Sadly, my testing indicates this will indeed be the case. 2 mana is just too much to hold up unless you have a plethora of ways to spend it.

I think Unsubstantiate won’t see much Modern play because it costs two mana. That’s a severe tempo loss in this format.

We’ll have to agree to disagree then. My Point was largely that a lot of decks hibernate between peaks in results. G/R Tron was a great example of that. All it takes is one big win and done writers talking about a deck favorably to make the meta share triple or quadrople. With more people playing the deck it has a greater chance to get on the scoreboard.

I’m not talking about myself as I don’t play the deck much. But there’s no doubt in my mind that it is and has been a tier 2 deck for quite a while.

2014 was a long time ago, and Modern is totally different now. When I say something like “Jeskai Control was bad pre-Nahiri,” I’m referring to the metagame immediately before Nahiri came onto the scene. During that time, Jeskai was unplayable.

There have been plenty of decks in Modern’s long history that put up high-profile finishes that just aren’t viable anymore. This article – and all my articles, unless I specifically state otherwise – should be read in context of the current Modern metagame, and not one from two or more years ago.

Unfortunately I’m all about the Benjamins when it comes to determining whether a deck is good or not. If a deck doesn’t have numbers to back up its viability in a given metagame, i judge it as guilty until proven innocent. That’s just what works for me; if you were having success with UWR pre-Nahiri, awesome! But according to data aggregate sites like mtgtop8, you were pretty much the only one.

You’re kidding, right? It won PT Born of the Gods. Then proceeded to win the GP right after. Before that Shahar won worlds with it. Granted, it’s not a lot of Modern games but still.

I’m not the writer of a Modern site that prides itself on collecting data to predict and evaluate the meta, so you’ll forgive me for just saying that I’ve seen the deck in the hands of capable players for years and the only time it was a truly bad choice was when Abzan claimed a huge % of the meta last year.

Now please explain how UWr was otherwise unplayable then fess up to the fact that sometimes good decks fall of the radar but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re unplayable. Do you have any experience with the deck yourself?

Don’t take this wrong. I thought you har a lot of good points in your article and this is a small thing to argue about. But what you said about UWr is not true.

Can you tell me specifically what Pro Tour and GP wins or Top 8s you’re referring to? Or show me the data that helped you know for a fact the deck was good in Modern pre-Nahiri?

That’s one player at one tournament and he didn’t even Top 8. Even bad decks can win in Modern. Everyone has different standards for “viable.” Mine are that if a deck is a worse version of an existing deck, or if it can’t win consistently, it’s not viable, because Modern has plenty of decks that can.

The reason for UWr’s success recently was most likely in thanks to the increase of aggressive linnear decks after Twin was banned. But mostly because more people started sleeving it for tournaments.

I know for a fact it was a good deck before Nahiri, and if PT and GP wins Isn’t enough to prove that point I don’t know what is.

Imagine Jund/Infect/Affinity as suddenly being 1-2% of the meta and try to calculate how far it would be between them making top 8’s or winning big tournaments.

The kind of card advantage you speak of, trading tempo for more cards in future turns, is, i agree, not that great in this format.

Last winter, a player managed to I believe 12-3 or 11-4 (I forget what the story was exactly, but at one point he conceded a won match to someone who needed the pro point) the modern GP with an identical mainboard spell suite to the wafo-shell, +/- I think the shadow of doubts. It’s not an unknown deck–he missed having his list published on breakers. It’s not that the deck isn’t viable–it boasts excellent jund, affinity, and merfolk matchups, with poor matchups against infect and tron of all flavors (almost an unwinnable matchup).

I never said card advantage wasn’t important, just that it’s overrated in Modern. Of course many matchups revolve around card advantage. But it’s silly to build a deck that always relies on card advantage to win, because those decks are bad in this format.

As for your example, Wafo-Tapa draw-go was viable in Modern for a very limited period and has been an outdated, unplayable deck for quite some time. Doesn’t “there is a deck” imply that the deck exists in some capacity? Even during its “prime,” the deck did not put up impressive numbers. It’s actually a case study for why card advantage-centric decks struggle in Modern.

I cited the deck’s evolution, Nahiri-featuring Jeskai Control, as the only current top deck that constantly does win via card advantage. The only reason Jeskai is suddenly succeeding now is Nahiri, a card that allows the deck to win in a way other than accumulating card advantage, something necessary for Modern success.

Wafo-Tapa style Draw-Go

The original list played a 26 land manabase (pre KTK fetches so not worth comparing), and the following 34 spell suite:
4 cryptic command
4 spell snare
2 logic knot
2 remand
2 shadow of doubt
4 think twice
4 esper charm
2 sphinx’s revelation
4 path to exile
2 supreme verdict
1 wrath of god
2 snapcaster mage
1 white sun’s zenith

With a sideboard of
3 thoughtseize
2 oust
2 stony silence
2 teferi, mage of zhalfir
1 celestial purge
1 disenchant
1 wrath of god
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

Bear in mind that he brought this deck out at GP Boston-Worcestire a good while back, but there are a number of us with a lot of success at local and regional events with lists that mirror his, +/- 3-4 cards in the mainboard and with sideboards that are functionally identical or functionally +/- 5 or 6 cards from each other. For example, Jund and Abzan midrange are extremely easy matchups with mainboards set up like that. Decks like Affinity and merfolk are surprisingly good matchups for decks with lots of wrath effects/spell snares and the card draw to consistently find them on time, and repeatedly within a matchup. Piles of countermagic make blue mirrors strongly favored, and make fast combo decks reasonable to compete with. Card advantage may not necessarily be the most important thing in the format, but much like in Legacy and Vintage, if you CHOOSE to make it the most important axis within a matchup (like jund and abzan frequently do, alongside this deck), the tools exist to overwhelm your opponent on that axis. It’s really no different than what affinity seeks to do with the speed barrier in modern, or infect with forcing interaction.

Agree with this entirely and have utilized this principle to some success in GRx Moon variants. There are chunks of turns with those decks during board stalls that I horde lands in hand, hoping to topdeck the looting. When I do, I can suddenly draw 4.

“In the case of Faithless Looting, I think it’s that a somewhat questionable topdeck if you’re not employing a graveyard strategy…”
I think part of the issue here is that folks tend to imagine “topdecking” as something that happens when your hand is empty, and thus FLooting is a dead draw in such a situation. But this sort of assumes that you’re playing as though you didn’t know FLooting was in your deck.

Typically, I see people make their land drops every turn they’re able, regardless of whether they need the mana or not. After all, what else are you going to do with that land you drew? With the exception of maybe holding one spare as a bluff, every land hits the table, no matter how superfluous it is. All you have to do to utilize Faithless Looting is change that habit.

Once you have enough lands out to cast your biggest card, you start holding the extra lands instead of dropping them. Then, when you “topdeck” that FLooting, you’ve got two extra lands to pitch, making FLooting into essentially a 1-mana Divination. Played smart, FLooting is actually plenty good as a “topdeck”.

As for the cards you mentioned… I think part of what has held Disrupting Shoal back is the lack of decks blue-heavy enough to employ it (since you need a cluster of 1-2 CMC blue cards, and perhaps a smattering of 3s and 4s if you want to give it more reach). In the case of Faithless Looting, I think it’s that a somewhat questionable topdeck if you’re not employing a graveyard strategy, and that Modern players aren’t attuned to the joys of looting the way someone who has experience with a card like Dack Fayden does. However, these situations do strike me as fixable.