Treasure Hunt should be banned!!! (now w/ discord)

Modern Burn Combo Competitive Control Discard UR (Izzet)

Lowenstein

Land (41)

• 2x Blast Zone
• 4x Cascade Bluffs
• 2x Den of the Bugbear
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 4x Island
• 7x Mountain
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 2x Riverglide Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 3x Steam Vents
• 4x Sulfur Falls
• 4x Temple of Epiphany
• 4x Wandering Fumarole

Enchantment (7)

• 2x Molten Vortex
• 4x Seismic Assault
• 1x Trade Routes

Sorcery (5)

• 1x Day's Undoing
• 4x Treasure Hunt

Artifact (2)

• 1x Chalice of the Void
• 1x Engineered Explosives

Creature (4)

• 4x Swans of Bryn Argoll

Instant (1)

• 1x Lightning Bolt

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Sideboard

Artifact (8)

• 3x Defense Grid
• 2x Relic of Progenitus
• 3x Void Mirror

Creature (1)

• 1x Laboratory Maniac

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Shattering Spree

Instant (3)

• 3x Noxious Revival

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It deserves a ban just as much as Simian Spirit Guide did. May he rest in peace.

As my mother's father's only grandson used to say, "The best card in Modern is Storm Crow. But the best deck is TWDOL." (That Weird Deck Of Lands)

Welcome to the primer for the best deck in Modern, Seismic Swans. Now, is this really the best deck in Modern, a format that is constantly becoming more powerful? Yes. Obviously, yes.

I wasn’t the original creator of the deck, however, I did discover it independently back in 2014! The deck is in the Top 50 of most upvoted decks on TappedOut, so I would like to think that I deserve some credit for the deck’s general popularity.

This deck is super fun so hopefully this primer helps you to get a better feel for it!

JOIN THE DISCORD! Just made it, thought it would be fun. Seismic Swans Discord Server

The Main Combo

The deck works like so:

T1: Land

T2: Land

T3: Land + Seismic Assault

T4: Land + Swans of Bryn Argoll or Treasure Hunt or Day's Undoing

You then proceed to draw lands and draw lands then discard lands and then break your opponent.

Card Choices: Mainboard

Seismic Assault - Dang, what a card. This is the main card of the deck. Kill your opponent, even wipe the board clean. Your choice, anytime. Just make sure you get that three red mana.

Swans of Bryn Argoll - Best card in Modern. Hands down. Haha nah the best is Storm Crow, but Swans is still good. Here's thing, this guy draws you great masses of cards, and you win the game. Guess what. You can even attack your opponent with it. And block with it. Wowzers! Also you can be charitable by turning your opponent’s Lightning Bolt into Ancestral Recall.

Treasure Hunt - So many uses. For one, win con. Turn 4 you can pull two of these. And hey, let's say you don't get a great starting hand - don't sweat, throw this down T2 and go hunting for something good.

Molten Vortex - Behold: if T1 you play this, your opponent is gonna have a hard time getting a creature out. Good against Burn, Infect, basically like everything. CAUTION: this is not a Seismic Assault replacement, it is for help controlling the board, maybe dealing face damage, maybe drawing some cards with Swans. I have won games with it, though.

Day's Undoing - Pretty Smooth. We've got a few situations here, but when you play this, please make sure you have an Assault on the board. Please. Situation: T4 you got a few lands in hand, discard them, deal some damage to faces. Then play Day's Undoing, draw 5-7 lands, kill opponent on their upkeep. This can work, it can also save you from decking yourself if that becomes an issue. Glad to have it in the deck.

Anger of the Gods - to slow down fair aggro decks, and it also draws cards with Swans. Depending on your local meta, you can play another one of these. In a competitive scenario I usually mainboard 1.

Trade Routes - This is good for control-ish decks that just keep taking your stuff, helping you filter through your deck. Really good late-game draw.

Lightning Bolt - mainly for Monkey/DRC tempo and creature-based combo decks (Heliod, Infect, and Druid), to slow them down.

Chalice of the Void - this has now made the sideboard to mainboard jump. The competitive meta is so 0 and 1 drop heavy right now so this can do a lot.

Lands

Temple of Epiphany - Scrying is perfect.

Swiftwater Cliffs - Surprisingly quite good.

Cascade Bluffs - Can act as two blue mana for swans - yus.

Wandering Fumarole - Can save the day! I have won with this before.

Den of the Bugbear - Another creature land that can often come in clutch.

Sulfur Falls - yup.

Reliquary Tower - This can actually come in clutch in some important situations.

Blast Zone - Helpful against Hammer Time, Monkeys, DRC's, and lots of other things. I was recently converted to having more colorless-producing lands in the deck thanks to really good results.

Gemstone Caverns - This has led to T3 wins, and I have even had a T2 win against a shadow deck. You can also picture a T1 Chalice of the Void on the draw. Beautiful.

YOU WILL NOTICE:

Steam Vents = NO. Bluffs is straight up better. And shocking is baaaad. Scalding Tarn = NOOOO. So many reasons. Lose a life. Bro you gotta hold onto your life in this deck. And filtering! Bro, you need your lands to stay in the deck.

Card Choices: Sideboard

(This might not be updated, since I change up the sideboard often)

As a general rule, I wouldn't go below 40 lands. If you KNOW the matchup will be really grinding and there is absolutely no hope of comboing T4 then you can probably take out more. Depending on the matchup, it would be smart to either board out a Blast Zone, Gemstone Caverns, or Reliquary Tower.

Also, this sideboard is based on the current competitive meta. If your local meta is different, then you should definitely make appropriate changes.

New: Noxious Revival - this is very good against hand disruption, counter magic, and permanent destruction. I have used this card in so many ways, and you can even effect your opponent's graveyard and draws with this.

