Two things you rarely see in Modern are land destruction and elemental tribal. Here, I've tried to combine the two to make a budget deck capable of destroying and disrupting your opponents mana-base while playing big, tramply, hasty creatures for an early-mid game beatdown. It's certainly not top-tier, but it has some surprisingly good matchups and you can easily take your opponents by surprise.
The Mainboard
I built this deck around cheap land destruction and fast damage. With that in mind, the core of the deck is as follows:
- Faultgrinders and Molten Rains serve as the land destruction, while also packing some damage. Use these to target dual lands, mutavaults, or tron pieces. You'll try to avoid casting Faultgrinder normally though, and instead use it alongside what's probably the second most important piece of this deck:
- Incandescent Soulstoke makes the deck tick. It lets you cheat your
Nova Chaser
s and Faultgrinders into play early, allowing you to kill lands on the cheap or get in for quick damage. Combined with a
Nova Chaser
in hand and a Flamekin Harbinger on the battlefield, you can be searching your library for 10/2 tramplers every turn.
- The aforementioned
Nova Chaser
is your main beatdown boy. He can come in with haste off of a Soulstroke, champion a Harbinger, hit for big numbers, and then get tutored back out to do it again.
I also have a set of Flamekin Harbingers, who helps grab the elementals you need when you need them. A pair of Flings also serve as finishers, and work great when paired alongside
Nova Chaser
. For ramp, we use Simian Spirit Guides and Pyretic Rituals. Do be wary, through: against some decks, we may want to ramp out one turn later so we can have an Apostle's Blessing or Lightning Greaves to protect our Soulstoke.
The Sideboard
The sideboard is pretty simple at the moment. I have some extra land destruction in the form of Stone Rain. Ingot Chewer can replace Faultgrinder or
Nova Chaser
against artifact heavy decks, while
Wispmare
serves as enchantment hate. Shriekmaw can come in for Faultgrinder,
Nova Chaser
or even Lightning Bolt to remove big creatures.
Matchups
Land destruction is, by definition, strongest against decks with greedy, unstable mana-bases. If you start hitting their lands turns 3 and 4, you can sometimes lock an opponent out of playing most of their hand. Tron is particularly weak to this, especially if they don't have a good draw. Similarly, combo and ramp decks are can be stalled with well-placed Faultgrinders. This can buy you time to hit with your big creatures while your opponent flounders.
Weak matchups are against decks with lots of cheap spells, like Infect and Burn. Jund falls into that category somewhat, depending on their draws. Sideboarding is key here - your Apostle's Blessings need to be ready to protect your creatures from the inevitable lightning bolts when battling Jund, while Shriekmaw might be more useful against more creature-based decks.
Possible Additions
If I had the money, I'd want a set of Blood Moons, because they fill a nice spot in the curve while denying the mana-bases of so many modern decks. Spellskite would be a much more flexible (and expensive) replacement Lightning Greaves and Apostle's Blessing. Also, Liege of the Tangle might be a powerful addition to the deck, but I'm not sure if I'll be in the position where I want to be using my lands to attack with instead of for mana.
Conclusion
This deck definitely doesn't fit into the norm for Modern land destruction/disruption. With a gameplan of stalling your opponent instead of locking them completely, we're able to pack a good early-midgame punch even if we don't draw great hands, or find ourselves staring down the barrel of an Infect deck. Don't expect to win consistently with this deck though -- it's very much a budget deck. If you have any ideas for things to add or change, I'd love some constructive criticism.
