Back in Ravnica-Champions of Kamigawa Standard, there was an interesting U/G deck featuring Erayo, Soratami Ascendant. The deck tried to utilize Ornithopter, Ninja of the Deep Hours, and Repeal to ensure that an Erayo could flip as early as turn three or four, and could leverage Erayo to generate an enormous amount of tempo and card advantage against the bigger decks in the format. The sheer density of free spells in Modern means something similar is possible, but Nunopeirera took things a step further:

Esper Prowess ? Modern | Nunopeirera, 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (13)
• 2 Snapcaster Mage
• 3 Dark Confidant
• 4 Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
• 4 Monastery Mentor

• Spells (27)
• 1 Dismember
• 2 Remand
• 3 Gut Shot
• 3 Manamorphose
• 3 Slaughter Pact
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Serum Visions
• 3 Myth Realized
• 4 Mishra's Bauble

• Lands (20)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 3 Island
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Watery Grave
• 3 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Polluted Delta

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Leyline of Sanctity
• 4 Rest in Peace
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Slaughter Pact
• 2 Twisted Image
• 3 Gaddock Teeg

Buy This Deck

The key to this deck is the sheer density of cards which pay you back for playing a ton of cheap cantrips and other non-creature spells. Monastery Mentor and Myth Realized allow you the bring the beats or stabilize the ground as you churn through your deck, while Erayo threatens to lock some opponents out of the game long enough for you to get a substantial clock into play.

A huge part of the power of this deck is in its ability to turn a corner quickly and put your opponent into a losing position. Utilizing the high density of Phyrexian mana spells and other free or cheap cantrips, this deck is more than capable of flipping Erayo on turn two and threatening to bury opponents in card advantage. Alternatively, you can play a turn three Monastery Mentor and generate two to three tokens, and still be able to easily present lethal on the following turn if you are left unopposed.

And if all that’s no good, you can still just value your opponent out of the game with Dark Confidant backed by Snapcaster Mage and cheap interaction. If you can beat down with a couple of 2/1’s while accumulating counters on Myth Realized, it won’t be long before you can put your opponent in a position where they’re just dead and have to give you opportunities to resolve a card like Erayo or Monastery Mentor.

This deck is enormously volatile, though. If you draw a handful of free spells and a payoff card, then you could easily win a game before it even gets started. However, you could also draw a handful of clunky cards and no cheap cantrips or whiff on payoff cards and have nothing but cantrips. This volatility likely prevents the deck from competing with the more consistent decks in the format, but certainly makes for some exciting sequences.