WMCQ – The “Best Deck” and the Glass Cannon

The World Cup Qualifier for the Midwest is almost upon us and yours truly couldn’t be more excited. My testing so far has led me to believe there will be two archetypes that I feel have a solid shot of taking it down.

  1. Nahiri Control – The default best deck
  2. Dredge – The deck that beats Nahiri Control, and a solid portion of the field besides that.

Let’s explore the lists that I’m currently using for each of these.

Nahiri Control:

2 Sulfur Falls

2 Island

1 Plains

1 Mountain

4 Scalding Tarn

4 Flooded Strand

1 Arid Mesa

1 Ghost Quarter

2 Steam Vents

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Hallowed Fountain

3 Celestial Colonnade

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Path to Exile

4 Serum Visions

3 Spell Snare

3 Ancestral Visions

3 Remand

3 Mana Leak

1 Lightning Helix

1 Timely Reinforcements

1 Anger of the Gods

4 Nahiri the Harbinger

4 Snapcaster Mage

1 Vendillion Clique

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Sb:

2 Crumble to Dust

3 Geist of St. Traft

1 Timely Reinforcements

2 Negate

2 Dispel

2 Spreading Seas

1 Wear//Tear

1 Celestial Purge

1 Stony Silence

Notes:

I expected this deck to struggle mightily with various Ramp archetypes, and yet, being able to board in 11 slots to help with these matchups have turned them from nightmares into incredibly favored post-board games.

This is the de facto best deck coming into the tournament, and from all this testing I’ve done, it earned this title easily. Remember when UWR Control in the past few years was strong, but had no way to finish games before other decks could recover from the tempo they lost to all the cheap removal? Essentially it was a bad burn deck that half the time couldn’t finish killing its opponent. Two key components have changed, and now we have the deck that will take the place of splinter twin as de facto pillar of the format to beat. First, it has the card advantage engine that is Ancestral Visions. In mid-range mirrors and control matchups, this card is a beast at ending the question of who is grinding whom out in card advantage, allowing you to untap with an ancestral recall effect on the stack. Disgusting. Secondly, Lahiri the Harbinger was printed, giving control players a planes walker that not only defends itself elegantly, but also ends the game quickly and filters the useless cards out of their hand. Simply put, this deck got the cards to fix its two greatest problems, and now we have entered its era of dominance. Nahiri Control can be modified to beat any particular archetype that you feel it needs help crushing, and that is why this deck is so dangerous. There is no archetype that can outright say it has an advantage here, the best they can say is that they feel favored when they aren’t focused on. I would like to say this deck will be banned soon, but I doubt it will with the downfall of the modern pro tour, and the fact that this deck does nothing unfair, it just does everything with efficiency.

There are some Jund players that will be ready for this deck with mainboard multiple Thrun, the Last Troll’s. I should forewarn the Nahiri players, this card is a wrecking ball to try and manage.

Dredge 4.0:

4 Polluted Delta

4 Scalding Tarns

2 Dakmor Salvage

2 Island

1 Swamp

1 mountain

2 Steam Vents

1 Watery Grave

1 Blood Crypt

4 Insolent Neonate

4 Hedron Crab

4 Shriekhorn

4 Faithless Looting

3 Darkblast

4 Stinkweed Imp

4 Golgari Grave Troll

4 Narcomoeba

4 Bridge from Below

3 Stitchwing Skaab

4 Prized Amalgam

Sb:

4 Thoughtseize

1 Darkblast

4 Lightning Axe

4 Leyline of the Void

2 ? (Pithing Needle? Inquisition of Kozilek? Conflagrate?)

Notes:

I tested this deck extensively and discovered a few things that changed where I went with it from my last article regarding dredge:

