Owling Moon

Modern Aggro Competitive Control Forcefeed Tempo UR (Izzet)

Iamme10000

Instant (12)

• 4x Boomerang
• 2x Mana Leak
• 4x Remand
• 1x Spell Snare
• 1x Vapor Snag

Enchantment (7)

• 3x Blood Moon
• 4x Fevered Visions

Artifact (8)

• 4x Arcum's Astrolabe
• 1x Ebony Owl Netsuke
• 3x Howling Mine

Sorcery (8)

• 4x Exhaustion
• 4x Serum Visions

Creature (3)

• 3x Snapcaster Mage

Land (21)

• 4x Flooded Strand
• 15x Snow-Covered Island
• 2x Steam Vents

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

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Sideboard

Sorcery (11)

• 3x Anger of the Gods
• 2x By Force
• 3x Crumble to Dust
• 3x Eye of Nowhere

Instant (3)

• 3x Gigadrowse

Artifact (1)

• 1x Elixir of Immortality

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The fatal flaw in every plan is the assumption that you know more than your enemy.

Love locking out your opponent? Like drowning in so many cards that card disadvantage is no longer relevant? Control decks got you down? Searching for something a touch more classy (or cruel) than the run of the mill aggro deck? Trying to find a Modern Red deck that doesn't use Lightning Bolt? Look no further.

Built on the concept of tempo above all else, Owling Moon aims to do one simple thing: Cram as many cards as possible down your opponent's throat, all while bouncing spells and lands to keep your foe's board presence minimal or nonexistent. A fine tuned disruption machine, your goal is a constant soft lock game of disruption and tempo, all the while keeping the cards (and tears) flowing.

Without further ado, the breakdown.

Mana Base

The mana base of this deck is interesting because you need to both allow access to blue at all times, and red on occasion, as well as coping with Blood Moon . Thus: Islands and fetchlands, with little room for anything else.

Island : You need . With Blood Moon, the only way to get it is Islands. Therefore, play Islands. This deck is also heavily skewed towards blue, so you can afford to play a bunch of islands.

Flooded Strand : Fetchlands are still important. Sufficiently so that they get four-of still. As to why Scalding Tarn is not used in Izzet, the answer is that Scalding Tarn costs eighty dollars, and Flooded Strand costs fifteen.

Steam Vents : Still fine with drawing these guys, but keep it is less useful than here, so you'll be fine with just islands and islands don't get you locked out.

Core Components

These things are our win conditions. You need these to even think about keeping a hand, and if you don't get at least a couple of these, you're virtually always dead meat. This is what makes this deck actually function, as opposed to just drowning in card disadvantage.

Howling Mine : You're playing four of these. These lovely little buggers fuel your engine of overwhelming card availablity, at the cost of tempo. However, if you care about that, go play Jeskai Control. This deck attacks tempo, not card advantage.

Ebony Owl Netsuke : The bread to Howling Mine's butter. The other card that helped define the Owling Mine archetype back in original Ravnica, you just can't go wrong with the Owl. This is your endgame, locking the opponent out allows you to use the Owl to strip away their life total with startling speed. Usually, you play a four-of, because you need it to actually close out games, but I've opted for only one. This slows the deck down, and loses it reach, but thanks to the following card, the end game is all mine:

Fevered Visions : This little bugger does it all. A hard-to-hit enchantment that both bleeds life away and creates a choking miasma of card influx to clog up your opponent? Sign me up. Allows us to play both card-draw and damage-dealing cards at the same time. This is the card that really makes this archetype viable in Modern due to its consistency in dealing damage. I still find that the Netsukes are important in closing the game out.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor : This deck suffers from lack of consistency and a hard time dealing with creatures. TMS topping your curve allows you to deal with all of those things, in addition to being another wincon. His +2 is kind of useless here, but the Brainstorm and Unsummon are good enough to warrant his inclusion. Playing three-of because he's really your main creature defense.

Tempo

The linchpin of this deck. Without these cards, it would swiftly drown in the flow of card disadvantage that it brings about. With them? Nobody is safe.

Boomerang : Old faithful. Here to keep the tempo rolling and the cards flowing. Turn 1 Island Turn 2 Island Boomerang is a lovely thing.

Eye of Nowhere : Equally faithful, but less shiny. Fills the slots and keeps the tempo. The original deck ran four, to help make sure that you bounce all the lands, but I've been finding that in Modern, it's not as good a strategy as it was in the past. Sorcery speed is just too slow, I'd rather interact and get tempo there. I may cut this all together, thanks to the next card:

Unsubstantiate : Another two copies of Remand ? Yes please. Losing the card draw is painful, but gaining the ability to counter the uncounterable and bounce creatures is very nice. Tailor-made for this deck.

Exhaustion : Free time walk. Any deck that taps out will hate you when this bad boy hits the stack. Can be used to block out a turn of mana, a turn of aggro, or both! Lovely against midrange and control (if you time it right!).

Cyclonic Rift : A simple one-of. You will rarely be able / want to cast this overloaded, but it's nice interaction and if you do manage to overload it, you've probably won.

Permission and Filtering

A slightly smaller section, but nonetheless very important. When the game goes south and your boomerangs have failed you, your counterspells will always be there for you.

Blood Moon : Sometimes, your opponent will just play too many lands for you to stop them from flooding the board. BM will shut down everything short of Red Aggro decks. If you fight one, board it out immediately, but it's so good against everything else that I think it takes the slot for now.

Remand : The one, the only, the classic. Free time walk. That's all you need to know. Doubly useful in Owling Mine thanks to the focus on keeping your opponent uselessly clutching their cards.

