Whoa! What an insane Pro Tour. Let’s talk numbers really quick.
24 Eye of Ugin
8 Fetchands
All those 24s should give you a hint, that The Eldrazi deck (two different flavors) was a full six of the top 8. To those of you with a ton of these cards: I salute you! Personally, I’d be shipping these asap. No I don’t think that WOTC is going to ban this deck tomorrow. It’s powerful and it took over the Pro Tour for sure, but WOTC isn’t prone to knee jerk reactions after Pro Tours. Especially in a format that doesn’t see much coverage right after a new set comes out.
Actually, if you really think about it, this deck is genius marketing on the part of R&D. Here’s a deck that you can basically open in current sets! If the ban hammer drops you can expect to have it happen AFTER this set is finished being drafted. That means for a short time new Modern players can, for a low investment ($400 for a Manabase plus some Draft trash) own a tier one Modern deck! Expect sales of Oath to skyrocket. All this is good for Magic as a whole. I also don’t expect that this deck’s numbers at the Pro Tour will mirror your local metagame. But let’s just say Eldrazi is the deck you want to fight, instead of the deck you wanna play.
KNOW YOUR ENEMY!
Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher are the two big problems of this deck. The sequence of Turn one Eye of Ugin, Eldrazi Mimic; Turn two Eldrazi Temple, Thought Knot Seer; Turn three Reality Smasher is pretty intense. It’s turn three (maybe your turn two) and you are at two life. That’s intense! But that’s as likely as it is for Storm to have a turn three kill. EVERYTHING must line up. That’s a series of turns that a player needs to have each of those cards in a world where people are prepared for plays like that. It’s gonna happen for sure, is it gonna happen every time? No.
So let’s focus on the power of this deck and see where we can shut it down.
Eye of Ugin Eldrazi Temple Thought-Knot Seer Reality Smasher Eldrazi MimicThese are the cards that power this deck. If you can deal with these effectively, you have game against this deck.
WHERE’S THE HATE?
Look at the Pro Tour when there’s a break out deck, like Devotion or Blue Moon or Eldrazi, it’s because there is a vacuum of hate for that sort of deck. The metagame is not ready for it, and as such the deck does well. This was the case for Eldrazi. There’s not weeks of data mining going into the meta until the Pro Tour shows us what to work with. Now that we know this is the deck we have to beat, let’s start thinking about it.
Whats good vs. Lands? Ghost Quarter/Blood Moon/Winning before they can kill you. These are all good options. Painter’s Servant doubled in price the other night, because Eldrazi temple and Eye of Ugin only work on COLORLESS Eldrazi.
SUPERSECRET TECH?
In the mean time, I’m still on UWR control. Until I feel like this deck is a real problem in my metagame, I’ll play what I’m comfortable with and put some thought into options for my sideboard. If it starts to become a problem you might think to play some version of GW Hatebears. Obviously Ghost Quarter as Strip Mine is pretty sweet. But free Loxodon Smiters and Wilt Leaf Lieges are not to be laughed at for killing a Reality Smasher. Also we’ve seen Madness is back in Shadows over Innistrad. Who know what kind of insanity you can pull with a Reality Smasher on the wrong side of the board.
BRING IT HOME.
Finally, don’t overreact to the hype. You’re better than every other knee jerk screaming for the ban hammer. First try to fight the problem before you scream “FOUL”. It’s only been a few days. Even Treasure Cruise got three months.
Zac Clark
Zac Clark is the Founder of Hipsters of the Coast. An avid gamer since his early teens, Zac can often be found in Brooklyn either playing games or taking photos. When he’s not drawing extra cards, wrathing boards and countering spells, he’s taking pictures of other peoples good times and listening to 90’s Music.