Making a janky standard deck modern playable
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on May 13, 2017, 4:07 p.m. by 2gherkins
So there's this card, right, New Perspectives, that is seeing play in a standard combo shell. The way that combo works is you cycle all of your cards with cycling after dropping New Perspectives (faith renewed, Shefet Monitor, and the cycle dual-lands). Sometime during this process or before this process begins, you enchant one of your lands with Weirding Wood. You then use Vizier of Tumbling Sands to untap and float as much mana as possible with the wood.
Once you've run out of most of your gas (viziers and monitors), the deck uses Shadow of the Grave to get it all back. Then rinse and repeat. Eventually, you will have so few cards in your deck and so much mana you will be able to cast Approach of the Second Sun and have it go right back to the top of your library. Cycle into it again and then recast to win.
So, modern. is a lot for a modern combo piece. The lucky thing is, the deck is built to combo off tapped out. Additionally, a modern New Perspectives deck doesn't need Weirding Wood - it can just win with Laboratory Maniac, and has extra Vizier of Tumbling Sands in the shape of Esper Sojourners , which have the added bonus of tapping our opponents lands. Modern also opens us up to Resounding Wave, which is just too. Much. Fun. We also get Angelsong, which I would consider a strict upgrade over Haze of Pollen.
So the modern deck needs to figure out what it wants to be. It has two options: it can try to ramp into its New Perspectives, or it can delay the game until it hits New Perspectives. Any thoughts on where I should take this?
There's the option to play a BUG shell with Kiora's Follower, Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, Garruk Wildspeaker, Kiora, Master of the Depths, etc. With that much ramp, you can easily get a turn 3 New Perspectives. You then cycle through your deck and go for the kill via Laboratory Maniac.
The other thing is the mana ramp lets you actually cast the expensive cycle cards. As in, you can start stealing your opponent's shit with Lay Claim or beat faces with Shefet Monitor.
The other thing I was thinking of is with Shadow of the Grave, it's not just when you cycle cards, but whenever you discard anything. This opens up options for things like Worm Harvest, Greater Good, Raven's Crime, Cathartic Reunion,Conflagrate, and so on. The only downside is needing mana because they don't benefit from New Perspectives.
May 14, 2017 1:12 a.m.
Anyone come up with a good prototype yet? I really want to abuse this in Modern!
MollyMab says... #2
I was discussing this very same thing with a friend.
I think your best win con is probably Conflagrate. This puts you into Grixis, for all the cycle value and pay off, you can also try and get extra value out of Karoo lands, and because you discard, you can Con for say 10, recurr, and con again for lethal.
May 13, 2017 5:33 p.m.