Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions
Modern BG (Golgari) Budget Control Death and Taxes Enchant Land Destruction Prison
Enchantment (22)
- 4x Contaminated Bond
- 4x Contaminated Ground
- 3x Enchantress's Presence
- 3x Pooling Venom
- 4x Sinister Possession
- 4x Spreading Algae
Sorcery (4)
Land (20)
Sideboard
Instant (8)
Creature (4)
Sorcery (3)
Maybeboard
Enchantment (4)
Artifact (1)
Has your game been faltering?
Do you find yourself racking up more losses than wins?
Are you tired of playing game after game only to be handed your walking papers, trudging out of your LGS with your head hung low?
Step one is to identify the problem. I can’t speak for other formats, but at least in Modern it seems that the main cause for all these headaches is that your opponent keeps tapping lands for mana, which they use to cast spells and pay for creatures (which then attack you). If only there were some way to circumvent this issue.
Well, as a wise man once said, Show
•Overgrown Tomb, a rotting morass of decaying vegetation, exudes and —concordant with our needs.
•Verdant Catacombs points the way to whichever befouled source of mana we seek in the moment.
Note: For a more budget friendly variation, replace Overgrown Tomb and Verdant Catacombs with Woodland Cemetery and Jungle Hollow. You’re trading down to slower, potentially ETB:Tapped land(s), but they’re playable nonetheless.
•Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth befouls all lands in play. Reaching out with tendrils of malice, it leeches the very life from land itself and brings a spreading corruption in the form of . This card is critical to our strategy, enabling repeated use of a particularly savage and cruel enchantment. 4 copies maximizes potential to get one into play and is well worth giving up a card slot or two. Just hang onto any extras drawn; in the odd event one gets nuked you’ll have a replacement ready to go.
•As a precautionary way to forestall Blood Moon and similar effects, we run some basic lands as well. Swamps and Forest (UN3s fill out our mana base.
•Thoughtseize hits hard Turn 1 and is but a foregleam of the horrors to come. Run Inquisition of Kozilek instead if you’re on a budget.
•Assassin's Trophy is a great card in and of itself, despite its otherwise significant drawback of basically tutoring a land for our opponent. However, in this deck that small consolation will be quite short lived...
•Brain Maggot
is a writhing, squirming, larval Thoughtseize. Let it wriggle its way from your hand onto your opponent’s ****list.
•Destiny Spinner does what Cavern of Souls can only dream of in a deck like ours. This sultry vixen bestows the gift of Uncounterability upon...well, everything from here on out. Aside from the two Instant/Sorcery spells we’ve already discussed, each and every other spell in the deck will now enjoy a clear path to the board.
Her other unique talent can turn the tide of battle in the mid to late game. With enough enchantments afield, turn that stagnating, untapped basic land into an X/X juggernaut to close out the game.
•Grim Guardian is one of our key cards to keep an eye out for. Once in play, every enchantment cast by us spells a point of life lost for our hamstrung opponent. It’s worth noting that a full 50% of our deck is comprised of Enchantments. Multiple Guardians in play will accelerate life drain by orders of magnitude. Grim Guardian, indeed.
The following spells are guaranteed to bring out the inner sadist in all of us. With each successive enchantment cast, we systematically beat our opponent to their knees and keep them there. The perverse beauty of tactics like these over, say, pure land destruction, is that glimmer of hope. Technically their lands and creatures may still be for mana or used to attack or block, but to do so is to invite catastrophe.
•First and foremost, Enchantress's Presence: a utilitarian spell that accelerates play and ensures we always have cards in hand. If we manage to get one in play relatively early, we won’t want for cards for the rest of the game. Each enchantment we cast will garner a free draw, ensuring we either keep pace with or simply outrace our opponent. Aggro/weenie decks won’t pose much of a threat when we can find answer after answer; even Tron or ramp builds will no longer zip past us. We simply shackle the appropriate enchantments to their creature(s) and land(s), and it’s as if we shoved a broomstick in their bicycle spokes and they went flying.
Let’s begin by corrupting their mana base.
•Spreading Algae is our bread and butter, and the reason for running a full 4 copies of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (as a side note, a more budget friendly alternative to this pricey Legendary Land would be to run a playset of Evil Presence). Simply pick the most useful of the lands across the table and attach this ticking time bomb to it. When it inevitably makes its way to the graveyard, simply replay this reciprocating enchantment targeting another of their ever dwindling resources.
