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Now that’s an Eldrazi that I’m afraid of! I’ll be honest, up until now, the Eldrazi cards on the Battle for Zendikar spoiler page have not gotten my adrenaline pumping until now. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve seen a lot of cool cards. I’ve been more excited that the Eldrazi are making 1/1s instead 0/1s rather than being impressed with the overall power level. Think about all the original Eldrazi and how terrified you were that they would hit play. If you play Modern or Legacy, you might still live in fear of that very moment.
When you cast this monster you draw a pile of cards, then when he attacks he annihilates the opposing board before you have a they to block. Unlike our next fiend, at least it's killable.
We also had to deal with an indestructible foe who exiled your best card and then took more away when he attacked. Better have the right removal spell or you’re doomed. Then comes the biggest and baddest of them all.
The Eldrazi are the most popular villain in the Magic universe mainly due to this monstrosity of the skies. One hit and you typically lose the game. He doesn’t usually have to deal the full twenty damage before your opponent is signing the match slip. I’m sure when he hits tables across the world, the rest of the players groan unanimously.
These are the Eldrazi of legend. These are the ones we have nightmares about facing. The spoiler isn’t complete yet, so we still have a little time to get scared and Sire of Stagnation is exactly what we needed to get our blood pumping. Take a look at this guy again.
Castable, check. Good stats to mana cost, check. Benefits to cheating into play earlier, check. Amazing ability that will send chills up your opponents’ spine, double check!
The Eldrazi are supposed to impact the game in a big way. Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger does that somewhat because he gets to exile two permanents and wins you the game even if your opponent chump blocks every turn. Sire of Stagnation changes the way your opponent must play the game. If they need lands in order to cast their spells, you get to draw two cards. Now that’s a powerful ability! The ability is more like opponent choose one: never play lands again or lose the game to your opponent’s card advantage.
Sire of Stagnation has really gotten me revved up for the epic battle about to ensue on the plane of Zendikar. What Eldrazi cards are you most exicted about? Do you think Sire of Stagnation is all I’ve pumped it up to be? Let’s get the conversation started in the comments.
Until next time,
Unleash the Force!
Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com
Most combo decks in Modern function on a strict principle of non-interaction, concentrating primarily on consistency and speed, relying on their “payoff” to win the game outright as long as they’re able to get there. We see this all the time in decks like Living End, Amulet Bloom, and Tron; strict adherence to non-interaction, looking to set up a certain combination of cards as fast and consistently as possible. Yes, Living End's combo has an interactive element, but it gets there non-interactively and the interaction is incidental so it fits. Burn can even be considered an extension of this, where it’s “combo” is 6-7 cards that do 3 damage to the face. These strategies are powerful thanks to a potent combination of speed and consistency which is exactly why they are a large threat in the format.
Last week, 
In addition, many alternate paths to victory are present in the deck, and they fit in the maindeck too! Academy Ruins can keep buying back Ensnaring Bridge or Codex Shredders forever to win via decking, and Ghirapur Aether Grid and Pyrite Spellbomb can even let the deck win through damage! Spellskites, additional Academy Ruins, and Welding Jars out of the sideboard make life horrible for anyone relying on Kolaghan's Command to get them there against “artifact decks”. A full playset of Sun Droplets are present to fight Burn.
Hurkyl's Recall: Look, it might be time. Affinity is still good (though it will catch some splash hate from Lantern’s performance) and Recall dodges Spellskite/Welding Jar/Academy Ruins shenanigans. Depending on size of fatties involved you might only need one attack step to win the game and if not the number of artifacts on the field could result in two or more attack steps, as it might take Lantern two full turns or more to dump their hand again to the point that Bridge becomes effective.
