Mat Bimonte: Modern Madness

It’s a brave new world. Gitaxian Probe is banned, as is Golgari Grave-Troll. What can we learn from the results of the SCG Regionals from this past weekend, and how do we attack a “new” format? Here is a graph for you to follow along:

 

 

Are Dredge and Infect Dead?

I think the answer here is that people are scared to bring these decks given the echo chamber that is the internet. A lot of people have given up on those archetypes, but I can easily see them being played to great success in the future.

Let’s look at Dredge first. There are a whopping zero Dredge decks in the Top 8 of any Regional. Pretty wild for a deck to be so dominant and then just disappear right? Let’s check out a recent list:

 

Really the only notable change is moving four Golgari Thug in the place of the banned Trolls. Is that really enough to kill off a deck? I’m not so sure it is, but people need to be playing this deck in force in order to tell.

How about Infect? Well, we see one Infect deck squeaked its way into a Top 8 in Columbus, which is generally a large event. What are the notable changes we can see?

Let’s start with a list pre-bannings from a respectable Infect pilot, Andrew Jessup:

 

Now, we compare it to the Top 8 list from Alex Roach in Columbus:

 

This deck actually has some sweet new things going on. We can see multiple Botanical Sanctum in the deck, which seems like a welcome addition to the manabase. We are cutting on fetches, as Become Immense is lowered to a two-of now that the busted Phyrexian mana spell (well, one of them) is banned. With the cutting of four Probe and two Become Immense the list goes up on Spell Pierce and protection spells, including the full four Blossoming Defense, and three Apostle’s Blessing.

Alex’s deck seems like it is positioned to beat the more midrangey decks, which is likely a smart choice moving forward. If midrange continues to perform well, Tron comes out too, which is good for Infect. My conclusion is that a deck built this way is going to be excellent with midrange on the rise, as well as having extra protection against one of the harder matchups (and best performing) Burn.

Can the already diverse format become more diverse by banning parts of 2 decks?

The quick answer here is yes. I’m going to post a few sweet decklists that I’ve found through parsing the results. Here is easily my favorite decklist from the results:

 

Who doesn’t love the old Pack Rat + Blood Moon to discard my mountains strategy? I’ve always wanted to slam down Goblin Rabblemaster in Modern, and maybe this is the strategy that makes it good. I admittedly haven’t tested this deck, but Blood Moon is the ultimate cheese going on in Modern until it hopefully meets the chopping block. I’m interested to see where this deck falls in popularity at more large scale events.

How about this one? Somebody playing my Invitational card (Go For The Throat) is always going to get a mention in my articles. I’m a sucker for bad Delver of Secrets decks too. So here we go:

 

 

 

 

Now if you know anything about regions, you know that San Diego is a historically Tron-prevalent metagame. Delver decks are decent against Tron in general. Having aggressive pressure like Tarmogoyf and Grim Flayer with countermagic is a recipe for success against them. You can also see that Alex hedges the matchup a bit by having two Shadow of Doubt in the main deck which is interesting. While I’m not certain this color scheme of Delver is better overall than Grixis, it is definitely something worth looking into if you like Delver decks in general.

This next deck has been around for quite a while, but again sees very minimal numbers of people playing it. I believe it’s the second best combo deck in Modern right behind Ad Nauseam currently. It doesn’t hurt that someone as well versed in Modern as Dan Ward was piloting it.

 

 

Dan’s biggest innovation was to add four of this bad baby to the main deck: 

Kari Zev’s Expertise is a combo with Breaking // Entering. Just sick. I actually watched quite a bit of Dan playing as his regional was streamed. His deck looked very consistent, which was a problem this deck (and most combo decks) fell victim to in the past. If you’re interested in cheesing your opponents out of games very quickly, this is probably the deck for you going forward.

Is this what Modern has become? Combo decks and cheese?

*Cue the sirens*

Here come the fun police. Get out of here if you think you’re just going to get away with playing all kinds of sweet things, waiting around forever, and not get a notice from the authorities. Burn and Affinity were back, and in a big way last weekend. They were easily the two best performing decks over the weekend with Burn taking down a quarter of the regionals. That’s one heck of a conversion rate.

Burn is a deck near and dear to my heart, and as you can see my preferred Red/White version seems like a stable choice for this metagame: 

 

While I hate some of the sideboard choices (Kor Firewalker is really bad), I do like moving up to four Inspiring Vantage. Playing straight R/W with three fastlands you get an adVANTAGE (sigh) in mirrors, which you can expect to play plenty of in coming weeks.

Where does this leave us?

I’m not even sure to be perfectly honest. The results seem to point towards the format becoming more aggressive with a resurgence of Burn, Bant Eldrazi and Affinity. However a strong showing by Jund, Combo decks like Through the Breach and Abzan Company, with sprinkles of Tron, leave me basically in the same spot as pre-banning.

News flash: Modern is diverse. There are so many decks to prepare for, and trying to prepare for all of them is a huge mistake. If I was playing a tournament this week, I would likely play something extremely aggressive such as Burn, or play something that is able to beat the midrange decks such as Tron.

My final suggestion is for your sideboard. Be sure to be cementing your “good” matchups. In a historically bad by a landslide matchup such as Infect vs. Tron, you don’t gain many percentage points by loading up your board to deal with them. Accept your losses, and beat your good matchups. Modern is nigh impossible to metagame, because there are a ton of decks. Play what you like playing, and play it well.

Thanks for stopping by,

Mat Bimonte

Mat Bimonte first picked up the game during Theros block, but already has a Modern 5K championship under his belt, as well as a number of smaller Standard tournament wins. Based out of Bloomington, Ill., Mat is a regular on the SCG Tour, with future aspirations of qualifying for the Pro Tour.

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Mat Bimonte