B/W Tokens

[JediCheese]

So, I was going through my old Shards uncommons and came across Tidehollow Sculler. Got me thinking about the old Lorwyn/Shards B/W tokens decks (with Spectrial Precession/Windbrisk Heights) and I realized we just got done with another set of blocks that had a solid B/W tokens deck (Lingering Souls/Sin Collector).

Has anyone seen a B/W tokens decklist for modern? Do people think this is possibly playable?

There is a ton of hand disruption between Sin Collector/Tidehollow Sculler/Thoughtseize/Liliana of the Veil and the 1/1 token army had a reasonable clock with the pump available to it.

[abeckett]

Melissa Del Tora has written a few articles about it over at TCG player. I don't think it's put up any solid finishes in major modern events, but I have not looked deeply at data to back that up.

I think the biggest issues comes down to speed and the fact that there are tons of cheap board wipes in the format (Pyroclasm/Firespout/etc). Combo becomes a big problem because discard only goes so far to stop them.

[JediCheese]

I came across Melissa Del Tora's articles and was underwhelmed. It seems she just threw together the obvious cards and left it at that without further tuning.

Is combo that prevalent? I've been casually watching the format and people are saying that Robots and B/G Rock are the best decks at the moment.

I might even be tempted to try a token/smallpox that is more like G/B rock. Pyroclasm/Firespout/Volcanic Fallout were all standard legal when Windbrisk Heights was out and about. Plus we have two 2CC anthems for our tokens and another two 3 CC anthems.

[John Galli]

Melissa Del Tora has admittedly juvenlie articles and I don't think she's that great a player, but she did go undefeated in the Swiss portion of a recent pro tour and she piloted B/W tokens in modern to two top 16 finishes at big events (one being a GP). Her list is very similar to the one that was popular over the last two seasons. I think the deck is very disruptive and powerful, but I'm not aware of it's bad matchups. It has a good matchup against Jund which has been a staple of Modern and one of the best decks for the past two seasons, especially the current metagame.

The last I checked, Modern was still heavily ruled by Birthing Pod combo, Twin, and Jund. UWR, Infect, and a few other combos made splashes at times, such as at Worlds. Here's Myers takeaways on the format from my PTQ season-

- Pod is reliable, efficient, terribly difficult to beat, and extremely challenging to play. They have 4-5 auto win-cons depending on their build, they have answers for most decks, and they ways to fight through most of the hate cards. This deck and other combo decks are the ones I'd come prepared to beat because you can't win a tournament without knowing these matches well and attacking them from multiple angles.

- this format has consistent turn 3-5 kill decks, so you must be able to do the same or disrupt. Jund for instance was great for me against most of the field despite having a weaker game 1 against combo. That said, I typically ran 5-6 maindeck one-mana discard spells to have some game. Cards like Jund Charm and Rakdos Charm are also immensely appealing in this format because they deal with a lot of archetypes in the format.

- Tron is one of the scariest decks in the field if the pilot can handle twin and pod. Like Jund, it's not great against combo in game 1, but it's insane against the average opponent. Playing a turn 3 Karn Liberated is something no one wants to deal with.

- Burn is a deck that you need to respect, because it does exist and is usually a turn 3-5 kill, plus most decks heavily shock themselves in the first few turns. That said, Burn has a rough combo match with little interaction ability even with the 3-4 color splash most pilots play.

- The format is really open. I routinely saw 25+ archetypes at PTQs and they weren't scrub decks. I think this format rewards card choice and tight play more than any other. It's very easy to make mistakes, and it's very easy to underestimate a matchup, either playing poorly against it or not having an appropriate sideboard. You have to practice, I felt much more comfortable playing in my second PTQ than I did in my first and the two heartbreaking matches I lost in that second PTQ were against my worst match with me sideboarding in 8 cards and a critical play mistake.

Btw, it always help to look at the most recent MTGO results-

www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/6162841

[abeckett]

John summed this up much better than I ever could. Tron can very consistently drop a Karn on turn 3, which basically trumps a ton of other decks in the format. All of the stuff Pod can do just makes my head hurt, and they can do it through a ton of disruption.

