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By: Tarmotog, Naoto Watabe
Sep 15 2011 11:26am
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Disclaimer: All the decks posted here are tweaked versions and not the ones that corresponded to their first appearances. By the way, I only have 3 Tarmogoyfs so every deck you see in this article has a cap of 3. Tarmogoyf was very expensive and I never thought that I would have needed my 4th copy when it was still cheap. I apologize beforehand if not having the stock list offends anyone.

When the Modern format announcements were made, I was excited. Not particularly because I liked the format itself or that I really wanted to play something new (which I don't) but mainly because of this picture in the announcement:

I'm an easy fish to hook. Just throw some cool promos and I'm game. That is pretty much the reason why I did not even try to qualify for the

The following is just to provide some background information on where this is coming from.
I used to be an avid promo collector, mainly because I played in the 100 card Singleton format. When promos were first on MTGO, I wanted to get them. Eventually, I followed the promo news closely to get to my ideal "perfect Singleton collection" which would have the coolest of spells in their most chic version. I own a large number of rare promos, some I had to fight for to earn, some I had to fight for to buy. I pretty much lost steam this year because of the lack of funds from not playing and winning tournaments and had to tone down significantly, missing out on various MOCS promos and rewards promos.

Also in the Modern announcement was the following (summarised):

That's actually how my mind processed all that cluster of words. The champs looked good and I definitely wanted the foil promo Lightning Bolt which I only had to qualify to get so it was to the drawing board for me!

I looked at the banned list and came to the conclusion that Spellstutter Sprite would be great in a format where people are playing without Mental Misstep. Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows should also be useful if small creatures were the main feature of the format. I immediately recognised the power of Blood Moon and picked up a playset which were at 2 each. I believed those would rise in price but bots seemed to be out of it already so I did not bother past the playset. With those cards in mind, I created this simple deck based on the previous extended deck that had Bloodbraid Elf into Ancestral Vision.


The deck played out decently and I had a fair winning percentage so I was soon comfortable with it. I supposed that I would play this deck when the format came up unless some decks in the format prevent me from doing so.

Once I was done with it, I went on to Classic to try to create a deck in which Visions of Beyond would work. More accurately, I wanted to try it out and see whether or not it was possible. It eventually worked and I did get to draw tons of cards but the effort was not paying off well when I had a hand filled with cards that I could not really do anything with. I did, however, have the other parts of the deck which suddenly came to me as an idea to port into Modern, turning into the following deck:


This deck is half storm, half masochistic. It revolves around some key ideas that I found to be rather interesting. Firstly, it has a storm component with which I could try for an early Erayo, Soratami Ascendant lock. The main kill condition was Death's Shadow which I have to get to under 13 life to utilize. It was a very interesting creature because it could get to a very large size very quickly and it was hard for the opponent to predict its true size when I could take damage out of nowhere to make it larger again. Ignite Memories is there to beat the Cloudpost deck which my friend had been quick to call the best deck in the format. 

The deck itself was surprisingly playable but around that time, there were a few creature based decks I was having troubles with, mainly because I had to win by attacking with large Death's Shadow and if they can't connect, I couldn't actually get to winning. It was rather annoying and I had even thought about playing Cryptic Command just to tap down to beat for the kill. Still, I couldn't bring myself to it.

I tried to settle for a more stable deck that would play closer to how I liked to play Magic, with counter magic and control elements, hence the next deck which I found in an article on starcitygames.com:


This deck revolves around the combo of Swans of Bryn Argol and Seismic Assault. Discard a land, draw 2 cards.
With Dakmor Salvage, it goes infinite because you always draw a land (getting a net gain of +1 card per cycle) and you never have to worry about decking out because of Kozilek, Butcher of Truth which can reshuffle the graveyard into the deck. Even if you draw it into your hand, you can continue after you discard it at the end step at which point you have a stocked library where you can repeat the sequence again and again.

It was a deck that could race the Cloudpost deck and still have a decent game against most decks unless they pack a ton of hate. I tested it out and soon got accustomed to playing the deck. It was also around this time when I had come up with the idea that any viable deck in the format would have to either be Cloudpost or a deck that could race it.

It was around then that the first results of the Modern DEs were coming online. This particular deck caught my eye. I saw a similar list in the starcitygames article I was talking about but it did not feature Birthing Pod and ran a full set of Overgrown Tombs which I did not have a playset of (which was why I did not make it in the first place).


For this deck, I pretty much needed 3 Birthing Pods, 1 Overgrown Tomb, some Melira, Sylvok Outcast, 2 Chord of Calling and a Yosei, the morning star to finish up. It looked really resiliant so I pawned away my 4th Breeding Pool for funds to obtain the cards.

