Modern Tiered List Weekly Update for 7/1/17

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EverythingIsK

3 July 2017

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Hey, hi, and howdy everyone, Zac Pinales here for this week's Modern Tiered List update. This week had a ton of movement for a few decks. This is caused by 2 GPs and an Open (3-star events) to have left the monthly rotation of decks in our data. When this happens, we see which decks fell victim to Flavor of the Month™. Here's the spreadsheet with your weekly fresh dose of Modern meta info:

Probably the epitome of Flavor of the Month™, GWx Company decks (not counting decks with Retreat to Coralhelm) TANKED. I almost brought myself to adding another tier of arrows to trending to appropriately communicate the levels of dunk this deck had taken. The deck lost 44 points in one week, 30 of which came from 10 entries at GPs and Opens last month. This makes someone just looking at numbers on a sheet wonder, how can a deck like that get slammed so hard? The answer is HypeⓇ, a product by Flavor of the Month™. The main components that contributed to this kind of turnout was a new combo between two cards that require an immediate response, cards that make finding this combo easily (Collected Company, Chord of Calling, Duskwatch Recruiter  ^Flip, etc.), and all of these cards being relatively cheap to obtain/ abundant in supply. Without disruption, the deck can win as early as turn 3. However, looking at the decks above it, they either have interaction with what the Company player wants to do (Death's Shadow variations, Abzan, Eldrazi Tron to an extent, etc.) or are even faster and/or more consistent than that player (Storm, Burn, Dredge, Affinity, etc.). While its infinite mana combo is game-winning, being a creature-based combo deck in Modern is far too creature-removal heavy for strategies to thrive for long periods of time. Fair and Midrange decks eat decks like these as a mid-morning snack. You can now find this deck at the cusp of Tier 2/3. As much as I dislike the deck, I have a hunch it'll settle more into the lower parts of tier 2 from here out.

Please don't take the above paragraph as, “don’t bother packing hate cards for it anymore.” This is how you get cheesed at events. People will still play the deck. And as such, players should still see a deck that can win on turn 4 as a threat if they don't have the right tools against it as a threat.

Other decks on a slope include Dredge and Abzan. Dredge is facing what Storm was facing in recent week in the form of with copious amounts of hate cards. The only reason it hasn’t fallen too far out of favour is that its matchups with the other top decks in the formats are still very strong, as it is still as quick as ever if you don’t have the cards to deal with it in hand. Abzan on the other hand, I am not terribly sure as to why it’s faltering as much as it has. Overall it has good matchups against the field, barring big mana decks like Tron variants and Titanshift.

So with a number of decks that dropped, decks had to rise. Starting in Tier 2, UW Control surged to the teetering point of Tier 1/2. The deck has had quite a few changes in recent weeks. This deck's success revolves around how it can constantly adapt to our forever evolving format. If the deck gets stale, it tries new things to better adapt to what is happening in the format. As true as it is also for UW’s cousin, Jeskai Control, Jeskai Control hasn’t seen the same success as UW in the last couple weeks.

Also in Tier 2, we have 2 newcomers, Humans and WB Smallpox. It brings me great joy to see these decks doing so well, especially the latter. Whether it's going wide and huge with humans or grinding the hell out of games with Smallpox, this is proof that Modern is still friendly to new competitive strategies.

Affinity players, be weary. Your metashare jumped to 8%, now shared for second with Eldrazi Tron. That only means you have a target on your head (still if you didn't already).

To close this section, I just wanted to point out a few decks in Tier 3 that did some work lately. Skred has been putting up, as its hate pieces are starting to shine once more. Jeskai Draw-Go, not to be confused with Jeskai Control, has also been seeing good bits of success by using singular win conditions + colonnades to close out games. Kudos to them.

I would like to point out a few decks that really stuck out to me while going through the 106 decks added to this week’s meta update. First off is a Bant MartyrProc deck by Lear_the_cat. This looks like a great control shell that has amazing sustain and plenty of tools at its disposal via an extensive Glittering Wish package, all of which helps it to grind its way to victory.

The final thing I have to show you for this week is a JundShift deck that is nothing I've ever seen, yet in my eyes is very innovative. So let’s take RUGx Scapeshift with Bring To Light, throw out the blue, now add the ability to “Jund'em out”, and your toolbox card is Dark Petition. What you get is this beautiful monstrosity. Hat tip to you, oRS. Love your deck.

That's all I have for you this week. Thank you for reading this far. Please be sure to drop a comment here or on Reddit. Be ready for next Monday's update for even more changes to our beloved format.