Welcome back one and all for another exciting Modern watchlist! With Crimson Vow’s release just around the corner, it’s time to sift through the new cards and see what’s worth keeping an eye on in the coming weeks. While there are quite a few that could see marginal Modern play, I learned my lesson with Midnight Hunt (writing a three part watchlist trying to capture everything), so we’ll only be covering my top five picks from Crimson Vow. As with all my watchlists, I’m going to aim to highlight cards I feel are flying under people’s radar (sorry, Chandra, Dressed to Kill and Wandering Mind).
Modern has settled into a nice rhythm of having a new top deck arise each week, only for the format to adapt and have a new “deck-to-beat” take its place. Since the release of MH2, we’ve seen a wide variety of decks achieve 5-0 status. Grixis Storm Herald, various flavors of Humans (Mono-White, Blue-White, Jeskai, and Jegantha), janky Enchantress builds (Phyrexian Unlife Prison and Yorion Bant), Yorion Magda, Temur Song of Creation, RG and Naya Zoo, GB Gyruda, and on and on the list of spice goes. MHayashi has 5-0’d with multiple Red Specials over the past two weeks: Jegantha Prowess, Obosh Midrange, TOD Chandra Midrange, and Companionless Midrange. Pilots have also had reasonable success with Aspiringspike specials like Mono-Green Eldrazi and Mono-White Fiddlebender, as well as an alternate take on Fiddlebender, Jeskai Artificers.
Yes, going undefeated in a Magic Online league isn’t a stamp of approval that the deck is a Modern-worthy pile, but it’s worth noting that players are able to succeed in current Modern with such decks. Week after week, the variety has remained (artificial diversity of the decklist dumps aside), and even “Tier 2” decks can have good runs. Modern continues to be a format where you can play pretty much whatever you want, and if you’re prepared for the best decks, you might just spike a local tournament or an online league with an off-meta strategy. So with all of that in mind, here are the five Crimson Vow cards I’m excited to brew around.
Cards to Brew Around This Month
Spiritually, Headless Rider feels like a much closer replacement for Bridge from Below than Magus of the Bridge, similar to how Faithful Mending was much better than Faithless Salvaging. But just like how the role Faithless Looting played can’t ever be filled except by the card itself, no Bridge from Below replacement will ever be the same. That being said, I do think the card merits some attention, both in Zombie tribal and Crabvine decks.
The closest analogue to Rider in Modern is Xathrid Necromancer, an anti-control card Humans used to play back in the day. Unlike Necromancer, however, Rider has an X/1 body, which means it’s more susceptible to Wrenn and Six and Lava Dart effects. But having cards like Gravecrawler in the Zombie tribe makes me think that it might be time to reevaluate Altar of Dementia, a card that practically vanished from the format after the initial banning of Bridge from Below. While the Convoke strength of the Zombie tokens is gone (with Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis) banned), the additional resiliency Rider offers shouldn’t be underestimated.
Zombie tribal can fling the tokens with Goblin Bombardment, which only gets further powered up by having one or more Mayhem Devils in play, and Crabvine might actually be able to fall back on the mill kill more reliably if all their dying threats are generating additional mill count for Altar of Dementia. The latter deck might still need a beefy recursive threat to really see a comeback (not to mention an answer to Endurance), but getting a solid backup plan might give it enough of a boost to shake the fringes of the format.
While not quite Consider levels of flashy, Voldaren Epicure is still a common worth getting hyped up about. Just like the Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar players got excited about Blood Fountain, I was ecstatic when Voldaren Epicure was spoiled. Remember September’s watchlist card, Vampire Socialite? Epicure is guaranteed, non-combat lifeloss to trigger Socialite. Sequencing might get a little funky sometimes, but the potential is there. While the rest of the Blood tokens package in Crimson Vow might not make the Modern cut, there might be something among the old Madness cards that could, which Epicure’s tokens would help enable. Falkenrath Forebear might be a decent recursive threat to take advantage of these tokens as well, but Modern has access to Bloodghast, and free recursive threats almost always beat out recursive threats with a cost.
Then again, perhaps Vampires is best taken in an Aristocrats direction. Zombies isn’t the only tribe with access to Goblin Bombardment, and a lot of Vampires are red already (Insolent Neonate, Cemetery Gatekeeper, Falkenrath Gorger), which makes slotting in Bombardment easy. Dominating Vampire can be a makeshift Munitions Expert, letting you steal an opponent’s threat, hit them with it, then sacrifice it to Bombardment or something like Viscera Seer.
Perhaps Vampires will want to go Mardu for Edgar, Charmed Groom for those sweet Vampire tokens and utility cards like Prismatic Ending, Stony Silence, and Rest in Peace. Since Vampires don’t seem to rely on enters-the-battlefield triggers, white would also give them access to effects like Hushbringer, although a Rakdos build would probably just stick with Torpor Orb and could always cheat Edgar into play with Aether Vial or Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord. Regardless of the final direction the tribe takes, I see a lot of potential in them to make a splash in Modern.
With the banning of Winota, Joiner of Forces in Historic and her rise to prominence in Pioneer, I’ve started looking at bringing some version of Winota to Modern. I’d played Naya Winota prior to her banning on Arena, and despite Winota’s rise to prominence in Pioneer makes picking up a new format alluring, I’m primarily a Modern player. With the recent Jeskai Winota 5-0, I think she merits some exploration in my primary format.
