No big official Standard event this week, but a pretty good Modern event--SCG's Invitational. The Invitational promises eight rounds of Modern, and the event is like a strong Day Two of a Grand Prix.

I like the Invitational results and I think they tend to be more representative of the competitive metagame for a couple of reasons:

• The player skill level is a bit higher than an event open to the public. It's not a Pro Tour, but the players generally aren't making ridiculous play mistakes and that means that decks aren't losing due to player error (and skewing results).
• The prize is large enough that people who are not regular Modern players will be serious about the format and learn their deck. If this were a four-round event, we'd see less buy-in.
• Eight rounds means fewer "glass cannon" decks like Ad Nauseam, the Griselcannon pile and to a lesser extent, Bogles.
• Players competing in the Invitational can lean on friends to borrow cards (not everyone is playing) so there are far fewer budget decks.

All this adds up into a tournament worth watching. The Top 8 is interesting, but what I'm really going to focus on today are the 7-1 or better decks. The list makes for a good place to take the pulse of Modern.

7-1 or Better Decks

Grixis Control ■■■■ (with or sans Gurmag Angler and Cryptic Command)
Amulet Bloom ■■■■
Abzan ■■
Affinity ■■
Collected Company Abzan ■■
Jund ■
Grixis Delver ■
G/R Tron ■
Sultai Delver ■
Burn ■
Merfolk ■
Grixis Twin ■

The Bloom in the Room

Let's start off with the Amulet of Vigor deck. Speculating on this deck is playing with fire. That's because I feel like Amulet Bloom is a highly disruptive and bannable deck. I'm not saying this because I can't stand playing against it—Merfolk is a pain and that deck is fine. Amulet is a highly consistent deck that also breaks out early enough to force an opponent to mulligan or die. It also has a superb lategame, thanks to cards like Tolaria West.

Most worrisome is that Amulet has a few different angles that I like to refer to as Oath of Druids threats. Oath, after all, is an enchantment that turns into a creature. That is, if you have Erase when I cast my Oath, you've stopped it. If I get to Oath once, though, your Erase is worthless. The threat has changed permanent types.

To apply it here, that means that your Vandalblast is great on turn one against the Amulet, but it is a lot worse after the opponent resolves Summer Bloom (or makes it to turn four playing out their lands). The Path to Exile in your hand is good against the Titan, unless they get Tolaria West for a Summoner's Pact to reload on the Titan. You can also keep the three-Path hand, feeling confident, only to run directly into Hive Mind. So the Amulet deck demands quick answers, but you aren't even guaranteed success if you draw the wrong ones.

I've made my case against speculating on the Amulet deck at this point. I urged people to pick up Hive Mind at $1 and now it's at $6, so the money has been made on the list already. We are getting close to Origins and if it can weather that banning cycle, the deck will be safe and its components will again rise in price.

As a side note: I'm puzzled why people are surprised when cards get banned in Modern. It's like being surprised that Modern staples get reprinted. Wizards has been very clear that they're more actively going to ban things in Modern.

Luckily, most bannings don't kill decks completely. Jund still exists, intrepid people Open the Vaults instead of casting Second Sunrise, and Amulet players will still have a Titan/Hive Mind deck if Amulet and/or Bloom get banned. When I hear people say things like "if Wizards bans something from this deck, I'm quitting Modern," all I can hear is "I want to keep beating people with an unfair deck and if I can't do that, I don't care about this format any more."

Grixis Control and the Rise of Gurmag Angler

The Grixis Control decks have a few variables, but they tend to share a common core. They have a light suite of counterspells, some discard, a few Kolaghan's Command and Tasigur, the Golden Fang to finish. I can't really call them tempo or control decks because they tend to do a little of both.

Some lists run one or two Young Pyromancer as another cheap threat. Others pack a Vendilion Clique. They often run Blood Moon maindecked. And sometimes, they run a Zombie Fish alongside the Banana King.

Kolaghan's Command has really invigorated the archetype. It was a card that I dismissed, since three mana is a lot to ask for and "guaranteed value" makes me think of Izzet Charm and people saying "well you can always loot with it."

Nonetheless, it seems to be more than just a pet card people are trying out. The fact that it two-for-ones Affinity from the maindeck has really cramped that archetype, for example. The ability to cast it and force a discard while bringing back Snapcaster Mage reminds me of Rise // Fall (talk about pet cards!).

It's currently $6 on hype. The Command is good and there's still a lot of space in DTK that needs to rise in value so that its profitable to redeem sets. I think $6 is a fair price to buy in at, but I don't predict any larger rise in the near future.

Tasigur is a phenomenal pickup right now. He's about $4.50 and a steep discount from where he once sat. He sees consistent play in Abzan and all sorts of Grixis lists. The downside of Tasigur is that, like Siege Rhino, he makes Dark Confidant problematic to play. In a Lightning Bolt world, Bobby doesn't live very long. That makes me see Tasigur as a stronger long-term play for deckbuilding as well as speculating.

Quick Hits: Singleton Deck Edition

Apart from the above two decks, the rest of the field was a diverse blend of decks. I'll go over the highlights here.

• Path to Exile is rare right now. Abzan decks run a few copies, but not a full playset. UWx Control is nowhere to be found at the moment. If you want to attack this metagame, then Path is a superb card to knock out threat-light decks like Amulet and Grixis Control.
• Keranos, God of Storms is going to be the trump card for these Grixis decks. They lack many hard counters and a Negate isn't going to clip out a Keranos. He's $8 right now.
• Similarly, Olivia Voldaren ($7) is the Grixis sideboard card to reach for when you're facing down Junk. She's very hard for the deck to kill, since Abrupt Decay bounces right off.
• No Infect. It's kind of a glass cannon deck, but this is a supremely hostile format to it with all the spot removal.
• I was honestly surprised about R/G Tron packing away both the SCG Invitational and Modern Open. The deck is good for a five-round event but I often feel it lacks consistency to take down something major.
• Do you know how many tix Deceiver Exarch is online? 8.5 tix. That's ridiculous. In paper, we've got a Commander printing containing the price, but it's still $1. This is a card I'd see players readily paying $3-5 for, as they do with Kitchen Finks.
• Gerard Fabiano has a copy of Slay in his sideboard and that makes me so happy.
• The Abzan Company deck is common enough that Anger of the Gods should come back to your sideboards. I thought we could be done with it, but the Born of the Gods sweeper is necessary again.
• The fact that two Affinity decks still made it to 7-1 is a testament to the power of that deck, not its fragility. In the face of the new Command and a Bolt-heavy format, the deck can still crush people.
• It's interesting to see Jund back again. I get the sneaking feeling, though, that Grixis and Abzan are just better at doing what Jund can do. They have the same quality of threats and a card like Scavenging Ooze is just not as threatening any more.

Next week, we'll cover GP Charlotte. This should be a phenomenally interesting Grand Prix in the Modern format. I expect many cards to move around in price, so if it happens there, you'll read about it here.

-Doug