My primary deck for the modern format; I have been tuning this list for the better part of a year.
The history of the deathcloud archetype in the post-Kaladesh meta-game began through a deck spotlight by Shaun McLauren of StarCity Games in the late summer of 2017 [1]. This initial attempt at a successful shell for deathcloud appeared very sensible in theory, but suffered from the same issue that continues to afflict Modern R/G land destruction (i.e. Modern Ponza) to this day: the deck did not have a real solution to the 'ramp problem'. The ramp problem is defined as a dissonance in deck construction between the desire to play expensive, high-impact spells and having the requisite mana acceleration. Neither of these components can function optimally without the other (you can neither make big plays without enough mana nor make big plays without the payoff cards). Building a strategy around achieving both the mana acceleration and the payoff within a reasonable amount of time has proven unreliable, and has only risen to prominence in the case of tron variants, as these decks solve the ramp problem through dedication to finding the tron lands, which happens to coincide well with finding colorless sources of payoff. Neither Ponza nor Deathcloud have the luxury of being predominately colorless, and thus are reliant upon strong opening hands that include at least one land, some form of accelerant (e.g. Utopia Sprawl, Birds of Paradise, and Arbor Elf), and payoff (in the case of tron the lands also function as accelerants, which simplifies the process).
The B/G Deathcloud list of Mr. McLauren attempted to solve the ramp by problem ignoring it. Rather than ensure a maximum likelihood of having an accelerant in the opening hand, this list shifted resources into turn 1 hand disruption. However, the casting curve remained up-shifted, featuring cards such as Grave Titan, Ob Nixilis, Primal Command, Thragtusk, and of course Deathclouds. The deck did not feature enough early game action to protect Garruk Wildspeaker and execute meaningful Deathclouds. I discovered this very quickly after building this B/G list. The deck was confused; it wanted to ramp but lacked the tools to get there. The hand disruption was lackluster if you could not reach the payoff in time. My solution was to remove the hand disruption and expand the ramp package. I added a playset of Arbor Elves and a pair of Birds of Paradise. This new form of the deck was ramping out the turn 3 Lilina quite reliably and allowed for large Deathclouds in the absence of Garruk Wildspeaker. The issue then became what to do if you could not draw any ramp. I turned to the Ponza players to learn how they managed the issue; and found that they were simply taking mulligans hoping desperately for the turn 3 Blood Moon. A turn 3 Deathcloud would be an over-costed Small Pox at best, and so I continued my search for a style that would compliment the fundamental idea of a Deathcloud deck (that is, to lock the opponent out of the game at turn 4-5 through severe resource disruption without crippling one's own board state). It was at this point that I made the connection with B/W tokens. Token generation is very resilient to board wipes as it comes in the form of Planeswalker loyalty abilities, Lingering Souls, and Bitterblossom. And tokens provide an excellent means of defending Planeswalkers until you can execute the payoff (a large deathcloud) or reach a Planeswalker ultimate. Casting token producing spells also sit lower on the mana curve. Turn 1 hand disruption followed by a turn 2 Bitterblossom seems quite good, and indeed B/W tokens players have been doing this for some time.
Thus I set out to prove that an Abzan Deathcloud list with a focus on token production could be more reliable than the B/G conception of the deck. The early iterations retained the ramp package, and made room for a playset of Lingering Souls, a playset of Voice of Resurgence, and a pair of Bitterblossom. I had a good amount of success with this version of the deck; it performed well at FNM level events and at small tournaments (PPTQs, IQs, 1Ks). However it would suffer against the combo decks in the early rounds of large tournaments (Opens and Classics) due to a lack of interaction. I decided to reduce the size of the ramp package and return to the hand disruption plan originally proposed in [1]. This worked much better with the increased number of 2 cmc cards that had been added to the deck when I included a third color. It also allowed me to slow down the combo decks more effectively than trying to out-race by ramping into payoff.
This past summer, the Deathcloud archetype again captured the attention of competitive brewers when it made top 8 of a modern PPTQ and was featured by TCGplayer and MTGGoldfish [2,3]. These lists were a bit strange as they had a land destruction suite in conjunction with Deathcloud that included Rain of Tears and Mwonvuli Acid Moss. It really shed some light on the meta at that Oklahoma store, as land destruction without the assistance of Blood Moon is not particularly compelling, especially at large tournaments. These lists gave me increased confidence that Abzan was a good direction to take the deck.
Thus I present my latest list here. I have not yet had the chance to take it to any large tournaments, but it performs well at the FNM level. It provides a solution to the ramp problem by having turn 2 plays that will provide a means of keeping Garruk Wildspeaker in play and using him as a glorified Arbor Elf. This strategy also provides an alternative pathway to victory through building a small board of tokens and then using Garruk's -4 to overrun the opponent. I must admit that I have used this tactic successfully as many times as I have the Deathcloud plan. I would not recommend building this deck or any version of Deathcloud unless you are prepared to face poor tournament results and alienation by your peers for not playing a meta-approved deck. If you enjoy going against the grain and relish resource denial this might be a useful starting point.
Literature:
- http://www.starcitygames.com/article/35767_Video-BG-Death-Cloud-In-Modern.html
- http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=14811
- https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-gb-ponza-cloud-friends-modern
