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Deck Overview- Modern Esper Rally

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As we await Standard rotation and a modern banning, this is not a generally exciting time for decklists. Luckily, there are still some heroes out there, like QMUNKE, who took this insane and/or brilliant concoction to a 5-0 record in a recent Modern League:

Modern Esper Rally

Creatures

4 Blood Artist
3 Bloodghast
1 Bloodthrone Vampire
1 Drowned Rusalka
4 Hedron Crab
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4 Magus of the Bazaar
4 Sidisi's Faithful
3 Viscera Seer
2 Zulaport Cutthroat

Spells

3 Ideas Unbound
4 Rally the Ancestors
4 Bridge from Below

Lands

4 Flooded Strand
1 Godless Shrine
3 Hallowed Fountain
2 Island
3 Marsh Flats
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Plains
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Watery Grave

Sideboard

2 Darkblast
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Felidar Cub
3 Lone Missionary
1 Ronom Unicorn
2 Spellskite
4 Tidehollow Sculler

It's impossible to know if this is an optimized list for this strategy, but there are a lot of sweet thing going on here. I truly enjoy playing two copies of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy to supplement Magus of the Bizaar, and I'm always happy to see an Ideas Unbound.

The strategy here is to interact with your opponents creatures with Sidisi's Faithful and chump blocking, much like the Standard Rally the Ancestors deck, and then to kill your opponent with Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat triggers. There's also an outside shot that you can win with Bloodthrone Vampire in combat, though mostly you'll just be using it to sacrifice creatures so Rally doesn't exile them.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Rally the Ancestors

I really like the inclusion of Bloodghast and Bridge from Below as the go-to cards to discard, especially considering that the onus is going to be on your opponent to kill their own creatures if they want to remove Bridges. You can also just build a huge army of zombies with any of your sacrifice outlets if you win the Bridge lottery with Hedron Crab and/or your discard outlets.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Bridge From Below

I also thoroughly enjoy the inclusion of Oboro, Palace in the Clouds, which gives you a repeatable effect to guarantee landfall every turn for your Bloodghasts.

I don't actually know how good this deck is, but it's definitely worth paying attention to, as there are a number of cards in this list that would be poised to spike if this deck takes off. Specifically, Magus of the Bazaar is worth less than a dollar, and being from Planar Chao makes it old enough to increase in price substantially if it suddenly becomes relevant.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Magus of the Bazaar

One thought on “Deck Overview- Modern Esper Rally

  1. I put this deck together on MTGO pretty much immediately after writing this. More people seem to have graveyard hate than I would imagine, though you generally board out most of your Rallies for your business creatures anyway. I also just turned my Hedron Crabs on an opponent who cast a turn 2 Rest in Peace to mill them. The deck has some powerful things going on, and is super fun. I’d easily FNM with it, and would have no problem playing it in an IQ.

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