Making sense of Modern for #SCGINDY

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Newsletter
Thursday, February 23rd

Three Modern tournaments last week weren't enough! That's why #SCGINDY is all about the people's format! In this week's edition, we've got Ari Lax's keys to winning in Indy, Jeff Hoogland with another new innovation toward his trademark archetype, and how Michael Majors feels about breaking new ground in today's competitive Magic scene!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

Stark, Nass, and Pardee take down Team Constructed Open at #SCGBALT!

Joseph Blizzard
Modern Classic

Jonathan Rosum
Standard Classic

Daniel Haberek
Legacy Classic

5 Ways To Win SCG Indy
By Ari Lax  

I chose to highlight Tron because I always love maindeck Relic of Progenitus. The card is such a freeroll and just randomly hoses a ton of threats. This time around, it hits 2/3rds of the Death's Shadow deck on top of Abzan Company, any Tarmogoyfs, Dredge, Snapcaster Mage, and honestly just everything. I would not be surprised if the third copy or the full four drifted their way into the maindeck for next week. Relic is also a beating against Storm as they are almost always routed through Past in Flames, though you probably want full-on Rest in Peace against the Goryo's deck, as Breaking//Entering resolving as one spell dodges everything else.

I chose G/W over G/R, as even though Grove of the Burnwillows is really nice against the card Death's Shadow, Path to Exile is just required against that deck. Pyroclasm or Lightning Bolt won't cut it. You need to kill a creature that regularly has the stats Big/Big, and slowly reducing that via Grove is merely cute.

G/W also gives you access to Stony Silence. Okay, you can't really play that in your Expedition Map and Oblivion Stone deck, but that's not my point. While it wasn't all over the Top 8 of the events, there was a ton of Affinity floating around the top tables of #GPVAN last weekend. Also, in the "events that happened on the wrong side of the ocean for people to immediately register them" category, Lantern Control won #GPBRISBANE. I listed graveyards and artifacts as the threats to beat for a reason. Don't forget your answers to both.

March 11-12
Modern

March 24-26
KLD/AER Limited

April 8-9
Legacy

Let's Talk Kiki Blue
By Jeff Hoogland  

When you are playing Engineered Explosives against decks like Death's Shadow, there are two different methodologies you could apply. The first is holding the Explosives in your hand until your opponent has played out their threats onto the battlefield. This method is more likely to generate "value," as many times your opponent will play out multiple cards of the same cost and you can clean them all up. The downside to doing this is it requires a larger mana investment down the line and it leaves your removal vulnerable to something like Inquisition of Kozilek.

The second is being proactive with your Explosives to help control the pacing of the game. By playing your card out proactively, you give up some information, but you also force your opponent to slow themselves to match your desired pace. As long as your Explosives stays on the battlefield, your opponent is fairly unlikely to play out a second card Explosives can kill, and as long as you leave two mana open, your opponent will be unable to play something like Temur Battle Rage without getting blown out.

Battle Birds In Baltimore
By Michael Majors  

I had a really strange tournament. It's usually fairly easy for me to spot most of my mistakes in deckbuilding and attribute blame to whatever holes there were. That isn't necessarily the case this time.

I won a lot more games easily than I suffered blowouts. I had two very strange games against Jund and Abzan where I was fairly far behind, fused Beck//Call to pull ahead, and then proceeded to flood out in very long contests and die. In one of those games, I missed multiple early land drops before mounting a comeback and then eventually flooding out.

Those are odd circumstances, especially when Brain in a Jar is working and I was able to scry multiple times over the course of those turns, which is a very powerful effect in Modern.

When folks inevitably asked me how my deck was, as most would consider it relatively interesting, I didn't really have an objective answer. I certainly did some sweet things over the course of the tournament and won several games in a spectacular manner where I would have never assumed I could win, but when one doesn't resort to hyperbole or win the tournament, then most people are just going to write off your experiment as precisely that.

I'm well past the point of having my pride hurt over some sense of Magic-based identity as a deck designer, but it's always interesting to me how resistant others are to new ideas or any kind of contest to the status quo. When there's clear potential, I'm a lot more interested in trying to fix the problems than write things off. At the very least, there's something to be learned in the journey.