Don’t plan on winning with creatures: Scapeshift seems to be a strong option, as it dodges Inquisition of Kozilek and cares nothing about the combat step. Lantern is really reduced to just hoping Scapeshift never finds, you know, Scapeshift, which can be a pipe dream since Scapeshiftcan Serum Visions/Anticipate/Peer Through Depths early enough to find it before Lantern gets Lantern online. Aside: I propose no longer naming decks after cards in those decks. It makes crafting legitimate sentences impossible. Tango has been thrown around pretty liberally lately, I propose Lantern become Tango Control. Scapeshift can just go die. In addition, Lantern Control has a tough time beating Burn, as seen by the playset of Sun Droplet plus a Nature's Claim in the board. A critical mass of burn spells means that Burn can often have two or three in a row on top of the deck, and it can normally do 10-12 damage before Ensnaring Bridge comes down, meaning Lantern has to fade a LOT of draw steps to win.
Tron gets better: Maindeck Relic of Progenitus to fight Academy Ruins, the consistency and redundancy to get Tron online even through opposing library manipulation, and a top end of Oblivion Stone, Karn Liberated, and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon drawing seven cards should do well against Lantern Control. It even gets access to Nature's Claim (which it was playing to fight Blood Moon and Affinity anyway) and it benefits from the field diluting their boards to fight Lantern as well. If I was playing a big event tomorrow, Tron is probably where I would start (I can’t believe I just said those words).
Moving forward, I’m definitely expecting better positioning for Burn, Tron, and Scapeshift. These decks seem to have good matchups against Lantern, so they’re a good place to start, but we have to be careful not to focus too much on Lantern. The best deck to fight Infect was Grixis Control, but the Grixis hate was a little too strong in Cincinnati and correcting that oversight (and overestimating Kolaghan's Command) allowed Lantern to take Oklahoma City. If people keep trimming graveyard hate for artifact hate, we could see Amulet or Grishoalbrand or Living End come back (another deck that has been punished by Grixis hate recently) and take the field by surprise. Currently, Modern is about to experience a slow month; the next big event for Modern is SCG States in the middle of October. Prepare to welcome our Eldrazi overlords, and use this time to perfect that sweet Zur the Enchanter list!
The top five Day 2 decks at GP Oklahoma (Affinity, Jund, Infect, Burn, Merfolk) are almost identical to the top five decks in the overall metagame as per the 
Jund had a similar Day 2 story to Infect, seeing an initial 11% Day 2 share crash to 5% in the Top 32. Jund was also underrepresented in that Top 32 by about eight percentage points. Abzan had fewer Day 2 showings than Jund but a much more average conversion rate: Siege Rhino and friends sent one of their five pilots to the Top 32 for a 20% conversion and an expected 3% share of both Day 2 and the Top 32. We're going to need more metagame data to know if a true Jund-to-Abzan shift is underway, but preliminary September data is already pointing to a Rhino comeback. Unfortunately for Abzan mages, GP Oklahoma City might slow that trend. If the format shifts too heavily away from Grixis (as we saw over the weekend), BGx mages might want to stick with Lightning Bolt over the Tasigur/Angler-killing Path to Exile. Moreover, with both Jund and Abzan putting one representative each in the Top 16, the GP saw no clear winner between the two. This will likely favor the more popular deck, Jund, as we go into October.
Following the trends we observed in 
happened at Seattle back in August. Some players tried to get fancy with all their Collected Company shenanigans and Abbot of Keral Keep trickery. Others tried to metagame too heavily against Grixis Control decks and, to a lesser extent, Jund. Others still were too heavily invested in their own Grixis and Jund shells, putting (too much) faith in the BR Command hype train (particularly when paired with Snapcaster Mage in Grixis). All of these players made smart metagame decisions and innovative deck choices, and almost all of them were run over by Affinity. Don't be fooled by the single copy of Affinity in the Top 8 (a beautiful Hangarback Walker, Thoughtcastless machine 
to be a Hurkyl's Recall playset that you are never going to use outside of the matchup. It should, however, be a diverse set of 4-5 cards that kill the Affinity matchup while also having relevance elsewhere: Ancient Grudge, Suppression Field, and, of course, Stony Silence all come to mind. Kolaghan's Command is insufficient. Heck, even Snapcaster and Command together aren't enough to stop the modular, infectious, battle-crying hordes. Ari Lax wrote a 
Brian Braun-Duin's 
Day 1 at a Grand Prix. Come Day 2, however, and it's time to roll up the sleeves and put on your big boy pants because the format pillars are coming back in force. You'll also see this in the Top 8 at the smaller events although, again, it's not a given. All of this means you need to know how your deck matches up against these pillars, and that you need to prepare for these matchups with the right cards. That said, as a related point, don't over-prepare at the expense of other matchups. Boarding in 3-4 Torpor Orb will certainly wreck Twin's day, but then you lose your complaining rights when you "only had room for" a few anti-Burn cards: what else do you expect when you commit so heavily to narrow cards like Orb? Overall, knowing your format pillars gives you fallback options in unknown metagames and prepares you for inevitable matchups at higher tables. It's up to you to gain that comfort.
