This deck is rather resilient and has enough flex slots for the combo in my opinion.

“Muddle the Mixture” can be played as both a counterspell and tutor for “Spellskite”/”Defense Grid” which will be sacrificed to “Shape Anew” to bring “Blightsteel Colossus”.

Your missing his best card in this deck list, master’s call.
It’s an instant “pestermite” that can’t be bolted nor path’d unless they use two cards, or they have to have an instant that can clear the board on turn three.
It’s playing a lot along the line of Deceiver/exarch on the end-step into a turn four “win”.

I’ve also seen a few decks go temur – green for the ramp in birds and arbor elf, blue for the shape anew, red for the thopter Engineer allowing a turn four win due to haste.

Nothing was more deflating than getting the X=2 or X=3 Death Cloud chain Remanded by Twin, only to have it Commanded two turns later. The constant threat of Exarch death didn’t help much either. Cloud looks much better without Twin in the picture.

Sure is! X=3 on turn 4-5 will seal it for most matchups, and the deck has enough early interaction to survive that long in most cases. Especially with Finks!

There are a bunch of three-drops I want to test now, especially Knight. She even gets bonus points for offering the combo kill alongside Retreat, if you want to pursue that route. Makes for an interesting follow-up article too: three-drop creatures you want to play in Twinless Modern.

I feel like we have to go Jeskai with the shell or we lose a lot of Snapcaster and Restoration Angel synergies. I also really want to play Bolt, Helix, and Electrolyze in this aggressive metagame. That said, if you are going a straight UW approach, I like the cantrips and Walls here.

Esper has great positioning now but I’m seeing metagame forces shift more towards Jeskai. A big reason for this, I think, is Snapcaster’s stronger showing in Jeskai relative to Esper: Bolt-Snap-Bolt is better than most Snapcaster synergies in Esper. That said, Souls is spectacular and Inquisition is perfect in this varied field, so Esper has a lot going for it. Love Stubborn Denial too!

Agree about Polymorph having too many deck constraints. One of the sticking points of post-ban Jeskai is their dependence on 4 Snapcasters, which is immediately off the table once we run Polymorph instead of Shape Anew. Engineer definitely makes for a faster combo-kill, but if the combo doesn’t get online we are playing a suboptimal card. We’ll have to see if the deck is better with a more dedicated Colossus plan or something more midrangey!

Thopter Engineer is nifty but isn’t itself a card I’m dying to play in Modern. There are way better things to do for three mana, and the key to the Shape Anew shell is that it needs to function optimally without Shape in the equation. That said, I’m with you on Angel being a big player in the new format. She’s got a lot of synergies, solid 3/4 stats, represents a respectable clock, and threatens wins off Kiki.

I hope we see some Death Cloud at the Pro Tour. Even if the Tron matchup sucks, there are ways to fix that courtesy of Fulminators, Ghost Quarters, and other anti-Tron bullets. If you can keep them off balance until the turn 4-5 Cloud, you can really set them back to the stone age.

CRACKLING DOOOOM. That was on my list of 20 cards, along with a few other Mardu staples like Smallpox and Monastery Mentor (Ajani did make that cut). Doom gets way better if we start seeing more Jund-style decks, although there are worse things to cast against Zoo and Merfolk assuming you’ve stayed on removal curve.

Interesting observation! Image could be a very strong piece of tech with the Exarchs and Mites on the downswing. Maybe we’ll see it return like in the old Kiki Pod days. Too bad Image can’t steal the on-cast triggers of the Eldrazi.

The key to the Jeskai Blink deck is making Shape Anew incidental to everything else you are doing. You could even throw in a singleton Kiki-Jiki as an added “oops, I win” bullet. I wouldn’t want the entire combo package to exceed 4, maaaybe 5 cards, however, so it’s important to balance your cool combo factor with the more traditional Jeskai shell.

Finks is beastly and I expect we’ll see a lot of it in the coming weeks. We’re already seeing it a lot in Jund shells, both in the sideboard and even 1-2 in the maindeck. UW Control is adopting it too and I’m sure others will follow suit.

I’m less sold on Jace in certain matchups, although maybe he’d be a nice one-of in certain maindecks. Still, I’m nervous about Jace against Infect, Merfolk, Burn, and the ramp decks, which is enough of a metagame subset for me to stay away. Great sideboard card though!

Through the Breach almost made the cut for this article, but a) the card was already good before Twin and b) there were so many ways to build Breach decks that one section didn’t do them justice. We have not only the URx Breach lists floating around (as seen on CF recently, for instance), but also Summoning Trap/Chalice builds, trusty Grishoalbrand, old-school Griselbrand with Emrakul, and some more corner-case stuff like Breach Tron, Izzet Tron, Possibility Storm, etc. Lots of room for Breach fans!

I’m also loving Wish right now, especially in an open format that rewards flexible sideboards and rapid-response answers. I’m a little nervous about going too deep into the Wish plan with something like Pillar, but even just sticking in Abzan colors gives you a ton of reach. Fetching Fulminators in Game 1 is nasty, and I love being able to pick up things like Decay, Gaddock Teeg, Finks, etc.

4 Blade Splicer
2 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Choking Fumes
2 Mana Leak
4 Master’s Call
4 Path to Exile
4 Remand
4 Serum Visions
4 Shape Anew
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
3 Wall of Omens
4 Flooded Strand
8 Island
7 Plains
4 Prairie Stream