When Modern was announced I jumped in two feet first. In fact, I fully bought into the format when they first hinted at it before the Community Cup last year. It was officially announced to be the format for Pro Tour Philadelphia, at which point it took off among the Pro community. Modern really got hot among a more diverse group when it was chosen to be the PTQ format for PT Avacyn Restored, and the player base has been growing ever since. The huge popularity on Magic Online has really driven the format and led to rapid metagame advancements. The huge card pool combined with a large, creative player base competing for a PTQ win week in and week out means only the best survive. The metagame continues to cycle and grow.
Storm combo quickly rose to be the best deck, but eventually people got wise and hated the deck out. Later on Splinter Twin had the best success, but a rise of fish decks featuring Delver of Secrets brought the deck to reality. Soon after, Modern saw the rise of Faeries and a true Caw-Blade deck rising to popularity. Affinity took this opportunity to run at full speed and is firmly entrenched as the Modern's premier aggressive deck. Lately, Jund has been dominating online and winning plenty of envelops. The biggest story to me is the immense success achieved by Melira Pod. I was never a fan of the deck, but it's proven me completely wrong. The deck puts up incredible numbers and is clearly one of the top decks. Now we're at a sort of equilibrium, with every tournament having wildly different decks and results, meaning things are coming down to deck configurations, the metagame, and playskill. All signs point to a great, healthy format.
Today I'm not going to post any stock lists or discuss sideboarding for the major archetypes. Instead, I've dug deep into online tournaments and the available decklists. This format is played globally by some truly strong players and deckbuilders. I've found some absolutely amazing looking decks, whether it be in their creativity, power level, or fun factor. The deck I'm going to share today is strong in all three categories...
I was browsing MTGO Modern decklists and found this gem from HiKiKomoRinGo. I've always known him to be a great player with great decklists, so seeing him with an Urzatron deck makes me excited. Japan has a strong lineage of Urzatron decks on the Pro Tour and beyond, and I've always found great success with them.
This deck is incredible in terms of my Magic framework. It's solely focused on its own plan and completely built to play a goldfish style game. Every card is either mana, acceleration, or land tutoring. The rest of the slots are the game winning bombs.
I'm particularly pleased with four of each of Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere, and Prophetic Prism. These cards add to consistency by shrinking the deck and eliminating colored mana issues. I haven't seen these played in such larger numbers before, but this deck is clearly a perfect fit.
The deck really operates well because of four Sylvan Scrying and four Expedition Map. This kind of redundancy creates a lot of consistency: this deck can and will do the same thing nearly every game. It needs to hit Urzatron early and often, and these tutors ensure that reality.
Ancient Stirrings shines as a land early and a threat in the late game.
This deck is no frills and all-in on going big. The modus operandi is to assemble Urzatron and cast Mindslaver or Karn Liberated to effectively end the game. All Is Dust and Wurmcoil Engine accomplish the same end. Emrakul is the ultimate end game, powered by Eye of Ugin. This package gives the deck incredible consistency because it should never be at a lack of threats, with eight ways to tutor for Eye of Ugin.
Most games play out similarly. The early turns are spent fixing mana and doing whatever possible to assemble tron. This deck can do so by turn four very consistently, and turn three is not unlikely; there's so much redundancy here. Then one of the expensive cards hits play and cleans up the mess. A second one should lock up all but the most grievous board positions. Mindslaver is a beautiful thing.
I actually wrote all of that after initially seeing the deck a few days ago. Apparently I'm either out of touch with the Modern metagame, or Charles Gindy is on a higher level than I (clearly), because he won an MTGO PTQ this past weekend with that very decklist on his account, thekid.
I'm just stoked that my instincts were so strong and this deck is the real deal. Now I'm super excited to dig even deeper into the deck. I'm a long time Urzatron enthusiast, even back to Tooth and Nail, so this deck is unreal fun. It's really reminiscent of Tooth and Nail, but the deck it most reminds me of is the Cloudpost deck from PT Philadelphia. Travis Woo and I worked on the deck extensively, and it was taken all the way to the top 8 in the hands of Jesse Hampton:
These two decks play out very similarly. They are fully warped around their mana. They both are designed to rapidly develop their manabase and ramp up to game ending spells. They both all but ignore the opposition and instead focus on their own game plans. The Cloudpost deck can play a bit more Magic and has a few different angles. The Tron deck is even more linear, so what it loses in flexibility it gains in consistency. This build mulligans very well and can operate from the topdeck effectively.
Something else of note is that being linear bestows other advantages. The main advantage is that opposing decks are going to be filled with simply bad cards. Every piece of creature removal around is just a blank against this deck.
