Cryptolith Rite in Standard has taught us just how powerful Duskwatch Recruiter is in a deck packed with creature-based mana. Duskwatch Recruiter gives Collected Company decks the ability to sit back and power through one-for-one removal, and force opponents to do something proactive to break up your card advantage engine. Even if they do manage to find a sweeper or enough spot removal, you can just deploy your new grip full of cards to the board. But is this effect powerful enough to break into Modern? Sam Pardee seems to think so:

Duskwatch Elves ? Modern | Sam Pardee

• Creatures (38)
• 3 Elvish Visionary
• 4 Duskwatch Recruiter
• 4 Dwynen's Elite
• 4 Elvish Archdruid
• 4 Elvish Mystic
• 4 Heritage Druid
• 4 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Nettle Sentinel
• 3 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
• 4 Boreal Druid

• Spells (4)
• 4 Collected Company

• Lands (18)
• 4 Forest
• 1 Cavern of Souls
• 1 Pendelhaven
• 1 Temple Garden
• 3 Windswept Heath
• 4 Horizon Canopy
• 4 Razorverge Thicket

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Stony Silence
• 2 Reclamation Sage
• 3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
• 1 Creeping Corrosion
• 2 Rest in Peace
• 2 Dismember
• 2 Spellskite

Buy This Deck

This deck is capable of producing monstrously explosive amounts of mana in the early turns of the game. The combination of Nettle Sentinel plus Heritage Druid and/or Elvish Mystic into Elvish Archdruid means you can start casting Collected Company or Overrunning with Ezuri, Renegade Leader relatively early in the game, especially if your opponent doesn’t have a substantial way to interact with your early mana creatures.

However, if they do, you’re going to need a back-up plan. Enter Duskwatch Recruiter. The advantage of Duskwatch Recruiter over a card like Chord of Calling is you don’t have to go all in and hope your opponent doesn’t have something like Anger of the Gods or Supreme Verdict. Sure, Chord can find something like Dauntless Escort if you need it to. Duskwatch Recruiter, however, just sits in play and gives you a mana sink to generate value off of all of the mana you can produce. Recruiter single — handedly gives you the ability to power through cards like Electrolyze and Supreme Verdict, since you can just leverage your abundance of mana to net cards.

In exchange, you give up a small amount of the explosive potential, since you don’t have Summoner's Pact or Chord to find missing pieces, but the advantages gained in the grindy matchups like Jund, Abzan, and Jeskai may just be valuable enough to make it worthwhile.