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

Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Brandon Isleib
Posted on July 7, 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 Standard a lame-duck format in light of the upcoming Magic Origins prerelease and with loads of Modern events, I'll focus on Modern, with a crack at an Origins Sealed deck.

Origin Rummy

Modern Dailies were down in attendance this week due entirely to the Modern Festival splitting the player pool. Nevertheless, there's plenty to look at from them. Here's what 4–0'd at least twice this week (Bold = won a Daily):

  • Grixis Control: 5

  • Affinifty: 4 (3 wins)

  • Jund: 2

  • Merfolk: 2

  • Naya Burn: 2

  • White-Black Tokens and Storm each won a Daily in their only 4-0 appearances.

With a split metagame, Affinity dominated. And thankfully (for me as a weekly writer of these things anyway), Wednesday's winning list made things interesting via the way-back machine:

Affinity ? Modern | Limited Agent

This is an Affinity/Burn hybrid, with Galvanic Blast, Shrapnel Blast, and still-banned-in-Block Disciple of the Vault daring the opponent find enough life. Disciple of the Vault also breaks the mirror wide open due to its global effect, meaning that the opposing Affinity player might die from sacrificing everything to Arcbound Ravager.

Chromatic Star is here over Springleaf Drum, which seems to be a choice for both Disciple of the Vault's casting and trigger. It also has synergy with Shrapnel Blast, which is handy since all the burn and life-loss means Thoughtcast can't make the deck. I've been surprised that we haven't seen much from Disciple of the Vault lately, and an Affinity-heavy metagame is exactly the right time to bring it out.

Grixis Control continues to put up good results, as exemplified by a familiar screen name:

Grixis Control ? Modern | LSV

Aside from its utility against Affinity, one of the reasons Kolaghan's Command has taken off in Modern is its ability to recur Snapcaster Mage while generating other value. Luis Scott-Vargas expands on the idea some by packing not only three Kolaghan's Commands, but also a Rise // Fall. Fall drawn early has a chance of being actual Hymn to Tourach, while Rise drawn late can recur Snapcaster Mage and delve creatures while gaining tempo. It isn't unreasonable on turn seven to cast Rise, bring back Tasigur, the Golden Fang, cast Tasigur, and represent Cryptic Command, all while staving off a Tarmogoyf for a turn, and that gives a fresh angle that's hard to combat.

Meanwhile, at the old lady job justification hearings Modern Festival Finals, we see a surprising deck.

Dredgevine ? Modern | Legion273

Momma taught me to keep all my efficient 1-cost cards, and Lightning Axe now being 50 cents shows that my momma was right. Although Grishoalbrand is the primary driver in Lightning Axe's price, it has plenty of utility in Dredgevine as well, killing Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler for the same amount of mana normally used to cast them. And with how many decks use Thought Scour and fetch lands while jumping through hoops to make an early X/5, Lightning Axe's discarding of a card isn't quite the loss it otherwise would be. Obviously, in this deck, it's also a way to put Golgari Grave-Troll, Vengevine, and Gravecrawler in the graveyard, fueling the deck's core synergies.

Not much else has changed about this deck—Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard is uncastable, useful only in the opening hand—but Lightning Axe deals sufficient damage in the format to make its synergy with the deck enough to win a major tournament.

One Spicy Metaball

This took ninth place at the most recent Magic Online Championship Series (MOCS), and I absolutely love it:

Pyromancer Ascension ? Modern | Corrado

Pyromancer Ascension is usually the backbone of Storm, and while this shares some cards like Manamorphose, it's a very different concept. The idea is to make Pyromancer Ascension active as quickly as possible and copy cantrips into a Lightning Bolt/Noxious Revival loop, fueled by the extra mana made from copying Manamorphose. Besides the cantrips you're used to seeing, Visions of Beyond when paired with Pyromancer Ascension might draw six cards for 1 mana, which is enough to cheer even the most Uba Masked among us.

There's not much else going on with this deck—it doesn't have a backup win condition or anything. It has one in the sideboard in Young Pyromancer, brought in once opponents have sided out their creature removal. While the deck might not look as strong as Storm on paper, it has a lot fewer do-nothings because it isn't hungry for fast mana, and Noxious Revival gives a Snapcaster Mage dimension to the deck in a pinch. If I had to face this or Storm in a tournament, I'd prefer seeing this, as it doesn't have to fiddle with its mana management quite as much, and it draws into its win condition a little more naturally. Also, seeing someone draw six cards for 1 mana has to be sweet, even if I'm not that someone.

Pre-Running

Sealed is like freerunning in that it requires deftness in handling the limitations of your pool and getting up and over your opponent's obstacles. It also, as the heading link and these links imply, goes well with the music of Other Echoes, who is, to rip off my column name, One Artist I Discovered Last Weekend. All that is to say that it's worth looking at a Magic Origins Sealed pool and see what we can build with it. At the time of writing this, magicdrafting.com didn't have the seeded pack programmed, but it gave me six boosters with these contents, sorted by rarity and then alphabetically—pull up the Card Image Gallery if you need it:

Magic Origins Sealed Pool

The main obstacle to the pool is that two of its rares are lands, and the third rare Despoiler of Souls is more for Ichorid lovers than Sealed players. But having three Somberwald Alphas is a great reason to center in green. Although black is a nice-looking second color due to Kothophed, Soul Hoarder's flying bombiness and reasonable removal in Reave Soul and Touch of Moonglove (like a Bone Splinters with upside), red, as thin as it looks, has the low end to make Somberwald Alpha a Glorious Anthem–type top of the curve. Here's what I'd play:

Magic Origins Sealed Pool Build ? Magic Origins Sealed | Brandon Isleib

Aggro-midrange is the name of the game here, and while there aren't a lot of removal spells, Somberwald Alpha gives two ways of messing with combat by itself, and several playables with renown mean the deck scales reasonably. Renown, spell mastery, and scry point to a format in which seemingly small advantages make a large difference, so Mantle of Webs and Wild Instincts should be better than they look. I love the reprint of Llanowar Empath; having two here lets the deck keep going when it otherwise might run out of gas compared to slower, more controlling decks.

I feel pretty good about playing a deck like this, as it should be able to maintain consistent pressure that means an opponent's expensive bomb isn't game-ending. If you see something else to build from this pool—Displacement Wave looks tempting, and Bounding Krasis seems to be one of the strongest uncommons of the set—post it in the comments.

Conclusion

While you're likely to play in the prerelease instead of a Modern event this weekend, you might be interested in some things from it for Modern. Some of the Planeswalkers are aggressively costed enough that they may have chances at crossing over; Goblin Piledriver might be good enough as well. Regardless, I'm excited to see how things play out this weekend and how the new cards will seep into Constructed formats. It should be a lot of fun.

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

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