Say Blood Moon wins the last big Modern event. What’s the plan? How about we go UrzaTron with 4 Karn Liberated?

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Okay… So part of this is just Tom Ross. How is Tom Ross a real person / Magic: The Gathering player? Tom’s reaction to Blood Moon winning Grand Prix Dallas was to play an even slower deck that relied on not just nonbasic lands… But getting three particular nonbasic lands onto the battlefield!

Part of it is that Tom correctly assessed that people would prepare for Blood Moon decks, maybe making decks good against anti-Blood Moon decks that much better. It turned out he was right!

G/W Tron over G/R Tron

The main [deck] reason to play green-white UrzaTron instead of the more traditional green-red build is Path to Exile. That is, Tom played Path to Exile over Pyroclasm in the starting sixty.

Three copies of a spot removal card is hardly the whole point, though. Not only does the Tron deck manage Path to Exile better than almost any other deck (who cares if the opponent gets one extra basic land when you are tapping yours for three?), it makes much better use of the white mana… Just elsewhere.

• Rest in Peace – Tom’s sideboard featured Rest in Peace, a powerful supplement to the main deck’s Relic of Progenitus and another great spell against Dredge.
• Blessed Alliance – Blessed Alliance is a really flexible card here that really blunts the advantage Burn decks have often had against Ramp ones. Blessed Alliance doesn’t just counter a Boros Charm, it can surprise the opponent with a Wurmcoil Engine or smite a Tarmogoyf.

Seven is big, and they just get bigger

The natural one-two-three is Urza’s Tower, Urza’s Power Plant, and Urza’s Mine in some order. That allows you to tap for seven mana with just three lands, or the cost of a Karn Liberated.

On eight mana you get Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and ten mana gives you Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Seemingly every play from there allows you to go “over the top” of a fair opponent’s game plan. It’s just about hitting your lands, and then landing almost any hitter to win.

Karn Liberated is only one answer to Blood Moon

There are a ton of direct answers to Blood Moon in Tom’s deck, incidentally… Karn can remove a Blood Moon from the battlefield, as can either Ugin or Ulamog. Casting those cards might be tough under a Blood Moon, though (and World Breaker might be even tougher with its colored mana in seven). However Oblivion Ring costs just three mana to start. If Tom is not under substantial life points pressure, he can work an Oblivion Ring to really asymmetrical advantage. It can free up his lands from under Blood Moon easily, regardless.

The deck has a good number of answers to obvious threats and strategies. Main deck Relic of Progenitus can give Dredge fits, while Spellskite will have an Infect player’s head scratching. Tom’s deck isn’t necessarily about locking out a game forever… Some of these tools are just there to buy time; remember – given a window to make a play, it’s unlikely there is one on the other side of the table better than one of Tom’s.

Plenty of G/W Torn, but More Modern in “Karn Liberated and the Answer to a Blood Moon Victory”

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The jury is still out on Wild Nacatl in Modern Naya Burn… But for now it is the accepted take.

So… Is Wild Nacatl where Naya Burn players should be at for Modern?

Consider Brandon Burton’s GP-winning list from Grand Prix Indianapolis:

Naya Burn – 1st Place Grand Prix Indianapolis, by Brandon Burton

4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Wild Nacatl

4 Lava Spike
3 Rift Bolt
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
4 Atarka’s Command
4 Boros Charm

3 Arid Mesa
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Copperline Gorge
2 Mountain
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Stomping Ground
4 Wooded Foothills

sb:
2 Deflecting Palm
3 Destructive Revelry
3 Kor Firewalker
1 Lightning Helix
4 Path to Exile
2 Skullcrack

Mana base aside, this deck is only four cards off of the PPTQ-winning deck Mike played just a few weekends ago. But the four cards different are the one mana kitty cats in question.

Patrick thinks the addition of Wild Nacatl — brining the creature count up to seventeen — might push Naya Burn from “The Lava Spike Deck” to “Red Aggro” … These are two different macro archetypes entirely from the perspective of Next Level Deck Building.

The difference in Modern is not trivial. When you are more purely a burn deck, mid-range opponents like Abzan and Jund are pretty easy to manage; but when you add Wild Nacatl, you can be fighting legit green creature decks on an axis where they are generally superior. On the other hand, Wild Nacatl — especially unopposed, especially on the first turn — “is like a Lava Spike every turn” (which is kinda sorta exactly what the deck wants to accomplish).

Not trivial.

Not trivial in the least.

But!

The more interesting creature addition (from Mike’s perspective at least) is Kor Firewalker out of the sideboard. Mike calls this “bringing a gun to a knife fight” and believes that if Kor Firewalker becomes the accepted tech for Naya Burn, all Naya Burn players have to start respecting it or they will fall behind in mirror match sideboard games. Kor Firewalker itself is an interesting card to play, being WW in a deck with Copperline Gorge, basic Mountain, and only twenty lands. Still, quite a breaker if you expect Naya Burn and Suicide Zoo.

Speaking of Suicide Zoo…

Suicide Zoo – 3d place GP Guangzhou, by Lim Zhong Yi

4 Death’s Shadow
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Street Wraith
2 Steppe Lynx
1 Tarmogoyf

4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Thoughtseize
4 Mutagenic Growth
4 Temur Battle Rage
3 Become Immense
2 Lightning Bolt
4 Mishra’s Bauble

4 Windswept Heath
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Arid Mesa
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Godless Shrine

sb:
1 Forest
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
2 Hooting Mandrills
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Stony Silence
1 Pyroclasm
2 Path to Exile
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Dismember

Patrick makes an interesting observation about this deck. It has relatively few cards “you would actually spend mana on” and an effective average casting cost of below 1.

