Casual Modern Formats

I have two favorite stores out of the seven where I have played in tournaments. Don't get me wrong, I've never been to a "bad" store, but I have particular favorites. Of the seven stores, three have closed (two of them were the same store but with different names and managers), so there are four left. Of those four, one of them is a national name (Star City Games), and the other is Games Parlor in Chantilly, VA, which is a great store, but having only played there three or four times, I can't count it as a favorite because it isn't a regular store for me.

That leaves my favorites, one of which is a sponsor of Monday Morning MTG: Red Battle Games. As this is my local store at the moment and it is owned by a couple of my friends, how could it not be my favorite? But today's article is not about Red Battle Games or any tournament there. It's about my other favorite store, LostShade Games & Hobbies.


Okay, so it's not ABOUT the store, but about a couple Magic formats there. If you check out their Facebook page (in the above link), you can find a copy of their October Magic events. Moving away from the competitive, sanctioned FNM events, on October 24th and October 31st they are introducing special Modern variants, both of which seem interesting.

Not living in Harrisonburg, VA where LostShade is located, I won't be participating in the formats, but I can at least tell you what they are and invent a deck behind it. Let's take a look:

Power of 2 Modern

In this format, which will be played 10/24/14, you build a Modern deck completely with cards with a converted mana cost of two or less.. This makes my choice easy as the deck I would personally build is mostly two or less mana anyway. Here, take a look:

Naya Power of 2

Creatures x4 Birds of Paradise x4 Kird Ape x4 Loam Lion x4 Wild Nacatl x2 Strangleroot Geist Land x4 Stomping Ground x4 Sacred Foundry x4 Temple Garden x2 Wooded Foothills x2 Windswept Heath x1 Kessig Wolf Run x1 Mountain x1 Forest x1 Plains	Artifacts x2 Isochron Scepter Other Spells x4 Lightning Bolt x4 Lightning Helix x4 Giant Growth x4 Colossal Might x2 Path to Exile x2 Chained to the Rocks
Sideboard x2 Path to Exile x2 Chained to the Rocks x4 Titan's Strength x2 Vexing Devil x2 Voice of Resurgence x2 Mountain x1 Plains

I had to play around with the Sideboard, because I'm really not sure what needs to go in here. This is pretty much just pump and swing.

    

With shocklands, making some of these creatures 2/3 or 2/2 on Turn 1 this is not difficult. Fetchlands will find you your shocks, and it can really be any of the three below in any combination, but I figured two each of the newer ones because they're cheaper and most people can gt their hands on them because of the large influx into the market created by Khans of Tarkir.

    

There are a couple more things crucial to the deck:

  

So Kessig Wolf Run is here because you'll have plenty of mana due to the mana base, so why not boost your smaller creatures with trample and a huge amount of power? Isochron Scepter is also here for along the same lines. You have pump spells and burn spells, so why not imprint one on an Isochron Scepter to constantly pump your creatures or burn your opponent?

Let's move on to the other format...

Halloween Magic Modern

In this format, which will be played 10/31/14, you build a Modern deck but you can only use black spells and artifacts. You can also use "LostShade Sticker Cards" which I imagine are custom cards printed on stickers and stuck to basic lands, but I was never there when they did this, but they're printing a new set, so that could be interesting. But the main thing here is only black cards (not even hybrid or multicolored) and artifacts. Should be fun.

Mono Black Modern

Creatures x4 Tormented Soul x4 Vampire Nighthawk x4 Pack Rat x4 Street Wraith x2 Sheoldred, the Whispering One Land x14 Swamp x1 Bojuka Bog x2 Leechridden Swamp x1 Mystifying Maze	Artifacts x4 Codex Shredder x3 Grimoire of the Dead Planeswalkers x3 Liliana of the Dark Realms x2 Liliana Vess x2 Sorin Markov Other Spells x4 Nighthaze x4 Bile Blight x2 Profane Command
Sideboard x2 Griselbrand x3 Mystifying Maze x4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel x2 Erebos, God of the Dead x2 Profane Command x2 Whip of Erebos

    

Pack Rat is a powerful card that utilizes discarding creatures to duplicate and get more creatures. Street Wraith can be tossed into the graveyard and brought back to the battlefield using Sheoldred, Whispering One. In a monoblack format, Swampwalk is important because your opponent cannot block anything.

    

I decided I ultimately wanted a deck that could be unblockable AND also have some recurrence throughout using Sheoldred, Grimoire of the Dead, Codex Shredder, and one of our planeswalkers. Profane Command was added as an after thought because it occurred to me that another planeswalker could boost our lands and allow us to force our opponent out of the game.

    

Liliana of the Dark Realms is here to find swamps, bring them onto the battlefield, and hopefully pop out an emblem so you can use fewer swamps to cast bigger spells. Liliana Vess is mainly here to take away card advantage from your opponent, find other spells, and then also as a backup Grimoire of the Dead. Sorin Markov is pretty much spot removal and hopefully controlling an opponent's turn.

    

So Bojuka Bog is here as a one-of in the event we need to exile an opponent's graveyard because they are running a deck like ours, but since we have ways of taking control of all creatures in their graveyard, we only want one. Leechridden Swamp can be searched for by Liliana of the Dark Realms. Forcing the loss of life could come in handy. Mystifying Maze is here only to stop any large swampwalk creatures an opponent has.

The sideboard pretty much has more Mystifying Mazes for extra protection, Griselbrand for card draw and life gain, Erebos and Gray Merchant for their devotion requirements, Whip of Erebos to help return things from the graveyard to the battlefield and also include lifelink, and then just a couple more Profan Commands because they seem useful.



While these are casual events at LostShade Games and Hobbies this month, starting January of 2015 these could be viable formats at FNM due to the "create your own format" option of the new list of allowed formats.

See you next week for Commander Mondays!