menu

Deck Overview- Modern Eldrazi and Taxes

Are you a Quiet Speculation member?

If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.

I hate the name for this deck. I try to have fun with deck names, but man, this one is just the worst. It does make it clear what's in the deck though. If you know what goes into Death and Taxes decks and if you're good at guessing the Eldrazi that fit in. Whatever, here's a 5-0 decklist from an MTGO League:

Eldrazi and Taxes by Benzyne

Creatures

4 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Flickerwisp
4 Leonin Arbiter
2 Reality Smasher
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Wasteland Strangler

Spells

4 Path to Exile
4 Aether Vial

Lands

4 Caves of Koilos
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Godless Shrine
3 Plains
2 Shambling Vent
1 Swamp

Sideboard

1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Duress
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Mirran Crusader
2 Pithing Needle
2 Rest in Peace
2 Stony Silence
1 Zealous Persecution

The idea here is to play creatures that make it very difficult for your opponent to play Magic. Leonin Arbiter can often be very frustrated in a format flush with fetchlands- not to mention the interaction with your own Ghost Quarters. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben makes Serum Visions even more embarrassing. Thought-Knot Seer is the Eldrazi that one would expect to make its way into Modern, so it's not surprising to see it here. Both it and Tidehollow Sculler combine with AEther Vial to potentially blank your opponents draw step. Once they're already on the battlefield, Eldrazi Displacer is another way to enable this effect during the opponent's draw step. Flickerwisp has always been played in this style of deck to combine with AEthervial to blink creatures at instant speed, and now you have major redundancy on this ability. The two function in dramatically different ways, though using either to blink a Tidehollow Sculler in response to the enter the battlefield ability will permanently exile a card.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Thought-Knot Seer

Utilizing Sculler and Seer to exile cards from the opponent's hand is powerful on its own, and it also gives the deck a critical mass of ways to exile cards to enable Wasteland Strangler. Wasteland Strangler actually saw play in Modern before Oath of the Gatewatch was even released in a processor oriented deck, and with there being so many Wild Nacatls and Collected Company floating around the card seems quite well-positioned now. It can also just kill itself in a pinch to prevent your opponent from resolving an Ancestral Vision.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Wasteland Strangler

This is the most resilient and powerful Hatebears deck that I've ever seen in Modern. Lightning Bolt proof creatures in Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher are huge upgrades, and I actually believe this deck is a real contender, unlike previous incarnations of the deck which were fringe at best. This deck could be an excellent choice for the Open in Indianapolis this weekend.

A lot of this deck is Standard legal, which means investing in the cards for Modern play doesn't make a ton of sense. Of all of the options, the card that is under-priced from this deck seems to be Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. This is a card that has been identified as a staple in older formats for a long time, and if this deck gains traction then the days of sub-$10 Thalias will be behind us.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

One thought on “Deck Overview- Modern Eldrazi and Taxes

  1. Just my humble opinion of course but I played this deck last night and came away thoroughly unimpressed. It doesn’t do any one thing well and the other linear decks (Tron, Company, etc.) are just much better and more consistent at what they do. It doesn’t take much at all in a deck with very little hand disruption or removal for Thalia and Arbiter to get out classed.

Join the conversation

Want Prices?

Browse thousands of prices with the first and most comprehensive MTG Finance tool around.


Trader Tools lists both buylist and retail prices for every MTG card, going back a decade.

Quiet Speculation