing again. What more could be a true format health statement than someone running 3 Mainboard Esper Charm. I can't fully explain why, but that just makes me so happy.

 

That all these kinds of brews are coming out of the woodworks just makes me unbelievably happy, and the format looks mighty healthy right now. I am loving current Modern, and you should check it out if you are in the mood for some good Magic games!