I'm really interested in the sideboard. Linear decks always have an interesting time sideboarding. Often there are very few cards that can be realistically cut in most matchups. There is generally no reason to get away from plan A by diluting the deck with awkward cards. Those who were familiar with Ravager Affinity were used to this phenomenon, as there were plenty of great colored sideboard cards, but few actually improved the deck enough to justify cutting a cheap artifact to fit them in. So, this deck needs to either completely transform post sideboard, which doesn't seem too effective, or bring in some very high impact cards for specific poor matchups. Being red and green is excellent because it presents this deck with such a good sideboard. These colors are packed with removal for troublesome permanents.
Splinter Twin is what sticks out most in my mind as a poor matchup. The blue creatures stall the ramp plan, making Splinter Twin faster, and this deck has no ways to actually interact. It's just two linear plans smashing each other, and the ramp plan happens to be way behind. Bringing in two Spellskite and two Combust gives this deck some extremely powerful hate, some of the best against Splinter Twin. These make the matchup winnable because they will either wreck the opponent at best, or buy some time at the very least. For further help in the matchup, I'd look towards Torpor Orb.
The rest of the sideboard is composed of high impact cards. Ancient Grudge is a go-to against any sort of artifact shenanigans, namely Affinity. Seal of Primordium helps there too, as well as dealing with pesky enchantments like Blood Moon. Birthing Pod is worth destroying as well. Relic of Progenitus is excellent against any graveyard deck, like Storm or the Loam deck. Pyroclasm is the cheapest and most effective answer to any of the rush decks in the format. It's just really cheap and does the job well.
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The final slots are spent on Wurmcoil Engine, which is used to put the pressure on aggro decks. This deck becomes slightly controlling post sideboard against decks it brings in tons of removal against. This plan is great at stalling the game, but they don't help plan A. Wurmcoil Engine is a nice plan B that can come down after removal and clean up the game. Opponents will rarely have an answer.
I appreciate how this sideboard is full of nothing but great cards. Everything is a cross-format sideboard staple with applications in many matchups. Spellskite, for example, is great against Splinter Twin but also effective against Zoo. Besides Wurmcoil Engine, everything is very cheap and easily played within the first two turns, meaning the cards count when they are needed.
In the very same PTQ, another player made Top 8 with a very similar deck. His only change was to fit two Pyroclasm maindeck, which was clearly a metagame call that could be correct. This is another testament to the strength of this deck. I'd recommend getting on the bandwagon now and winning before it catches on. One problem with such a linear strategy is that it can often be hated out. The consistency of a single plan can quickly become a downside when it's easily dealt with. This phenomenon happened to Storm to start the Modern season. That being said, this deck is really powerful and resilient, and I can't think of many sideboard cards that really destroy it. And the best answers, cards like Gaddock Teeg and Blood Moon, are all easily dealt with from the sideboard. A more troubling thing would be a general metagame evolution that put this deck into a bad position, but I don't see that happening within the season. The PTQ metagame is very well matured and not going to go through a major shift anytime soon.
It's cool how this deck fills a metagame slot that was previously unfilled. Before this, the metagame was something like:
Combo: Splinter Twin/Storm Aggro-Combo: Birthing Pod Control: UW Urzatron Aggro: Affinity Aggro-Control (Fish): UW Caw-Blade, Tempo Delver decks, Faeries
I know it's not generally considered aggro-control or fish by most, but I'd certainly put Jund in that last category as well.
Now there's a completely new line:
Ramp: HiKiKi Tron
It just doesn't fit into the other categories. I'd say the closest is combo, but it's just not quite combo as it has been known historically. It does rely on a combination of cards, the Urza lands, but it really just needs to get seven mana. It doesn't care how it gets it, so attacking the manabase isn't necessarily going to be effective. A hodge-podge of lands and talisman casts Karn Liberated just as well as a completed Urzatron, afterall. The win conditions are somewhat combo-like in the sense that this deck is all-in on one spell to win the game, just like some combo decks; there is so much redundancy, however, that fighting the win conditions is just asking to be overpowered. Unlike an Ad Nauseum or Enduring Ideal that relies on ritual effects, there isn't a huge card investment into casting one large spell here, so a single Counterspell doesn't get the job done.
This deck forces everyone else in the metagame to react. Urzatron isn't particularly weak to splash damage, and people just aren't playing the cards they need to combat this deck. Now people have to keep this deck in mind. Many decks are going to have to dedicate some sideboard slots to give them some more game. It's a major shakeup to rock-paper-scissors.
Thanks for reading! I'm really enjoying this deck and hope you do too. I'll be producing a higher volume and quality of content for magic.tcgplayer.com in the future, so look out for it!
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