Sideboard


So this is Undying Retribution

The basic idea is to abuse the undying mechanic for value, speed, resiliency, and versatility as well as some cool synergies. At the very least, it is a good cheap deck you can take to an FNM and have a lot of fun with. Very capable deck and can stand toe to toe with a lot of the meta in the right hands.

As I tend to do a lot with this deck, I made another Primer (Click this link). As per usual, if you want to read up on older versions of the deck, they are in the drop downs below and on the same google doc as the link to the current primer.

If you want to see more on the deck, check out the discord!

If you are interested in seeing the old primer, I still have it here, but I'd highly recommend checking out the new primer that I made (and the subreddit if you want to learn more about the deck):

So this is Undying Retribution, please check out the PDF Primer

Check out my new primer here (PDF Download from Google Docs). Be sure to download the PDF so that Hyperlinks the work.

In the primer, there are hyperlinks that can help you quickly see why certain cards are in the deck, just make sure you download it so that the hyperlinks work. All the hyperlinks stay within the document aside from decks and cards not directly related to the deck.

I made this primer as a pdf because I am moving away from using tappedout, and pursuing other methods of outreach and community building for the deck. To do this, I can't have the primer only be compatible with tappedout. I'd highly recommend checking this primer out over the old one as it goes more in depth, is more intuitive, and has less errors than the old one.

If you want to see more on the deck, check out r/UndyingRetributionMTG, which is a community dedicated to discussion on the deck. Also, check out the discord!

If you are interested in seeing the old primer, I still have it here, but I'd highly recommend checking out the new primer that I made (and the subreddit if you want to learn more about the deck):

So this is Undying Retribution

This is an aggro deck that seeks to take as much advantage of the undying mechanic as possible. In games you will be putting many creatures in the graveyard, but you can be certainty they won't be there for long.

While the main plan of the deck is to play fast by sacrificing your undying creatures to play above curve threats, this deck does so much more. The deck has aggro games, tempo games, and control games. The deck even has a combo you can use to win the game. If you like a deck that is low to the ground, versatile, and resilient, this may be the deck for you.

The best way to explain the deck is to break it down into two parts: The engine and the cards that support, protect, and enable it.

The Engine

There are three main parts to making the deck work at maximum capacity: Undying Creatures, Sac Outlets, and Retribution of the Ancients. The deck can operate at some capacity without all of the pieces, but is very hard to stop when you have all three.

Young Wolf: With a sac outlet, it's a one mana 2/2, and is the easiest to get out early, which can allow you to get on the board and assemble the deck's engine easier as well as build a board state while dumping mana into other cards. Gains aggro decks and decks like burn, playing Retribution of the Ancients and Young Wolf with a up by turn two is the dream for stabilizing quickly.

Strangleroot Geist Amazing creature, probably the best for aggro draws. Other decks that don't try to abuse the undying mechanic even use this card because of its often a two for one that gets damage across fast. easily the easiest to sac for value because you can sac it, and still attack because it has haste. In matchups where you need to race, going turn one Carrion Feeder into turn two Strangleroot Geist has you attacking for five by turn two.

Geralf's Messenger: This card was one that I left out of the deck in previous versions for the longest time. its definitely the most awkward. It costs , which makes it a big reason why the mana base has to be so taxing, making it hard to activate Retribution of the Ancients, even if you would have enough land to do so. Being three mana also makes it hard to cast while leaving up mana for your other spells and abilities, which is extremely important for this deck. That being said this card is valuable as an undying creature, and enables some seriously powerful plays because of its unique ability to drain opponents upon entering the battlefield.

Carrion Feeder: Hands down the best sac outlet in the deck, makes the aggro plan all the much more feasible. This card also works well with Retribution of the Ancients because you can remove +1/+1 counters from carrion feeder as well as your undying creatures if need be. Without an undying creature, this card is still very good because it makes value from creatures that are already going to die and can still be a viable threat. Making +1/+1 counters without needing undying is relevant too.

Viscera Seer: This card is Carrion Feeder 5+ if you want to play it. Though my most recent versions forgo playing this card, it is definitely worth looking at because it is a good sac outlet that can help to find the other pieces to the engine as well as answers.