•Contaminated Ground can also combo with Spreading Algae in a pinch, but works just as well by itself. Nullify a dual land or utility land and reduce it to a festering pool of muck and mire. Best case scenario they’re running some combination of but no ; even should they be running mono , that’s still a guaranteed 2 life lost when they it.
•Assert dominance using Pooling Venom. As anyone familiar with psychological mind games can tell you, oftentimes the mere threat of harm will cause more damage than the actual deed. Abrade the enchanted land if necessary; otherwise dangle out the illusion of freedom while sapping their life away 2 points at a time.
Now let’s turn our attention to any creatures our beleaguered opponent may have been able to field.
•Sinister Possession does for corporeal flesh what the aforementioned spells do against the very earth. Short of utilizing any inherent abilities unrelated to combat, a creature afflicted by this aura will be rendered useless lest 2 life be lost.
•Contaminated Bond is a crafty way to deal with creature threats with certain characteristics, such as those deemed unblockable. Remember, auras such as these stack. Attach a couple to a particular nuisance and it usually does the trick.
In the end, remember this: They can’t cast spells if they can’t make mana, and they won’t attack with creatures if it costs too much life to do so.
while preparing to set up our own side
•Make getting Grim Guardian, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Spreading Algae into play the next priority
•Cast as many immobilizing enchantments on the opponent’s creatures/lands as possible, sapping life through Grim Guardian and aura effects that trigger whenever the opponent s their lands or attacks/blocks with their creatures
•If your opponent is yet clinging to scraps of life, crush them to dust with an X/X behemoth of titanic proportions, courtesy of Destiny Spinner and her ability
•Schedule an appointment with a mental health care professional, you sadistic son of a b****. No one should derive such perverse pleasure from ruining another’s Magic: the Gathering experience.
•Abrupt Decay can swing the boardstate back in our favor, so it merits inclusion. Feel free to replace Assassin's Trophy with this less expensive card. It doesn’t pack quite the same punch, but it won’t hit your wallet as hard either.
•Spiteful Returned combos with Grim Guardian, and can paralyze an opponent’s creature just like our other auras if we bestow it thusly. Bear in mind, should that enemy creature die, Spiteful Returned won’t be sent to the graveyard like any other aura. It reverts back to an enchantment creature and returns to our side of the board for reuse.
•Kruphix's Insight occupies the slot reserved for card draw. In this precise setup it beats most other ubiquitous draw spells hands down. grants permission to sift through the top 6(!) cards of our deck to grab a whopping 3(!!!) enchantments. Remember, we’re running in excess of 50% enchantments in this build—it’s like gassing up with nitromethane.
Update: Just saw that Enchantress's Presence was reprinted in Modern Horizons 2. Kruphix's Insight is out; Enchantress's Presence is in. It’s relegated to the sideboard for now, until I decide how to integrate it into the maindeck. It’s too good to pass over.
Update #2: Dropped 1 copy each of Assassin's Trophy, Destiny Spinner and Pooling Venom to open up three slots for Enchantress's Presence in the main deck. Replaced the sideboard slots with Inquisition of Kozilek x3.
Cards in the Maybeboard are leftovers from ideas considered when constructing this deck. I’ve left them there to show I’m aware of them, so please don’t suggest them (unless there’s a specific reason why it would be ridiculous to omit any of them, some sort of amazing synergy or something). I’m open to any other suitable suggestions though.
”The land mourns; it is wasting away. The productive land withers; it is fading away. The prominent people of the land wither. The land has been polluted by its inhabitants...That is why the curse devours the land, And those inhabiting it are held guilty.”
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Casual
100% Competitive
Revision 4 See all
(3 years ago)
| -1 | Assassin's Trophy | main |
| -1 | Destiny Spinner | main |
| +3 | Inquisition of Kozilek | side |
| -1 | Pooling Venom | main |
| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 3 years |
| Last updated | 2 years |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 22 - 4 Rares 14 - 11 Uncommons 16 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 1.88 |
| Folders | Modern, Other peoples ideas, Modern Decks, future decks, Cool idea, Modern |
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