There comes a time that you need to re-evaluate where you are and what you are doing. I make no apologies for being Gruul, through and through. And no matter where I go, that is what I will be. But, I'm convinced that I need to do something a little different. For how long, I don't know.

Back when I first started playing Modern, and was drawn to the colors of the Burning-Tree and the Scab-Clan and the Ghor-Clan, my goal with the deck was always to play more of a Red/Green Hate Bears type concoction. I had, of course, Burning-Tree Shaman, but I also played other cards purely for the attempt to hate out the metagame, like Blood Moon, Chalice of the Void, Damping Matrix, and Trinisphere. Those cards, and those decks served me well over the years, and I've had a lot of fun, and crushed many a dream while on the way to getting my own dreams crushed. With a couple larger Modern events on the horizon that I will be attending, I was left with a choice. Was I going to take the same old decks, knowing their weaknesses and lack of overall viability, or was I going to stick with my philosophy of hate cards, regardless of colors, and see what I could do?

It can be a struggle to walk away from the familiar, and jump to something else. In this particular case, for me, while I've made the choice to abandon what I've played previously, I've not abandoned the ideology that was the underlying reason for my deck options. I'm still playing the hate.

To help show how I got where I am, let's take a look at various decks that provided an influence for me.

Here we are with good old Mono-White Death and Taxes. This version was a recent top deck from a Modern Daily event on MTGO, but there are many similar iterations that can be found by searching any reasonable deck database. This type of deck has long been a staple, to varying degrees, since the inception of Modern. It "taxes" many common actions in the format, from searching to casting non-creature spells, and it has cheap, powerful creatures put the game away.

The sideboard is filled with a plethora of more specific and targeted hate cards. My own personal opinion is to attempt to avoid this type of a sideboard, filled with nothing but singles and two-ofs. While I get the inherent strength and flexibility that is able to be attained here, in a deck with an overall lack of search and card draw effects, it seems to really break apart the consistency of play. Regardless, I like a lot of what is going on here, even if there is not the fatty plan that is so endearing to me.

Several months ago, while scouring lists from the Modern Daily events, I stumbled across this beat down machine. I saw it at the same time that I found the Mono-Green Aggro deck I've written about previously...the same Mono-Green Aggro that the wife played all throughout Modern season this Summer. Not sure what it was about that version over this one that I liked more, but suffice it to say, I jumped onto the other one, and completely forgot about this. For the last several months, this has just been another deck hanging out in my collection of Modern decks on MTGO. As I made my way towards building my deck, though, this gem was rediscovered.

If you want aggressive and beefy beat down, this deck has it in spades. With 30 dudes, 24 of which cost three mana or less, this deck is made to swing. The inclusion of Loxodon Hierarch really stands out to me as an awesome choice, saving so much of your team from global removal as well as providing instant life gain when it hits the battlefield. Given the low curve, and the inclusion of seven mana guys, along with the 23 lands, it would appear this deck will get flooded quite often. You do have things to spend the mana on, like using the Monstrous on Fleecemane Lion or activating Gavony Township, but it still seems a little soft in the long run. I also dislike the odd numbers and mix of non-creature spells in the deck, and I'm not sure I can fully get behind a deck that only runs two Path to Exiles as opposed to the full compliment.

Back when Collected Company was first discovered as a viable Modern card, there were all sorts of brews showing up. While things have calmed on that front, and Collected Company has pretty much been relegated to Elves, Zoo, and the occasional Abzan list, this list managed to sneak through as a 4-0 deck in a Daily. What we see is a mash up of the previous two decks discussed, which can be useful in the right metagame. This deck eschews the more popular Aether Vial for Collected Company, and replaces some of the Mono-White creatures with either bigger, or better, versions of beaters. I admit that it is convenient to gain an advantage with the Company, and not be forced to set Vial to possibly the incorrect number, depending on your hand and draws. Another edge to consider is that you are not at the mercy of your draw steps, as flipping the top six and choosing seems better, odds wise, than hoping you have the correct hate bear in hand, with, again, a deck that has little to no draw or deck manipulation. I completely understand the allure this deck holds.

Conversely, I question how useful it is, or realistic, to hold up the four mana. There are games you may not even get there before you are defeated, and there is enough early interaction in the format that even your bears may not save you from the fast combo. Some of your more powerful answers in the board are also complete blanks to Company, since they are enchantments. I would assume that there is a swap between your Instants and Enchantments much of the time in subsequent games. I still have difficulty with seeing where this deck is necessarily right.