Village Rites: Brand new card from M21! One of the issues I cited for this deck not being as good as it could be in the past was the lack of efficient and effective sac outlets. While this is a one time use card, being able to draw two cards for one mana at instant speed means you can fade a path when your opponent would least expect it, get card advantage and help hit land drops (which I'm finding is increasingly important for the deck), and help you find the cards you need. Has been very good so far, and really helps with adding consistency to the deck. Much like the late Faithless Looting, you can keep some hands on the back of being able to cast Young Wolf into Village Rites. This card replaced some of the Eldritch Evolutions the deck previously played

Eldritch Evolution: Much like Village Rites, this is a one time use sac card that can provide an awesome advantage. The card used to be a 4 of, but it is actually very awkward in a lot of instances because it leaves you tapping out for a turn, which I have been seeing as a big deal recently. That being said, The card does allow the deck to have a toolbox of sorts out of the sideboard, and can help find high value undying creatures, or just give you the combo kill with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician if possible, so I think that it is justified to have some number of this card in the deck still.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician: This card is very good a lot of the time. you can use this card to "Reset" undying creatures by putting -1/-1 counters on them which cancels their +1/+1 counters. While you can use this ability for that, I tend to find that it is a strategy I rarely employ. Yawgmoth is more of a draw engine card than a way to advance the board like Retribution of the Ancients is, which is not the best for an aggro deck, but it is very valuable for all sorts of situations. it's second ability to proliferate is actually something that would get used from time to time in this deck, being a great thing to discard extra Retribution of the Ancients as well as other redundant cards if need be. Finally, On top of all of that, incidentally, he can just let you combo kill with opponents.

How this combo works Show

Why Yawgmoth is only a two-of Show

This information is based on what I have found during games I have played with the deck. I have gone from having four copies, to three, and then finally to two where it is today. I think that this highlights some of the key differences between how this deck, and a similar deck, Golgari Yawgmoth Chord play.

Retribution of the Ancients: This is the name-sake of the deck. I assure you, this is not some joke. This card is really good. Though this card is bad in multiples, I would venture to say that anything less than a 4-of is wrong for the deck. The most basic functionality of this card is that for just you can "reset" your undying creatures while still having the upside of potentially killing an opponent's creatures. That alone is great for the deck because it is the last part to assembling the engine of the deck, but it also does stuff cheaper, more efficiently, and oftentimes just better than other cards.

This card is literally like all of these cards but wrapped into one: Show

I cannot understate how much you want this card to be a 4-of. If you draw too many, there are ways of discarding it for value, and you can bet your opponents will want to destroy it if able. The number of times you will find this being awkward will be dwarfed by the number of times you dominate in games using it. This is not a joke, seriously, try it out if you don't believe it.

While assembling this engine is nice and all, you can't really expect to get it every game. That being said, getting at least two parts of the engine is good enough to win a lot of games.

What to expect if you don't get everything Show

The Rest of the Deck

While these cards are not a part of the engine of the deck, these cards are very important to ensuring the deck runs like a well oiled machine. These cards help to get the engine started, keep it going, and can even act as a substitute for some of the pieces of the engine if need be.

Unearth: I initially avoided using this card because this deck already does a decent amount with the graveyard (since it uses undying creatures for value), which would make this deck more susceptible to graveyard hate. But recently, I have felt that there is a need for this card. This card helps to ensure that the deck has all of the pieces of the engine. With it, you don't have to fear so much about losing your undying creatures, so the card helps you be aggressive. In a way, this card acts like a Retribution of the Ancients lite, as it helps add to the longevity of your creatures. There is also that obligatory "If your opponent has graveyard hate, you can always cycle it as well" Clause. This card has ended up becoming the glue that brings the deck together into a more resilient and cohesive whole.

Scavenging Ooze: Great card in a lot of situations, and though it is not a part of the main game plan, it is just an all star that stabilizes the board when needed. Probably the best catch-all to get from an Eldritch Evolution in the main. Also a flex slot for siding some of the specific hate cards in and out between games. This card is also very good with Retribution of the Ancients

Assassin's Trophy: Catch-all removal, deal with everything from card:Primevil Titan to Rest in Peace. Should really try to fit more into the deck because being able to deal with graveyard hate or just a must-remove threat is nice. It can be awkward to do stuff the same turn as casting it with the deck being so mana hungry, but it is a really good card. For a lot of decks, there is an argument for playing cards like Abrupt Decay and other such spells, but this deck needs ways of dealing with graveyard hate of all forms, so this being a catch-all seems especially important here to me.