Snapcaster Mage : Good old snappy. He will die instantaneously, for no purpose, because your opponent will have so much removal they don't know what to do with. However, he can recast whatever spell you want from your graveyard, and that's why he's here.

Mana Leak : Sometimes, you just need a counterspell. The old tried and true, cheap enough to be relevant and potent enough to actually counter important things. There might be better counters, but if your opponent can afford to pay the , you've probably lost anyway.

Serum Visions : In this deck, it's imperative you find what you need. Visions allows you to dig deeper than pretty much anything else, and if you can find something that's a better digger for just as cheap, I'll take it.

Sideboard

Very up in the air, not a frequenter of many tourneys. If you have any suggestions, I'll take what I can get.

Anger of the Gods : Bloody aggro decks will bury you if you're not careful. Here to take out zoo, 8-whack, RDW, hatebears, anything else that's nasty, fast, and should die. Very important that this matchup is not a complete lost cause. You'll still lose though.

Ceremonious Rejection : Here for the Tron and Eldrazi matchups, both of which are awful for us. Swap out your Mana Leak for this puppy and watch them weep.

Hurkyl's Recall : You hate aggro, remember? Hurkyl's is here to remind the most aggro of decks, affinity, that you really hate aggro in a way only Owling Mine can. Three of makes Affinity very, very sad.

Crumble to Dust : Does Tron count as aggro? Anyway, this is here for Tron. Because it doesn't matter if they have only three lands if they can produce 7 mana with them. Play fair against Owling Mine, Tron.

Gigadrowse : This little bugger does it all. Locks down mana, creatures, and manlands for a turn, which is often all you need. This comes in when you're not so concerned about creatures, especially against Control decks.

Elixir of Immortality : Your cheeky post-boarding alt-wincon. Runed Halo is a common sideboard card, and with the Elixir, you can opt to simply mill your opponent to death by waiting. Also gains life against aggro decks, but that's less important.

Gameplan

Very simple. You want two things to happen in your games: your opponent to be drawing cards, and your opponent to also have no access to mana. To this effect, your hand should have:

1x Card Draw: Fevered Visions , Howling Mine .

1-2x Bouncing Betties: Boomerang , Eye of Nowhere

1-2x Permission: Remand , Gigadrowse , Horribly Awry

2-4x Lands: Anything really, but you need at least on Turn 2, and usually you want by Turn 3 or 4.

General Plan:

T1: Island , Steam Vents tapped, or Flooded Strand into either.

T2: Island, Eye of Nowhere or Boomerang . If neither is available, keep mana open for opponent's turn to either Remand or Mana Leak .

T3: Repeat T2 if you think it's needed, if you have time, Howling Mine , Fevered Visions . You don't need Ebony Owl Netsuke until either of those cards are on the battlefield.

T4+: You should be able to get a lock down by this turn. Keep following up with bounces and tempos, you should try to have Howling Mine or Fevered Visions up at this point, hopefully Ebony Owl Netsuke . Try to save Whelming Wave until they have multiple creatures.

TL;DR: Howling Mine / Fevered Visions + Ebony Owl Netsuke + Boomerang = Hilarious.

Budgeting Show

This deck is surprisingly budget-friendly. Any cards not specifically mentioned here should not be swapped out. However, the following cards do have viable alternatives, consider looking into them to be more budget-friendly!

card:Jace, the Mind Scultpor: If you happen to have a pair, go to town and slap them in. If you have a few hundred spare dollars, also go nuts. If you're looking for something more budget friendly to help you win games, the old tried and true is Sudden Impact saw the old Owling Mine deck of original Ravinca through just fine. If you still want to try a planeswalker, Chandra, the Firebrand can copy your spells or start burning through other 'walkers or weak creatures. Psychosis Crawler forfeits your no-creature build, but can easily close out a stalled-out game.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor : $135

Sudden Impact : $0.25

Chandra, the Firebrand : $3

Psychosis Crawler : $0.50

4x Scalding Tarn / Flooded Strand : These two are essentially interchangeable in this deck, the only difference being that one costs sixteen dollars a pop. However, to go even more budget, you can swap a few out for Evolving Wilds , as Turn 1 is not often important. If you do this, consider swapping out Anger of the Gods .

Scalding Tarn / Flooded Strand : $80/$15

Evolving Wilds : $0.05

3x Anger of the Gods : While rather budget-friendly, it is unsustainable without fetchlands. Instead of Anger of the Gods , try Firespout . It doesn't hit flyers, and leaves you slightly more vulnerable to Affinity, but is fine.

Anger of the Gods : $2.70

Firespout : $1.75

3x Blood Moon : Definitely not budget friendly. At $150 for a playset, this card would be the first to go when budgeting this deck up. However, it's usually not needed except against Tron and Eldrazi. Try swapping for Crumble to Dust , and hope to the gods for help, for you will need it. Last sideboard slot could be put up for a Relic of Progenitus .

Blood Moon : $43

Crumble to Dust : $0.35

Cost of Deck Core: Rest of the deck costs, minus the costs of aforementioned cards. Cost: $130

Any helpful comments or upvotes are appreciated. Specifically wondering about Cryptic Command, Unsubstantiate, and Gigadrowse. This is my first deck on this site, and my first attempt at a competitive deck. Thanks for spending your time here, and hope you enjoy this deck and your life.

Top Ranked	Achieved #41 position overall 6 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is not Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares 16 - 3 Rares 14 - 6 Uncommons 11 - 6 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.08
Folders	Competitive Modern, Izzet League strikes again!, MDN