Hello!

With new Modern Masters set being released, I immediately started drafting with it and loved it. So far I played about 20 drafts and I would like to share my knowledge about best deck, best cards, another good archetype and few tips about it.

At first, I would like to start with stating that Modern Masters is different from normal limited format. Cards are stronger and synergies are pushed. Which means that sometimes you have synergistic decks, and you don’t play a first pick quality removal spell or two, because you want all your cards to work together, not just have all good cards. Because having two 5/10 cards, that together work as 9s is better than having two 8s, if you can make them work often enough.

Also, lot of cards are worse than they were in the sets where they appeared first time, because the power level is higher. Let’s take a closer look at, in my opinion, the best archetype.

4 color control / Blink control

Those two decks are pretty similar, both want game to go long and win with card advantage. The main difference is that Blink decks focus more on 《Momentary Blink》 and 《Ghostly Flicker》 with various synergies, while control tends to have more removal spells, counterspells and less creatures. The main thing that made me group those two together is the power of 《Dinrova Horror》. In my opinion, it is by far the best common in the set.

It is card advantage, tempo play and finisher. What more can you ask from a common? In blink decks you can abuse the “Enter The Battlefield” trigger multiple times and in control decks you really appreciate the body, because it can be hard to finish games otherwise, unless you have some rares.

With everything I said earlier about synergy format and not playing removal spells because you want your decks to be synergistic, I believe that for this format, because of all the good removal spells and power of 《Dinrova Horror》, playing the control game is the best strategy. You don’t really need any specific cards, there is plenty of removal that you can have and it doesn’t really matter if you have 《Grisly Spectacle》, 《Auger Spree》 or 《Agony Warp》 as long as you have all angles covered.

The problem with synergistic decks during drafting is that if someone else or multiple people draft it, you might not get your key cards. With those controlish decks, you just want some removal, some card advantage, some manafixing and it doesn’t even matter what colors you are in!

Usually you are base Blue or Black splashing one or two other colors, but you can easily have base White deck with more creatures and Blink synergies, or even Green with 《Penumbra Spider》 as your brick wall for your opponents threats.

The only problem I had with those decks was sometimes lacking finisher, if I didn’t have any good rares to do that for me. That problem was solved once I realized how good 《Dinrova Horror》 is and started taking it over pretty much anything.

There definitely is such a thing as having too many, but so far that didn’t happen to me 🙂 Just keep in mind, it is a 6 drop, so if you have multiples, lower your curve a bit so you can survive until you can cast them. There are not many better feelings than playing multiple Horrors in a row. Kind of reminds me playing 《Torrential Gearhulk》 on subsequent turns.

Unless you have great rares like 《Cruel Ultimatum》, 《Simic Sky Swallower》, 《Damnation》, 《Deadeye Navigator》 or something similar, 《Dinrova Horror》 will be the best card in your deck. You should keep that in mind while drafting, take it pretty much over anything and build your deck so you are not that much behind when you reach six mana.

There are not many good two drops for those decks if your base is in Grixis colors, so you should take 《Agony Warp》s and Signets highly. 《Augur of Bolas》 is not great in most decks, because you usually won’t have enough spells, but when you do it’s amazing, so keep that in mind.

You really want to have a sweeper in your deck, and luckily there is one at common rarity – 《Cower in Fear》. This card is insane against some decks and I would maindeck it pretty much every time. If you get lucky and get 《Pyroclasm》, even better. One advantage of Cower is that you can tutor it with 《Mystical Teachings》.

Let’s look at few decklists so you have better idea how the decks should look like.

This one is good, not great, but without any rares I was pretty happy with it. As usual I wish I had more Horrors, but I could also use one more 《Forbidden Alchemy》 so I could get my engine going more realiably. Augur was pretty bad with just 8 spells and I frequently sided it out.

I think this is a good example of how easy it is to splash in this format.

This is the best deck I had in this format. It just shows that with 《Damnation》, I can focus less on creatures and play more card advantage and counterspells. 《Mystical Teachings》 can grab you pretty much anything, Augur is great with 13 spells and I even have 《Deadeye Navigator》 to go with Horror as an ultimate endgame. With 《Soul Manipulation》 to get them back. And I can Teachings for that one, obviously.

Playing this deck was real delight, only thing to consider would be playing 20th mana source (17th land) to prevent any stumbles, but I wasn’t sure what to cut and didn’t want to flood out so I decided against it. This deck could also use one copy of 《Cower in Fear》.

Let’s go over few cards that I like or don’t like in this archetype.

Great lategame card to go with Horrors, good synergy with 《Forbidden Alchemy》 and also easy to splash as you can see in the first deck. Once you get one or two Horrors this should be high pick.

I like this card a lot in this format. It is simply fine removal spell and people don’t pick it very high, so you can get it late. You usually won’t have many ways to sacrifice it, but that’s fine. 《Gnawing Zombie》 is a fine card to play if you have multiple 《Mudbutton Torchrunner》.

《Vithian Stinger》 or 《Pyroclasm》 are another good ways to kill it without having to play bad cards. 《Skirsdag Cultist》 was underperforming for me, so I would not play that card even with multiple Torchrunners if you have good alternative.

