So is This What U/R Modern Decks Looks Like These Days?

Okay let’s look at the creature base of a blue-red deck.

• One copy of Brazen Borrower? Okay, that makes sense.
• The Maximum Number of Snapcaster Mages? Of course! Also these guys make sense together; seeing as they all have Flash.
• Oh, and ALL FOUR COPIES of Emrakul the Aeons Torn!

Wow so that’s kind of ridiculous.

Michael likes to think about this deck as a blue-red Flash deck. Bounce your thing. Get in for two or three. Hassle with some card advantage. You know, how you do with a Flash deck.

But then!

The opponent taps their mana main phase to handle your hasslers.

So it’s Boom! Head Shot!

Through the Breach into Emrakul, the Aeons Torn get’s em. Good.

I mean, what is a blue deck going to do if you just cast Through the Breach? They kind of have to counter it, right? Whether or not you actually have the Emrakul.

One of the cool, synergistic, bits about this deck is that you can buy a lost Through the Breach back with Snapcaster Mage.

Patrick describes this blue-red as “a Splinter Twin deck” which of course warms Mike’s heart. But it’s not a Splinter Twin deck that actually wins the game. Unless the opponent does a lot to themselves with shock lands you still have to lace together the last four or five with Lightning Bolt and Snapcaster Mage, but that’s not so big a deal after Annihilator 6 has had its way with the opponent’s battlefield.

So What in Zendikar Rising is Making Affinity’s Modern Deck?

Surprisingly, it’s not one, but two different Modal Double-Faced lands that make the deck:

Kazuul’s Fury // Kazuul’s Cliffs makes red… But this Affinity is all over all the Fling combos. Either side is okay.

The real gold comes from Timbercrown Pathway // Cragcrown Pathway. Affinity really wants to play Hardened Scales to take advantage of all those +1/+1 counters. When you already want green mana on turn one, some of these Modal Double-Faced cards start making more sense.

The big incentive to red as a splash color? Alpine Moon in the sideboard.

Balustrade Spy Innovates Modern Decks

So we recently talked about Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer “Oops, All Spells” decks in Pioneer.

They’re powerful, but mostly cute at 77 cards, in Pioneer.

The Modern version is a beautifully tuned killer. It could be a problem, in fact.

But one thing’s for sure, Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer are gorgeously tuned in Modern.

• In addition to consistently flipping over all your copies of Creeping Chill, this deck will put four Vengevines into your graveyard.
• A combination of Sword of the Meek and Narcomoeba will set up your Salvage Titan… Putting those Vengevines onto the battlefield.
• You’ve already brained the opponent with four copies of free Lightning Helix. Now sixteen hasty Elementals are going to come a coming!

To top it off, if you accidentally draw one of the cards you would rather have in your graveyard… It even plays one copy of Phantasmagorian to “fix” your “hand” … Err… Whatever the opposite of your hand is.

But that’s not all!

In case you were planning to beat it with dedicated graveyard hate, it sideboards into Goblin Charbelcher.

And So Many More Awesome Modern Decks…

• The Tron deck that Patrick calls “a thing of beauty”
• The Death and Taxes deck that Mike — somehow — calls the deck of the week
• “You can fit a lot of themes when you’re 80 cards…”
• And… The “secret weapon” for the format!

Find out if Modern is, in fact, completely busted right now:

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