VIDEO: Top 5 Decks That Might Return to Modern

With the dust settling from the recent bans, the Modern metagame is starting to take shape. With Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Simian Spirit Guide gone, there is a lot of space for some older decks to make a comeback. MTGTavern takes a look at what could happen.

Time Stamp	Transcript
00.00	Hello beautiful people of MTG. I am Dan, otherwise known as MTG Tavern, back today for Cardmarket. About a month ago, you may have heard of, what was that card's name again? Arrow, Ero, , that got banned in Modern along with , and since then, Modern has changed quite a lot. With those cards being banned – particularly Uro more than any – it has given space for some decks that have just disappeared over the last couple of years to come back to the format. In today's list video, I am going to be looking at five decks from yesteryear in Modern that might make a reappearance this year. Like I said in the introduction, here we are looking at five decks today that until those bans happened last month, they were pushed out the format, they were exiled, they were vanquished, they were disintegrated from the face of the Modern platform, and now, with those bans they might have a chance of coming back.
01.00	Of course, I am not saying that any of these five decks we are going to identify today will all of a sudden just break Modern. They are not going to be tier-one probably, not even tier-two, but you might see these in your Modern leagues, you might see them in FNM; somebody might want to brew one of these again because they are not complete rubbish. You never know, fingers crossed. If covid goes away soon we might get a Cardmarket series and you might see these in Cardmarket Series events. These decks, you might see them every now and then. They have a chance of doing something in the format, they are just not going to be particularly broken. Before we get into our top five list, a quick reminder. You see the color of this t-shirt, the red part not the blue part, of course. There is a corresponding-colored button down below which is the subscribe button. Slap that subscribe button; that will make us love you even more than we already do. Leave a thumbs up because that will make Cardmarket realize that I am the best content creator in the world. Let's go look at five decks that might come back in Modern this very year.
01.58	At number five I have got Living End. Regular viewers of this channel – particularly my videos – will know that I love playing some Living End. They will probably be thinking "what a surprise, that random Living End guy genuinely thinks Living End will be a thing in Modern again". One can always dream, but hopefully, you will give me a second to explain myself. I do not just mean the traditional Jund variant of Living End, the traditional cascading to Living End, hope it does not get countered, you might win. I am talking about the more recent Blue-Red, and even the four-color version, of Living End which have been picking up steam certainly over the last half a year. But just sticking with the Jund variant of Living End in for a second, when Uro and got banned, that gave the opportunity for midrange decks to come back into the format. Some blue decks did take quite a bit of a hit. With more midrange decks coming back they usually play hand disruption with and Living End does not typically care about that because it can just keep cycling and draw a cascade spell anyway. Targeted removal, Living End definitely does not care about that. All up for Living End in as far as the banlist goes. If you look at the metagame over the last month, yes, you have got W/U control, but in general, most of the matchups are at least 50-50 matchups for Living End.
03.05	You are playing a lot of decks in the meta right now which involve a lot of creatures to win the game which is exactly where Living End wants to be. Prowess decks play a lot of creatures because that is where most of their damage comes from. Living End is pretty good against creatures, especially when they are all in on casting prowess creatures. Jund and , while their hand disruption can be annoying, in general, there is not something scary in those particular decks. Taxes, all creatures, Humans, all creatures, Heliod Company, yes, there are some awkward combos in there, but in general, mostly creatures. W/U Control, that is why Living End is at number five and not any high because W/U Control will always be a problem for Living End. Even though traditional cascade Living End has a decent matchup against most of those decks we have just mentioned, it is more of the , the U/R, or the four-color version which I think you are going to see more of going forward. Both of those versions of Living End do cast Living End still on your opponent's turn if needed with or Electrodominance, but most importantly, they are now backed up by ; it is even more consistent.
04.08	They are just jamming through that Living End; a random counter spell is not going to do too much on your opponent's turn. Coming in at number four, I have got Bogles. Despite being incredibly different decks Living End and Bogles have one thing in common and that is that it does not particularly care about hand disruption to a certain degree, and definitely do not care about targeted removal particularly in the case of Bogles. But, why is boggles better now? First of all, you are going to see more of these midrange decks come in, they are going to be playing more targeted removal which is completely blank by the hexproof on the bogle. Moreover, the fact that the Uro decks are now completely gone is a huge bonus for those bogle decks because they were able to Uro very early in the game, gain a little bit of life to stay alive, put an extra land into play, and before you know it, if the bogle deck did not kill them by turn four or five at best, they were completely locked. Even though you are not targeting that bogle with your Cryptic Command, if your opponent could never attack with their creatures, it does not matter if they have got removal, does it?
