I’d normally say Twin, but Delver really eats Twin alive (especially the Grixis Delver decks). Depending on your familiarity with the deck, Temur Twin might be the strongest here. Grudge is still strong against Affinity, and although UR Twin can splash for the card, it loses access to cards like Goyf, Huntmaster, Thragtusk, and/or Thrun, all of which are viable options to shore up your other matchups (even the fairer ones you’ll inevitably encounter). Temur Delver is also a great option for similar reasons, particularly leveraging Disrupting Shoal against aggressive decks with homogenized CMCs.

AV is the kind of unban you do only if control is totally off the map and BGx is out of control. We just aren’t there right now, so AV is the kind of risky unban that could skew things too heavily towards blue-based control and away from other options. This is less of a risk if something got added to BGx to push it over the top, or if something got printed/some metagame shifted to make control really bad.

Power to Jund! I don’t play BGx myself, but I know the importance of keeping BGx viable in Modern as a policing strategy. It is good for the format that Abzan can excel in some metagames and Jund can succeed in others. And we will probably reach a point where they are both viable, given enough time for the metagame to mature.

I am also a bit surprised at the Elves share. I would have expected the deck to explode after GP Charlotte, or at least for the Company players to gravitate towards the deck with the best finish. Neither of these things happened, however, which suggests there are some other factors inhibiting Elves’ success in Modern. Part of this is probably just that the deck isn’t optimal. It has some weak matchups, particularly against the linear decks that are faster. I’m also not sure why Elves’ MTGO percentage crashed: it had been 5% a month ago, so something shifted to make the deck worse or move players elsewhere.

I’m quite aware of the combo, but when we have turn two/three combos that win on the spot (albeit not consistently enough to be deemed ban-worthy) and linear decks that are capable of hitting wins three turns in, a turn three combo that does not do so, but does buy some time for control decks, seems quite fair.

I’m not saying unban Dark Depths. That would be overkill, even in this format. Thopter-Sword is just fine though.

Thanks for the responses all.

It is a pity I got in late for Jund, but I guess I could save up for the missing pieces.

For now I’ll go with Twin, still to decide if I want to use the Goyfs to beat the Delver players by playing RUG or play against the larger portion of the field with straight UR.

PS Abzan has lead me to a 4-0 and a 3-1 in my last two events. I just find I’m hoping to get lucky rather than anything else (got a lot of life gain main and in the side, and a ton of Affinity hate in the board – but these feel like the ultimate in draw my hate or lose)

Sword of the Meek with Thopter Foundry is a powerful combo, but there are already much scarier things legal in Modern.

Part of the reason Thopter-Sword combo was so good was because it was played alongside Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage, another (more) powerful combo that required much different hate to properly address. Not only is the scarier side of that coin gone, but more quality hate is regularly played that would contain it. Abrupt Decay, any quality graveyard or artifact hate (very common sideboard cards against popular decks, like Stony Silence, Relic of Progenitus), Torpor Orb…it’s a healthy list.

It’s not even as potent as Twin with Exarch or Pestermite since it doesn’t win for you on the spot, and isn’t flexible with the combo pieces. Sword is basically worthless in multiples, and isn’t a serious threat with anything else in the environment. Also, what deck suddenly becomes broken-tier overnight by shoehorning this combo in? Tezz control? Does any other deck want to dedicate that many slots to this?

Yet, because of the stigma, Sword will remained banned, decried by Internet “experts” as a busted card. The combo can certainly pull ahead against aggro, and it is some great inevitability when left unchecked. Broken, though, at least anymore that turn 2-3 Amulet Bloom kills two different ways, or Twin taking you from 20 to -10000 in the blink of an eye? I don’t think so. Wizards will play it safe as always, so the earliest we’ll see a Sword unban will be January (if ever). If/when it does, I’ll be happy to see it come off.

From the decks that you have listed I would probably choose Twin. The combo can go a long way in stealing games against linear, aggressive decks. That being said Burn is probably 50-50 and Delver decks will be your worst nightmare. Twin is one of their best matchups after all.

So from what I see there, it’s a lot of linear non-interactives and Delver. BGx handles Delver, but it tends to get overwhelmed by the fast linears (after all, Abzan was one of the big reasons Infect was Tier 1 for a time). Twin can usually race the interactive aggro if it disrupts them, but Delver can be a problem. Delver variants tend to have a lousy Burn matchup. In short, there’s no true catch-all answer.

All that said, however, I’ll put in a vote for UR Twin. Delver isn’t the greatest matchup for you, but cards like Rending Volley could at least patch that matchup a little, and you could just try to race them.

Just play a combo-focused UR Twin with more removal over counterspells and a suite of really efficient one-mana counters like a couple of Dispels and Spell Snares so you can be mana efficient against the Delver decks. Most often you’re just going to be spending your first couple of turns Bolting (or Forked Bolting, it’s a great thing to have against aggro) things that are killing you and then simply comboing them out of the game on turn 4. Against Delver your plan is the same, except delayed for a turn to have a Dispel online, they won’t be killing you that fast anyway.

My options are Abzan Midrange, Twin (all variants), Grixis Control and Delver variants. I could also build Grishoalbrand and Kiki-Chord (if I wanted to go Tier 3, which I don’t really).

Sword of the Meek? No, we can’t have that in Modern, ever. It doesn’t depend on the metagame, on how the format has evolved, or how strong decks are against it. Unless they ban Thopter Foundry, which would be really stupid, we can not have Sword. Look up the combo somewhere.

I have to say that I’m surprised to see Elves so low in meta share, given how much attention their GP win got (being the first of the month and all). I’m thinking it could be because of a bad matchup vs. a Tier 1 deck. Do you think that Jund and Twin committing to Bolting their T1 mana dorks is responsible for this? Or is it RG Tron and Pyroclasm?

Agreed. I think Sword of the Meek would be a safe unban right now, but I don’t anticipate it happening. If WotC makes that conclusion they’re likely to save that for January so they can shake things up a bit for the PT.