Although Pioneer Winota is playing Tovolar’s Huntmaster as their top-end threat, Avabruck Caretaker caught my eye not only because she can grow Winota but also because she can supercharge your whole team with hexproof and two +1/+1 counters if you can flip her to her back face, Hollowhenge Huntmaster. Caretaker plays just as well with Tovolar, Dire Overlord as his Huntmaster does, and Outland Liberator is another fantastic Human that can initiate the Day/Night cycle. And flipping a Magus of the Moon into play to lock your opponent out of the game while you continue to generate value with Winota sounds fantastic. Ultimately, an all-in Winota build might not be good enough in Modern, but I’m eager to brew a couple different versions and see how they fare.
If Concealing Curtains doesn’t get your spicy brew senses tingling, I don’t know what will. Sure, a one-mana 0/4 doesn’t look like much on the surface, but it looks a whole lot better when you make it a one-mana 4/4. While Arcades, the Strategist is slightly more mana efficient than Assault Formation, he’s unfortunately a Bant card that can’t be hit by Collected Company. Doran the Siege Tower, however, can, and in Abzan colors, no less!
What really appealed to me about Curtains, however, is that you don’t need Arcades or Assault Formation to get it going. Its activated ability is not only disruption but also a self-enabler, trading Defender for Menace and three power. And transforming Curtains is only an upside: both Formation and Doran care about toughness, and Curtains keeps its X/4 stat when it flips. ThrabenU recently played a Doran deck that could easily fit Curtains, perhaps upgrading its Ornithopters for the little Wall.
I’ll be honest, Torens, Fist of the Angels immediately captured my attention from the moment it was spoiled, and I could write an entire article about potential brews around this card. A Monastery Mentor for creature decks is a big deal and every bit worth getting excited about. My mind immediately went to my old pet deck, Monument Sisters, a fun little brew built around the wonderful interaction between Oketra’s Monument and Whitemane Lion coupled with everyone’s favorite trio of Soul Sisters, Soul Warden, Soul’s Attendant, and Auriok Champion. It wasn’t the best deck ever, but it was certainly a blast to play. And considering I went as deep in the jank tank as playing Genesis Chamber as Monuments 5-6, you’d better believe I got hyped about “better Chamber on a body.”
While I’ve been working through the implications of a green splash in what was previously a mono-white deck, I’ve also been toying with the idea of a Selesnya or Bant Humans deck built around Torens and a Midnight Hunt human I’d completely overlooked, Katilda, Dawnhart Prime. This first incarnation of Katilda turns all of our Humans into pseudo-Noble Hierarchs and lets us cast a Whitemane Lion to start making tokens the turn Torens comes down rather than the turn after, which was a serious flaw my old Monument Sisters deck suffered from. If I’m not playing Oketra’s Monument in this human-centric version, that frees up a couple slots to potentially play Cemetery Protector as both an additional token maker and main deck graveyard hate.
I’ve also considered a Yorion pile of some kind: with or without Oketra’s Monument; adding Eladamri’s Call for either Torens consistency or to branch into a more toolbox-style deck; or splashing red for Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Norin the Wary, Impact Tremors, and Magus of the Moon. Perhaps Scurry Oak deserves a slot in one of the Soul Sisters versions, whether or not the Sky Noodle ends up in the Companion slot.
Parting Thoughts
I’ve given y’all a lot of deck ideas to consider and, before we go, I need to address the number one complaint that’s going to be raised: “These cards/decks aren’t ‘good enough’ for Modern.” Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we?
Back in July of 2016, Eldritch Moon released and introduced Sigarda’s Aid to Magic. Two months later, SaffronOlive posted an Against the Odds video of a Mono-White Equipment deck that ended up doing okay, but was very much a meme deck. Fast forward a year to August of 2017, where SaffronOlive was trying to break Argentum Armor with Quest for the Holy Relic (the closest thing we had to Stoneforge Mystic at the time). Unsurprisingly, that deck also did okay but was still a meme. Then, two years later, SaffronOlive broke out the Sigarda’s Aids again with the printing of Colossus Hammer and took a Boros “Hammertime” deck to a 5-0 finish in July of 2019. A month later, Stoneforge Mystic was unbanned in Modern, and all the pieces of Hammertime were finally together.
Hollow One had a similar “meme-to-riches” success story, and while SaffronOlive might not have been the only one to craft the deck before it exploded onto the competitive scene, he certainly helped popularize it. From my own experience, Jeskai Humans was a deck I first encountered in a side event at GP Indianapolis in August of 2017, a month before the release of Ixalan and the apocalyptic arrival of 5c Humans, the best tribal deck Modern has ever seen. (Sorry, Merfolk.) With the decline of the five-color build and the return of Jeskai Humans, it’s been weird seeing the red-white-blue build as a viable alternative instead of its outdated predecessor.
But my point with all of these examples is that none of these tournament decks started out as hyper-competitive, streamlined decks from their inception. It took months to years before they took down tournaments, and often not until that one missing piece was printed or unbanned. Hammertime was missing Colossus Hammer and Stoneforge Mystic; Hollow One needed Flameblade Adept, and it took players time to realize that the randomness of Burning Inquiry and the strength of delve cards like Gurmag Angler were exactly what the deck wanted; Humans needed Unclaimed Territory and Kitesail Freebooter. All of these decks, however, existed before their “glue” cards were printed, and often for many, many months before these final cards were released.
So don’t let your deck idea being “bad” stop you from exploring the ideas that interest you. Modern, and Magic as a whole, is a game, and you should be having fun. Play what you like, and give yourself the freedom to explore Modern’s card pool without the “competitive fun police” telling you that your deck is bad and you should feel bad. Brew your heart out. Play your janky spice. Even the best decks in Modern today were once memes. And who knows, maybe your pet deck just isn’t good yet.
