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I'm a firm believer in playing what you love in Modern, and in Magic. For me, that often means Tarmogoyf, although I do occasionally try other flavors. Among my Goyf-related pet projects is Rogues, a longstanding deckbuilding challenge with a simple rule: run 4 copies each of Thieves' Fortune and Tarmogoyf.
Creating and holding to such restrictive exercises can do wonders for both personal and format exploration, no matter the overall strength of a resulting deck and even if the excursion eventually leads to something outside its own parameters. Lately, the release of Thieves' Guild Enforcer led me to revisit Rogues, a deck that has long clamored for additional one-drops with which to enable Thieves' Fortune.
Rogues Through the Ages
Rogues started out in a Temur shell running Humble Defector and employing a Splinter Twin package. With the enchantment's banning, it adopted Traverse the Ulvenwald and Kiki-Jiki, the latter providing a clunky combo that wasn't really what I wanted to be doing in the first place. Rogues lay dead in the water until Fatal Push and Fourth Bridge Prowler baited a switch to black from red as interactive colors. And I touched again on Rogues with the release of Robber of the Rich and the unbanning of Stoneforge Mystic, the pairing of which stretched the deck thin color-wise.
Out in Force
While Prowler was great in matchups featuring x/1s, it was far from the one-drop Rogues needed, which would be closer to Delver of Secrets but on-tribe; an aggressive creature with some form of evasion that clocked adequately in a pinch. Then came Thieves' Guild Enforcer, a card compact enough to apparently merit inclusion in some actual Delver decks: CHERRYXMAN maxed out on the Human to enable Vantress Gargoyle, so why shouldn't we use it for Thieves' Fortune?
Enforcer has a number of legs up on Prowler. Once the eight-card condition is met, it swings like a flipped Delver, and with deathtouch to scare off blockers. Deathtouch is great on defense too, especially combined with flash; we can drop it into combat to take out a pesky fatty. Flash also gives us the choice between instants like Fatal Push or other options such as Spellstutter Sprite on an opponent's turn, rather than committing to playing a Rogue on our turn. Turn one Rogue can be nice to set up Fortune, but what if opponents then play Noble Hierarch? In that case, Push into Goyf tends to be a much sleeker line, and Enforcer gives us the most possible time to decide.
Sultai Rogues (Full Force Remix)
Here's where I landed:
Sultai Rogues, Jordan Boisvert
The Toolbox
With all that digging and tutoring, it pays to have a fleshed out toolbox.
Fourth Bridge Prowler: A card that reinvigorated my Rogues project when it was spoiled, Prowler has indeed been demoted to bullet thanks to Thieves' Guild Enforcer, a far superior enabler for the deck. The card can still be a decent one-drop for some openers, but truly shines as a tutor target, where it shows up after blocks to finish off weakened Goyfs or pops out of the deck to handle Dark Confidant, Grim Lavamancer, mana dorks, and other troublesome x/1s.
Faerie Impostor: I always liked two copies of Impostor in this deck, since when it's good, it's very good. That being said, it's certainly clunky when it's not good, and this build is tight enough for space that I went down to one. Still, re-using ETB effects is great here, and slamming Impostor with Cloak in play creates an impressive clock at the same time.
Spellstutter Sprite: While not a Rogue, Spellstutter synergizes with a key enabler in Faerie Miscreant and gives us precious stack interaction. Grabbing Sprite for value in the mid-game is a great way to secure a lead.
Snapcaster Mage: We don't have that many instants and sorceries to hit with Snapcaster. When drawn naturally, the creature usually serves as an extra Traverse or Fatal Push. But in the deck as a Traverse target, Snap lets us re-use the bullets we dig for with Thieves' Fortune, which grants it tons of utility.
Scavenging Ooze: A late-game powerhouse and incidental grave hate for all stages of the game. Some decks absolutely have to remove this card to do their thing. Ooze hoses Uro, Snapcaster, other delirium decks and more.
Brazen Borrower: Another excellent newcomer for the archetype, Borrower is itself a Rogue with flash, lending itself well to enabling Fortune. At the same time, it's a searchable bounce spell and multiple spells rolled into one card.
Lurrus of the Dream-Den: The sleeper best creature in the deck, and a major draw to Traverse strategies in black. Having access to a multi-use Snapcaster for permanents helps us win wars of attrition in the late-game, and we're already on 4 Bauble. Of course, that makes Lurrus better suited to shells like Jund Rock, but those lists are rarely equipped to run a Traverse package. That means we can benefit from Lurrus in those matchups.
