Last Saturday the Magic Online Championship Series took place on…well, Magic Online. This is usually an extremely competitive event, as it qualifies the winner for a bunch of cool things, including the Pro Tour and a trip to Seattle to compete with the other MOCS winners.
This most recent event was Modern and was won by Magic Online user Zyxwvutsrqpon playing a pretty unique Jund list that contained the brand new Grim Flayer (a card I am quite the fan of). But that wasn’t the only interesting addition. Check it out.
1 Abrupt Decay
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Copperline Gorge
1 Forest
1 Godless Shrine
4 Grim Flayer
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Lingering Souls
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Marsh Flats
1 Mishra’s Bauble
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Raging Ravine
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Seal of Fire
1 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
1 Tarfire
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Terminate
2 Thoughtseize
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Golgari Charm
2 Kitchen Finks
3 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Painful Truths
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Thoughtseize
This is basically similar to the Spirit Jund deck that was popular a while back in Modern, which splashed white in order to cast cards like Ajani Vengeant and Lingering Souls. The only white cards in our deck, however, are the two Lingering Souls, and they’re best utilized by putting them into our graveyard with either Liliana of the Veil or Grim Flayer himself.
The other interesting cards in the deck are three unique one-ofs: Mishra’s Bauble, Tarfire, and Seal of Fire. All three of these are able to help us achieve delirium and grow our Tarmogoyfs, and they cards we don’t often see in traditional Jund decks (or many decks at all for that matter). This deck is definitely a unique one, but I wonder, with so many Dredge decks floating around, if we’re going to feel a lot of the splash damage from that. Let’s find out.
Of course we run into old Craig Wescoe in round one! Craig is just awesome and it was a pleasure to battle him. I have to assume that Rest in Peace was simply well-timed and not topdecked; he used it exactly when he needed to it seemed. Even if he did topdeck it, good on him!
Speaking of Rest in Peace, it definitely seemed weird to be a graveyard-based deck with Dredge being such a known quantity right now. It feels like people are definitely gunning for Dredge and, as I mentioned, we’re getting hit with a lot of the splash damage. Things like Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace are just brutal against us, nerfing both our Tarmogoyfs and our Grim Flayers. While we do have three ways to deal with them in the main deck, and a couple more in the sideboard, you can see based on the first match how crippling a well-timed graveyard removal spell is against us.
The roughest part of the deck was definitely the mana. There were times where you want multiple green for Scavenging Ooze, double black for Liliana of the Veil, a white for Lingering Souls, and a couple red for multiple red spells. This wasn’t too much of an issue, but there were definitely some complicated situations where you really have to predict your turns and how they’re going to play out when searching out your lands.
I rarely play “Tier 1” decks on Modern Monday, so this was interesting to try out. I’d be lying if I said Grim Flayer wasn’t the selling point for me. If you’re able to dodge the graveyard hate, I think this deck is actually very good. It has some of the strongest creatures and removal spells in the format, and it’s capable of making some of the largest Tarmogoyfs in the format as well!
That’s about all we have for now though. Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you next week!
Frank Lepore
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