The Karnage has begun

Posted On 3:09 PM // Leave a Comment

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Thursday, May 10th

While Teferi, Hero of Dominaria was the talk of the town after the Atlanta Open, Karn, Scion of Urza appears to be the Planeswalker to beat at the conclusion of the Baltimore Open. With five starting loyalty, three great abilities, and the ability for any deck to play it, most expected Karn to be good but I'm not sure we expected it to be this good. Karn may not have been in James Lu's G/B Constrictor deck that helped his team win the Baltimore Open, but it was in just about everything else during our stay in Charm City and I think it's reasonable to expect that moving forward.

I'm not the only who's been in awe of Karn's, well, Karnage of late. Pro Tour Amonkhet champion, Gerry Thompson, may have found the best Karn deck in Standard thus far in Construct tribal, a deck that truly abuses Karn's minus ability. The Cincinnati Open champion, Collins Mullen, took some time to breakdown how he flexed Karn's muscles during his time in Baltimore with the uber popular W/B Aggro deck in Standard. As for 2017 SCG Tour Player of the Year, Todd Stevens? He thinks Karn's arrival has put his favorite Modern deck back on the map in Eldrazi Tron.

However you slice it, Karn, Scion of Urza is no joke. The only reason it won't be dominating the SCG Tour this weekend is because the SCG Tour is taking the weekend off. But make no mistake about it—when we head to the Louisville Open next weekend to resume Season One of the SCG Tour, it's Karn's world. We're just trying to cast spells in it!

— Cedric Phillips, Content Coordinator

May 26-27
Modern

June 2
Modern

June 8-10
Season One

Construct Tribal Is Real
By Gerry Thompson  

Standard at the moment is a bunch of control decks and a bunch of decks that struggle mightily against large Walking Ballistas. Cards like Verdurous Gearhulk and Winding Constrictor make Walking Ballista even more egregious, but staying in theme gives you some additional help in Metallic Mimic and Foundry Inspector. Going long, Scrap Trawler threatens to bring them all back again.

Now, this deck might be a worse version of G/B Constrictor in some aspects, but going harder on Construct tribal gives you some extra benefits.

Your Karn, Scion of Urzas are incredible compared to everyone else's, and their Karns were already pretty damn good.
Foundry Inspector and Metallic Mimic provide a level of synergy that basically must be broken up at some point by your opponent.
Winding Constrictor has more toys to play with, which again ramps up the synergy angle of the deck.
Scrap Trawler keeps the Ballistas coming.

James Lu, Roshen Eapen, & Alexander Ferzola take down #SCGBALT!

Zan Syed
Standard Classic

Roger Carroll
Modern Classic

Brian Coval
Legacy Classic

The Guide To W/B Aggro
By Collins Mullen  

W/B Aggro even had easy access to discard effects that would make things very difficult for U/W Control. Doomfall was easily one of the best cards to play against U/W Control, because not only could you use it to take away a sweeper that they were leaning heavily on, but you could also use it to remove a Lyra Dawnbringer that they might have brought in after sideboard.

W/B Aggro also had a ton of game against the other decks that we expected to see. We had an excellent sideboard plan of transforming into a more controlling deck to fight against the bigger creature decks we might face, like Mono-Green Aggro or G/B Constrictor. These were decks that our proactive beatdown plan would definitely struggle with because they were just playing bigger and better creatures than we were faster than we could. But after sideboard we had access to Fumigate and Settle the Wreckage, cards that were excellent against these big creature decks.

The card that really tied everything together for W/B Aggro was Karn, Scion of Urza. Karn allowed you to have access to a ton of card advantage, while also being able to present reasonable threats with the construct tokens he can make. Karn fits in very well with any deck that has incidental artifacts, in this case Heart of Kiran and Scrapheap Scrounger.

Bold New Looks At Eldrazi Tron
By Todd Stevens  

Strictly speaking in the context of Modern, there's one card from Dominaria that I'm much more excited about than any other. It's not only the likely most hyped card from the set, but it also fits perfectly into decks that feature my favorite tribe in Magic: Eldrazi. With that being said, I probably don't need to give you more than one guess for which card I'm talking about.

That's right, Karn, Scion of Urza could be the exact card that Eldrazi Tron has needed to get back toward the top tier of the format. Eldrazi Tron would have incredibly powerful topdecks available most of the time, but it didn't have a card advantage engine that reliably saw enough cards to stay in every game long enough to find those topdecks. That's precisely what Karn can provide though, as it starts seeing two extra cards a turn right away when it comes down. You don't get the better of the two cards right away, but it still reliably churns through your deck in search of what's needed at the time. Unfortunately, a four-mana planeswalker won't solve all of your problems in Modern.