Noncreature Bullets
Traverse the Ulvenwald won't find these bad boys, but thanks to Thieves' Fortune, they're never too far out of reach. As mentioned, boasting Snapcaster lets us semi-reliably use a key spell twice in a game.
Spell Pierce: Pierce is just so good in Modern. The noncreature-heavy decks walk into it at all points of the game, be it with big planeswalkers or just generally big turns, and a naturally-drawn Pierce beaks up early plans like nobody's business. It's mostly just bad against Zoo-style decks, which are more or less nonexistent right now. Against Prowess, the format's closest analogue, countering Manamorphose or Light Up the Stage is the truth.
Unearth: Similar to Snapcaster, with some downsides and upsides: it can't be searched, but it provides a tempo boost. Also excellent with Snapcaster, not to mention Lurrus. Unearth represents a lot of options in the mid-game.
Collective Brutality: Early enabler or all-around role player, as needed. Extra copies in the side help us turn on lightning-fast in the matchups where Brutality dominates, like Burn.
Situating in Modern
Not too long after I started messing around with Rogues again, Stormwing Entity came to be, which prompted a change of course that currently has me singing its praises in a different Traverse the Ulvenwald deck. The lesson from Rogues this time around is similar to the lesson from Rogues the first: the better deck tends to abuse the better card better.
That fact of life has me second-guessing Delirium Delver—is the deck necessarily on an even keel with Traverse Shadow, Modern's other delirium exploiter? Natch, the only way to find out is to keep on grinding! How are your piles holding up, and what have you learned about your favorite cards in isolation? Let's keep the conversation going in the comments.
The first and primary reason is that the old system simply isn't needed right now. It used a points-based weighting system in effort to smooth out the discrepancies between paper and online Magic. Paper results were given extra weight because they were more reliable. MTGO may be more accessible, but it also has a smaller player base. Millions play Magic, but only a small fraction are willing to maintain a digital collection. Those that do play MTGO tend to play lots of events and show up in results more often, leading to more outlier results. That just didn't happen in paper, so we added weight to the more accurate results. There are no paper events happening, just MTGO events. Thus the weighting system is meaningless.
metagame as a whole has moved on. I think it safe to say that banning Arcum's Astrolabe worked. Snow isn't completely dead, however, and both Bant and Sultai Snow did put up results. Not enough to be Tier decks, but enough to tell me that they're still reasonably competitive. Sultai did slightly better, likely thanks to Dead of Winter; without Astrolabe, players need another compelling reason to play Snow to make the spin worth it.
and plays new cards, so there's excitement for the deck and higher adoption as a result. However, Dragon and Entity genuinely seem like upgrades to the deck, so this might be no accident.
Stoneblade was the more popular deck in July, but straight UW Control was a fine choice. Worth noting, if I'd combined the two, then UW would be Tier 1. Don't sleep on this deck.
Everything else that eventually made Tiers 1-2 was very consistent. Were it not for those spikes, the top 2 decks wouldn't have been on top by the margins they were and Tier 1 would have been a very level playing field. Thus, I regard the top decks with suspicion.
Flying totally off the rails is 
It's been over a year since my last 
Kamigawa Block Constructed was a 
However, it was never as popular as in Block. This was primarily due to overshadowing from Tron in Standard and then Loam decks in Extended. That said, it remained viable until the end of 
Thus, the question of Modern viability. Jitte's been banned nine years, and Magic's changed a lot. Creatures are significantly better and the overall power level is much higher. Size up Jitte against Oko and there's little comparison, or so the argument goes. The argument for unbanning says that Jitte's time has passed. Getting Jitte online requires four mana and an attack, not to mention a removal dodge along the way. You then have three options that are a bit mediocre, making it inefficient and underpowered by modern standards. And so every time there's a 
So, Jitte is still backbreaking in the creature matchups. It gets more overwhelming the earlier it resolves. I was prioritizing finding Jitte more and more as testing went on, and started mulliganing aggressively for Mystic, especially against Humans, which is the matchup I played the most. And my opponent agreed with me. To the point that we spent an inordinate amount of time debating the merits of sideboarding in Collector Ouphe in addition to Deputy of Detention to answer Jitte.
Once Jitte has counters on it, combat becomes a nightmare for the opponent. Jitte can only pump the equipped creature, but it can shrink any creature. It's often wrong to pick off the one-toughness creatures because it's better to block a stronger one and then shrink it so your creature survives. This makes combat math very hard for opponents. And if they don't force the issue, it just gets worse as the counters start piling up.
