Graveyard. Fill it and use it to pump Tarmogoyf. And don't forget about Vengevine, because when he's gone he's only ever one turn away from coming back
This is the most recent iteration of the modern deck I've been working on for the past 4-5 years. And in testing it has performed the best out of all the other iterations I have run in the past.
The mana base is fairly self explanatory with the exception of Creeping Tar Pit, which is there for the blue mana but also for the versatility of having an extra creature that can't be blocked for those situations where either you lost your creatures or they have enough blockers to block lethal.
As for the spells, first up is Inquisition of Kozilek. It serves a dual purpose. One: it lets you see what your opponent has in their hand (which allows you to know how to approach the game). And two: it lets you get rid of one of their cards, filling up the graveyard. You fill up the yard for Goyf and limit the surprises that they can give you during the game.
Next is Consider. It's got the three best words in Magic: "draw a card." One mana to draw a card is great, but when you get to essentially surveil 1 first, it makes it that much better. Especially if the top card is one of the dredgers, since you can start filling the graveyard early.
Fatal Push is another one drop, but you'd almost never play it turn one. Simple creature removal of creatures with mana value 2 or less unless a permanent you control left the battlefield this turn, then it's creature removal for creatures with mana value 4 or less.
As for planeswalkers, we only have one in the mainboard. Liliana of the Veil. Discard engine at +1 and creature removal at -2. Her +1 does hit you too, but that can be a good thing for those times when you have Vengevine in your hand as you get more value from him in the graveyard than you do by hard-casting him. I never even consider using her ultimate just because it's unlikely you'll ever get there. And her other abilities on this deck are more valuable than the ability to make them choose which permanents are more important to them. However, if you can get there, then it may be worth it to use the ult but it's not necessary.
Altar of Dementia is a very useful and flexible tool. It can be a wincon in and of itself, but that's not usually what we're going to use it for (although I did have to once because I was going up against a deck that made me have to pay like 25 mana per creature to attack but I managed to use the Altar to mill him for like 31 when he only had 30 cards in his deck). Most of the time we're going to use it to help us fill our own yard. And it gives us ways to prevent our creatures from getting exiled by cards like Path to Exile and Prismatic Ending by instant speed sacking them. And it gives us value too because it lets us mill as well.
Now we come to the creatures.
First up let's discuss Tarmogoyf. X/X+1 where X is equal to card types among cards in all graveyards. He can get up to a 9/10 but more often than not he'll get to either a 3/4 or a 4/5. But that is still a force to be dealt with. He is the main reason to fill up the graveyard.
Next is Grim Flayer. Another dual purpose card. Graveyard filler and topdeck filterer. And he has delirium where he goes from a 2/2 to a 4/4 if there are 4 or more card types among cards in your graveyard. And he's got trample.
Cryptbreaker is a solid threat in his own right. Not because he's an intimidating body, he's not, but because he can create an army of zombies. But he does more than that for us. When he creates the zombies, he lets us discard a card. This is important because our dredge cards (Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug) don't offer much help in our hand when our graveyard still needs to be filled. And we definitely don't want Vengevine in our hand because we don't want to be hard-casting him. We want to get him in the graveyard so that we can get maximum value out of him. Cryptbreaker let's us get him in the yard if we ever unfortunately draw him.
Golgari Thug is a Dredge card that also gives us the ability to return creatures to our library from the graveyard. If Goyf dies, then you can get him back with the Thug. Since he's just a 1/1, you're not going to be attacking with him too much and he won't be killing a lot of creatures. But he can be used as a chump blocker. And that's the easiest way to get the most value out of him. Just make sure that he doesn't die before other creatures are in the graveyard because if there are no other creatures in the graveyard his ability has to target him.
Snapcaster Mage gives new life to our spells after we cast them. If we need any of our spent spells again, then we can bring in Snapcaster and do just that. And if nothing else we can use him as a surprise blocker since he has flash.
Stinkweed Imp is our final dredger. 1/2 flier with functional deathtouch. And dredge 5. We can use him as a chump blocker that gets rid of their creatures and just never seems to die.
Finally, Vengevine. He is the other big threat (in addition to Tarmogoyf) in this deck. We never want to hard-cast him if we can avoid it, as we get more value out of him by bringing him out of the graveyard. At 4/3, he's a big problem that our opponent has to deal with. And he has haste which makes him an even bigger threat. The more copies of him that are in the graveyard, the tastier the value we can get from him as we cast our second creature spell in the turn (which is fairly easy since 13 of the 20 cost 2).
Now for the sideboard.
Surgical Extraction is one of those cards that will be sided in about 90% of the time or more. I tried having it in the main board but I determined that it works better from the sideboard as Game 1 gives us an opportunity to gather information about their deck and learn what makes it go. When we have that information is when we bring in Surgical Extraction so that we can know exactly what to get rid of when the opportunity arises. For most matchups, I tend to side out both copies of Fatal Push and the one Yahenni's Expertise in favor of Surgical Extraction, but occasionally I'll side out something else if I feel that I need either Fatal Push or Yahenni's Expertise for that matchup. Surgical Extraction also has Phyrexian mana, which makes it easier to cast if we're tapped out.
There is also an extra copy of Fatal Push in case our opponent has more creatures that we don't want to spend 3 for Hero's Downfall to get rid of them.
Aether Vial is important to side in against control as it negates (see what I did there?) their counters since you're not casting the creatures. I tend to keep it at 2 charge counters since most of the creatures cost 2 but it's important to note that since it's not casting the creature, it won't count towards Vengevine.
The playset of Snapcaster Mage is completed in the sideboard. Yet another way to get more value out of our spells, it's a good idea to finish the playset in a good portion of matchups. I usually bring him in about 65-85% of the time.
Assassin's Trophy can hurt both artifact and combo, since it says "target permant" instead of "target creature or planeswalker." The downside is that it gives them a land, but it is just a basic land. This can also help out against tron too, as it can destroy their Urza lands , which lets you then target it with Surgical Extraction to get rid of it entirely.
Damping Sphere is there for when you go up against tron or any other deck that features the Urza lands. It sucks when your opponent gets all three out and has 7 mana available on turn 3 so this lets us disable that.
Liliana, the Last Hope is there as another way to bring creatures back from the graveyard and to remove small creatures. Just like Liliana of the Veil, The Last Hope's ult is not likely to be used very often. But if you do get the ult off, then it can break the game wide open. Even if you don't control any zombies, you get X+2 zombies where X is equal to the number of zombies you control. You get an exponential growth of zombies every turn. But the main purpose of this card is resurrection of creatures and graveyard filling.
Yahenni's Expertise is a board wipe. It won't necessarily hit everything, but it will hit most things. And it lets you get your board back online a bit by letting you cast a spell with mana value 3 or less for free. It's a one-of in the mainboard because of the fact that it won't hit everything, but there are two in the sideboard to bring in against decks that feature a bunch of small creatures (like white weenie or elves or something of that sort).
This deck has performed very well in my testing, but even still I know that there are ways to improve it. So I'm open to hearing any and all recommendations as to how I can make this deck better. Thanks in adavance!