were format benchmarks?), and overall thought it could see some game in the future. What I didn't know was that a dedicated core of brewers, testers, tuners, and players had been secretly mastering the ins and outs of Lantern Control for over two years since I first came across the deck. Zac Elsik, aka Shadowgripper on MTGS, was one of those players, and their shared (and individual) knowledge and experience paid off big when Elsik stormed GP Oklahoma City with a Lantern of Insight in one hand and a Ghoulcaller's Bell in the other. For many players, it was a sign that Lantern Control was the next tier 1 deck, the true coming of control to Modern (those proactive Grixis Control chumps don't count), and even a bannable force that could ruin the format. Although the deck is certainly strong, and certainly stronger than many realized for years, its GP Oklahoma City win was not so much a testament to the deck itself as it was a testament to the deck's pilot. Elsik, who had already cracked the 
We've all heard the Modern adage before: it's more important to play a deck you know than it is to play a deck that is "good" in the metagame. This only takes you so far (ask anyone who tried to stick with Storm during Deathrite Shaman's reign), but Elsik's finish is a great example of this wisdom in action. As we saw time and time again on camera, Elsik understood both his own play trees and his opponents', which gave him an edge in all those matchups. Elsik knew exactly what he was doing and what his opponent was doing. The other player? It was like watching Justin Cohen's PT Fate Reforged run with Amulet Bloom all over again. Opponents countered, discarded, and killed the wrong cards. They spent their resources the wrong way, not knowing what Elsik could draw or do with his board state. This advantage will certainly diminish with time, as it did in Amulet Bloom's case with the surge of Blood Moons, but it served Elsik well in the event.
The first major set of cards that will almost certainly have an impact in Modern post Battle for Zendikar are the manlands, of which two have already been spoiled with the expectation of a third. The first land spoiled was Lumbering Falls, which becomes a 3/3 blue and green hexproof elemental for 2GU. This card has major potential in decks like Temur Twin and Scapeshift where having a creature the opponent cannot interact with that also fixes two colors is outstanding. This should card help push the Tarmo-Twin deck further into prominence by helping against BGx decks that posed major problems in the past. Falls also makes the green splash easier to facilitate. While I do not believe that Temur Twin in its current iteration is a tier 1 deck, the addition of manlands could help push it over the top by blanking the removal of decks like Grixis and BGx. Tarmo-Twin had problems getting threats through black removal previously and the addition of a color fixer that attacks through removal might be all it takes to move up the 
Shambling Vent is a black and white manland which becomes a 2/3 lifelink creature for 1WB. The card looks okay for decks like BW Tokens or the older BW Pack Rat/Deadguy Ale deck that lost some ground in the past months, but in decks like BGx where it really wants to shine it does not compare well to Stirring Wildwood. That is a real issue. While I could see one Treetop Village becoming a Shambling Vent, the fact that Vent dies to Lightning Bolt is a problem. Vent also has a relatively lackluster ability compared to trample or reach, both of which help close some of BGx’s weaknesses (unlike lifelink). The lifelink is not irrelevant against Burn, but Vent itself is a little slow and low impact against that deck. This all makes me question its inclusion in my Abzan lists. Besides, the BG manland is still unknown and would probably be preferable in BGx. Tokens might play Vent if they really need mana fixing or maindeck lifegain but that seems unlikely. In my eyes, Vent is a niche card that whose power is unclear until we see the BG manland. Overall, I think there is very little chance Shambling Vents makes as big a splash as Lumbering Falls.
