With the Regional Championship in Washington D.C. taking place this past weekend, a lot of attention has been focused on Pioneer. The format has been seeing some major metagame shifts, especially since the release of Duskmourn. Duskmourn has proven to be a very powerful set for Standard and Pioneer alike.
As strong as Duskmourn is, though, the set hasn’t had too big of an impact on Modern. Some powerhouses like Abhorrent Oculus have made a splash here and there, but nothing too major beyond that. There hasn’t been much in the way of innovative archetypes popping up recently, either.
With that being the case, one particular strategy that did have a breakout performance this past week we felt was worth sharing. This deck takes a combo that has become popular in Pioneer and completely revamps its supporting cast. If you’ve been looking for something unique to play in a Modern world dominated by Boros Energy, this deck could be right up your alley.
Executing the Combo
- Mana Value: 3BG
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats: 6/6
- MTG Sets: Bloomburrow
- Card Text: Ward- Sacrifice a Food. Other creatures are Food artifacts in addition to their other types and have “2, Tap, Sacrifice this permanent: You gain 3 life.” Whenever a Goof is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, put two +1/+1 counters on Ygra, Eater of All.
As mentioned, this deck’s gameplan is centered around an infinite combo that has made its presence felt in Pioneer. The goal is to find a copy of Ygra, Eater of All along with two copies of Cauldron Familiar. Because Ygra makes all of your creatures into Foods, including the Cauldron Familiars, as long as you have a Cauldron Familiar in your graveyard and another in play, you can continuously sacrifice the copy in play to bring back the one from the graveyard in an infinite loop. The opponent will be drained of all their life in the process, and Ygra will grow incredibly large to boot.
Interestingly, though, this Modern deck doesn’t feature much of a sacrifice theme at all. In fact, there are no copies of Witch’s Oven to be seen. Instead, this deck is simply looking to turbo out the combo as fast as possible. One of the ways to do this is simply to hard-cast Ygra and your Cauldron Familiars. Thanks to Phyrexian Tower, you can sacrifice one of your Cats to play Ygra ahead of schedule. This gets one of the Cats into the graveyard to start the combo.
Beyond that, though, there are also some unique synergies utilizing the graveyard that let you combo without ever casting Ygra! The most important avenue to victory involves using Shifting Woodland to copy Ygra from your graveyard. As we will see in the next section, enabling Delirium is very easy, as is milling over your threats. There’s a playset of Shifting Woodland present, showcasing its importance to the deck.
One of the cooler ways to set up the combo is to use Buried Alive to tutor up Ygra and two Cauldron Familiars to your graveyard. From there, you can activate Shifting Woodland to copy Ygra. So long as you have another random Food (say, from Gilded Goose) or creature in play besides Ygra, you then get to sacrifice that permanent to resurrect one of your Cats and start the chain. If you don’t have Shifting Woodland, Goryo’s Vengeance targeting Ygra can accomplish a similar task.
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Filling Your Graveyard
- Mana Value: 3BB
- Rarity: Mythic
- Stats: 5/5
- MTG Sets: Duskmourn
- Card Text: Impending 5 – {1}{B} (If you cast this spell for its impending cost, it enters with five time counters and isn’t a creature until the last is removed. At the beginning of your end step, remove a time counter from it.)
Whenever Overlord of the Balemurk enters or attacks, mill four cards, then you may return a non-Avatar creature card or a planeswalker card from your graveyard to your hand.
In order to help maximize Shifting Woodland and simultaneously dig for your combo cards, you need ways to fuel your graveyard. Fortunately, this deck is chock full of options. One of the cards in this department is none other than Duskmourn’s own Overlord of the Balemurk.
Overlord of the Balemurk serves as a two-mana way to fill your graveyard and churn through your deck to find Ygra. Of course, you also get the upside of having a big threat in a few turns. In some spots, it’s totally reasonable to just cast Overlord for five mana off Phyrexian Tower. You even have Vampire Hexmage as a quick way to remove the time counters from Overlord and start attacking.
Besides Overlord, Grisly Salvage and Malevolent Rumble fill your graveyard all the same. Both of these cards have the upside of letting you put any Shifting Woodlands you find into your hand, too. On top of that, Malevolent Rumble gives you an Eldrazi Spawn to power out Ygra early.
Stitcher’s Supplier is yet another way to mill cards. Stitcher’s Supplier isn’t too scary on its own, but it does synergize super well with Phyrexian Tower. Between all these cards, it’s not difficult to set up Delirium for Shifting Woodland.
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Battling the Top Dogs
In game one, this deck lines up surprisingly well against some of the elite strategies in Modern. Stitcher’s Supplier and Cauldron Familiar are good at stalling versus Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and other small creatures out of Boros Energy. Once you get your combo assembled, the Energy deck doesn’t have a ton to disrupt things at instant speed. This deck’s combo has the added bonus of getting around protection from The One Ring, since Cauldron Familiar drains “each opponent.”
Meanwhile, against decks with lots of Counterspells, Shifting Woodland works wonders. Once you have your graveyard stocked with the necessary pieces, Shifting Woodland’s ability to copy Ygra becomes very problematic for the opponent.
Where this deck can run into issues is when facing down graveyard hate. Shifting Woodland becomes a dud in the face of Rest in Peace, and looping Cauldron Familiars between the battlefield and your graveyard becomes impossible. There’s a reason this deck utilizes Haywire Mite and Abrupt Decay in the sideboard.
Regardless, this deck’s recent top eight finish is nothing to scoff at. It’s unlikely to move into the top echelon of strategies moving forward in a format as powerful as Modern, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a sweet choice. There’s still plenty of room to explore within this Golgari Ygra shell as well. We look forward to seeing if this deck continues to make noise in Modern in the near future.
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