Welcome back to this budgety goodness column right here, right now, right on, right on. I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce the two certainties in life: Death and Taxes. This week we have the more traditional mono-white version. No Eldrazi, but more taxes and hopefully more death for the opponent. This deck has been my bread and butter in the modern format for a couple of years now and always has legs. A similar list recently won the SCG Invitational and another Top 8’d GP Las Vegas (a 3000+ person modern event).
I want to note that Horizon Canopy makes this deck a little out of the budget range at the moment and I’m running them in this video, but they certainly aren’t necessary. It halves the cost of the deck if you just run Plains instead and the equity gained is not very high. You actually have a better burn match-up without the Canopies! So, yeah, keep it budget at first and pick them up later is my advice.
Here’s a deck tech and a 5 round competitive league for ya:
Non-Creatures:
4 Aether Vial
4 Path to Exile
3 Smuggler’s Copter
Creatures:
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Blade Splicer
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Thraben Inspector
4 Restoration Angel
2 Aven Mindcensor
4 Flickerwisp
Lands:
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Tectonic Edge
4 Ghost Quarter
8 Plains
1 Eiganjo Castle
2 Mutavault
Sideboard:
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Declaration in Stone
1 Rest in Peace
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
3 Stony Silence
1 Mirran Crusader
2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Sunlance
Smuggler’s Copter continues to impress me and I’m starting to think it could be a 4 of. Overall we had a pretty medium performance there, even though we started out 3-0, but I think I could’ve played a bit tighter against our second Elves opponent and drawn a bit better in game 1 against Eldrazi Tron. That was certainly an interesting string of events in that one.
This deck has the tools to beat any deck out there, but definitely struggles against Collected Company decks. With just the 4 Path to Exiles in the main deck, it’s pretty difficult to keep the combo creatures from getting you before you can finish them off in the air. To combat this, if there are a ton of Collected Companies in your metagame, you could run more copies of Grafdigger’s Cage in the sideboard. Maybe go up to 3. Also put more Sunlance in there to answer the mana dorks and Devoted Druids.
Let me know if you have any Taxing questions or concerns on my Twitch channel: www.twitch.tv/kponceMTG and come hang out! See y’all next week. Happy Taxing!