New: Void Mirror - For decks like Living End, Rhinos, Tron (sort of), pitch Elementals, Bring to Light. I am trying out 3 right now because of how heavy the competitive meta has these decks. However, if you are only playing at a local LGS, then you can swap this for something else.

Shattering Spree - Artifacts suck. Like Pithing Needle, Lantern of Insight and other control artifacts, and Tron artifacts. They all gotta go. Also great against Urza's Saga decks.

Laboratory Maniac - Yes, I love my Leyline, but oh it can hit me hard too. So now I can mill myself! This is also a good way out of a lot of controlling situations too. Lifegain can be tricky to beat, so this helps out there.

Damping Sphere - Tron (rough match up) and Storm. Also hurts other combo decks that are pretty much decided by whoever goes first.

Defense Grid - control ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Leyline of Sanctity - picture Jund/Shadow, then picture this deck. Yeah, not a good picture. (I mainboard 4 of these in more competitive scenarios btw, because it helps the chance of winning Game 1 against Blitz, Burn, anything with hand disruption, Storm, Heliod + Walking Ballista, Valakut, and so on.)

Matchups

Ragavan Tempo: we deal with the Monkeys and other small creatures pretty well, but the problem is that they can grind us out pretty easily with a couple counterspells/hand disruption and a slow beatdown. Chalice is good hear, and so is Noxious Revival. Maybe Defense Grid too.

Hammer Time: Blast Zone, Molten Vortex, Shattering Spree, Chalice, these are all cards that you need in your opening hand.

BtL Scapeshift: Prismatic Ending and counters are really rough. I would bring in Defense Grid and the Revivals. And absolutely Void Mirror to stop their win-cons through Bring to Light.

Elementals: Void Mirror is what you want and probably Defense Grid as well.

Heliod: it's a decent matchup. We can definitely win games 2-3 because we bring in Thassa's Oracle. We can stall them from comboing for a little by shooting their stuff with lands, and then boom we combo and win.

Death's Shadow: both Jund and Rakdos versions and decent matchups as well. The scariest thing is Thoughtsieze, which is why we mb Leyline of Sanctity. Molten Vortex is especially good here. I have won several matches with just Vortex and Swans of Bryn Argoll, bc they do so much damage to themselves. The Day's Undoing combo also gets better.

Blitz: If we can shoot their creatures we are in a good position. Luckily, our lands don't do any damage to us so we can likely race them as well. Chalice of the Void is a good sb piece here, also Anger of the Gods could be. However, Leyline and the shooting plan can be enough.

Titan: well a T3 Primeval Titan is problematic. There is hope to shoot their smaller creatures and maybe they don't win T3 because of Leyline protecting from Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. I would say the matchup is about 50/50. Bring in Shattering Spree, Damping Sphere, maybe Chalice of the Void.

Tron: :| it's a little scary. We are definitely better against Eldrazi Tron. We can beat Karn Liberator with some luck, but Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is completely gameover. Obviously bring in Damping Sphere, Shattering Spree can be good as well.

Control: depends on the version, but this is fine. Molten Vortex gets better here. I have testing for Niv-Mizzet, Parun in the sb. Bring in all the Defense Grid. Also Trade Routes is better in this matchup.

Normal Jund: ugh this deck is designed to beat ours. Good luck!

Small creature / creature combo decks: generall good matchups, since we have virtually 41 kill spells. Obviously Anger of the Gods and Lightning Bolt are good.

Bogles: Blast Zone :). Win the di roll and combo T4, or sb and pray you can slow them down enough with Damping Sphere / Chalice of the Void.

Playing the Deck

You can think of the deck as a very grindy deck that also happens to have a win-out-of-nowhere combo kill. So, it isn't usually smart to just mulligan for Assault and Swans.

A big challenge of the deck is knowing what hands to keep. It can change depending on what your opponent is running, but basically you ideally want something that will deal damage and something else that will draw your cards. In other words, at least one red card and at least one blue card. I wouldn’t mull below 5 unless you just have all lands.

Matchups: Here’s the rule of thumb: Jund is the worst matchup. Just the worst, because of cards like Thoughtsieze, Inquizition of Kozilek, Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy, and Liliana of the Veil. Basically, the more a deck is like Jund the worse the matchup is. The least it is like Jund, the better it is. There are several difficult match ups, but also several pretty good ones. Some games you will win quickly and others it will be really grindy as you rely on clutch topdecking.

Should I Play This Deck?

Yes!! Several reasons: it can be so annoying against with your friend group, it is a fun combo deck, it wins, and it’s cheap! The current build is less that $150, but it easily can be even cheaper than that. See the Budget tab for more.

If you like janky combo decks, this one is for you!

You just have to understand that even though it is the best deck in Modern, it is pretty fragile, so don’t freak out if you lose XD

However, I have won several FNM’s with this and even gone 8-0.

Budget

I have recently added a ton of cards that would probably blow out of range of any budget options. However, for a long long time I played this deck with it costing less than or around $100. These cards make the deck better, but you can for sure cut things like Chalice of the Void, Gemstone Cavners, Defense Grid, Shattering Spree, and other lands, and replace them with more budget-friendly options.

Thanks so much for checking out the deck! Leave an upvote if you like it.

Suggestions??? Let me know! I enjoy the discussion.

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 10 years ago
Date added	10 years
Last updated	2 years
Exclude colors	WBG
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 6 Rares 2 - 8 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.32
Tokens	Goblin 1/1 R, Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	Budget, Other People's Modern Decks, MDN - Fun ideas, Interesting Builds, Deck Ideas to Work Off Of, WANT TO BUY, think about, Troll, Interesting decks, Epic combo decks