Looks fine. But don’t expect a reply from Jordan. The guy doesn’t reply to old articles.

Hey Jordan. Could you please take the time to reply to my comment please? Greatly appreciated : )

I’m looking to get started with Modern and your Favourable Mantis build looks very fun to play with.

My SB for a gpt would be:

1 Stubborn Denial
2 Wear // Tear
2 Pyroclasm
2 RIP
1 Spellskite
2 Stony Silence
3 Timely Reinforcement
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

Think this will give me a good chance in a broad field? What can I do about GR Tron btw?

I helped design this deck with chris on the way to OKC. There were four of us in the car brewing it including his brother. We literally made it on the car ride just befote we got there. I designed the manabase sorcifically and we all put cards together to finish it. He went x 3 at the actual gp. People were getting tilted from losing to a “standard deck”. We made some minor tweaks after the trial, a big one being suns champion in the sb, because jund can’t handle it.

Familiar does nothing for this deck. At best it’s attacking for 2 on the second turn and giving us a Cursecatcher effect that I don’t even think we want in this deck. It doesn’t synergize with Stubborn Denial, it gives opponents a decent target for Lighting Bolt effects once we get an Anthem online, and it doesn’t present a passable clock or stop an opponent’s. Serra Avenger does all of these things.

Moorland Haunt looks fine on paper, but I don’t like how it messes up on-curve Mantis Riders. We only run 20 lands. We’d have to cut something like Colonnade, which also messes up on-curve Riders, to play Haunt. And even there, Haunt does a lot more damage to the turn-three Rider plan than Colonnade does. Without Colonnades, we might also lack plays for the first couple turns of the game. I’m inclined to think Colonnade is better for all of these reasons.

A few more questions: what do you think of Judge’s Familiar as an early-game play? It’s built-in disruption, keeps with the “flying white creatures” theme, and though it does not pass the Bolt test, it’s at mana parity with Bolt, so it’s not nearly as bad to lose one this way. Maybe try it out in place of Serra Avenger?

Another pet card of mine is Moorland Haunt, which gets you value from dead creatures (relevant in this case since the creature count is low), and the Spirits meet the pre-requisites for both anthems. Something to consider, perhaps?

Good arguments for Helix. I’ve been favoring Timely because it does so much work against Grixis and aggro decks. The main draw to Helix seems like its relevance as an early-game play, which we don’t have many of outside of Anthem effects. But our fliers wall most of the creatures we want to hit with it from turn 3 on, and we don’t take much damage from lands, so I’m not sure we really need more remove-target-weakling effects. I like that Colonnade is so big, and with an Anthem out he does swing for 5 in the air, which is a whole lot. IMO if you’re activating manlands, you’ve reached a point where you can afford the 3WU activation cost.

For the Favorable Mantis build, I’m somewhere around here right now:

3 Timely Reinforcements
3 Pyroclasm
1 Stubborn Denial
2 Wear // Tear

I’m filling in the other slots with Stony Silence, Spellskite, and Rest in Peace. RIP is a tremendous card in Modern and this is one of the few decks that can play it without fearing any self-harm, but I cap at two copies because I don’t like drawing more than one. Still, it doesn’t address any “problem” matchups on its own, which is why it’s still flex.

Please let me know how your testing goes!

What have been your preliminary thoughts in terms of building a sideboard for this deck? I’m feeling like I’d want some Snares, Pyroclasms, and Engineered Explosives for creature decks, Wear/Tear for artifacts and enchantments, but beyond that I’m grasping at straws. Lightning Helix is redundant with Timely Reinforcements, but in my opinion it outperforms it – it doesn’t overlap with threat deployment, it can be aimed at the face, and it comes out at instant speed.

I haven’t. I hear you on the Anthems not doing anything on their own, but I think there’s a really big difference between a 2-mana do-nothing card and a 3-mana do-nothing card in Modern. Since Modern’s a turn-four format, we want to have relevant disruption available early on, not to mention pressure to back it up with. Needing to cast a 3-mana enchantment to start actually having a gameplan seems shaky to me, and in an Ascendency deck you probably won’t have much disruption to begin with. Mind posting a list?

As for Gideon, I don’t like how expensive he is (don’t want too many four 4-drops, and he competes with Lightning Angel) or that he sits above Mantis Rider on the curve. That means opponents get a whole turn to Bolt/Helix/Anger the Rider before Gideon gets online, and that’s assuming we immediately dump Gideon into the grave when he hits play to get his ultimate off, making him a four-mana Anthem. That’s more expensive than Glorious Anthem and twice the price of Favorable Winds. Gideon doesn’t even pitch to Shoal.

It’s true that Gideon has “other applications,” but not ones that directly/obviously support our primary gameplan. I’ve moved away from this kind of deckbuilding in Modern, since the digging tools are so bad. I think consistency by redundancy is the way to go in this format, and the seven-Anthem build exemplifies this concept. More about consistency by redundancy in my piece on Faithless Looting (link below).
http://quietspeculation.com/the-perfect-format-modern-sleepers-part-1/

Did you ever Brew a fair deck with Jeskai Ascendany in Modern? I’m working on a Jeskai Token deck and am quite stuck there.

Actually, thanks to the turn 4 rule, combo decks really suck in Modern. As of today, the only “combo” decks in Tier 1 are Twin (if you combine both Grixis and UR) and Infect, and Bolt does a lot of work against both of them.

The combo decks in Tier 2 are Amulet Bloom, Living End, Scapeshift, and Ad Nauseam. In my experience, Bolt decks can race all of these options pretty reliably. Some Bolt decks, like Twin or Delver, even have a ton of game against the other combo options because of their control elements (Remand, Stubborn Denial, etc.). Sure, games are easy when your opponent has “unplayable draws.” But Bolt goes to the face. That’s why it’s so good: it’s never an unplayable draw.

Even if none of that were true, those decks are Tier 2, meaning they’re relatively under-represented compared to the other decks in Modern, against which Lightning Bolt supposedly has more relevance.

That’s why I moved towards the 7-Anthem variant, which lands them pretty consistently. I’m also really happy when opponents Decay an Anthem and not a Mantis Rider / Serra Avenger, since I often have another one at the ready. They were actually so consistent in that build that I trimmed the number from eight to seven.

No set date for the article yet yet. The hands definitely take some getting used to, more than Monkey Grow or iGrow hands IMO. But Counter-Cat does eat aggro. My girlfriend plays it and I can’t for the life of me beat her with another Delver build, either. Take a look at my MTGSalvation primer for more info on the deck. As of today it’s a bit outdated, but the fundamentals still stand and my most recent list is at the end of the thread.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/573218-counter-cat

The curve is way too high to get any mileage out of Day’s Undoing. More on how to properly build around and cast that card here:
http://quietspeculation.com/best-of-both-worlds-your-weekly-undoing-digest/

Shoal is also better in Delver decks since you want to hit specific cards there, but it’s still testing very well in these decks.

Greetings

Even when you draw it, it can still get remanded, spell snared, or abrupt decayed so its by no means a sure t2 resolution.