Basically, the deck is a creature based combo deck.
It runs Viscera Seer + Melira, Sylvok Outcast + Kitchen Finks for infinite life (persist wants to put -1/-1 counters but Melira says no to that),
Viscera Seer + Melira, Sylvok Outcast + Murderous Redcap for infinite damage,
Body Double + Reveillark + Viscera Seer for infinite recursion and the deck has the tools to get all the parts out easily.

It was a fine deck to play but MTGO can be quite annoying when it comes to infinites because I don't actually have infinite life when I run out the first combo. That is not fine when opponents have large creatures (lords etc) and they attack you knowing that you take minutes to gain some amount of life. I stopped playing the deck after awhile because I wanted to explore better ways of winning but I kept it in mind because it was still a decent deck to run.

Another thing to note is that elves doing its infinite business trumps this deck's infinite life nonsense.


One of the following days, I saw this zoo deck posted at dailymtg.com. Apparently, it went 4-0 in a Daily Event. I wasn't very optimistic about it because so far, anything I was playing or played against did not really seem to have any trouble with zoo. I played the above deck in a DE to a mediocre finish and it did not feel like a deck with much edge over the format no matter how I looked at it. Cloudpost decks naturally packed lifegain, Living End was just mean, combo decks go off really fast. It's hard for a fair deck to pull consistent numbers in the format. The only thing I like about the deck is Tribal Flames for 5.

I was quite bummed about the format and wanted to see if there were any interesting decks running around and I saw this in an article on puremtgo.com:

 

 

The gameplay of this deck is truly interesting. It took awhile to formulate a proper playstyle to maximize the deck's capabilities. One of the key plays I came up with was that I had to mulligan as though I was playing Classic dredge. Just mulligan for the Treasure Hunt or mulligan down until there is a hand that can potentially find Treasure Hunt more easily.
You cast cast Treasure Hunt and play Reliquary Tower. Then, you cast Lightning Storm for a large amount of damage.
The main allure of the deck is its uncounterability provided by the 4 maindeck Boseiju, Who Shelters All which gives it a real edge against any decks with counters that are not trying to Duress/Thoughtseize you. It is a rather slow deck in that you can only cast 1 Treasure Hunt a turn and you have to have good draws (for cards like Reliquary Tower or Cascade Bluffs) and also not whiff out with an immediate flip of Lightning Storm. It's a rather unstable deck to use to race another fast deck but it has a very strong game against slower decks. I managed to go 3-0 in a TNM with this deck. (Laughing inside)

Over the weekend, I followed the Pro Tour coverage to see what was going on in Modern and it was rather disappointing at the personal level because of the decks that were being played. Zoo was out in a force that I did not expect, seeing how weak it was with my own eyes. The lack of blue based control decks was just saddening. I suppose you really can't have a good blue deck in the face of a format that can hardcast the Eldrazi family consistently.

After the tournament had settled down, I took a look at the Bant Zoo deck (countercat is such a sad sad name) and I noticed that I was only missing a Gideon Jura, a (Stomping Grounds), a Tarmogoyf and a bunch of Aven Mindcensors. I like decks that don't need me to have a playset of a particular type of shockland. I sold off my playset of Blood Moons at 7 each, and bought everything but the last goyf.


I couldn't figure out what to replace the empty slot of the Tarmogoyf so I put a Birds of Paradise in its place. It shouldn't be too big a problem because the deck runs 4x Green Sun's Zenith which I have tested in Classic extensively to know that that one card is capable of providing the volume of threats needed. Although I have to say that on paper, I have a weaker deck than one with the extra Tarmogoyf.

Below is the said Classic deck which I made some time ago to abuse Green Sun's Zenith with Mana Drain, banking on the idea that a deck with Stifles would suffice in creating a playable deck: 


Notice the large number of 1 ofs which are enabled by Green Sun's Zenith. This deck allowed me to understand the potential of Green Sun's Zenith which created consistency in terms of volume without actually having to have real volume.

Anyway, I took the deck to a DE and went 2-2, losing to the mirror who went all the way and another to a Splinter Twin deck.

Fast forward to Modern Championships.
The tournament itself was 2am Monday and I had a job interview at 11.30am. I played for the sake of not wanting to regret not trying. I couldn't think of what to play so I just played the deck that had a good chance of winning, the Bant Zoo deck, even without the 4th goyf. The main plan was to play a few rounds and retire for the night, hopefully not dropping out of the tournament only at the end of the swiss and not getting anything. 7 rounds of swiss means it might last till 9am but Modern is not a very slow format so I wasn't too worried about not making for it on time but rather, I was worried about just not getting any sleep in the worse case scenario with nothing gained.