This card is even better than it was before, because the “Duress” effect is more powerful now when playing against other slower strategies. It is another card that gets Horror back – see a trend here? Cast more Horrors = win more. 《Momentary Blink》 works with this card too as it wasn’t already good enough.

I thought this card would be good but it was underperforming for me everytime I played it. I suggest keeping it in sideboard, unless you have rock solid manabase so you can cast in on turn three easily. It gets worse real quick, and the last thing you want to be doing is having uncastable cards in your hand that do nothing later in the game against aggressive decks.

Another underperformer. Easy to see it coming and usually too small to block profitably on turn 5. Good thing it has going for it is that you can tutor for it with Teachings. It plays well with counterspells, so in the second deck it was actually good because I had so many. But most of the time that won’t be the case so it will be pretty mediocre and you should not play it if you have anything else.

So is this the only archetype you can play to succeed in this format? I think it is the best, but I know a lot of people had success with different RB strategies, so maybe it’s not one deck format as it seems to me. I wasn’t really happy with RB decks, but I found one more archetype that I liked and had a lot of fun with, although it’s worse than Horror Control.

GW Tokens

As name suggests, cards that create tokens, populate and cards that benefit from going wide are great in this. How easy. The problem with this archetype compared to Horror Control is that if one or two people are drafting something similar, you are screwed. There are not that many good cards for it, so you can easily be left with pile of mediocre GW cards with little to zero synergy.

Also, 《Cower in Fear》 is one sided 《Wrath of God》 against you and that card is a common…….

But it’s fun! And when it works, it’s great and hard to stop, which is true for most synergistic decks. Let’s look at one GW masterpiece I drafted and then analyze what cards are important.

15 Lands, low curve, lot of token makers and 2 “Anthem” effects. This is exactly how you want your GW tokens deck to look like. It is hard to get deck as good if there are multiple people trying to do the same thing, but let’s go talk about important cards for this archetype.

–《Call of the Conclave》 is the most important card in the deck. It gives you early battlefield advantage and works great with populate cards. You need to curve out well with this deck because you have miserable lategame, and this card is the best way to do it.

–《Avacyn's Pilgrim》 is very important too. For the same reason, it helps you get on the battlefield early and also fixes your mana a bit which is important, because you want to play 15 or maximum 16 lands with this archetype.

–《Gideon's Lawkeeper》 is just a very good card. You don’t have many removal spells, this is the best way to get through blockers and also is a creature which helps with some cards, mainly 《Wayfaring Temple》. I would pick it about as high as Pilgrim.

-Other card worth mentioning is 《Kor Hookmaster》. He was really overperforming for me, so I suggest taking him high. He gives you tempo advantage and battlefield presence, which is exactly what this deck wants.

Rest of the deck doesn’t really matter, but there are some things to keep in mind.

–《Eyes in the Skies》 is fine by itself, but gets way better the more Golem and Centaur makers you have. 《Slime Molding》 is good with it too, but that one is usually not very good in your deck because you don’t play many lands. Anthem effects make it great.

–《Fists of Ironwood》 is bad on its own, but amazing with some cards. 《Wayfaring Temple》 and 《Bronzebeak Moa》 make really good use of Trample and two extra tokens. Anthem effects and 《Kor Skyfisher》 makes it better too.

–《Strength in Numbers》 was pretty bad for me. It does the trick if you desperately need something to punch through, but I was really unhappy with it and it underperformed most of the times.

–《Intangible Virtue》 looks like a bomb, but in most decks it’s not even good! It’s hard to have that many tokens to make it great, so keep that in mind. 《Eyes in the Skies》 are amazing with it though.

–《Gaea's Anthem》 is the best nonrare card for this deck. Seeing it in first pack can be a signal to try to draft tokens.

If everything works your way, GW tokens are great and fun to play. But what if your draft goes wrong and you are left with bunch of mediocre GW cards?

I found out that you can salvage it at least a bit by splashing blue. Splashing is easy in this format and blue has some good aggressive cards, namely 《Wingcrafter》 and 《Tandem Lookout》.

This deck is not great, but I think it shows that Bant Aggro might be a viable archetype. 《Wingcrafter》 and 《Tandem Lookout》 are REALLY good with green big creatures. And they work well together too.

If only they weren’t so bad against 《Cower in Fear》……《Soul Warden》 is pretty good against RB decks and token/Blink decks, I have it main here because the draft was a trainwreck, so I at least wanted to have an advantage if I face those matchups.

Few more tips:

That’s all I have today. May all 《Dinrova Horror》s from your draft end in your deck.

Thanks for reading!

Lukas Blohon

Lukas Blohon
He’s represented the Czech Republic on the international magic stage for a long time.
Always devoted to his goal of becoming a better magic player, as remarked on by fellow Czech pro Petr Sochurek few people work as hard as Blohon at improving their game.

Achievements include a PT: Dark Ascension Top 8, GP Brussels 2015 Champion, 6 GP Top 8’s & just recently he was the PT: Eldritch Moon Champion. Now he joins the Hareruya Pros to continue making his mark on magic history.

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