Modern Pod report

[Travis Lannoye]

Managed to make it into the weekly Modern event at Mox last night with Pod. My list was roughly as follows:

Spells (6):
4 Birthing Pod
2 Chord of Calling

Creatures (31):
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Deceiver Exarch
1 Eternal Witness
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
3 Kitchen Finks
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Murderous Redcap
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Qasali Pridemage
3 Restoration Angel
1 Spellskite
1 Wall of Omens
4 Wall of Roots
1 Zealous Conscripts

Lands (23):
4 Arid Mesa
1 Breeding Pool
4 Copperline Gorge
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Gavony Township
1 Forest
1 Hallowed Fountain
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden

Sideboard:
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Negate
2 Obstinate Baloth
3 Path to Exile
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
2 Sowing Salt

There were exactly 8 people there last night, so not a great showing, but we still got four rounds of good Magic in.

Round 1, vs. Elves.
- This kid told me later that he only invested about $20 in his deck because he was still working on Standard. Bad investment choice IMO, but I digress. His deck contained things like Cylian Elf and Druid of the Anima, plus a red splash for four Lightning Bolts and zero sideboard. You can guess what happened here.
- Despite him getting quite a few bodies on the table with double Elvish Archdruid, I managed to combo out with Kiki/Exarch, although I suspect I could have simply overrun him with Gavony Township.
- Game two, I kept a hand with two Nobles, an Exarch, a Linvala, something else, and lands. The Linvala alone would have single-handedly shut off his team, but then I ripped Kiki off the top and put him out of his misery.

1-0, 2-0 games

Round 2, vs GR Tron.
- This was fortunately an easy round for me. My opponent remarked that his game 1 matchup is horrid against me, and it was. I combo-ed out in game 1 with relative ease.
- For game two, I boarded in 2 Salt and 2 Negate for a Finks, Pridemage, Linvala, and I think a Wall of some kind.
- Can't recall too many details about game 2, but I remember he wasn't able to assemble his Tron pieces very quickly, and I managed to kill him without much interference. I also remember wishing I had an Avalanche Riders in my board that I could Pod into.

2-0, 4-0 games

Round 3, vs GR Tron.
- This guy had a playmat that said PTQ Top 8 on it, and it looked pretty fresh, so I figured I was in for a fight. I was.
- In game 1, he managed to assemble Tron very quickly and dropped an early Wurmcoil Engine. I had gotten him to a pretty low life total, but I wasn't able to push through enough damage to kill him.
- I boarded the same four-card swap for game 2, but quickly realized a flaw in my plan. For one, he kept leaving a Ghost Quarter up in anticipation of my Salt (which I had), so that he could nuke his own land and save his combo. Second, he boarded in Lodestone Golems, which bought him a lot of time against my draw that did not feature any one-drops. My draw did, however, contain a Conscripts and a Kiki-Jiki, and eventually I drew enough land to simply combo out. There was a pretty sick play where he dropped a Karn and brought it down to three, then I dropped a Conscripts to steal it and remove a land of his, which also killed the Karn. I then dropped Kiki the next turn.
- In game three, I overboarded. I brought in the Paths and the Grudges to deal with Lodestones and Wurmcoils, and I took out so many combo pieces that I only had one Restoration Angel left. I also failed to read Sowing Salt properly. It turns out that if you have two Urza's Towers in play and I cast Sowing Salt on one of them, the other one stays in play. I made that mistake, and he managed to assemble Tron immediately AFTER my mistake. He even had an Eye of Ugin to dig up an Emrakul in his deck. Luckily, we went to time before he could get all 15 mana.

2-0-1, 5-1-1 games

Round 4, vs UW control
- Anyone who has been to Legacy at Mox knows this guy Darrell. He generally plays Azorius decks, and he's kinda loud. Don't let that fool you, though. He's a very strong player, and he's actually a pretty nice guy when you start talking to him. He mentioned that he threw his deck together in a few minutes, and that Pod was a bad matchup for him.
- Game 1, I somehow thought fetching on my own turn was a good idea, and then he dropped a Spreading Seas on me. Dumb. He also had infinite Paths and Tec-Edges (got both my Townships because he claimed he could not beat that card). I managed to kill him via the aggro route in game 1.
- Game 2, I boarded in Sigarda (didn't see any wraths) and Staticaster (saw V Clique and Snapcaster) for Linvala and Qasali Pridemage. Of course, he managed to drop a Detention Sphere on my two Hierarchs, and another one on my two Resto Angels. Luckily I managed to combo out against him FTW.

Props:
- One prop to Witte for sticking with his Polymorph idea, and another for actually winning a couple matches with it.
- One prop to Andrew for loaning me the Linvala, and another prop for loaning me the Chord of Calling.

Going forward, I think I want to cut one Path in my board for an Avalanche Riders. It would have been real nice to be able to tutor up an LD spell against all that Tron (3 of the 6 opponents we faced were Tron varieties). I also want to fit a third filter land (either Fire-Lit Thicket or Rugged Prairie) for one Copperline Gorge.

Modern was a lot of fun, and I would totally play it again. I have a basketball game next Monday, but I could see myself playing it again in two weeks time, or at another event.

EDIT: The Tron decks play out a lot like the MUD decks in Legacy. Pat, I think you'd enjoy playing some sort of Tron variant. The lands are pretty cheap to acquire, and you probably already have the Wurmcoils and Mindslavers and maybe even Karns. I know I have a couple of Karns for EDH.

[John Galli]

Very solid sir for your first tournament foray into Modern. That deck is really good, I'm not too surprised that it forgave some of your mistakes as most people are woefully unprepared for how good it is or lose even if they have the right cards. That format is so much fun, I have to give credit to Wizards for finally getting it straightened out

[Travis Lannoye]

The biggest problem I had was the fact that there were nearly infinite lines of play to consider, and often times I ended up over-thinking things too much. Still, the power level of the deck is so high that I was "forgiven".

Also, not sure if it was normal for everyone to play Tron or not, but if I went there again, I would definitely want some more Tron hate.

[John Galli]

Yeah, that was the same issue Lukas mentioned which was why his brain was mush in the PTQs after 4 or 5 rounds. So many ways to combo out, so many other lines of play for good moves, it's a tough deck to pilot.

Tron is a popular strat, although not everyone runs it. But it's definitely tier 1. It was easily my hardest matchup when playing Jund and about 1/3 to 1/2 my board was dedicated against it and similar decks like Scapeshift.