With a stroke of luck, I was paired up twice in rounds 6 and 7, and I lost my second match of the tournament in the last round to the only 7-0 player. With great breakers from the double pair-ups, I managed to sit in the top 8, a feat that I did not expect. I was at least going away from the tournament with my 4th Tarmogoyf!
In the 7 rounds, I faced 2 bant zoo, 1 affinity, 2 mono blue poison and 2 ascension decks, losing to the poison deck (I was stuck on 3 lands and unable to cast all my answers) and also to the mirror in round 7.

In the top 8, I beat the mirror who I also won in round 6, the BWG deck that has Dark Confidant, discard and Green Sun's Zenith and I managed to recreate the finals of the PT by having the Bant Zoo deck lose to a Splinter Twin deck. Infinite 1/4s for the win? Just a little different from infinite faeries.

As a tip for the readers, I won some of my matches against similar decks on the fact that I had removed Noble Hierarchs and Birds of Paradise for real sideboard material while my opponents kept theirs in. Although the odds don't change greatly when that happens, it is something that I would want to point out for anyone who wants to play such a deck because when it comes down to it, my plan is to have more viable threats than my opponent and use my removals exclusively on their more important threats. Mana creatures make very poor topdecks and thus I have a significant strategic advantage when it comes down to dogfighting in the mirror. Some may disagree but my experience tells me otherwise so I'm putting it out as legit advise.

When Modern was announced, the prices of Tarmogoyfs skyrocketed and I never expected to be able to make my playset again. Thankfully, I managed to walk away with 1 foil and 1 non-foil Tarmogoyf, leaving me with a full playset with an extra to spare! Not sure which to sell off now. I bought a foil Tarmogoyf before Legacy was popular for some insanely low price of 20 plus to 40. Can't recall the exact number but definitely much cheaper than it is now. The only qualm I have is not having it pop out at the end of the tournament and that really douses out some of the excitement of winning it.

In addition to the double goyfs, I received a nice amount of M12 packs which I converted into some tix but I managed to use about half of those on Ftv: Legends , the Duel Decks: Ajani vs Nicol Bolas and some other randoms like a foil MED4 City of Brass. Did I mention that I spend heavily online?

This marks the end of my story telling of my Modern tale. I hope that you like the format because I personally still don't. If they ban Cloudpost and blue control decks start to come out, I might like the format better then. That's just me of course.

8 Comments

I want to play control too by apaulogy at Thu, 09/15/2011 - 11:47
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5

I don't think unbanning JTMS will be enough however. The reason that all the control players dislike Cloudpost is because it is a ridiculous trump to countermagic. It wins the mana development war. I think there have to be serious adjustments made before control becomes actually viable again.

However, there are also Next Level Blue lists running around that revolve around Engineered Explosives, Goyf, Vendilion Clique, Cryptic Command, etc... You should check those out...I can't bank roll that, but it looks like you have the cards...

Nice article, sir.

NLB by Tarmotog at Thu, 09/15/2011 - 20:48
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I'm not very sure how next level blue fares today. The control decks that pop up every now and then are quite different all the time and they don't seem to return or catch on. From what I've seen extra effort like using a playset of shadow of doubt to deal with the cloudpost decks but the matchup should still be quite rough. Being able to play draw-go will definitely be a plus against all the combo decks going around.

I hope the problem gets fixed by apaulogy at Thu, 09/15/2011 - 21:56
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I like playing control too, and would like to think something is viable.

GL on your quest, sir.

can you post some modern by apricio at Thu, 09/15/2011 - 23:59
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can you post some modern videos. :)

Reply by Tarmotog at Fri, 09/16/2011 - 11:35
Tarmotog's picture

Sorry to disappoint but I'm pretty much done with modern after having acquired the foil promo lightning bolt. =x
(Especially when it's not a format that I particularly enjoy and also because I'm not gunning for QPs this season.)
However, if there would be something I would have to test for that needs modern, I would be sure to include some videos then.

I think videos from you would by apricio at Sat, 09/17/2011 - 11:31
apricio's picture

I think videos from you would be very good beacause your a very serious player and a good one.

That will take some time to by Tarmotog at Sun, 09/18/2011 - 13:16
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That will take some time to come to fruition I guess. I first have to try not to be too conscious of being accountable to others in recorded matches. @_@

Intra thread postings! by whiffy at Sun, 09/18/2011 - 13:56
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So in response to the comment on yso, I plain ol just never even thought about using gush. I dont see how it could be a terrible card, so i will try it out :)