Modern Musings: Jumping into Modern

This time last year, Magic took up a gigantic part of my time. If I had to guess, I'd say that I probably played in more than half of the 5k's, PTQ's, and other small tournaments offered within an hour driving distance. This year, however, has been totally different; life's hit hard. Between school, work, attempting to establish some kind of social life, and having a relationship to attend to... let's just say that Magic has been back on the back burner.

Because of this new lack of free time that I've grown accustomed to, I hardly ever get to play in any standard events anymore. I've played maybe 3 or 4 FNMs in this past months which has led me to sell off the majority of the standard staples. I've got G/R and Jund Monsters built for when I do have the chance to jam some games in, but other than that there hasn't really been much of an incentive to buy into the format.

At this point, I figured I have two options:

1. Play casual magic in the forms of EDH and potentially draft, or
2. Invest into Legacy and Modern

The first option is kind of "eh" with regards to my play style. While I do love me some EDH and drafting, I get very bored of the multiplayer politics that comes from playing EDH and he lack of doing something broken that comes from drafting. As far as the second option goes, Legacy--while a very fun format to both play and watch--isn't played as much competitively in Florida, which doesn't really give me the incentive to spend over a grand on a deck that's going to come out of its box maybe once every two months. So I've ultimately fallen unto Modern as the default format to play. There are a bunch of events in my local area that I can play in, and a lot of players have also defaulted to this as their format of choice because of how easy it is to get into. It also helps that I love playing all of the different types of decks and seeing what everyone else comes up with.

One of the first things I always hear people gripe about Modern (and to a greater extent, Legacy) is that the price of admission to start playing is exponentially higher when compared to Standard. While I agree completely on this, everyone has to understand that unless a card is completely broken and becomes banned or restricted, your deck is never going to lose the value that you put into it. I'll use the Affinity deck I put together in December 2012 as an example. At the time, I think I spent maybe 200ish dollars total on the deck. Since then, not only has the price of Mox Opal spiked to more than double its original value, but I've only invested maybe an additional 20 dollars into the deck buying foils and random sideboard cards. Compare that to my standard decks, which have seen me go through Mono Blue Devotion and G/R Monsters variants and spending probably double that amount in just the span of around 6 months.

If you want to invest into a format that's fun, diverse, and allows for essentially any play style to achieve victory, I'd suggest giving Modern a shot. There are so many options for every person's play style that I'd be astonished to find anyone who says they don't like any of the decks that are offered within the available card pool. For those considering what decks to check out first, I'd suggest this flow chart:

Now don't go dropping all your money on the first deck you lined up with, but rather use this as a guide to see what kind of decks are doing what you like to do in magic.

Modern decks in my opinion fall into one of four categories:
·         Aggro: trying to kill your opponent with dudes before their fourth turn
·         Control: not letting your opponent resolve anything, or killing everything they have until you ultimately kill them
·         Midrange: control the board a little bit, and win with value over the course of the game
·         Combo: don't interact with your opponent and laugh as they can do nothing to stop you from winning

Aggro is probably one of the more commonly seen categories of decks that people tend to play. Decks that fall in to this category would be things such as Naya or RG Beats, Affinity, Merfolk, BW Tokens, White Weenie, Infect, and any other deck that wants to beat down with a flooding of dudes on the board. These decks rely on cheap resilient threats backed up with burn and removal to clear the path to victory. A lot of these decks are also very cheap, as most of the power cards are very inexpensive and the expensive cards can be played with substitutes that are essentially the same.

Control has gained a lot of popularity as of late with the recent pro tour showing of the power of UWR control. Decks in this category include the aforementioned UWR, and also Grixis and UW control variants. The goal of these decks is to ultimately grind their opponents out of resources until they can begin to profitably attack them. Be warned that if you’re planning on building on of these decks that it may take a while due to the price of the cards being exceptionally high. There are some shortcuts like using Mana Leak instead of Remand, but a lot of the lands and core cards like Cryptic Command and Snapcaster Mage are very integral to the decks performance.

Midrange are usually more popular in a metagame that has a lot of aggro decks, and not a lot of control. Decks in this category include multiple Birthing Pod variants, Domri Naya, UWR Geist variants, and multiple others. These decks wade out the early game assault of the aggro decks while trying to get under the control decks buy playing haymaker after haymaker. You could technically file Birthing Pod decks under the combo category, but I see it more as a deck that has a bunch of value creatures with a potential combo inside of it.

Combo is probably the most interested and fun kind of deck to play, but horrendous to play against or watch. Eggs, Storm, KCI, and Ad Nauseum would be examples of decks that fall into this category. These decks tend to play a game of solitaire against their opponent, hoping to hit all of their pieces and eventually kill. The bad thing about these decks is that Wizards has banned so many of the “good” cards that make combos consistent. Instead of a quick turn two or three kill. You’re usually going to see a playing “go off” on turn four or later.

Once you figure out what kind of deck you want to play proxy it up and bring it to battle! See if you like the interactions that are available to you or if you might want to switch decks before you invest too much into it. And if there’s one thing I can’t stress enough, it’s that if you enjoy playing the deck, don’t listen to anybody else’s opinion on if it’s “bad” or “unplayable”. The fun about playing in any constructed format is the fun of finding the answers that make your bad matchups great, and your great matchups even better. There’s always going to be some kind of hate for whatever deck you’re playing. Just ask anybody who’s played affinity before ;D

Before I end this, I’d like to throw out an aside that I’ve been tasked with managing any kind of video content for the website. I’ve got a few ideas swirling about, one of them being video deck techs and possible live recorded matches of local players. If you have a brew or deck that you’ve come to fall in love with, contact me either through Facebook or in person and we can work out when to get some recording in. Just make sure to send me a deck list, and a reason as to why you think your deck should be featured.

That’s all I have for you this week ladies and gents. Hopefully school doesn’t make me want to commit sepukku anymore and I can get down to playing more games and putting out more content. From what myself and the other admins have talked about, there’s going to be some pretty cool things going on for the group in this coming year. Let’s just hope everybody has the time to get it done!

Til next time Casual Net!

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-Robert W.