The next big cycle of lands that have the potential to make a big difference are the Battle Lands (or whatever you are calling them until we decide on a name), which are fetchable dual lands that enter untapped if you control two or more basic lands. These lands are going to make a splash in two colors decks that want to splash a third color for sideboard cards or value cards without making their mana more painful. Unlike the shocklands, Prairie Stream and company do not force you to start at 17 life, but they also do not allow you to use them for mana right away before turn three. These are probably not as powerful as the shocklands but will definitely see play as a way to improve Burn matchups while still maximizing the value of your fetchlands. Some places where I expect these lands to excel are in decks like Grixis Twin, which only splashes a few black cards like Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Terminate and already plays a good amount of basics. Another deck that is on the rise that gets some love from this cycle is UW Ojatai Control, such as 
Grand Prix Oklahoma City introduced many players to a spicy modern deck that has been on Magic Online for some time, a deck that has a lot of potential moving into Battle for Zendikar. The deck is 
As I mentioned at the beginning, Tron looks to be the big winner for Battle for Zendikar: a block full of giant colorless monsters has got to provide something for the ramping menace. Whether or not there's something to replace the current slate of haymakers is not known, but we have seen a few cards that will heavily impact Tron, for good or bad. So far, the biggest new standouts are Titan’s Presence and Crumble to Dust. The biggest reprint, largely from a price standpoint, is Sylvan Scrying. Titan’s Presence is a colorless instant for three that allows a player to reveal a colorless creature and exile a creature with power less than or equal to the revealed creature’s power. The fact that this card is an instant really propels it into the realm of playability for Tron as it can answer Splinter Twin decks without a Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere, or Grove of the Burnwillows. I quite like this card since it is also very good in the mirror and can answer nearly any threat including a Primeval Titan from Amulet Bloom if you have a Wurmcoil Engine. The only major issue I foresee with this card is that it does require a creature, but the upside is there if you can find a Wurmcoil Engine or one of your Eldrazi. It is also possible that some of the new Eldrazi may find a home in Tron, making hitting with Presence more likely. I suspect this card will show up as a two of or three of maindeck and maybe in the board depending on the Splinter Twin density after Battle for Zendikar hits tournaments.
Crumble to Dust. This is a functional reprint of Sowing Saltwith two differences. The first, a minor one, is that Sowing Salt is red whereas Crumble to Dust is colorless. I do not expect will have a major impact on the playability of this spell. However, the second difference between Crumble and Sowing Salt is much bigger. Crumble is 3R to cast rather than Sowing Salt’s 2RR. This difference in casting cost is huge, allowing decks that did not want to invest so heavily into red like Jund to keep their best answer to Tron in the sideboard without too much pressure on an already stretched manabase. This should find its way into Grixis variants, especially Grixis Control, to combat Tron. The card is also strong against Scapeshift, which returned to form at Grand Prix Oklahoma City this past weekend with a 
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The manabase of the deck may look blasphemous in the current world of fetchlands and shocklands, but has been shown to be effective. Pilots should avoid lands that reshuffle the library and require them to pay too much life for relevant plays in the early game. The lack of self-shuffling effects effectively allows the pilot to “stack” his or her deck with each Ancient Stirring played, and life points are a precious resource to begin with (the deck also suffers from a rough Burn matchup, and fetches/shocks don't help). The most commonly played utility lands are Academy Ruins and Ghost Quarter. Ruins allows the pilot to reclaim countered, discarded, destroyed, or even self-milled artifacts as needed. Ghost Quarter acts as additional disruption against certain matchups, prolonging the game and increasing the likelihood of victory. The average converted mana cost is relatively low, so the deck runs efficiently on 18 lands and three Mox Opals.
Grafdigger's Cage singlehandedly shuts down every copy of Collected Company and Chord of Calling in an opponent’s deck. It also does impressive work against decks like Grishoalbrand, and keeps the ever popular Snapcaster Mage from flashing back key spells that have been milled away.
metagame. Nearly every deck has a card that Needle can shut off, and knowing which card(s) to name is the sign of someone who knows what they are doing.
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