Fatal Push: Must have for most black decks. just some decent creature removal that can help you tempo out games. Helps you keep the board down while assembling your engine as well.

Despite this deck truly only being two colors (without even a splash), the land base is very demanding. A probably the best way to show this is by looking at Strangleroot Geist and Geralf's Messenger. You need for Strangleroot Geist but you need for playing Geralf's Messenger. While that is the most obvious point of contention, the requirement of the manabase for this deck gets more demanding the closer you look. Just remember, you are trying to play cards like Eldritch Evolution, Strangleroot Geist, and Scavenging Ooze in a deck that's like three quarters black cards as well as trying to activate Retribution of the Ancients as much as possible in a turn. In order to make the mana base capable of consistently playing and activating these card, this deck employs the use of a few not so common land cards:

Twilight Mire: This card allows you to play basics. you can have a swamp into Carrion Feeder on turn 1 and still play a Strangleroot Geist on turn two. Though this card is not commonly used for its reputation of being clunky at times, this card makes the deck very consistent with mana.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: this card also solves some of the issues Twilight Mire solves. While the card doesn't totally fix mana problems if you have it, it is still very good since the deck is mostly black. There is also the added bonus of making Nurturing Peatland painless. You don't want more than 1 in the deck because drawing multiple is A) like drawing two swamps but worse, and B) Really bad because this land is legendary.

Nurturing Peatland: Costs life to make mana, but it makes the mana more consistent, and helps out a lot to prevent flooding too much. Gives you gas at the end of the game to get you over the edge and win.

Blooming Marsh: Fastlands are lands that not all decks play, but you will find that decks that try to be low to the ground play this land. This deck is no exception. For the same reason the deck plays Twilight Mire, the deck also wants to maximize the number of multicolored untapped lands it has at its disposal.

Overgrown Tomb + Verdant Catacombs: Past this point you start to see lands for a typical multicolored deck’s landbase. Overgrown Tomb acts as an additional untapped multicolor lands while Verdant Catacombs, being able to “fetch” Overgrown Tomb acts as additional copies of the card while both triggering revolt for Fatal Push and having the ability to “fetch” the basic forests and swamps in the deck.

Forest + Swamp: This set of lands should go without saying. You need basic lands in the deck so you don’t get destroyed by cards like Blood Moon, Path to Exile, Field of Ruin, and so on. Every deck needs basic lands, and you’ll find very few that don’t. Key interaction here is that they can act like multicolored lands with Twilight Mire, which is one of the reasons it is so good in the deck.

General Hate

Gemrazer: This is an interesting card to me. I like that you can destroy graveyard hate with this card while being a 4/4. I especially like how this card can play against graveyard hate: In situations where you face graveyard hate, you just load the board with your creatures and sacrifice them after the graveyard hate is removed. This card plays perfectly with that plan while having a lot of upside. You can mutate this card onto an undying creature, and then have the ability to sacrifice it, giving you a 5/5 reach and trample threat to go with your undying creature. A three mana 5/5 that is also anti-graveyard hate is nothing to scoff at. What I especially like about this card is that it does a lot against Anger of the Gods. Slap this guy on an undying creature and have at least some kind of protection from that card, it is also just a good creature to cast on an empty board. I side this in against all sorts of decks that you wouldn't even to because it helps keep consistent pressure on while interacting well with other decks.

Here's a list of some places this card is good: Show

Phyrexian Revoker: Tutorable all-purpose sideboard card.

Collective Brutality: Really good against a number of combo deck and decks like burn. Usually a mistake not to play this card in the 75 if you can.

Thoughtseize: Anti-combo card, also good for taking out silver bullet cards.

Silent Gravestone: Untested card, seems decent to deal with a lot of graveyard hate cards.

Silent Gravestone: deal deal with the cards that this deck has the most trouble with such as Scavenging Ooze and Surgical Extraction. Also has text vs other graveyard decks even if it is slow. This does shut down your Unearth and Scavenging Ooze, but it may be worth it.