I think what you play in this format does very much depend on the meta you expect and whether you are packing the right hate for your bad matchups.

[John Galli]

Btw, even though we've all said our peace on Melissa, here's her important articles if you are still interested in the B/W Tokens archetypes-

11th at the San Diego GP

Update for GP Detroit and struggles at GP Kansas City

Whether you change routes or not, important reads.

[John Galli]

Additonal Note - Here's a couple of cards I like in sideboards in Modern (and/or maindeck):

-Torpor Orb
-Grafdigger's Cage (an absolute allstar in Modern)
-Stony Silence
-Jund Charm
-Rakdos Charm
-Discard, Discard, Discard. Specifically Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek
-Deathrite Shaman
-Rest in Peace (if it doesn't hurt you, which doesn't seem to be the case for most decks)
-Dismember
-Combust
-Sowing Salt
-Fulminator Mage
-Molten Rain

*Against Pod - Grafdigger's cage is an absolute beating and really crushes a lot of their strategy. They can deal with it, just like any other hate card, so you have to have a combination of hate, but it's easily the best one and the most criminally underplayed. Stony Silence, Torpor Orb, Both B/R based charms, Deathrite, and discard are all good as well. The biggest problem is that the deck can win out of nowhere, so the best thing you can do is shut off their three main points of attack which are ETB effects, Pod, and Recursion. If you can keep them off Pod, they have to "luck-sack" into a combo. That said, the deck is great at just beating your face in too, so you have to keep some element of anti-aggro and pressure along with whatever you do.

*Against Jund - considering I played Jund, I'd say the hardest thing I had to deal with was an aggro deck that could overwhelmingly swarm me with some resilience. It's one of the reasons B/W Tokens is a very tough match. Turn 1 Thoughtseize into massive tokens requires really specific cards from me to come back. Your fliers mostly just don't care about anything I play, so I need to play sweepers, gain life, and get to my end game. I ran Thundermaws in mine (which some others do too) and this in combination with Lingering Souls helped my match against B/W Tokens more than traditional builds.

The other hard thing for Jund to deal with is turn 3-5 combos. Unless they get a discard spell, they're just slower, so if you're playing, Tron, Twin, or Pod, you have a very good game 1. Still, Jund has Maelstrom Pulse, Terminate, possibly Blightning, Thoughtseize, and a whole slew of other interactive spells, so you're never dead in the water. It's really easy too for Jund to splash a fourth color, in my case it was white, but you could do anything, which gives you access to some really great cards (enter Ajani Vengeant)

*Against Twin - This deck plays for the win everytime, that's all they care about. They play enough disruption and redundancy to force their combo through, so to beat them you need to play VERY tight and know how they're going to try and stop you and when they can potentially go off. You also need to pay attention to not fall behind by sitting back and waiting because that will just let them build up to a comfortable place where they can go off regardless of what you have.

*Against Tron - this deck mostly loses to Sowing Salt and has a very tough time with land destruction of any kind. If you don't have this, Stony Silence in combination with removal for their big ticket items is key to winning. Shutting off some of their early plays like Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, and Eldrazi Temple is really important, moreso than you'd think. Be aware that they can dig up Wurmcoil Engine, so that is another way for them to break you even if you Slaughter Games something. They also can lose if they get out-aggro'd, but they have to have a fairly marginal hand for you to be able to do this. Still, a few guys and some "Vindicate" effects do wonders against Tron a lot of the time.

*Against UWR - I don't know how played this is anymore, but I "solved" this match when playing Jund against them by the time of my second PTQ. I found out that they have an incredibly difficult time with attrition, and I increased my Three Drop / Four Drop / Five Drop cards to the point where I knew I was going to win the long game everytime. They try to remove all of your threats with wraths and pin-point burn / exile, and a lot of games might come down to man-lands and tectonic edge. Thus, Land destruction in combination with heavy attrition goes a long way. Slip cards into your 75 that they wouldn't expect at all, because this is the matchup where you can take extreme advantage since all of their answers are very well known and exploitable.

There's plenty of other decks to get knowledge on that are worth it, like Infect, Boggle, Soul Sisters, G/W, R/G, Burn, Gifts, etc, but hopefully this helps a bit