Modern U/W

Hey Guys! Well it has been a while since my last article, I haven't felt the need to write anything new, although I was tempted to write an article about the SCG invitational, in which I had two of my car-pooling friends in the top8 (Jono Randle and Tom Buettner), one of which is fairly established at this magic thingy, the other is an up-and-coming potential pro-tour player. 

Talking to players of this caliber day-in and day-out is making the Manaleak group one of the better groups to play magic with in the entire country, which is showing with Manaleak players taking down the majority of the most-recent PTQs. Therefore testing new decks against these players will give you a good indication to the viability of said chosen deck, which leads me on to Modern.

Modern

The Modern format has been thrown a lifesaver, the banning of Bloodbraid Elf has meant that Jund has become alot weaker, although not unplayable as the core of the deck (Bob, Goyf, Shaman and Co.) are still around. The solution many people have sought is to replace BBE with another 4-drop, like Huntmaster, Olivia or Thrun, of which it seems the latter two are favoured. I am still not sure of this approach, the slot which was once occupied by BBE does not have to be taken by a 4-drop (which everyone is focusing on), why not lower the curve and go more aggro? These questions make magic interesting and so the banning gets a big thumbs up from me!

Moving on to what I played at the recent GPT in Worcester, I felt that people will be playing the Thrun/Olivia Jund lists and so decided to play a UW control variant.

I give you, Blinkin' and Slammin': 

Creature (16):

3x Kitchen Finks

3x Vendilion Clique

2x Wall of Omens

3x Restoration Angel

2x Snapcaster Mage

2x Sun Titan

1x Phantasmal Image

Instant (14):

1x Sphinx's Revelation

4x Path to Exile

4x Mana Leak

4x Cryptic Command

1x Dismember

Sorcery (2):

2x Supreme Verdict

Enchantment (1):

1x Detention Sphere

Artifact (1):

1x Batterskull

Important Lands (8):

4x Celestial Colonnade

4x Tectonic Edge

The Blinkin' section of the deck is the synergy between Restoration Angel and the other creatures in the deck, whereas the Slammin' section is referring to the power level of cards such as Sun Titan, Sphinx's Revelation and Cryptic Command! The deck tested well at the tournament, finishing 2nd place to Aaron Biddle's Birthing Pod deck, I must admit that I am uneducated in the interactions of the Birthing Pod deck and therefore most likely did not play optimally. However, the matchup felt close and the matchup against Jund seemed heavily in U/W's favour (which is always a good sign). The addition of Phantasmal Image to the deck has really made a difference, if it copies a Kitchen Finks, it can block and then persist back as anything you like! It can be bought back with Sun Titan and also has the added bonus of killing all the legendary creatures making their way into the new Jund lists! Perfect! 

Standard

Standard is looking very diverse at the moment and we seemed to have finally moved away from the mind-boggling boring meta-game of throwing Hellriders at each other! Yay! Of course Hellrider has found a new home in the Naya and RG Aggro decks that have arisen, however this has allowed the emergence of Supreme Verdict control decks (Bant and Esper), which makes UWr less favourable in my eyes. Here is the meta-game analysis from the Pro-Tour:

Deck	Win Percent	Matches
Jund Aggro	60.00%	100
The Aristocrats	57.83%	83
Human Reanimator	57.02%	121
Jund Midrange	55.60%	241
Bant Control	53.19%	94
Jund	52.73%	110
Gruul Aggro	50.65%	154
UWR	49.82%	275
Naya Humans	46.88%	128
Saito Zoo	46.32%	95
Esper Control	46.29%	229

Make of it as you will, the statistics are here and like many statistics they can be interpreted in many different ways. I was playing Bant before the PT and I will still be on that plan after it, UWR and Jund are very popular decks and I feel that Bant simply crushes these decks. However, there is an argument to play a vast majority of the decks listed here and so it is your personal choice to which you prefer. 

That is all folks! Next Weekend is a Standard GPT, hope to see you all there!

Chris Delo.