>Message Be Gone<
First, in order to understand this deck, you must have intimate knowledge of the meta. And this is actually really easy to obtain.
This is the modern meta as classified from MTGtop8 and Modern Nexus. This makes things easier for us as we can quickly read off these to determine the meta, and if you go on MTGTop, you can click on any of the archetypes for a list of all the decks of that archetype that was played in a tournament within the time frame specified.
These lists tells us numerous things. First, it says that there are 5 T1 decks that we must sideboard against heavily, 6 T1.5 decks that we must take into consideration when sideboarding, and a bunch of tier 2 decks that we shouldn't consider too much. Please note however, that not every deck in T1 or T2 categories can be effectively dealt with, and I will go over those in more detail.
Final thing to mention as that although "top8" is a good indicator of tournaments, it is not the be-all end all. The FNM level is going to drastically differ from the Top 8 lists and you will have to use the modern sideboard list I presented to your advantage. Additionally, the Top 8 is only a list of decks that win. You are guaranteed to find more T1.5 and T2 decks like Boggles, Zoo, Living End, Infect and Life Gain than indicated here since they are budget and not everyone has the money to pay for 4 goyfs.
> Okay, onto the actual description! <
The early game plays consist of Aether Vial and mana dorks in the forms of Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise. The vial always comes first, because this way, you can play a 1 cmc creature with the Vial and a 2 cmc spell on turn two in this manner. Aether Vial speeds up our early game, provides combat tricks, and allows us to bypass control. It is particularly good in this deck because if they decide to side in artifact hate, Aether Vial is easy to come out.
Our mana base is so low because of the 6 dorks and Aether Vials. The Vials can technically be called mana dorks too, so in this we have 10 mana dorks. This deck is in fact inherently slow, because it doesn't get anywhere without the proper hate cards. The dorks and vials speed that up against aggro decks, but against slower decks the vials aren't exactly needed. While this may make some worried about the mana base, I haven't had too much problems as of yet. The slower decks I'm referring to are the midrange decks. We can use the first few turns that they are chucking discard and removal at us to find the lands to drop that one hate card that just destroys them.
Collected Company is pivotal in this deck. It is this deck's bread and butter. Why you may ask? Well, unlike a mono-green aggro deck which just uses it to pump out two creatures for one card and develop a hefty board state that takes advantage of the lack of wraths, Collected Company in this deck functions entirely different. It is basically Dig Through Time but for green decks. In this we use it not to churn out any creature, but to dig deep into our deck to find those hate cards. Eternal Witness helps us greatly in this in being able to reuse the same Collected Company over and over again till the field is full of hate cards.
Some of this deck's weaknesses have to do with flyers. As you have probably noticed, this deck doesn't contain any flyers. Why? Because there aren't any diverse 3 cmc or lower hate flyers besides Aven Mindcensor, but as of late search hate doesn't do so well in this meta. So instead, we hope that they use their flyers to chump block and/or our life gain to counteract the damage they are dealing.
Graveyard hate is my 2nd weakness, which may come as a surprise to some. The main reason being is because of Eternal Witness. This card is the bread and butter for recursion in this deck, helping me withstand against removal and discard while allowing multiple uses out of a single Collected Company.
My final weakness, and probably the most prominent, are wraths. A single wrath can just wipe my board and I can't do anything since I rely on a few specific cards to win the game. Luckily, because control is non-existent in this meta, wraths aren't a thing in a creature heavy meta like this one. The only thing we really have to worry about are the red damage wraths that are used on occasion, and
Burrenton Forge-Tender
is here for them.
Finally, a bit on the card choices. Kira, Great Glass-Spinner isn't used because A) I have so many protection from (blank) spells that it isn't really needed, B) I can't afford to run Islands when Merfolk is Tier 1 and C), I just don't have room for something that is supposed to work good against removal heavy decks, but yet dies to Abrupt Decay. I use Voice of Resurgence instead of Tarmogoyf because it has a better early game play and the tokens can get through goyfs whereas a goyf just sits and stares at a goyf. Oh, and don't forget the control match-up too. Finally, Congregation at Dawn is used over Chord of Calling because the Chord's cost is way too pricy, and I need to be able to play multiples of a hate card, like say 3 Mirran Crusaders against Junk.
List of archetypes in terms of how strong I think they are against this deck (ie, the ones at the top don't bother trying to win). This list will be constantly changing as I do more playtesting.
- Mill
- Tron
- Storm
- 8-Rack
- Bloom Titan
- Gifts Reanimator
- Griselcannon
- Skred
- Scapeshift
- Living End
- Podless Pod
- Merfolk
- Tokens
- Delver
- Jund
- UW/x Control
- Ad Nauseum
- Infect
- Affinity
- RDW
- Twin
- Junk
- Boggles
- Hate Bears
- Zoo
- Life Gain
- Dredgevine
- Mono Green Aggro
