All eyes on Modern this weekend!

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Newsletter
Thursday, February 1st

Cheers from Bilbao!

As I sit here putting the final touches on my preparation for Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan, many things are running through my mind. Have I done enough drafts to prepare myself for the limited portion of the tournament? Did I get enough games of Modern in with Humans and Tron to prepare myself for the constructed portion of the tournament? And is there anything I can read in the meantime to make myself stop worrying so much?!

Fortunately, the third question is easy to answer! First up is Todd Anderson, who took a deep dive into the wackiest Modern deck we've seen in some time—Goryo's As Foretold. Then there's Gerry Thompson, who went toe-to-toe with Brad Nelson about Merfolk Branchwalker and why it's better than Brad thinks. Lastly, there's #SCGDFW champion, Jonathon Rosum, who showed the world just how good Modern Humans can be.

Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan should be one heck of a tournament. With some of the greatest minds in the game focused on Modern, there's no telling what to expect. Will Jeskai Control rule the day as it has over the past month on the SCG Tour? Or maybe Affinity will be unstoppable like we've seen it be so many times before? Or will Lantern Control in the hands of Sam Black rise up and drive everyone nuts?

Your guess is as good as mine but I can't wait to find out!

— Cedric Phillips, Content Coordinator

March 3-4
Legacy

March 10-11
Modern

March 24-25
Team Constructed

Goryo's As Foretold:
Where Do We Go Now?
By Todd Anderson  

Decks like this one make great use out of stuff like Izzet Charm, since it can triple up as a removal spell, protection spell, or just a discard outlet for your excess creatures to make your Living End or Goryo's Vengeance a little better. Izzet Charm is a dream card for a deck like this because it will regularly use all three modes. In the entire time I've played Magic, I've never seen a deck that wanted four copies of Izzet Charm more than this one. Much like Muddle the Mixture in Thopter Depths, we use it for anything and everything.

Lightning Axe, while a fine card to help assemble the Goryo's Vengeance side of things, might not be the card this deck actually wants. It seems actively bad with As Foretold and Living End, causes you to two-for-one yourself to kill a creature on the first turn, and is pretty terrible in multiples. But it does play an important role. There aren't a lot of cheap discard outlets in Modern, and we're already playing four copies of Faithless Looting. As you assemble the As Foretold and Living End combo side of things, having cards like Lightning Axe to discard Griselbrand or one of your two combo pieces isn't a big deal. Plus, if you're drawing a ton of cards with Ancestral Vision, discarding an extra land doesn't really hurt that much either.

One card I'd like to see more copies of is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. Not only does Jace, Vryn's Prodigy give this deck some legs in the early turns, it also acts as a lightning rod for removal. And we all know how good a lightning rod for removal can be in a Splinter Twin deck.

Philadelphia Open Weekend Winners

William Lo, Lucas Michaels, and Jeremy Henry take down #SCGPHILLY!

Aiden Brier
Standard Classic

Ross Merriam
Modern Classic

Oliver Tomajko
Legacy Classic

Why Brad Nelson Is Wrong About Merfolk Branchwalker
By Gerry Thompson  

As far as power level is concerned, Merfolk Branchwalker passes. Have you tried building green decks in this format? Most of the cards stink! Green used to be a huge portion of the metagame share, but Tireless Tracker rotating and energy getting nerfed reduced it to bare bones. If you decide you absolutely want to play green, you're going to need to sacrifice.

Is Merfolk Branchwalker as good as Longtusk Cub or Servant of the Conduit? No! And no one is saying that. They each have their pros and cons, and last weekend, Merfolk Branchwalker vastly outperformed the competition.

Servant of the Conduit and Aether Hub are a significantly worse package without Attune with Aether. You'll run out of energy quickly and have a bunch of colorless lands and Grizzly Bears. That doesn't necessarily eliminate them from consideration either, but at this point, all the great cards have been banned. Some part of your deck is likely going to be worse than you'd prefer.

The Guide To Modern Humans
By Jonathan Rosum  

Humans is technically a "newer" deck to the current iteration of the Modern metagame. The deck was popularized by my friend and Lotus Box teammate, Collins Mullen, back with his win at #SCGCIN in 2017. Humans is a deck looking to both provide an aggressive clock while also disrupting the opponent to make sure that they can't kill your creatures or you.

Humans is a very interesting deck from a gameplay perspective as you do a lot of interacting with your opponent for a deck that has 37 creatures. The reason why I started playing the deck before #SCGCOL was that I found it absurdly consistent at executing its game plan of aggression and disruption as well as rewarding individuals that have vast knowledge of the Modern format.

First things first: Let's talk about a few key cards that make Humans special.