Against Counters, the effect was still present, though less pronounced. As a creature deck with mana dorks, Counters Company can win too quickly for D&T to do anything. When that doesn't happen, Jitte becomes a chainsaw, since so many creatures are x/2 or smaller. This was tempered by Counters having tutors to find Reclamation Sage, but doing so pulled attention from the Rest in Peaces and Phyrexian Revokers that were keeping the combos down in the first place. I don't know how this matchup would have played out, but I do know that the dynamic had been shifted as a result of Jitte.
The Burn matchup was also affected, but more subtly. Jitte was also good here, but mostly because gaining life is good. D&T's creatures match or beat Burn's straight up anyway, so Jitte killing them is irrelevant. Pumping creatures to shorten the clock is also good, but that was marginal at best. It's better to just sandbag the counters to gain life as necessary.
The most surprising result was against Bant Snow. Jitte is normally just a pump spell against control, and useful mostly as a "combo kill" with Mirran Crusader in Legacy. Sometimes you get to pick off Monastery Mentor, but that's rare. However, 
Umezawa's Jitte is definitely Modern-playable. There's a joke that Deathrite Shaman is actually a one-mana planeswalker thanks to all its abilities. I think Jitte is in the same boat. It's a four-mana planeswalker, with abilities that are more relevant than I thought. It has a planeswalker-like effect of gradually building an overwhelming amount of virtual and real card advantage until it overtakes the opponent. Unlike real walkers, after all, Jitte activates multiple times per turn and at instant speed. Two mana to cast (or Stoneforge in) and then two mana to equip is not that bad of a rate for the versatility that Jitte actually provides.
While I remain skeptical of the Muta swap, I hear dude on snipping the Opts. These decks certainly walk a fine line when it comes to interacting versus cantripping, and mustn't spend too much time treading water; at their bests, our cantrips should fuel our gameplans, not overshadow them. I may have overestimated Stormwing's vulnerability without instant-speed cantrips protecting it at all times; many Modern decks don't run 4 Lightning Bolt.
So is the creature worth three mana? Absolutely, just as Tarmogoyf is—er, 
Allow me a moment to extoll the virtues of Mishra's Bauble. In my first Stormwing Delver build, I omitted the artifact, fearful of running too many non-instants or sorceries lest I'd have trouble powering out the bird. But Bauble and Stormwing actually play very nice together.
Then there's Bauble's palpable synergy with Stormwing. As it does with Delver of Secrets, which Bauble 
When it comes to one-ofs and bullets in general, I think this deck is poised to take advantage of a wealth of options. Between Serum, Bauble, and Traverse-chaining Entities, we have access to plenty of library manipulation, making it quite achievable to find niche answers as needed.
Mutagenic Growth is a holdover from my original Stormwing Delver build. While it was phenomenal with Hooting Mandrills, it's still great with Stormwing and Goyf, and I really like the ability to dig for it with a landed Stormwing and a Serum, Manamorphose, or Bauble to beat Bolts.
When Twin was 
However, those exist too. The most recent addition is Conspicuous Snoop and Boggart Harbinger, which I've already 
seeing lots of play on the basis of being new and exciting rather than necessarily good. Time will tell if Snoop was just a flavor of the month or the real deal.
Ignoring the superficial differences in color and combo, the gameplan is the same for both decks. Both Twin and Inverter are interaction-heavy control-combo hybrids playing a tempo game. Twin's is entirely reactive, focusing on counterspells, while Inverter has proactive discard, but their purpose is the same: break up the opponent's gameplan until the combo is assembled. These are primarily interactive decks; they just win via combos, rather than finisher-type creatures like Baneslayer Angel.
Probably because Inverter is not replicating Twin's success in Modern. Granted, it is fairly new and is picking up more results, but most of those are League 5-0s. 
While I think the decks are viable and reasonable in Modern, the evidence does back up that "They all suck!" assessment from earlier, at least in comparison to what Twin used to be. The most common explanation I hear is that Modern has moved on. The other answers and threats are so much better now than in Twin's heyday that its style of Magic is simply outclassed. Fatal Push, Assassin's Trophy, and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath didn't exist back then. This line of thought seems to conveniently ignore that Teferi, Time Raveler and Veil of Summer also didn't exist in 2015.
Relic of Progenitus), the only thing that matters is resolving Oracle. If that happens, Inverter wins, end of story. It's a far more robust combo than Twin in that sense.
I think the problem is format speed. Pioneer is not a very fast format. Mono-Red is a good deck there, but it's got nothing on Modern Burn or Prowess. Humans regularly kills on turn four, and every combo deck is at least that fast. Inverter can hit on turn three with Eldrazi Temple, setting up a turn four Oracle, but that requires a lot to go right. It's more common to go for the combo on turn five or later in Modern. In Pioneer, there's far more time to get set up, and so this more ponderous combo is more threatening.