For Grindy Matchups

Evolutionary Leap: With this card, you can pull out of grindy matchups easily, being able to draw two off of an undying creature, and even just get new creatures before one would die to removal is really nice.

Obstinate Baloth: Honestly, I am not sure why I have this card in the sideboard right now, it is a good card, and often is just a gotcha card, as well as being tutor-able burn hate, but I don't have a specific reason for playing this card over other similar ones.

Graveyard Hate

Nihil Spellbomb: Decent graveyard hate card, cycles if you don't need it.

Yixlid Jailer: Tutorable hate that you can also get back with unearth. Hits so much stuff from Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, to Conflagrate. also does not impede on your undying plan.

Additional Info

With the general overview out of the way let's talk about some of the important information about this deck:

This deck clearly gets a significant portion of the strategy shut down by graveyard hate. That being said, this deck handles it differently, and in my opinion better, than say dredge. I think that a good way to put this is by looking at some of the graveyard hate that graveyard oriented decks face between this deck and another example deck. Lets look at dredge versus thus deck:

Dredge:

This deck operates out of the graveyard. All the deck really cares about is getting a creature with dredge into the yard and then just dumping more and more cards into the graveyard through those means. Because of this, dredge concedes to modern's most potent graveyard hate such as Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace. This is because dredge can't get the payoff cards it plays out of the graveyard, let alone fill up the graveyard to utilize them as intended. While not all decks play such potent graveyard hate as Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace in the sideboard, almost all decks play cards such as Nihil Spellbomb, Scavenging Ooze, Tormod's Crypt, Surgical Extraction, card:relic of projenitus, and other cards in the 75. These cards also do a lot to significantly hinder dredges gameplan, and slow it down enough for the opposing decks to win. To combat this, almost the entire sideboard for dredge is built to combat this, playing cards like Assassin's Trophy, Pithing Needle, Blast Zone, and Ancient Grudge. This is where dredge has the bulk of its issues, with the deck wanting to play out of the graveyard, dredge is forced to play hate cards out of the hand, which doesn't further the decks strategy or set it up to "go off" following the removal of such spells. This is where I would like to talk about how dredge deals with Grafdigger's Cage This card is uniquely just okay, or usually not enough on its own against dredge if the deck can answer it. This is because while the card does put a hard stop on the deck pulling creatures out of the graveyard, dredge can still put them in there, allowing the deck to set up for a big turn, remove the Grafdigger's Cage when it matters most, and proceed to "go off" like there wasn't any graveyard hate there to begin with. This is where I would like to talk about how Undying Retribution would deal with graveyard hate.

Undying Retribution:

With this deck, almost all graveyard hate acts as a Grafdigger's Cage. This is because this deck plays cards out of your hand for its game-plan rather than directly out of the graveyard. Much like how dredge can stockpile the graveyard with creatures to bring back under a Grafdigger's Cage, Undying Retribution can stockpile creatures onto the battlefield, attack, block, and do whatever, and if the situation arises that the graveyard hate is removed, you can just take off as though the graveyard hate was never there. While your opponents can play removal spells to full effect while you are facing say a Rest in Peace, you still have access to all of the same sacrifice value with Village Rites or sacrificing to Carrion Feeder for value in response to a removal spell. The deck still operates to some capacity under graveyard hate, and unlike dredge, you don't have to hope you get anti-graveyard hate cards in your opening hand or have to choose between developing you strategy and trying to draw the much needed removal. While this deck does struggle a lot with graveyard hate, it is not nearly as bad as other graveyard-centered decks.

More Specifics

With that comparison out of the way, Here is how Undying retribution deals with graveyard hate on a case-by-case basis:

TBA

I get it. Looking at the deck, it almost looks like a Yawgmoth Deck with an identity crisis. I'm just adding this to show that- well, this is just a different deck. I am also keeping this as relevant info for the time being just in an effort to guide discussion. When trying to get opinions from others on the deck, they always talk about it as though it lives in the yawgmoth combo decks' shadow.

