Eldritch Moon brought with it some goodies for Spirit tribal, enough I think to have a fun deck to play around with in Modern. The Esper colors it so easily aligns with allows the ability to have control, disruption, and kill spells. I definitely think this is a fun tempo/control sort of deck. Would love to hear your thoughts below!
Win Condition(s): In my mind we've three win conditions of sorts. Here they are in no particular order: 1. Beat down with Geist of Saint Traft. Not strong, but is evasive with the hexproof. Doesn't take long for his angel to start doing work. 2. Go wide with Lingering Souls and
Drogskol Captain
. Lots of flying, hexproof 2/2's are tricky to deal with. 3. Gain indestructible off of a
Selfless Soul
and then Supreme Verdict your opponent. This one is a bit more "cute" but is bound to happen at least some of the time (totally not living in Christmasland...).
Creatures
Mausoleum Wanderer
is our version of Cursecatcher only it has the potential to scale with spirits that we put onto the battlefield (more on that later)
Rattlechains
is one of our buddies from SOI. He can flash in to save someone from targeted removal, and allows us to flash more spirits in once he's resolved (this allows for a big Masoleum Wanderer to steal a spell from our opponent). Spell Queller is a solid flier, that removes one of our opponents spells of any kind. Really nice to have 8 mainboard counter creatures between this and wanderer. Geist of Saint Traft is just a really strong hitter for us. Able to cause a lot of damage even if he only gets in once or twice.
Drogskol Captain
is our lord giving our spirits hexproof and +1/+1. Just really helpful for us in battle obviously.
Nebelgast Herald
helps us keep our opponent tapped down and allows us to get in for more damage. Since none of our creatures are all that big, this is extremely helpful in getting that last bit of damage in.
Selfless Soul
can protect our creatures from removal, but it can also combine to win-con with Supreme Verdict.
Flash This deck is very evasive through flying and hexproof, but it's only really good if you have the ability to flash them in. That's why I'm running 3 Aether Vial in addition to our 4 Rattlechains. Aether Vial also helps us stay out in front mana wise.
Card Draw I'm running a playset of Serum Visions in this deck because this deck feels very hatebears-lite in a way and my struggle with every hatebears deck I play is that they are so dependent on blind draws. Serum Visions helps us set up our draws a little better.
Utility We have 8 mainboard ways of countering (4 of which leave a body on the field for us). I'm running 4 Path to Exile in the mainboard, but those can be sloted out for card disruption if you'd rather. Deck is able to run enough disruption/counter/kill to keep the board clear for swinging in.
Land Just want to highlight a few of the lands here.
Moorland Haunt
allows us to generate more spirits if we need them. Good way to buff a Masoleum Wanderer before sacking it. I'm only running one of them though because I'd rather have 2 Vault of the Archangel. I'd rather draw the ability to give my spirits deathtouch for added killing power and lifelink to be able to live longer. Cavern of Souls also allows us to bring in spirits that can't be countered, adding to our board state.
Sideboard We have a few spirits that you typically see in Hatebears decks. They help us with various match-ups and get buffed by Drogskol so they become even greater in our deck. Kira, Great Glass-Spinner is also a really nice draw for us. She gets buffed and can really slow our opponent down, making them have to two for one our creatures for targeted removal.
It's not a top tier deck, but I think it'll be lots of fun to play with. There's a case to be made for something like Always Watching in this deck. I'd love to hear what you think about the deck, what works and what doesn't. Let me know below. Thanks for reading!