05. Jan	Arguably, just as important Simian Spirit Guide also got banned from the format. That meant that Oops! All Spells, Neobrand, Ad Nauseum, were either completely gone or rather slower. Even though Bogles can put a lot of pressure on them and you cannot target it that is not of much use when your opponent is comboing killing you on turn four or five. Do not be shocked if a lot of midrangy decks come into the format, that Bogles comes back this year and absolutely dominates for a very short period of time. It does also need to avoid Tron though. Tron is a bad matchup for Bogles. At number three, I have got a deck that is reasonably similar to Bogles and that it can sometimes blank removal and that is Infect. It might seem a little bit weird that I am identifying Infect as being a deck that could come back when Infect was not that bad against Uro. If you think about it, the three points of life gain on Uro does not matter when you are attacking your opponent with Infect damage. Then, ramping on turn three, tapping out on turn three is what the Infect deck usually wants because then there is nothing else, they can do. They know there is a green light, you can go and pummel your opponent's face with those infect creatures. It was not Uro being in the format itself that was the issue for Infect, the issue was the decks that came along to beat Uro such as Prowess, Rakdos Shadow were jam-packed with a very quick clock, creatures on the ground, and also, very cheap and efficient removal.
06.20	It is okay against a reasonable amount of removal. It is even okay against a reasonably quick clock on the assumption that the clock is not hyper-interactive. With Prowess and Shadow, it was the worst-case scenario. With Uro out of the picture, it does open up the opportunity for Tron to come into the format and Infect is quite good against it and most big mana ramp decks. While they are messing around playing on turn one, they are playing , to access Tron mana, you are killing them. The Tron deck or most of the big mana decks are not hyper-interactive; they are not playing loads of removal. They are just trying to get big mana on turn three and four which is really where Infect shines. Even with some of the more midrange decks coming like traditional Grixis Death's Shadow, like Jund, yes, they do play a reasonable amount of removal, but it is not a very quick clock and it is not an absurd amount of removal like prowess and Rakdos Shadow did have.
07.13	Right then, at number two, this is probably the only deck on the top five which does not specifically get better because of Uro or anything being banned, but moreover because of recent printing. We have got Elves in Modern. Elves has been a deck that randomly pops up into top eights in big-name events, GPs, or Cardmarket series. An Elves deck randomly makes top eights every now and then and it is down to specifically the meta. If Elves can avoid that turn-one or two piece of removal on your mana dork, it can empty its hand incredibly quickly. At that point, it becomes a top-tier deck in the format. You just need to avoid that turn-one piece of removal which is asking quite a lot in Modern. When it was behind on board, it was usually relying on a) being in your hand, but b) also being pretty damn good as well, and of course, Collected Company is not always completely reliable.
08.04	However, unlike the rest of the top five here, Elves was not specifically better because of cards getting banned recently, but because of Kaldheim. We had , , and printed which gave the Elves deck the ability to come back from early removal in the game; it did not have to rely on Collected Company and now it has legitimate backup plans earlier in the mana curve, and it could refill the board rather quickly. Before I reveal my number one, let's just remind ourselves of what we were really talking about here in the top five. We were talking about decks that might come back because the Uro and all those cards around before were just too much for these decks to handle. We were talking about them not being necessarily broken, but being tier-one tier-two at their absolute best. Most importantly, you might play against them randomly in FNM or in a Modern league. Nothing encapsulates the last two years and how not broken these decks are than Eight Rack. As we all know, Eight Rack has always been about keeping your opponent's hand completely empty.
08.59	They get their draw step and that is it. Then, you slam or and slowly burn them out of the game as they have dwindling resources. A Rack strategy over the last couple of years with , but most importantly Uro, has been quite frankly completely laughable. They play a card early in the mana curve, they draw a different card instead. It has just been not good for Eight Rack to say the least, but now at least with Uro out of the picture maybe the Simic strategies relax a little bit, there is not as much value in those decks so people might just veer away from them. That might open up Eight Rack as a position to come back into the format and actually it does have a lot going for in the format right now. The Rack and Shrieking Affliction is an artifact and an enchantment and not every deck in the format certainly main board is running specific pieces of removal for those types of permanents. Not only are your opponents going to be discarding cards in the early game, there is also a high chance that when they topdeck they draw which does not do anything anyway. Of course, over the last couple of years that was completely relevant because your opponent just drew a thousand cards after casting one spell; not good at all.
10.04	Guys, that was my top five list, the top five decks that have not been seen in the format too much over the last couple of years but now with recent bans, with recent printings, you might see them coming back and you might play against them at FNM, a Modern league or, fingers crossed, if COVID goes away a Cardmarket series. I hope you enjoyed this video. This was Dan MTG Tavern back for Cardmarket. I will see you next time.

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