Over the past few weeks my friends and I have had an attitude of "The sky is falling!" in regard to the Jeskai Ascendancy Combo deck being legal in the format. My perspective from the deck building side as well as the player side of my mind is that I need to play a deck capable of beating this oppressive combo deck.

We’ve had a lot of conversations about possible/likely bans in Modern when the next banned list comes out. Based on our testing, these ideas seems legitimate and worth thinking about. Take a look at the list on the chopping block.

Jeskai Combo is consistent, fast, and has an insane amount of redundancy. Jeskai Ascendancy itself seems like the best place to attack the deck, but Glittering Wish helps out by giving you a functional seven copies to draw. The combo is reminiscent of Dredge (and Eggs) in many ways. The main similarity is that these decks all play the game out in an atypical way that is uninteractive. With Treasure Cruise adding an absurd amount of card drawing, we have a recipe for a metagame takeover.

The only problem is that tournament results don’t agree with these lines of thinking. Here are some facts:

• The four SCG Modern events in this format have had zero copies of the Jeskai Combo deck in the Top 16.
• Two of the last five published Modern Dailies have had one Jeskai Combo deck in the 4-0 list.
• One of the last three TCG Player Max Point events had one Jeskai Combo deck in the Top 8.
• In total, there have been two players who have been successful out of the last twelve major events.

The sky is not crashing down anytime soon. This realization was a weight lifted off my shoulders and the sun started shining on Modern again for me.

After analyzing these events, I discovered some important things. First of all, Affinity players are really happy right now. With all of these other decks moving into the meta, Affinity fired right back with lots of success. Basically, Affinity is much more consistent and punished all these other decks.

Whether that will stay true I’m not sure, but Affinity is one of those decks that will always see play no matter what the metagame looks like because it is a fast and consistent aggressive deck and lots of players love playing it. There are different ways to build it as well. Take the winning deck from this past weekend for example.

While I cannot support something crazy like running 62 cards, I do think that some of the choices in this version are quite intriguing. The full four copies of Spellskite, for instance, stand out as well as the four Master of Etherium. Regardless of which version you prefer, the deck isn’t going away anytime soon.

Although Jeskai Combo may not be breaking the format yet, there is another deck that is taking the metagame by storm. U/R Delver is back and out in Top 8’s in force. Here’s one of the most successful versions.

I remember how potent Delver was in Standard and this version takes the archetype to the next level. All of the creatures are extremely potent and can deal tremendous amounts of damage within the first few turns. For example, I’ve seen Monastery Swiftspear be as big as a 5/6 on a regular basis.

The deck does have some issues with cards like Lingering Souls or a steady stream of removal spells from a controlling deck, but it’s positioned quite well against the other decks seeing play right now. Nearly every event has shown success for this archetype.

Treasure Cruise is the man behind the curtain here. The goal is to play your hand as quickly as possible, similar to Affinity, and then Cruise your way to victory by out-drawing your opponent. I don’t like that this deck has relatively few ways to interact with your opponent outside of burn spells. The way this deck is constructed, it reminds me of Affinity or more closely of a Burn, the next deck up on our list.

This list breaks out of the typical mono-red or Boros Burn that we’ve seen in the past and the blue addition is again thanks to Treasure Cruise. The format is truly warping around this card. U/R Delver and these Burn decks are similar in how they play out. The Delver version allows for some interaction, while the straight burn version has a single-minded focus.

No matter which of these two decks you think is better for winning the next Modern tournament you attend, you will certainly have to play against these archetypes. These decks are crushing event after event so prepare yourself accordingly.

One player decided to bring back a fringe deck to combat all of these card drawing decks. Here’s what he ran.

With only one version of this deck showing up in the twelve events, I doubt this deck will become a major part of the metagame. One topdecked Treasure Cruise can drastically set this discard deck back, but they do have access to many targeted discard spells to nab the Cruise before their opponent has the fuel to pop it off.

I prefer a more hateful approach to the current metagame. One way to hate out the current slew of decks is to start casting your bears and let them rip your opponent apart. Here’s the latest iteration of Hate Bears.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is the most important draw to this deck. In a spell-heavy metagame, it’s obvious that Thalia would shine. At the end of the day, you are just playing a slower aggressive deck but hopefully your hateful creatures slow your opponent down enough for you to win.

I would love to see a way to get some extra card advantage like a couple planeswalkers or even a fringe card like Lead the Stampede. When I see this deck losing is to other decks trying to clog up the board with creatures like Melira Pod--the next deck up on the docket.

After I collected all the data from these past twelve events, my conclusion was that the Melira Pod shell is best suited to attack the current metagame. It provides a similar approach to the game that Hate Bears does, but can directly attack some problems with Abrupt Decay and Thoughtseize, as well as some other tutor targets for Birthing Pod.

This list may look similar to other Melira Pod decks you’ve seen, but if you look at the details, you will notice some specific aspects of the deck that have not been present. I may be advocating an already established archetype, but I completely redesigned the deck around the current metagame. More testing is needed, but I believe this version is the right tool for the job.

Look at the maindeck Lingering Souls for instance. While that is an already established card, maindecking it focuses on specific problems in the metagame right now. In fact, it’s possible that there should be more copies in the seventy-five. The card is exactly what you want against the majority of decks you are likely to face off against. We know it’s great against Affinity and UWR Control, but it’s also amazing against U/R Delver.

Many of the singletons were included to disrupt specific parts of the metagame as well. Eidolon of Rhetoric, Sin Collector, and Scavenging Ooze are some of the tools that are very effective in the current metagame. I’m not going to go through each of these cards in detail, but if you have questions about any of them, please ask in the comments.

Cartel Aristocrat is a pet card of mine. When I’m playing this deck, I love having multiple options for sacrifice outlets. Many times you will find yourself in a position where podding for Cartel will allow you to combo off.

It’s possible that some other singleton is needed in this place and we can’t afford to have the versatility of multiple sac outlets. One card I was looking to add is a second copy of Linvala, Keeper of Silence. This angel is $40+ because she does a great job at shutting down so much of the metagame. Playing a second copy maindeck might not seem like a drastic change but it would be something that I haven’t seen before. There is always customizability with any Pod deck and we have a lot of possible choices.

While these decks may be a large part of the metagame, there will still be players that will be playing already established archetypes. Twin is still a powerful and consistent deck and it’s not going anywhere. Players will still jam their favorite decks like G/R Tron, Infect, Bogles, Abzan Midrange, Living End, Scapeshift and yes, even Merfolk.

Modern has many great decks but the metagame shifts between which ones are well positioned and which are not good choices from week to week. I’m going to be rocking my tweaked Melira Pod. How will you attack the metagame?

Bonus Decklist

Aristocrats is one of my favorite decks of all time. I love to see players still working with the archetype. I don’t think it’s coming back as a viable deck but it might be fun to play this deck at a local event.

Until next time,
Unleash the Melira Force!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com