Built around the Big Blue eldrazi payoff,
Elder Deep-Fiend
.
With the setups available in Modern, you can somewhat easily T2 a
Matter Reshaper
or
Eldrazi Skyspawner
off of either a
Noble Hierarch
or
Eldrazi Temple
, giving you potential access to a turn-3 upkeep Deep Fiend to tap out your opponent's mana, and could follow up with a Reality Smasher for maximum tempo. You can also potentially chain into another Deep Fiend off of
Sanctum of Ugin
, or just use the Sanctum to find the follow-up Smasher.
All of this was do-able and OK before, but with
Once Upon a Time
and
Oko, Thief of Crowns
entering the format the strategy gets an enormous boost. Once Upon a Time is just an amazing way to set up the smooth early turns that you want, finding you early Hierarchs or Temples, or pairing your Deep Fiend with Emerge fodder and visa-versa, to make all of your broken starts more consistent and realistic. Oko, on the other hand, is just a game plan unto itself and can just win some matchups on its own. It's really that good. Oko is also part of the reason for Eldrazi Skyspawner over alternative emerge fodder, since it does so well to provide Elk targets.
Gilded Goose
is in probationary status; I think the deck wants extra accelerants that can cast Oko and be found with OUaT, so I'm testing it over Birds of Paradise. The real question is if the ability to use your spare mana outweighs the cost of sometimes messing up sequences that would need more goose Mana than you have food.
Manabase is still up in the air; color requirements are satisfied, but it might just be better to have Prismatic Vista and a basic Wastes (though I do love playing fetch-less in paper if it doesn't hurt the man's). This would really depend on how important finding your basics is.
Sideboard is also still up in the air; these are all cards I'd like to have access to, but I'm still unsure about which are most important.