With that said, let's start with what Golgari Yawgmoth Chord actually is. Golgari Yawgmoth is a creature based toolbox deck that is built to be versatile, opting to accelerate into being able to cast cards like Chord of Calling to get desirable cards, and combo off using Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, or just get value through it's card draw ability and sacrificing undying creatures and mana dorks. I would also like to state that though this deck was previously played on the competitive scene, the deck relied on Once Upon a Time to be consistent enough to operate, and is no more of a deck than this one following the banning of that card.

Given that information, I would like to show how these decks are geared for their separate, respective play-patterns. in Golgari Yawgmoth Chord, the deck goes wide with mana dorks and attempts to get the Chord of Calling tutor effects online as fast as possible. Retribution of the Ancients does not slot into that strategy for a number of reasons:

1) Playing it lowers the number of creatures (most likely mana dorks and toolbox targets) in the deck. This hinders the plan of being able to get a Chord of Calling or Yawgmoth, Thran Physician online as fast as possible because this card in place of a creature that would be producing mana. On top of that, you can't even search for Retribution of the Ancients off of a card like Chord of Calling if you wanted it.

2) This card does not play with mana dorks well at all. The only thing these things can do for each other is have the mana dorks produce mana for Retribution of the Ancients. If they are the only two cards on the board, you accomplished nothing. This is signifigant because mana dorks take up a large portion of the deck since they play a good role as early acceleration and late sacrifice fodder for Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

3) If you have retribution out, how are you going to get value off of it? The only sac outlet in the Golgari Yawgmoth Chord deck is yawgmoth, and at that point the deck is doing what it wants anyways.

As for this deck, playing mana dorks and tutor-spells like Chord of Calling just doesn't make sense. By sacrificing your undying creatures when you play them, you have a one mana 2/2, a two mana 3/2 with haste, and a three mana 4/3 that deals four damage on etb. by playing say card:finally of devastation, you're playing a three mana vanilla 2/2, four mana 3/2 with haste, and a five mana 4/3 that drains for four. That is just bad. The only tutor-spell that is in the deck is Eldritch Evolution because at worst when you cast it, you get Geralf's Messenger, which is on curve for that mana cost. Even then it is just a two-of because it is three mana.

Alongside that point, in order to be able to think about the undying creatures as above curve threats, the deck plays more and cheaper sac outlets than just Yawgmoth, Thran Physician such as Carrion Feeder. Because your sac outlet starts at one mana rather than four, the deck is able to think about the undying creatures in such a way. With this play style in mind, having Retribution of the Ancients makes a lot of sense. By being able to sacrifice creatures early and generate +1/+1 counters, you can easily see how Retribution of the Ancients just bolsters this strategy, doing all of the things I mentioned above and more very efficiently.

As a summation to these points, this deck plays to the board and is built around leveraging Retribution of the Ancients, while the Golgari Yawgmoth is built around leveraging Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. This deck also plays Yawgmoth, Thran Physician to have the ability to play like a Golgari Yawgmoth Chord deck as an option to play towards during games or to have an out during games, but first and foremost, this deck is abusing the power of the synergies the deck has with Retribution of the Ancients.

Mainboard

Abundant Growth: Protect against effects like Blood Moon, letting the deck not only be able to operate under some capacity in the wake of it, but also letting the deck play answers to the card since most of the answers in the deck require multiple colored mana to cast.

Aether Vial: This is a card that already sees play in Yawgmoth Chord, and could potentially solve issues like the deck needing to tap out and go shields down in a sense in order to cast undying threats like Geralf's Messenger. This could also aid the deck in improving the mana situation as well as help under a Blood Moon, though the diversity of cost for the threats the deck is playing as well as the fact that it cant help activate Retribution of the Ancients or cast the other non-creature spells the deck plays (probably the most needed ability under Blood Moon).

Sideboard

Pharika's Libation: this would be a way to deal with Blood Moon as well as just being good as an edict effect.

Plague Engineer: Tutorable silver bullet card. I really need to find room in the deck for this card.

Collector Ouphe: Tutorable silver bullet for some artifact based decks. Also deals with cards like card:Relic of Projenitus and Nihil Spellbomb if you expect to see it.

Fulminator Mage: I really want to add this card to the sideboard. After taking out Damping Sphere, I feel that the deck could use a little bit of tron hate. Having one of these just makes it so you can tutor it up, sacrifice it, and even do it again with Unearth. This also deals with scapeshift decks and problematic utility lands.