  1. First, Bloodghast is the definition of a win-more card in most matchups, and an incredible liability in terms of not being able to block other aggressive decks. Dredge is not often the fastest deck in the room, it is simply the most durable if they don’t pack grave-hate in sufficient numbers. Therefore we need blockers against other aggro decks like Bushwhacker Zoo, etc…
  2. Second, Greater Gargadon was also a win-more in my testing, and didn’t honestly matter enough to be worth the slots unless it came down on our turn 1 (making it a liability more often than I would like, and certainly not a dredge enabler, which I wanted instead every time).
  3. Third, Stitchwing Skaab was a key component of allowing us to continue the dredging process while also recurring Amalgam’s, and providing a way to race in the sky. Being able to activate it on your opponents end-step to recur a crap-load of amalgam’s is still my favorite trick.
  4. Fourth, Bridge from Below is necessary for creating what I’d like to call, “a land war in russia,” scenario against aggressive decks. It singlehandedly flipped the zoo matchup to favorable as we can just chump with creatures all day to get zombies to trade with, or swing back for the win if they overextend. The Land War in Russia metaphor alludes to the idea that the other deck will get bogged down trying to push through all our creatures, and for every creature we lose, we replace with zombie tokens to push back.
  5. Fifth, the 18th land was necessary as we want to have 2 lands in our first 7/8 cards to ensure that we only need to dredge one to play faithless looting from the graveyard.
  6. Sixth, Leyline of the Void seemed to be an appropriate method of fighting against a variety of matchups that we are otherwise unfavored in, specifically ensuring that we win the mirror, that Living end improves even further, and that Abzan Company will struggle mightily against us post-board.
  7. Seventh, I still am unsure what the last two slots need to be, and I’m hoping for some solid suggestions/reasoning in the comments so I have a full field of information to consider from.
  8. Eighth, you may look at the list and think, this is madness, he cut the entire color green from the equation thus crippling our ability to kill Grafdigger’s Cage, as well as messing with both the burn and affinity matchups. My response is simple, Thoughtseize is our removal for Gravedigger’s Cage on the play in game 3. Game 2 we play the odds that they do not draw this card in a timely manner, because diluting our power level to handle this card is foolish, and at least thought seize will do us a favor in Game 3 by also being able to disrupt their speed of deploying threats/answers to us if it doesn’t grab a hate card. Gnaw to the bone did not actually improve any matchup, and was long overdue to be cut since it was incredibly slow, and mostly a win-more card that burn could play around with skullcrack and atarka’s command anyways. Ancient Grudge we will miss, but honestly how much I cannot say as Darkblast is incredibly effective against affinity in general, and lightning axe will only serve to improve this matchup post-board. In the end, green isn’t necessary, but blue most certainly is (Stitchwing Skaab, and Hedron Crab (for the moment)).

As I’ll likely play this deck before I play anything else at the WMCQ, despite it being a glass-cannon scenario, I’ll lay out a brief side boarding guide for any who wish to follow in my footsteps:

  1. Nahiri Control – +4 Thoughtseize, -3 Darkblast, -1 Stitchwing Skaab
    1. Very favored matchup as lately Nahiri Control has had to focus on taking down the usual control issues with ramp decks, and as such hasn’t had much room in the sideboard to refocus on graveyard strategies. It helps that they are naturally set up well to deal with living end and abzan company, so outside of us it makes little sense to need to reinforce the graveyard hate.
  2. Jund – +4 Lightning Axe, +4 Thoughtseize, -4 Bridge from Below, -3 Darkblast, -1 Insolent Neonate
    1. This matchup is typically rough as they now mainboard Scavenging Ooze’s, and Kalitas. Go fast and try to push through before they get the chance to ruin your day. I’d say you’re only about a 35% to win this.
  3. Merfolk – +4 Lightning Axe, +1 Darkblast, -4 Bridge from Below, -1 Insolent Neonate
    1. This matchup feels about dead even and is entirely tempo based. You can often play through the entire game 1 without laying an island if they don’t rock a spreading seas out quickly, and that will tie the board up while you take to the air with narcomoeba’s. Post-board you go heavy on tempo and hope no grave hate is coming.
  4. Abzan Company – +4 Lightning Axe, +4 Leyline of the Void, +1 Darkblast, -4 Bridge from Below, -4 Insolent Neonate, -1 Stitchwing Skaab
    1. The good news is their graveyard hate is usually at a minimum, the bad news is that game one is completely unwinnable. Luckily Leyline of the Void and adding additional removal to the main makes the post-board games roughly 65% each for you, with that going up an additional 10% if you drop a turn 0 Leyline.
  5. Infect – +4 Lightning Axe, +1 Darkblast, -4 Bridge from Below, -1 Insolent Neonate
    1. A favored matchup indeed, spells kite is their biggest problem card, and other than that, enjoy dredging dark blast constantly, they have some pretty big issues with it.
  6. Scapeshift – +4 thought seize, -3 Darkblast, -1 Stitchwing Skaab,
    1. This matchup can be alright or a nightmare depending on the number of Anger of the Gods they have to buy tempo til they combo you out.
  7. Bushwhacker Zoo
    1. +4 Lightning Axe, -3 Darkblast, -1 Shriekhorn. This matchup was oddly favored pre-board as Bridge from Below gives you serious game against them. Typically these decks run a couple of Gravedigger’s Cages post-board which is an absolute nightmare if they drop it turn one, but you did choose a glass-cannon deck, so a little prayer for luck should be how you operate anyways.
  8. Dredge Mirror
    1. +4 Leyline of the Void, -4 Bridge from below. Most versions still run Greater Gargadon, and if they get that card in the opener, Bridges are useless. If you get Leyline of the Void in the opener, you gain tempo at the very least, and likely they just get shut out of the game.

I remain unsure whether I’ll be able to actually attend the World Cup Qualifier due to some personal stuff going on currently, but I would highly recommend someone take this monster and let it out of its cage. If nothing else, the deck has been my favorite deck to work with in modern so far, and I still have two slots left to shore up other matches such as R/G Tron, etc…

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