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Main » Articles » Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Brandon Isleib
Posted on May 20, 2015
 Reddit

Welcome to Gathering Magic's weekly quintet of Magic Online decks you should be aware of this weekend, whether you're playing a major online event, going to a Grand Prix, or hitting Friday Night Magic. In an era of big data, Magic Online provides some of the biggest data, so even a quick-and-dirty snapshot of recent activity gets you ahead of the competition. This week, with the release of Modern Masters 2015 Edition upcoming and the Magic Online Championship just past, we'll look at Modern in the main, with a dose of Pauper tech.

Modern Master Flash and the Furious Five Decks

Here's what 4–0'd at least twice in Modern Dailies this week (Bold = won a Daily):

  • Green-Blue Infect: 5

  • Elf Company: 5

  • Affinity: 4

  • Amulet Bloom: 3

  • White-Blue Control: 3

  • Jeskai Control: 3

  • Mono-Blue Tron: 3

  • Red-Green Tron: 3

  • Living End: 2

  • Storm: 2

  • Grixis Twin: 2

  • Blue-White Tron, Skred Swans, Merfolk, and Blue-Red Twin each won a Daily in their only 4-0 appearances.

Elf Company looked good last week, and it was the deck of choice for the Magic Online Championship winner, so it's received plenty of press lately. Putting archetype variants together, Tron made a big impression over the last week. Using a list from the Championship:

R/G Tron ? Modern | Maxime Martin

Not a whole lot has changed with how this deck operates. Wurmcoil Engine is well-positioned in a Burn-heavy field (though not in an Infect-heavy one), and the release of Rending Volley has made sideboarding against Splinter Twin even easier. As Tron is normally restricted to minimal color commitments, Boil being a good card right now is handy as well.

As the main deck above implies, Infect is prevalent enough—with Become Immense giving it extra oomph—that Spellskite has been popular again. The G/U Infect deck is pretty well set in its main deck, but this version from Saturday's Daily added black to tell Spellskite where to stick it:

Sultai Infect ? Modern| echoscience

Besides that, Inquisition of Kozilek joins Gitaxian Probe to check for disruption on a critical turn—it gets rid of Spellskite, as do Abrupt Decay, Spellskite, and the sideboard Twisted Image. To make room, echoscience cut Mutagenic Growth, which is tough to part with, but it's not as though Groundswell or Become Immense can go. Black also gives Plague Stinger for the main deck and Phyrexian Crusader, both of which have useful matchups.

Meanwhile, in the other ridiculously fast deck of small creatures . . . 

Affinity ? Modern | ibelievable

Most of this is stock, but Temur Battle Rage is increasing in popularity as a gotcha against decks with Lingering Souls and other speed bumps. Affinity already specializes in free wins against bad opening hands, so why not have a free win against decks that normally make you work for it? Temur Battle Rage implies both Cranial Plating and Master of Etherium to create maximum opportunities for value; it's not worth it otherwise.

One Spicy Metaball

I really wanted to talk about Skred Swans that won Wednesday's Daily, but Carlos beat me to it, so I had to dig deeper. This deck went 3–1 on Friday with several cards I wasn't expecting to see together:

Esper Control ? Modern | merrysan

The removal package and Lingering Souls looks sort of like W/B Tokens, as do some of the Planeswalkers in a weird build of it, but Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere pull a different way. While it's hard to see what's going on, I think the easiest place to focus is on the three Gideon Juras and four Phyrexian Crusaders in the main deck and the four Mirran Crusaders in the sideboard. Those interactions—forcing everybody to attack Gideon Jura while a Crusader knocks off opposing creatures, protected from removal colors—indicate a heavy metagaming bent. And that seems right in a land of small creatures and burn (there's Timely Reinforcements and Pulse of the Fields in the sideboard). It has the grinding aspect of Abzan or tokens without having the same clear vulnerabilities.

Certainly, white has the best suite of sideboard cards in Modern, and black usually has the best general disruption. Is this a flexible enough shell to keep adapting as metagames shift subtly? It would take a lot of work—maybe more work than it's worth—but it's an interesting question.

Nylea's Presents

This deck has some history, but I hadn't seen it in Daily lists until it won one.

Domain Zoo ? Pauper | MarlboroBox

Matca Rioters and Tribal Flames offer some of the highest damage output for their converted mana costs in Pauper (and just in general) as long as you can achieve full domain. Nylea's Presence takes all the work out of achieving domain while giving you a card for your "trouble," making this deck suddenly scary. A curve of Wild Nacatl into Nylea's Presence into a Matca Rioters can end the game quickly. The rest of the deck is the best available support and synergies for this basic plan, with several small synergies tucked in.

Deck like this are what bring me back to Pauper lists routinely in this column—cards you haven't thought about for a long time mingle with Constructed staples in new ways that are surprisingly good. That Nylea's Presence could open up an archetype in a major format fascinates me, and it aids the feeling that there's always another reason to keep brewing.

Conclusion

Collected Company will keep changing the format—Jasper De Jong's Melira and Company is like a Birthing Pod reunion, only with Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit—and what decks are viable will change with it. This weekend's release, I hope, will invigorate widespread brewing—Sunday's Daily had eleven 4–0 decks instead of the typical seven, so maybe the Magic Online Championship piqued interest. I hope you're able to make it to a Modern Masters 2015 Edition release event, and if you are like most people (or at least me) and love the Draft format in the original set, I hope your Draft experience will be as good this time.

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TAGS articles, metagame, constructed, magic online, analysis, mtgo, modern, decklist, pauper, brandon isleib, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you'll play this weekend

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