Fiend Artisan: This is a card that got a lot of hype, but it seems that even the decks that could use this card the most effectively don't want it. If this card were to be played in this deck, it would just be a 1/1 or a 2/2 more often than not, and it would mostly be used as a sac outlet to get toolbox cards. Unfortunately this card is underwhelming given that reality, and the fact that you cannot activate a summoning sick artisan makes it all the much worse here.

Cabal Therapist: This is a card that has some amount of promise. It is a sac outlet, though it is clunky, if the ability could be activated the same turn this card was played, the card would be much better, and it is hard to get this to line up and actually take cards out of the opponent's hand while getting value until like turn three. While I have seen this card performing well, I do not think that it is fast enough for what this deck wants to do.

Priest of Forgotten Gods: This is actually a great card in my opinion, it is a wonderful sac outlet that gives additional reach, ways to kill hard to defeat creatures, mana for explosive turns with retribution, and card draw. This card is seriously amazing when it works, and has turned many games around the times that I have used it. That being said it has problems that lead me to take it off the list: Being a 1/2, it has an unimpressive body, which means it does nothing to advance the board state for the first turn it’s out, and when you can't activate it. it is extremely susceptible to removal, drawing it from opponents, meaning it rarely survives long enough to do anything. If you could only activate it the turn it came out, this would be a very reasonable card to run.

Butcher Ghoul: I wish more undying creatures existed, there's really only the three in this deck that are close to modern playable, and I almost want to play this guy at times to up the undying creature count, but two mana for a 1/1 with no other abilities is just bad. Even when you sacrifice him, he is just a two mana 2/2. Not worth it.

Chord of Calling: Good modern card, not for this deck. If you want to play this card in this deck, then you're in luck, there is a similar deck that has had more success than a list like this called Golgari Yawgmoth Chord, a value toolbox deck centered around using these types of cards and mana dorks to generate value and combo off with undying creatures and Yawgmoth. Just this deck doesn't really want these types of effects.

I am not sure how much I remember, but this is generally how the deck came to be the way it is now plus or minus a few chronological errors. It all started with an evolve zoo deck that would play cards like Experiment One, Cloudfin Raptor, undying creatures, and cards like Rapid Hybridization to make a critical mass of cheap 3/3 or 4/4 creatures. When Retribution of the Ancients came out, I added it to the deck along with Avatar of the Resolute, but it was still 3 colors. The deck later morphed into a more casual golgari deck that played Greenbelt Rampager, Pelt Collector, and Narnam Renegade. That was also the second deck I posted to this website. At this point, It was very clear to me that the deck was split between multiple strategies that both worked if you had drawn either of them, but was just clunky most the time, so I made a stompy deck and an undying + Retribution of the Ancients based deck out of it. At this point, I thought that I couldn't really do much for the undying deck with the current card pool, so I left the deck like that for a while. After not looking at the deck for a while, I remember seeing a few lists that reminded me of this project, and saw some cool ideas like playing Eldritch Evolution for value with undying creatures. Around this time I stumbled upon another user named skookes (Check Skooke's Deck out by the way). We bounced ideas off of each other and we both made lists that tried to abuse this synergy. I began to take this deck seriously, and around this time I think I made and posted my second version of the deck under a new name, Undying Aggro 1.0. A little bit later, Modern Horizons came out, giving the deck Carrion Feeder and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. This boosted the deck, but with the climate of the meta that came with the set, I did not do much in the way of magic: the gathering for this period. After that, I saw the deck deck, Golgari Yawgmoth Chord, get to the competitive scene. I began to play the deck more, seeing it as a fun, yet casual deck given the existence of Golgari Yawgmoth. Golgari Yawgmoth Chord felt like the most correct version of the deck because it seemed to deal with the lack of existing playable cards much better than what I had brewed up. Following the ban of Once Upon a Time, Yawgmoth Chord fell out of favor on the competitive scene, but I continued to play this deck because it was more of a fun deck than a competitive one. It did powerful things, but very often I was left feeling like the deck just needed more pieces to work well and be consistent. By this point is the deck you see here (barring the significant changes made over time). This just about brings the deck up to present day. Over the past year, I began to feel more confident in this decks power. I began to take the deck seriously again, streamlining it as well as adding new cards as they came out. Most recently, the card Village Rites has really helped the deck a decent amount. Now I can say I feel confident in the deck's power, and it is only up from here. I hope you stick along to see how this deck evolves even more.
In playing the deck, I have found that there are some areas that the deck could definitely be better with the ability deal with these issues efficiently. Here is what I have found playing the deck:

