Modern is in an interesting place at the moment. The unbanning of Ancestral Vision coincided with the printing of Nahiri, the Harbinger to make Jeskai control a powerful force in the metagame. Beating Jeskai demands a plan capable of going big enough to overwhelm the control deck. At the same time, the typical linear strategies and midrange decks pull us toward efficient interaction. Sam Black’s solution to this problem was to build a deck featuring Tireless Tracker as a way to bridge the gap between powerful threat and card advantage engine. Let’s take a look:

Temur Traverse ? Modern | Sam Black, Magic Online Championship

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
• 3 Snapcaster Mage
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 4 Tireless Tracker

• Spells (25)
• 1 Gut Shot
• 1 Thought Scour
• 3 Mana Leak
• 3 Spell Snare
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Tarfire
• 1 Serum Visions
• 2 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
• 1 Seal of Fire
• 4 Mishra's Bauble

• Lands (19)
• 1 Mountain
• 2 Forest
• 2 Island
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 2 Steam Vents
• 2 Stomping Ground
• 3 Misty Rainforest
• 3 Scalding Tarn
• 3 Wooded Foothills

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Gut Shot
• 1 Grafdigger's Cage
• 1 Thragtusk
• 1 Izzet Staticaster
• 2 Spellskite
• 3 Negate
• 1 Keranos, God of Storms
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 2 Ancient Grudge

Buy This Deck

This deck prominently features two of the most exciting cards from Shadows over Innistrad for Eternal formats: Tireless Tracker and Traverse the Ulvenwald. Tracker is the easiest card to understand. The combination of Tracker and fetch lands means you’ll almost always have more clues than you know what to do with. Additionally, clues let you leave up mana to cast Mana Leaks and Lightning Bolts, but also have a mana sink if your opponent doesn’t cast spells into your open mana. Tracker quickly gets out of hand, and does a reasonable job of functioning as a Tarmogoyf or Scavenging Ooze-esque threat.

Traverse the Ulvenwald, on the other hand, is just a powerful tutor. Eladamri's Call used to be a powerful tutor in Extended, and Traverse is much more efficient, even if it can’t always be cast on the early turns. Even so, between Mishra's Bauble and fetch lands, Delirium is trivially easy to turn on, and Snapcaster Mage gains even more utility when it can find powerful creatures or lands. Additionally, this gives you the ability to play powerful singleton lands and creatures in the seventy-five, such as Bojuka Bog, Keranos, God of Storms, and Eternal Witness, and only tutor them up in the appropriate situations.

All told, this deck can apply consistent pressure backed by efficient interaction and card advantage. You also have the ability to sculpt your draws and tutor up relevant silver bullets in the matchups where they shine. This means the deck is enormously flexible, and can substantially shift the matchups it’s focused on from week to week. Something like Thundermaw Hellkite may become more important as Planeswalker control decks become a bigger component of the metagame. Similarly, Cavern of Souls becomes more valuable as counter magic becomes more prevalent. All of these options, and more, are available, and that kind of versatility is something I find hard to turn down.