There’s an atmosphere of hope in Magic: The Gathering’s Modern format right now. A format-warping card, The One Ring, was cast into the fire, and the dominant energy decks were nerfed a little bit more with Amped Raptor copping a ban. While it’s still too early to draw any strong conclusions, so far one deck has seen a significant victory in the post-ban meta: Kethis Combo.
This week the Modern MTG format is a bit of a brewer’s paradise. There’s always a period of excitement and uncertainty when the Magic: The Gathering banlist changes – as the dust settles and new cards rise to take the place of the old. But with Mox Opal, Splinter Twin, Faithless Looting, and Green Sun’s Zenith unbanned in the very same update, this time there’s the added wrinkle of lots of new toys to play with.
So far, MTG Online has had two Modern Leagues and one Modern Challenge since the ban update which we can use to take stock of the shifting meta.
It’s going to take a while for players to find and optimize fresh strategies for the newly unbanned cards, so at first we’d expect the tried and true archetypes to perform well. Sure enough, first and second place in the December 17 Modern Challenge went to a Murktide Regent and Goryo’s Vengeance deck respectively, neither of which played any of the new cards.
But things get interesting when we look at the third place deck. It’s a Kethis of the Hidden Hand build, running four copies of Green Sun’s Zenith. This card is included in the deck to ensure you can get out your only green creature, Kethis, the most important part of your combo.
Kethis lets you play Legendary permanents from the grave if you exile a few first, and Standard players may remember him with fond (or not so fond memories). He’s back to his old tricks in Modern now, this time using Jace the Perfected Mind as a powerful source of repeated mill. The -X ability on this MTG planeswalker can take 9-15 cards out of an opponent’s library in one fell swoop, after which you can simply recast Jace from the grave to do it all again.
That’s the big outlier in the Modern Challenge, but looking at the Leagues we see players going 5-0 with all kinds of strange and interesting builds.
Perhaps a little discouragingly, Boros or Mardu Energy decks with Ragavan or Orcish Bowmasters to replace the Raptor, and Unstable Amulet or Fable of the Mirror Breaker to fill the space left by The One Ring are doing very well, but did anyone really expect that deck to be killed off so easily?
Elsewhere in the lists, all four unbanned cards made an appearance. Someone went 5-0 just jamming Splinter Twin in the Boros deck. Meanwhile Faithless Looting appears in reanimation builds with Archon of Cruelty, as well as alongside its old friend Hollow One.
Both it and Mox Opal also show up in a Grinding Station mill deck that gets back 0-cost artifacts with Underworld Breach. This was already a niche deck in Modern pre-ban, but the addition of Mox Opal may make it way stronger.
Opal has had a particularly strong showing, notably appearing in several artifact stuffed lists that aim to win the game with a kitted-out Kappa Cannoneer, while Green Sun’s Zenith showed up in a modified Yawgmoth list, as well as an Elementals deck running Omnath and Risen Reef.
Those are the highlights we took away from the first League results. The second batch of League data appears to still be being updated, so we’ll skip over it now.
Time will tell whether Kethis’ success was a one-off, able to take opponents by surprise thanks to its unexpected strategy, or a new top deck. Either way, we’re excited to see how Modern changes in the next few weeks.
For now though, if you want to play a format that’s not in the midst of a massive shakeup, we recommend our guide to the best MTG Arena decks. And don’t miss our MTG release schedule guide to find out when all upcoming Magic: The Gathering sets hit the shelves.
Source: Wargamer