Yi’s version, with Traverse the Ulvenwald in the sideboard, can do some interesting things… Like find that basic Forest, or double up the ability to hit Ranger of Eos (without having to play a second copy of Ranger of Eos). Patrick and Mike both think Ranger of Eos is a perpetually underplayed card; in this deck it can get a hasty Monastery Swiftspear, or multiple Death’s Shadows. If all it does is find two copies of Wild Nacatl, Ranger of Eos is already a more mana efficient Broodmate Dragon (nine power over six mana instead of eight power over six mana, and starting up two turns faster).

Jund — one of the most popular Modern archetypes — had many different takes over three gigantic Grand Prix last weekend. One of the most interesting ones was in the hands of Hall of Famer Raph Levy:

Jund – Top 64 Grand Prix Lille, by Raphael Levy

4 Liliana of the Veil

4 Dark Confidant
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
4 Tarmogoyf

1 Dreadbore
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Slaughter Pact
4 Terminate
4 Blood Moon

4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
4 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills

sb:
1 Thoughtseize
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Spellskite
1 Thragtusk
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Damnation
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Collective Brutality
2 Shatterstorm
1 Rakdos Charm

Blood Moon?

Is that four copies of Blood Moon? And main deck?

“Why should anyone be allowed to do anything?” Sure, sometimes Blood Moon messes up Jund; but there are spots where it will mess the opponent up even worse.

“Is Wild Nacatl a Great Choice for Naya Burn?” covers much, much more than a couple of green Modern decks, from the control side of Grixis and the various brands of Azorius; all the way to the mindset of a Hate Bears player. What is the Hate Bears Plan A, anyway?

All your questions will be answered in “Is Wild Nacatl a Great Choice for Naya Burn?”

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Goblin Dark-Dwellers… Standard standout and now cross-format All-Star!

Goblin Dark-Dwellers has been a solid Standard performer almost since its first appearance in Oath of the Gatewatch. But with the recent adjustments to the Modern metagame — away from Eldrazi and loosening the fetters on Ancestral Vision — the menacing five drop has come front and center in that larger format, too.

So… Patrick didn’t play any kind of The Gitrog Monster deck at Grand Prix LA… But he did open up 8-0 with the first of this week’s Goblin Dark-Dwellers decks:

Michael Majors-esque Grixis by Patrick Chapin

2 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

3 Ancestral Vision
2 Dreadbore
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Kolaghan’s Command
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Mana Leak
4 Serum Visions
2 Spell Snare
2 Terminate
1 Thought Scour

2 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Swamp
1 Watery Grave

SIDEBOARD
2 Anger of the Gods
3 Boom // Bust
1 Countersquall
2 Dispel
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Negate
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Terminate
2 Thoughtseize

This deck contains two pieces of cool technology that you will Will WILL want to understand for any go-forward Modern melees…

Goblin Dark-Dwellers + Ancestral Vision

If Ancestral Vision is in your graveyard, you can play it immediately and “for free” by playing Goblin Dark-Dwellers. Ancestral Vision was not great in and of itself for Patrick, but it is very powerful with our centerpiece five drop (and great in the mirror).

One of the things that makes this deck cool is that Serum Visions can put Ancestral Vision on top of your deck… So you can mill it away with Thought Scour (and then re-buy it with Goblin Dark-Dwellers).

Goblin Dark-Dwellers + Boom // Bust

If Boom // Bust is in the graveyard Goblin Dark-Dwellers can look down and say “Ooh, I see there is this card ‘Boom’ that costs two mana; I can certainly cast that for free” … But then when it comes time to resolve the card, you can choose the “Bust” side and make the whole Erhnam-Geddon deck in one (okay, arguably two, cards)

One card that would have made this deck better is another Standard standout… Koziliek’s Return!

Patrick lost to Master of Waves twice, and Etched Champion once; Kozilek’s Return looks red but is colorless rules-wise… So much for Protection from Red (or other colors).

Check out this Goblin Dark-Dwellers take:

Skred Red by Chris Wallace

4 Boros Reckoner
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
3 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Stormbreath Dragon

4 Koth of the Hammer

2 Anger of the Gods
1 Blasphemous Act
4 Blood Moon
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Mizzium Mortars
2 Pyroclasm
4 Skred
1 Volcanic Fallout

2 Scrying Sheets
21 Snow-Covered Mountain

SIDEBOARD
1 Anger of the Gods
2 Crumble to Dust
2 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spellskite
1 Surgical Extraction

Patrick and Michael riff on the Boros Reckoner / Skred angle, talk about how Countersquall is sometimes a Time Walk, debate the best ways to beat Nahiri, the Harbinger / Emrakul decks, killing the opponent on the third turn with Knight of the Reliquary, and shout out to now-qualified good friend Lan D. Ho. Also how Mike is a ghost.

All these decks are belong to us (and now you too) in “Goblin Dark-Dwellers in Modern and Beyond!”

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P.S. In this episode we state Grand Prix Charlotte winner Andreas Ganz played 62 cards; this was a result of a typo online. Ganz played only two copies of Temple of Enlightenment and 60 cards overall. Our apologies — and congratulations! — to Andreas.