《Keruga, the Macrosage》

《Keruga, the Macrosage》 seems like the most difficult to utilize in Modern. The format is too fast to give up early plays, and there aren’t a lot of powerful cards that exist that “cheat” the restriction. 《Brazen Borrower》 and 《Bonecrusher Giant》 still involve skipping your first turn, and Cycling cards aren’t helping with board presence. I do think that Jeskai Fires in Standard will easily pick up Keruga however, at pretty much only the cost of playing all copies of 《Aether Gust》 in the sideboard.

《Umori, the Collector》

《Umori, the Collector》 is an interesting one to think about, and at a first glance seems like it plays extremely well with artifact decks. The problem is that Modern artifact decks use payoffs that aren’t artifacts, such as 《Urza, Lord High Artificer》 or 《Emry, Lurker of the Loch》. If 《Mox Opal》 were legal I could easily see traditional Affinity builds giving up cards like 《Galvanic Blast》 to be able to utilize Umori, but as it stands building a deck with only artifacts and lands doesn’t seem powerful enough. Even the 《Surge Node》 + 《Coretapper》 decks would rather have access to 《Karn, the Great Creator》 in their maindeck than an Umori in their sideboard.

The most likely place I expect Umori to see play is in Vintage 《Mishra’s Workshop》 decks, as right now the only card they sometimes play that would break the restriction is a single copy of 《Karn, the Great Creator》. While it isn’t castable off Workshop, I think having an 《Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth》 or 《Black Lotus》 giving you access to an extra threat can play out quite well in the Shop’s game plan.

《Kaheera, the Orphanguard》

《Kaheera, the Orphanguard》 comes off as a bit too narrow in deck building requirements for me. There are some aggressive creatures like 《Wild Nacatl》, 《Loam Lion》, 《Steppe Lynx》, 《Lightning Skelemental》, and 《Rotting Regisaur》 that could maybe work together in a Tribal Flames Zoo deck, but the problem is that those cards aren’t very good in Modern nowadays, and Kaheera doesn’t seem worth it to play such a weak deck. There also already exists a Modern Elemental deck, and I’m sure people will give up 《Phantasmal Image》s to try out Kaheera, but right now the gameplan of those Elemental decks almost seems built around copying abusing 《Risen Reef》 by copying/flickering it, or abusing 《Lightning Skelemental》 with 《Thunderkin Awakener》.

Perhaps one of those decks will be good enough, and if the other Companions didn’t look so much more powerful to me I would probably be more interested in Kaheera, but the nature of Companions is that they compete with all the other Companions now in deckbuilding.

《Gyruda, Doom of Depths》

《Gyruda, Doom of Depths》 suffers from a lot of the same problems as Keruga. Modern doesn’t have a lot of great options that help you feel like you won’t just be skipping turn one every game if your deck is only even-costed cards. It also suffers from just looking like the weakest payoff of all the Companions to me.

I was trying to approach Gyruda from two different angles, the first was trying to play it with 《Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy》, 《Goryo’s Vengeance》, and 《Griselbrand》, and I actually was heavily considering just not even playing it is as a Companion and just using 4 copies main so I could play better cards like 《Thoughtseize》 and 《Liliana of the Veil》. The issue with that style of deck is mostly that Gyruda is surprisingly bad at returning a creature from your graveyard with it’s trigger.

I don’t know how to do the really complex math that people like Allen Wu or Frank Karsten frequently use in their articles, but after using a hypergeometric calculator and seeing how many creatures I would need in a 60 card deck to be 90% to find one in my top 4 cards, I discovered that number was 26. 26 is an absurd number of even-costed creatures for a Modern deck, and even if I’m approaching the problem wrong I really don’t think the answer is going to end up being less than 20, which I’m still not willing to build my deck to accommodate.

This led to the second way I wanted to approach Gyruda, which was as a BG ramp deck using a 《Swamp》 based manabase and 《Witch’s Cottage》 to set up the top card of your library. This seemed like a lot of pieces that still involved a clunky assortment of even costed cards and I could never find a shell I liked as a full decklist.

As far as Gyruda in other formats goes, there might be hope for it in Legacy thanks to cards like 《Lion’s Eye Diamond》 and 《Ancient Tomb》 giving you reasonable acceleration. I also think it could be pretty strong in the Pioneer 《Soulflayer》 deck, as a lot of the core pieces of that deck are even-costed anyways, and you’d even have the upside of occasionally hitting 《Zetalpa, Primal Dawn》.

