I do think they cut it, at least against Eldrazi in my testing. More on this, probably, tomorrow!

Just curious: where do you see these turbo moon decks positioned in a new modern world full of eldrazi, tron and hyper aggressive strategies? Are turn 1-2 moons followed by goyf or rabble pressure enough to cut it, do you think? If not, is there a way to tune the ideas for more success?

You’re right about MutaMoon being caught between midrange and tempo. Like Counter-Cat, it can play both depending on the matchup (although not as well). I was talking with a friend about it at FNM, and we decided it was closer to aggro-combo than anything. In any case, the decks I design tend to be very tight on mana and try to spend all their cards in a game. I like to win, but I also like to mulligan a lot, and for my games to be very close. Still, “very close” isn’t far off from “losing,” and you raise some interesting points.

Blood Moon, especially combined with Molten Rain post-board, “turns off” a lot of “hard” answers like Terminate or Decay. It doesn’t matter that Guide is a ritual, or that Magus is a Moon. They’re still bodies, which makes them highly versatile cards. I’ve won plenty of games with Guide and Magus, and that’s one of the main strengths of the deck – the 2/2s actually get there, since Growth, Ghor-Clan pumps, and Bolt/Tarfire back them up.

Decks that don’t care much about Blood Moon (Soul Sisters, UR Twin, Merfolk, Burn? Grishoalbrand?) don’t pack enough removal to warrant extra threats in my SB, and most of them can’t reliably answer Goyf. I have a joke that the only reason people play three-color decks in Modern is so they can kill the thing, but as funny as I think I am, there’s still a lot of truth to that idea. People often splash for “hard” removal. White, the color of Path to Exile, has never been good enough in Modern to put all your eggs into a basket with (or something). The rare UW or GW deck still can’t really answer a Rabblemaster, and remember the Paths opponents cast give us actual cards thanks to the Looting engine. We stop playing lands in excess of four, so an early Path lets us start chaining Lootings into more Tarmogoyfs a lot earlier.

As for “hard”-removal-heavy decks like Jund, boarding out rituals for Molten Rain and grinding them out has been working really well. By “grinding” I don’t mean naturally out-carding them, since that will never happen. We just need to bait out their basics with our six Moons, and then blow them up with Molten Rain. After that, we have all the time in the world. Usually a single Rain takes them off something crucial (black for Terminate and KC, or green for Goyf and Ooze), and as long as they haven’t resolved a bunch of their own Goyfs already, ours will quickly end the game when we draw them, by which time they’ll be 6/7 or something. Rabblemaster is also nutty in this matchup, and might even be better than Goyf. The Goblin is totally Liliana-proof, coming down and immediately generating a creature to sacrifice. Even after she resolves and -2’s, the new Goblin kills her while Rabblemaster comes in for 3. He can trade with Goyfs later on, after a Mutagenic Growth buys him some recruitment time, and then the 1/1s leftover do a lot of work. So I don’t want extra threats in these matchups, either, and as much as Huntmaster shines against BGx, I love Ghor-Clan here as a Bolt-resistant body who wins Goyf wars and grows Rabblemaster past blockers like Tasigur.

Seems okay, but horrible with Looting. We like doing things every turn. Not providing a burst of value also hurts.

A mostly worse Huntmaster. We also don’t want to have more than four lands in this deck to make Looting work.

Original article from mothership: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/1213

Blessing doesn’t deal damage, win Goyf wars, or cost 0. It’s much too inflexible for my taste, and we have to actually pay for it – yuck! Plus, it will always cost us life.