Halfway through last month, I published "Brew Report: Perfect Pairs," picking out happy couples from among Wizards' decklist dumps. As is common in Modern, more innovative decks were published in February's latter half, including ones built around Standard-legal enchantments, age-old Modern artifacts, and even a few known staples. Today we'll unearth and assess that tech.

Reclaiming the Wilds

Contrary to what Modern Horizons hype-builders might have you believe, many Standard cards do indeed trickle down into Modern. One such recent card has spawned an archetype by itself.

Wilderness Reclamation put two copies in the Top 32 of this Modern Challenge and has since amassed multiple 5-0s. Whether the strategy hangs around remains to be seen, but one thing's for sure: Growth Spiral officially has a home in Modern. Similarly to its Standard incarnations, Reclamation aims to slam the enchantment and then untap all its lands, in this format representing the likes of Cryptic Command and Mystical Teachings to out-pace opponents using Snapcaster Mage and other instant-speed cards. Eventually, Nexus of Fate puts the game away.

The deck reminds me most of the Heartbeat of Spring combo decks from Kamigawa-era Standard. These too relied on a green enchantment to generate a massive mana advantage, and even featured triple-devotion X-costed spells, if from a different cycle than Blue Sun's Zenith.

Modern-wise, I dislike how slow Reclamation is as a deck, although the enchantment can come online relatively early; Mystical Teachings is an awfully bricky card when people are attacking for six flying on turn two. I'm also not a fan of relying on the graveyard to generate so much advantage, especially in this polarized metagame. These traits suggest that the popular Teachings version of the deck is mostly riding the hype wave right now, and not necessarily here to stay.

Utopia Reclamation only has one 5-0 to its name, but it signals other possibilities for building around Wilderness Reclamation. The deck borrows heavily from the Turbo Fog archetype, most commonly represented in Modern by Taking Turns, by making use of flexible Amonkhet sleeper Haze of Pollen.

This build removes many of the complaints I had about the Teachings version, now ignoring the graveyard completely and ramping into its plays with greater consistency thanks to land-enchanting auras. On the flip side, it's suddenly soft to nonbasic hate like Ghost Quarter, and also seems much less consistent despite its many 4-ofs. In fact, given the spell spread, I wouldn't be surprised if Utopia Reclamation is a very early build of a variant to be fleshed out in the coming weeks, and we'll see less-rigid decklists down the road.

No Ironworks, Node Ice

With Krark-Clan Ironworks banned from Modern, players are tinkering with new artifact concoctions to fill the void.

Semblance Anvil, affectionately referred to as Slot Machine by hype-mongers, made quite a splash when it emerged online last month as the spiritual successor to KCI—it plays all the same cards, after all! With an artifact imprinted on the Anvil, subsequent artifacts cost 2 less to cast. That makes Anvil similar to Ironworks in terms of mana generation: Ichor Wellspring costs 0 either way. Cheaper artifacts net less mana, though, which makes churning through the deck significantly more difficult than it was with Ironworks, a deck that had a very low fail rate once it got going. All the digging in Anvil leads to setting up a combo with Grinding Station and decking opponents out, or re-casting Pyrite Spellbomb with Myr Retriever.

Despite the hype, the deck has yet to prove its worth numbers-wise. Only one copy of the deck 5-0d in February, a success I have yet to see repeated; naturally, the deck strayed far from the Top 32s of published Challenges, as well. Anvil suffers from many of the problems KCI had, such as slowing to a halt in the face of Stony Silence or other heavy-duty hate. But compared with KCI, Anvil boasts fewer angles of attack and is far less resilient to disruption; there are fewer Engineered Explosives here with which to blast through the floodgates.

Surge Node revolves around sticking its namesake artifact, which has slumbered quietly in Modern for years, and spreading the charge counters onto artifacts that can make better use of them, primarily mana rocks. Everflowing Chalice and especially Astral Cornucopia then serve as the primary dumps for counters, with Chalice of the Void—which can come down for 0 and then "tick up"—acting as disruption. Coretapper rounds out the enabler suite for when Surge Node proves elusive.

With all that mana, Node starts dumping large artifacts into play, including Wurmcoil Engine and Platinum Angel. The maxed-out Kuldotha Forgemaster searches out the best one in a given matchup, should it resolve and activate—Lightning Greaves, a card I've long felt had yet to realize its Modern potential, lets Forgemaster and other creatures prove their worth immediately. Greaves on Platinum Angel indeed forms a hard-lock against many decks.

Of course, I still doubt Node makes much of a name for Greaves in Modern. The deck folds to Stony Silence, as many artifact strategies do, and lacks the proactivity and resilience of Hardened Scales. Expect this deck to fall way off the map in a month or two when players have forgotten about it.

Modern Misfits

The last two decks we'll look at today make up for not matching with a hearty dose of novelty, each expanding upon an existing deck theme in a totally new way.

Jeskai Chalice cuts Modern's premier one-mana interaction for Chalice of the Void, which is well-positioned against two of the top decks right now: Izzet Phoenix and Burn. With so many strategies riding on Faithless Looting or Ancient Stirrings, having a card to stop powerful enablers and cantrips presents an interesting alternative to packing removal spells Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile.

I'm not totally convinced; after all, this deck only has a single result to its name. But I like the inclusion of Hieroglyphic Illumination, a functional one-drop for the deck early on, and, of Terminus, which gives Jeskai Chalice an "unfair" dimension I think is necessary for interactive decks in the current Modern. Successful Jeskai lists sidestep this requirement with the ever-flexible Bolt-Snap-Bolt, while UW also runs Terminus; the most popular interactive deck in Modern, Grixis Shadow, is built around the ability to give a one-mana 8/8 double strike and trample. Non-Terminus options on this front aren't really available for Jeskai Chalice, and Illumination gives players the option to miracle during an opponent's turn in lieu of Opt.

Hollow Living End is, in my opinion, the coolest deck of the day. Electrodominance gives players more ways to cast Living End, meaning they don't necessarily have to run no one- or two-mana cards in their decks to enable cascade and can instead tech End as an engine. In goes Faithless Looting, the card some top players are now calling the best in the format. But Bolt is relegated to the sideboard, as Hollow Living End already packs functional sweepers for enemy creature decks. Late-game Electrodominances also serve as reach.

The Hollow One engine is self-supporting here. Each cycling creature reduces its cost by one (or by two in the case of Street Wraith), so the 4/4 will always be cast for 0-3 mana, with cycles thrown in for good measure. Flameblade Adept is thrown in as a way to pressure opponents early, often swinging for 2-3 damage; should they remove Adept or Hollow, Living End brings them back. The same goes for Insolent Neonate, which plays multiple roles by binning additional creatures, "storing" mana for Hollow One next turn, and chewing through the deck and into the combo, as well as having a body itself.

GLAUBERT also took his list to 5-0, as did another player some days later, so the strategy may well have legs. No matter these Hollow innovations, Violent Outburst fans needn't fear too much, as traditional Living End seems alive and well.

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough

As pundits ponder whether Modern has fundamental issues with Dredge, Phoenix, and Burn on top of the metagame, others are hard at work behind the scenes, brewing the decks of tomorrow. Which innovations here do you like best? What did this report miss? Share your thoughts below.