Decklist: Selesnya Company with Zirda

For the most part I’m only abusing the cost reduction with equipments and 《Gavony Township》, but I still think that Zirda is a pretty nice card to have access to in this deck. I expect a lot of Zirda decks in Modern will continue to play it alongside 《Stoneforge Mystic》, because equipments play out much better when you always start with an extra creature in hand that makes them cost less to equip.

It’s also worth noting that you could play Zirda alongside 《Eldrazi Displacer》 and 《Drowner of Hope》, which is a way to generate infinite Eldrazi Scions. Unfortunately you would keep yourself from playing most of the other powerful Eldrazi, and would likely have to approach playing with those cards from a different angle than what 《Eldrazi Temple》 offers. Zirda conveniently also has an activated ability, so a deck built around those cards might include more copies of Zirda maindeck to make comboing more consistent.

Decklist: Grixis Shadow with Obosh

While normally Grixis Shadow relies on Snapcaster in long games and 《Temur Battle Rage》 in short games, I think the consistency of always having Obosh will prove itself worth it over those cards. It offers to come down and potentially have its static effect provide an immediate lethal combat, or just be an effective 6 power threat on its own in a long game of resource denial.

I could definitely see it being a mistake to not use 《Collective Brutality》 (and perhaps other 2 mana spells) in the sideboard, as the Burn matchup might rely too heavily on specifically Brutality. For the most part my sideboards in this article are just a random collection of cards I think are good enough to use, that still follow the restriction of the Companion.

Decklist: 4C Control with Lutri

Obviously there are a ton of different ways you could build a mostly singleton Modern deck. I wanted to show off this four color version because it gives a better view of the various powerful instants and sorceries you could have access to. While counterspells don’t play well with Lutri, cheap interactive spells and card advantage spells are payoffs you’ll want to be looking for.

I also wanted to show off that fetchable trilands existing make decks like these a little bit more achievable, obviously if I could play 4 《Arcum’s Astrolabe》s my mana would be a lot better, but I still think we’ll see the occasional 1 of Triome appear in Modern decks to offer slightly better mana, especially with 《Mystic Sanctuary》.

Yorion’s restriction makes us build our deck in a way that many of us have never tried to do in Magic, but adding 20 more cards to a deck is surprisingly easy. I took a Temur Urza deck that tangrams recently won a Modern Super PTQ with, and adjusted it to use Yorion slightly more effectively, and tried to keep the land and artifact ratios the same.

Decklist: Temur Uroza with Yorion

With the exception of 《Witching Well》 and 《Ice-Fang Coatl》, these are all spells that were already in the list before I brought it up to 80 cards. I thought the addition of Well and Coatl would make Yorion good enough, and I don’t think Yorion has to be built around heavily in any deck. While it’s possible to keep a chain of value going with 《Restoration Angel》 and other cards that aren’t quite strong enough in Modern anymore, I think it’s easy enough to build a deck with cards you’d likely include if you didn’t have Yorion anyways.

In the manabase I felt I was safely able to add 《Snow-Covered Mountain》 and 《Ketria Triome》 among 8 total added lands. Normally those cards would likely be omitted from a 60 card deck because drawing them could be bad in certain spots, but an upside of playing with more than 60 cards is you reduce the odds of drawing 1-ofs that exist to tutor or fetch in specific spots.

I’d be really surprised if a deck like this isn’t one of the best decks in Modern moving forwards. Perhaps it won’t be an Urza deck and will just be a control or midrange deck utilizing Yorion a little better, but I really think Yorion is a high enough upside in this deck to be worth playing 80 cards.

Decklist: Jund with Lurrus

Naturally 《Mishra’s Bauble》 felt like one of the best cards I could play alongside Lurrus as it gives me the ability to get value without needing more than 3 mana to just cast Lurrus. Discard spells to clear the way for Lurrus felt quite useful, and 《Wrenn and Six》 is likely the most powerful 2 mana permanent in Modern, so building a Jund deck around Lurrus felt easy. Because I wanted to abuse Lurrus with Bauble and 《Seal of Fire》 anyways, combining it with the utility of 《Traverse the Ulvenwald》 felt like the right direction. It’s possible you could build this deck as a 《Death’s Shadow》 deck, but I’m worried the lack of 《Street Wraith》 will be punishing, and Lurrus being a lifelink creature plays a little awkwardly with Shadow.

I’m sure Lurrus will likely be the most explored Companion of them all, and that we will see a lot of great innovations very quickly across all formats soon after the release of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths.