We recently received word that Wizards did not plan on banning Nadu before the next scheduled B&R on August 26th. Some of us hoped that we would be able to start the Modern RCQ season knowing exactly what decks weren't going to be allowed in the format. Some want Grief to be banned, as well as The One Ring. The no-ban announcement left the door wide open for SCG Con to be littered with a heavy Nadu Meta. This ended up being my first modern tournament, and first time playing it in paper, and it went about as well as I expected it to. I ended up dropping out after round five after falling to a two and three record, but I'm not the star of the article this time! I'll go over a little bit of my experiences in the article today, and I'll go over a deck that I believe is incredibly well-positioned. I'll save you a Google Search, and it was no surprise that things went this way. The top 5 decks of the tournament were Nadu decks. Half of the top 16 were Nadu decks. It continues to illustrate the point made by Magic players all over the world that appears to be falling on deaf ears: Nadu has to be banned. Ideally, we wish for it to happen before the Modern RCQ Season starts in early August, but it appears there will be at least three weeks of Nadu tearing up Modern Events until the next B&R. Anyhow, let's go over some other noteworthy parts of the tournament that should hopefully show some good signs to come for the Modern Format.
Reanimator combos are fun in any format - and they're especially fun when we can play them in a competitive environment. The Goryo's Vengeance Deck in Modern accomplishes that, and it makes great use of three of the five elemental creatures. Also, it reanimates Griselbrand, and who doesn't love that?
Key Combo Cards
Right off the bat, this already good deck gained a new friend when MH3 came out. We have a creature that gets big as we discard cards, and we already want to discard cards to reanimate powerful creatures. What's not to like here? If we end up with stuff in our graveyard that we do not need to reanimate, we can also give the frog flying so that it has built-in evasion. I like to think that this card is a great early gameplan for the deck that allows it to be aggressive before and during the assembly of the combo.
This is really what makes the deck work incredibly early in the game. We now have access to surveil lands, and this can allow us to get a creature reanimated onto the battlefield as early as turn two. If you want to wait until turn three so you can blink it and get around the exile trigger, you can do that too, but the deck can really pop off quickly. The fact that this spell is only two mana is beyond broken. Creatures in the format have such powerful enter the battlefield effects and attack triggers these days. Even if you don't benefit from the attack, there are multiple creatures in the deck that have lifelink, and since Goryo gives them haste, we are talking about massive lifegain very early in the game. If you can make the creature stick without it being removed, you are pummeling the opponent very early.
This is our way to get around the fact that we have to exile the creature at the end step. It is also extra relevant because most of the creatures in the deck have a very strong ability just from entering the battlefield. Since Ephemerate also has rebound, we are talking about grabbing up to 15 cards with an Atraxa, or taking up to three cards from an opponent's hand with Grief. Also, Subtlety is another one that can get pretty ridiculous with this ability. Since it can continually place cards on top of the opponent's library, there is a way to effectively timewalk the opponent for a few turns, which effectively locks them out of the game while we take over the board and win.
Key Creatures in the Deck
When I first heard that this deck can play Griselbrand and it's actually good, I immediately wanted to try it. The fact that you can give the creature haste to attack and gain 7 life, then draw seven cards with the free life you just gained is phenomenal. It basically allows you to mulligan to 3 or 4 cards and not care. Really powerful early game abilities.
Atraxa is known in every format as a bomb of a card. It's no surprise here that it's an easy target for Goryo in this deck. The enter the battlefield effect is too good to leave out. Because of the deck wanting to be able to run a mana base that allows for it to hard cast Atraxa, it even lights up one of the best removal cards in Magic: Leyline Binding. Even if Atraxa isn't going to be able to attack, or it gets removed after entering, we are still going to grab five cards. Even if you only get to do that, you effectively looked at ten cards and hand-picked three to five of them to put in your hand. That is the case, and it's hard for it to be bad that way.
We all know that this card is also facing a possible ban. Many players are calling for it, saying that it interrupts the play experience, and that getting Grief Scammed on turn one makes it really hard to win the game after that. This deck absolutely wants to play it, and it wants to blink the creature as much as possible. There is no better feeling than reanimating a ton of creatures without having to worry about any interaction, and then working towards winning the game.
Although this deck doesn't play Subtlety, there are a lot of the Goryo decks that do. It really creates a difficult situation for the opponent as they are forced to choose what cards they want to be able to keep on top of their deck, but it never really gives them a good choice. This is where the styles of the deck can vary. It appears the list from this past weekend focuses more on simply removing threats, which is also fine. I think the reason for that is because there are a lot of Eldrazi spells that have cast triggers. You don't want to let an opponent cast a card that has a strong cast effect, and then put it right back on top of their deck and let them get that same effect again the next turn. There are situations where Subtlety can lock out the game, but also situations where it could be bad. This deck opting to use Solitude definitely makes sense, but any of the element within the Esper Colors are strong in the build in their own way.Now this deck is undoubtedly strong, but it's unfortunate that it didn't have a slightly better performance over the weekend. Although it had a good win rate at 6-3, it really leaves us to wonder if it would have done a bit better without Nadu being so prevalent. Who knows, if Nadu gets banned, the Goryo's Vengeance on turn two or three could make this the fastest deck in the format!