  • While this deck can grind out a lot of decks, I find that some decks can achieve a decent mix of being able to grind and put on pressure. If there were a way to gain life while still contributing to the decks strategy, the deck could be massively improved. I cannot think of a card to put into the deck that can solve this issue. Most of the cards that would help I feel are already in the deck (being Scavenging Ooze, Blood Artist, and Lurrus of the Dream-Den).

  • This deck struggles a lot with Blood Moon because of the greediness of the manabase, that being said, this deck should had a lot of ways to deal with it. Trouble is that all of the answers the deck has to this card requires two or more colored mana. This makes it very unfeasible to deal with the card while playing the deck. if there were a card that can be worked in with the deck that only requires only one colored mana (maybe Pharika's Libation?), I feel like the deck could deal with Blood Moon more effectively. Another idea I had to dealing with this issue is including the card Abundant Growth, which can help to iron out the mana issues that the deck regularly faces while helping to protect non-basic lands from Blood Moon.

  • Anger of the Gods is also a tough card to face up against, that being said there are a few ways to deal with the card that are already in the deck. I feel like this may be an area that is covered by the deck (the inclusion of Gemrazer, Having Carrion Feeder, and discard spells out of the sideboard), though I need to actually get testing to see if it is enough.

So That's the Deck

I hope you liked it. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for the deck, if you spotted any mistakes in this description, or if you have any formatting suggestions.

Also, if you could share this deck with someone else and Upvote so this deck gets a little bit more exposure, that would be greatly appreciated as well. You can see by my update history on this deck that I am actively trying to find new cards, test, and update the primer.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

Format [Card] - Reason for not playing it Main: Eldritch Evolution - Most the deck is low curve and individually unimpactful cards, so this card does not suit the deck well. Competes for 3 drop slot as well

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician - Too expencive. Very powerful, but much more suited in the yawgmoth deck. In this deck you want to play a cheap and easy to activate sac outlet and immediately use it to get value from your other cards

Forest - Deck does not want exclusively green sources, if it cant produce black, it can significantly hinder the manabase

Side: Necroplasm - Kills tokens, fun synergy with retribution, and easy to control with sac outlets, minimal testing, taken off to improve other matchups

Knucklebone Witch - Alternate win con/to combat infinite combos such as heliod by milling opponents out

Cards I Would Advise Against, But Not Tested Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth - Deck does not want exclusively green sources, if it cant produce black, it can significantly hinder the manabase. Having all of your lands be able to cast a lot of Strangleroot Geist isnt especially useful either given how the mana tends to work out.

Plumb the forbidden

Deadly Dispute

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire

tba

Suggestions

Updates Add

Updates to the land base: Well, as usual after a lot of deliberation, I decided that this deck is primarily black deck. While the deck is still very clearly a 2-color deck, the proportion of the mana requirements for this deck are skewed more to requiring black than green. this is a huge distinction. While the deck needs double green by turn 2, and uses a lot of green mana, most of the mana you will be spending is black is the idea. So why does this matter? It’s time we reevaluate the mana base.

