Spicy Decks from Mythic Championship IV

Howdy folks! I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from the last banned and restricted announcement. But rather than wallowing in my sadness at the loss of a card I've played quite a bit of over the last year (as long time readers of my column know), I'm instead looking forward…. by looking backwards! I didn't review the decks from Mythic Championship IV, which took place in my home country of Spain (in Barcelona), so I thought I could do two things at once.

Because of the distance from the tournament, both in time and in b&r announcements, it goes without saying that I won't talk about how Hogaak dominated the tournament. It was obvious that it would and it's banned now, so let's focus on what information we can use. As such, I'll be looking at the spicy brews of the event might give you some ideas moving forward in this fun brew-heavy environment, though obviously the exact builds will likely need tweaking in a post-looting era!

7. Unexpected Emrakul

Unexpected Emrakul by Erich Hellauer, MC IV Barcelona

Hail to King ! What we have here is a deck with a plan B in to almost win on the spot. That isn't by itself uncommon, but the addition of Emrakul, and, more importantly, the spicy addition of the namesake makes this deck special. Mr. Eric Hellauer knew this gem though, and clearly felt lucky enough to hit some Emrakuls off the top of his deck with the Gatecrash Sorcery. Looking at the new cards, we can see potential sideboard All-Star from Core Set 2020. It's been doing work in Standard and seems to have Modern and even Legacy potential.

6. Scale Up Infect

Scale Up Infect by Timothy Wu, MC IV Barcelona

Once upon a time in Modern, Infect dominated the metagame. In those days, was legal in the format and it helped make the format quite wacky. Nowadays, this deck is pretty off the radar, minus a few sweet upgrades Wizards recently released for it.

is a pretty absurd card, combined with infect creatures enables turn two kills with a and another pump spell. Moreover, having Scale Up means you don't need to fill your graveyard for , so you have a better land base and you only have to have one copy of the previously necessary Delve Growth effect.

Modern Horizons also brought to the deck, offering extra lands that you can trade for extra cards, along with sideboard all-star in the sideboard and, of course, there are also some copies of Veil of Summer.

5. Four-Color Snow

Four-Color Snow by Craig Rocco, MC IV Barcelona

Let's talk about Modern Horizons again, as it has released a ton of new stuff into Modern, most of which was overshadowed by the Hogaak menace before its eventual banning.

Snow is a mechanic from the Ice Age era that later showed up in Cold Snap with some success and it looks like Modern Horizons is expanding on that success with cards like and [Acrum's Astrolabe] pushing the power level of snow quite far.

This deck seems a bit strange to me with a weird mix of utility creatures, s, discard, counter magic, and some removal. In Legacy, they have a term for random midrange concoctions – a pile. This seems like a pile to me, especially because of its choice to use , which seems a bit slow for Modern, even if it's great with the Coatl.

4. Devoted Abundance

Devoted Abundance by Jon Stern, MC IV Barcelona

Moving away from the fair side and into the unfair side of Modern, we have a combo deck leveraging the popular Vizier combo in conjunction with a new card from the last core set: . Traditionally, only white and black leylines have seen real competitive play, but maybe this is a chance for one of the other Leylines to have a chance in the spotlight.

With the new London Mulligan rule, it's easier to start the game with one of these in play, and then every mana dork in your deck adds an additional green mana when they tap. Combine this with , a blue enchantment from Saviors of Kamigawa, and you've got yourself an infinite mana combo alongside the regular combo.

In order to finish the game, Karn, the Great Creator will do the trick, locking up your opponents with the infamous or just tutoring up a for millions. It's an interesting take on a previously powerful deck. I'm not sure it's better, but it's definitely worth mentioning.

3. Mardu Shadow

Mardu Shadow by Andrew Baeckstrom, MC IV Barcelona

Oh, Shadow decks! I love them all, but at the same time, but it definitely wasn't the right time for them at this event. But this event has passed and Modern has changed, so we're gonna feature this lovely Mardu Shadow combination. Last month, I discussed the Esper version, which you can read about here. Sadly, no one thought it was a deck worth playing for the Mythic Championship.

This one leverages some of the advantages the esper version had, using not only for , but also to get a singleton copy of . Some versions even run a to protect your threats.

Since there's no blue counter-magic in this deck, it relies more on discard to disrupt your opponent. fits that role perfectly since it can be a great target for in addition to keeping your opponent on the back foot.

Finally, four copies of gives you a great land base for growing your Shadows while fixing your mana and preventing flood in the late game. Another Modern Horizons addition, which is becoming a staple in every black sideboard, is , ideal for dealing with tribal decks and it's even useful against combo decks like storm to fight the Goblin tokens from .

2. Rakdos Elementals

Rakdos Elementals by Patrick Kenkel, MC IV Barcelona

Speaking of tribal decks, this is one you probably didn't expect. I was going to talk about Goblins but this list from Patrick Kenkel caught my eye for a couple of reasons: and .

Both creatures deserve more love in Modern. The first looked like a meme, but really reached new heights with Unearth. In this deck, the Skelemental is even better since can bring it back a second time.

Arcanist, a Legacy staple in red-based Delver decks, is also a key piece to the deck in Standard. The ability to replay your cheap discard and removal during the combat phase is amazing and I strongly believe it will see more Modern play in the future.

Although the individual cards feel strong, the combination lacks a bit of consistency and I think it's worth looking to and other cheap spells moving forward, especially considering the Looting ban.  

Speaking of which! This deck is losing a key piece in Faithless Looting, and it will need serious adjustment to keep up, starting with more reliance on cards like to stack your graveyard (maybe). It remains to see if another version will appear, but the combo of Unearth and Skelemental is still very potent and deserves exploration in the format, especially when other graveyard decks have been weakened.

1. W/U Quest

W/U Quest by Jerry Mee, MC IV Barcelona

To cap off this list, I thought I'd discuss the Jankiest brew I highlighted, utilizing , a card from the original Zendikar that I played in Standard when it first came out.

For those of you who don't know how it works, is a white enchantment for one mana that gets counters when you cast a creature and if you get to five counters, you can search your library for an Equipment and put it onto the battlefield attached to a creature.

That, combined with 0 mana artifact creatures like [Onrithopter] or that can be bounced with allows you to cheat into play alongside a busted Sword to attack as early as turn two! The deck is obviously quite all-in on the equipment plan and has little else going for it should that plan fail.

And hey! It has now, if it wants it. I think it's cool that Jerry Mee chose to play this in a sea of hyper competitive decks, built by the best of the best It feels nice to see personal brews at the highest levels of play, even if open decklists makes these rogue decks less effective. 

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading and I've got not much else to say, other than that it's fun to look through these tournaments for spicy strategies that might be the next big thing in Modern (or, more than likely, not that). I can't wait to see how the format evolves now that is available in Modern and graveyard based decks aren't the menace they were before.

As usual, thank you so much for reading and please, leave your comments or questions below or you hit me on my shared Twitter account.

See you in fifteen days.

Rodrigo Martin.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.

---

Editor's Note: All the decklists apart from the Mardu Shadow list didn't have complete sideboards reported, so they are listed above with the information available (cards, but not the quantity of each card).