Deck Spotlight: GW Eldrazi!

What’s happening everyone, MoxAmethyst here and I’m back today to take a look at what happened at last weekends Modern Tournament results, the first event under the new banlist!

Before we jump into the deck tech and break it all down, we would really appreciate if you took just a moment to check out our Facebook and Twitter, and you can find what I’m up to personally over at Instagram. Your support does mean a lot to us here!

Now let’s get to it. Last weekend saw the first large tournament with Hogaak and Looting banned, and Stoneforge Mystic back in the fray. StarCityGames Modern Open in Dallas was taken down by Harlan Firer on 4 Colour Whirza, which if you haven’t read my earlier articles is the deck that I (amongst a good amount of others) pegged as being the deck to beat going into the new format.

As you can see the Top 16 of this event was incredibly diverse, with Burn being the most represented deck at 4 copies. I expect the format to diversify even further as people try out new Stoneforge brews, and other overshadowed cards from Horizons that haven’t had their time in the spotlight.

The deck we’re going to look at today just missed out on Top 16 coming in at 22nd, and that is Selesnya Eldrazi. Piloted by Ally Warfield, this list looks very well tuned for a ‘first draft’, and very capable of holding it’s own against the field. Let’s take a look at the 75 that Ally played.

This deck is very reminiscent of the Bant Eldrazi decks that we saw during mid to late 2017. Recently the best shell for our Spaghetti friends was in the colorless aggro deck or with the Tron lands. Now we could be looking at a return to Noble Hierarch and Ancient Stirrings at the core of the Modern Eldrazi decks.

Now obviously I don’t believe that this version of the deck is going to make the other builds obsolete, as each of these decks has a very different game plan. Notably this version plays out much more like a tempo deck than the other two we’re used too, which feel much more aggressive. We have our usual suspects in Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher, accompanied by Eldrazi Displacer to round out the Eldrazi creatures. Displacer has always been very good at reusing Thought-Knot Seers Thoughtseize-esque effect, but now there is a new target in Stoneforge Mystic.

Stoneforge does a couple of things in this deck, firstly and most obviously she searches for equipments, which play very nicely with the heavy hitting Eldrazi. If you aren’t quite sure yet, just imagine have a Reality Smasher equipped with a Sword of Fire and Ice. It’s very powerful. Stoneforge also fills an interesting slot in the curve. The big issue with the old Bant lists was that without a Hierarch on turn 1 or an Eldrazi Temple on 1 or 2, you weren’t doing much of anything until the 3rd or often 4th turn. Stoneforge let’s you play a threat on Turn 2 without the need to cheat on Mana, and helps bridge the gap in games where your deck is a little more fair.

Another card that we have access to now thay the old Bant lists didn’t is Karn, the Great Creator. You probably don’t need me to tell you how and why this card is good. Ordinarily I would be quite unsure about Karns addition in one of these Colored Eldrazi decks, but here he makes a lot of sense. Being able to cast a Stoneforge on 2,search for a Batterskull and then play Karn on turn 4 with a board presence to protect him looks like a really nice curve, and these sorts of lines are what lead me to call this a more ‘Tempo’ version of Eldrazi.

For the rest of the deck we have a fairly normal supporting cast, including Ancient Stirrings, Path to Exile and Talisman of Unity as a little extra ramp for your 4 and 5 mana threats.

I’ve sleeved up this deck for a get together with my playgroup and it feels like a real contender. I fully expect more people to be toying around with GWx Eldrazi decks over the coming weeks, so I would definitely recommend keeping this archetype on your radar.

Well that’s all for today guys, thankyou so much for taking the time to read this. If you have any questions or there’s anything you would like to see me write about feel free to leave a comment down below and I’ll do my best to put out content that you guys want to read.

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