While it may seem like a corner case situation, I have lost too many games that should have otherwise been heavily skewed my way due to having a land that could not produce black mana. This brings me to the foundational idea behind this set of changes: the deck is no longer playing basic forests. This is a big change to make, for one, there is no painless way to get instant green mana off of a fetch land, and the deck can no longer cast gemrazers and young wolves underneath blood moon among many other things. So why make this change? Well, as stated earlier, this deck is primarily black, with less green requirements albeit the cards being played require more than normal green mana. This means that in a lot of cases, basic forest doesn’t produce mana, so you are basically stone raining yourself. This may seem like a corner case situation, but when you’re playing a deck where ideally your opening hand has 2 lands in it and you expect to play the first 3 to 4 turns with only those 2 lands, you can see how many hands have to get shipped back when you draw the basic forest. Moving beyond opening hands, lot of play revolves around leaving black mana open for village rites and retribution of the ancients, so when having 2 or 3 lands, casting spells and being able to hold up mana for these plays quickly becomes something you have to choose between. Even going into the late game, when you have your engine up and are trying to use it over the course of several turns, not being able to use that mana if you have a forest becomes a huge issue. Looking at things this way, you can see that not being able to produce mana doesn’t affect you in just one turn, but multiple, meaning you lose out on a lot of mana over the course of several turns. This kind of tempo loss and mana disadvantage is not something you can afford in modern, especially when playing a deck like this, where mana needs to be used as efficiently as possible to keep in the game.

But what about Urborg and the filter lands? These cards are great, and helped to remedy the problem, but also made it harder to accurately identify for a long time. Relying on these lands to make your forest a usable card for most of the deck presents a lot of issues. What are the odds that your 2 land opening hand has both a basic forest and one of these lands? Relying on something like this also gives your opponents another angle of attack that makes you vulnerable in another way, your lands. If you have a forest and an urborg in play, or a a forest, twilight mire, and any other land, you can see how just one spreading seas or stone rain basically takes you out 2 lands. While these lands are good, and still have a spot in the deck to help make double green off of your swamps in the case of twilight mire, or give you access to painless mana off of nurturing peatland, fetches, and an easier way to utilize your twilight mires in the case of urborg, relying on them to make a land work in your mana base just isn’t something you can do.

With that, heres the changes: -2 forests, +1 Overgrown Tomb, +1 Verdant Catacombs

It is also worth noting that now the deck supports and black fetch now that you will only be fetching lands that are swamps, so that’s nice for budget reasons if you don’t specifically have verdant Catacombs. Outside of that, the deck is the same as before with some minor changes to the sideboard.

These changes also mean that unfortunately, any cool lands or utility lands that are green compete for a flex slot instead of just being fun of shoe-ins, so no yavimaya, cradle of growth (doesn’t help much anyways), no Boseiju, Who Endures, and no Pendalhaven sadly unless you want to cut one of your spells. That said, it may be worth looking into black utility lands such as Takenuma, Abandoned Mire, though generally, I think the landbase is good as it is, since in practice you generally are able to use all your lands when you have them.

Some notes on the sideboard: I think it might be worth looking at replacing dauthi voidwalker in the side for leyline of the void, since most decks that dauthi voidwalker is played for are built to answer the card, where leyline is much harder for those decks while letting you keep to your gameplan instead of devoting a lot of mana in the early game to interact with the graveyard.

While Necroplasm is certainly cool, and I would like to test it more, I think I found a better use for the slot in another piece of graveyard hate. I am finding that rhinos is not as bad of a matchup than I thought, and I could devote the slot to more graveyard hate or lifegain to hedge against burn.

All of this may seem like a lot of thought for a bunch of little changes, but you can see how going through these edits over time these changes go from being one or 2 cards, to more and more. Looking back at what the deck used to be, the current deck is much more streamlined and focused. Its odd to think that this deck used to play 2 yawgmoths, or 2 basic forests, no butcher ghouls, even no gemrazers, no deadly brews, no viscera seers, and if only my update history went back to before I took this deck seriously as a viable modern deck, none of the cards that I would say make this deck what it is today. Looking at how the deck has evolved; a lot has really changed. These deliberate changes over time really add up, and I can’t wait to see how the deck changes in the future.

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Casual

97% Competitive

Top Ranked
  • Achieved #35 position overall 3 years ago
  • Achieved #6 position in Modern 3 years ago
  • Achieved #1 position in Modern Aggro 3 years ago
  • Achieved #1 position in Modern Competitive 3 years ago
Date added 3 years
Last updated 1 year
Exclude colors WU
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.

Rarity (main - side)

29 - 10 Rares

8 - 0 Uncommons

21 - 5 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 1.69
Folders Undying, Primers, Decks I like from other users, Future Brew, Modern Interest, Inspirations, insumo, Fun Deck To Try, This is just neat, Modern Decks
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