Yesterday was Modern Monday and, with our new format, we now stream the matches live on my Twitch channel on Monday, alerting readers of the deck we’ll be playing and of the stream itself in an article here on NumotGaming.
Then, on the following Tuesday (today), we post the matches for those who missed them along with our thoughts in article form.
The deck we played was a concoction by Jim Davis which was required to include four copies of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. He also included numerous Eldrazi! Take a look.
Creatures
4 Blight Herder
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Ulamog’s Nullifier
4 Wasteland Strangler
Spells
4 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
4 Delay
2 Dismember
1 Doom Blade
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Serum Visions
2 Thoughtseize
Lands
2 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Eldrazi Temple
2 Eye of Ugin
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Watery Grave
Sideboard
2 Thoughtseize
2 Damnation
2 Spellskite
2 Disfigure
2 Dispel
2 Negate
3 Liliana of the Veil
The deck ended up seeming like a cross between U/B Control and the processor Eldrazi list I played at the Pro Tour. Before the following matches, I did play some other games with the deck and they went pretty well for us. Let’s see if our League would follow suit.
Okay, so something went very well and others did not. I feel like I’m a huge Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver fan and I always will be. Every time we played an Ashiok it always felt so hard to deal with outside of an Abrupt Decay, and it left uncontested it definitely does threaten to take over the game.
However, just like the previous iteration of Eldrazi I played, I’m not sure Wasteland Strangler is really where we want to be. I’m also not sure Nihil Spellbomb is better than Relic of Progenitus, since Relic manages to neuter Tarmogoyf much more efficiently for not much different of a cost. Back to Wasteland Strangler, I’m not sure we wouldn’t simply want to have more removal, and perhaps a couple copies of Drowner of Hope. I also didn’t think this list felt much like a Snapcaster Mage list, and I think if we’re adding Relic of Progenitus, I would be fairly eager to cut them for something a little more exciting
One of the great things about the deck was that it does manage to fight on a couple different axes, namely large creatures, planeswalkers, and disruption. Cards like Delay and Ulamog’s Nullifier were actually great whenever we were able to cast them, and our opponent’s rarely expected either. With only three dedicated removal spells that could efficiently take out a creature like Tarmogoyf, I would probably consider adding a few more. We also didn’t seem to have much in the way of disruption for things like Tron. Lands in particular are hard to deal with for U/B decks. So are Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hungers, unfortunately. Those things are more in the arena of red and white cards respectively.
I wanted to steer clear of it, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a place for Thought-Knot Seer in the deck. One problem we had was that we had plenty of disruption, but not a very fast clock. So we could stop our opponent’s plans, but they had enough time to regroup afterward. Thought-Knot Seer tends to help in this area.
Ultimately I liked this deck a lot and I think Jim might have been onto something. Blight Herder is super-efficient when you’re able to process some cards, and even a 4/5 creature for sometimes three mana is no slouch. I think with a few more cards to close out the game we could have a real deck here. I’d even be tempted to take a look at things like Consecrated Sphinx (a personal favorite) or Grave Titan. Maybe I’ll work on it a little more while streaming, so be sure to check that out!
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on Thursday with another Magic Minute about my experience in a Modern No Banned List tournament this past weekend.
Frank Lepore
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