Using these three decks as a rough guideline, I set about determining what I wanted to build. Before I go into any of the details, let me show you the list I am currently testing:

This list is not a first pass, but it is the first one I've tested. When I thought about what I wanted to accomplish, I knew my goal was to attempt to make things miserable for my opponents. In order to do so, I needed to at least consider what I thought I could reasonable expect to play. My initial list included Affinity, Twin variants, Zoo, Burn, Tron, Delver based decks, and Grixis. What do all these decks have in common? They run a bunch of activated abilities, from fetch lands, to Twin tapping, to Equipping, and to activating Planeswalkers and man-lands. And we haven't even looked at things like Cycling, Transmute, Unearth, Bloodrush, or Ninjutsu. I recognized this as an axis I really wanted to attack right off the bat, and locked in on the idea that Suppression Field was going to be a crucial cog in the machine.

My initial wag really only included that lone hate card in the main, as I was running Fleecemane Lion in the first iteration, and had another Choke and Leyline of Sanctity in the board, along with Beast Within, which I was considering swapping to Melira, Sylvok Outcast. I sent the list over to my Oklahoma travel companion, Eric, and asked him for input. He hated the Lions, which was the correct call, and suggested Thalia, Guardian of Thraben as a switch. He also discussed trimming the numbers in the board of Leylines and Choke. With those now smaller, and with cutting the Beast Within, I had slots for Gaddock Teeg, which is a game breaker against the big mana decks like Tron, and Mirran Crusader, a beating against the abundance of green based creature decks, both added at Eric's behest.

There were a couple suggestions I either didn't take, didn't take yet, or am considering later. Hurricane was an immediate point of contention for Eric, and it's reasonable that it is disliked. One quirk that I embrace in deck building is that I like to have something that can reach. Sure, I play fair decks, but I also want something that can jump over fair and just win. Or, as is the case with Hurricane at times, can just draw a losing game and allow you to repeat with hopefully better luck. Always playing an "X" spell is just about as firmly woven into my deck-building style as Hair Bands were into 80's music. Just sit back and enjoy the sweet tunes.

It is possible that four Wilt-Leaf Liege is too much. Hey, when I look at myself in the mirror, trust me when I say I know what "too much Wilt" looks like. Much like my failed diet plans have neglected to make less of me (I'm sure the pizzas are not helping their cause), I'm not currently ready to run less Wilt in the deck. That being said, I do at least entertain the argument that cutting two would permit me to run either Gaddock Teeg or Mirran Crusader in the main, and free up a couple board slots for Melira, or even Spellskite, as a hedge against Infect. I'm also not opposed to considering my beloved Trinisphere in those two slots, either. Being unreasonable is not an absolute in my life, so the possibility remains.

I've been playing this in the TPR for a couple days now, and have to admit that the results have been fantastic to date. I keep reminding myself to temper my enthusiasm with the knowledge that I am in the TPR, and not actually at a competitive level event. Taking that into consideration, I've managed favorable results against Twin, Tron, and Burn. Furthermore, I've held my own against random, unexpected decks. I have not had the opportunity to test against Zoo yet, though I suspect I should be able to be no worse than a coin flip in the match. I suspect that running into either Soul Sisters or Elves could be problematic, especially the white life gain menace. On the flip side, any deck relying on discard, like Jund or Junk (read Abzan...old habits die hard), seems to be at least a little advantageous for me, given the 8-pack of "If a spell or ability an opponent controls causes you to discard X, put it onto the battlefield instead of putting it into your graveyard" guys.

While not complete, my current sideboarding has been done, or is planned, as follows:

Twin:

-4 Wilt-Leaf Liege

+2 Gaddock Teeg

+2 Choke

Tron:

-2 Hurricane

-2 Wilt-Leaf Liege

+2 Gaddock Teeg

+2 Stony Silence

Burn

-2 Hurricane

-1 Wilt-Leaf Liege

+3 Leyline of Sanctity

Zoo:

-2 Hurricane

+2 Mirran Crusader

Affinity:

-3 Wilt-Leaf Liege

+3 Stony Silence

Merfolk:

-2 Hurricane

+2 Choke

Grixis:

-3 Wilt-Leaf Liege

-1 Hurricane

-1 Suppression Field

+2 Mirran Crusader

+3 Rest in Peace

Elves:

-4 Suppression Field

+2 Mirran Crusader

+2 Gaddock Teeg

Living End:

-2 Hurricane

-1 Wilt-Leaf Liege

+3 Rest in Peace

Will this definitively be the deck I sleeve up for Cincinnati and Oklahoma? While I've been please so far, I have not yet taken the plunge. But I'm close. I'm standing on the precipice and I'm ready to jump. I just need a few more days to test and to assure myself that it'll be alright.

They say the only things you can be guaranteed in life are death and taxes. While I'm not ready to die just yet, I can say it's probably time to play my taxes. :)



Peace,

Carl Wilt