Ajani, Nacatl Avenger
3, Jan, 25

MTG Best Modern Decks - January 2025

Despite being around for over a decade, Modern is a surprisingly active format with new decks popping up regularly. For better or worse, this is largely thanks to Wizards creating sets like Modern Horizons, which shake up the meta. Alongside this, the occasional Modern ban can also invert the order, breathing new life into the format once again. 

With room for constant deckbuilding and exploration as new cards get printed, Modern is an incredibly compelling format. It’s also one of the most popular competitive formats in MTG at the moment, with tournaments aplenty. Thanks to this, especially after the recent unbanning, you may well be looking to jump into the fray and beat the competition. To do that, you’ll obviously need a deck, and we’ve got you covered there.

Here are all the best MTG decks in the Modern format right now!

Honorable Mention | Mono Blue Belcher

Mono Blue Belcher

Currently, the Modern metagame appears to be remarkably stable, all things considered. Following the chaos after the release of Modern Horizons 3, this is a relief, especially since creativity isn’t being stifled. While the top of the meta is fiercely competitive, occasionally more unique decks can break out and steal the spotlight.

Before the recent Modern bans and unbans, Mono-Blue Belcher was stealing the show. Utilizing a grand total of zero lands, this deck is very strange, but it’s also seriously strong. If you can get the titular Goblin Charbelcher in play and tap it, you win the game. Without any lands to find, Charbelcher reveals your entire deck before doming your opponent for lethal.

While Goblin Charbelcher won’t find any lands in this deck, there are technically 24 lands you can play. Each one of these is a double-faced card, which has a land on the back. Several of these, such as Sink into Stupor and Sea Gate Restoration can even be played untapped, at the cost of life.

Once you have some lands in play, Mono Blue Belcher is effectively a control deck that delays until activating its combo. Flare of Denial, Jwari Disruption, and Disrupting Shoal should all disrupt your opponent’s plans. The same is true for Harbinger of the Seas, which can stop many land-based shenanigans.

Ultimately, Mono Blue Belcher isn’t one of the best decks in Modern right now, but it is very powerful. In the right hands, this deck is capable of being the runner-up in major tournaments and outright winning smaller events.

8 | Basking Broodscale Combo

Right before the recent Modern ban announcement, Basking Broodscale combo was gaining a ton of traction in the Modern format. It had strong matchups into all of the top decks, allowing it to gain a foothold into a format that was unhealthily dominated by Boros Energy. The deck got even better postban with the inclusion of Mox Opal but, for whatever reason, this deck doesn’t seem to be putting up a ton of recent results.

Like many of the strong Modern decks at the moment, Basking Broodscale Combo wins the game by assembling a few key cards. The main combo involves the namesake card and Blade of the Bloodchief. This, basically, allows you to make infinite Eldrazi Scion tokens (one at a time), create infinite colorless mana, and gain infinite entry and death triggers.

This two-card combo wins the game alongside a huge combination of different cards. The most common win condition for this deck is Glaring Fleshraker. The three-mana uncommon, one of the best in the entire game, will deal infinite damage alongside the Broodscale + Blade combo. It will also generate tons of mana, and can turn a massive Kozilek’s Command into a Fireball, offering a secondary win conditon.

Walking Ballista also becomes a win condition alongside Basking Broodscale. Since you can sink infinite mana into the creature, it can become infinitely large, dealing infinite damage. Karn, the Great Creator also becomes a win condition in this circumstance since it can grab a Walking Ballista from your sideboard.

While this deck should be perfectly capable of putting up results, it simply does not seem to be, at least outside of Leagues and the odd Modern Challenge. For that reason, the Basking Broodscale combo is eighth on our list.

7 | Golgari Yawgmoth Combo

Golgari Yawgmoth Combo

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Don’t get us wrong, Yawgmoth Combo is still a great deck in the Modern format, but it’s nowhere near as good as it once was. While you may see Golgari Yawgmoth occasionally making the top eight of Modern events, it’s no longer an undisputed front-runner.

While the deck fell off the map entirely during Nadu’s reign since it was just a worse version of Nadu, Winged Wisdom combo, Green Sun’s Zenith’s unbanning has allowed Yawgmoth and his Undying friends to return with a vengeance.

As the name suggests, this deck revolves heavily around getting a copy of Yawgmoth, Thran Physician onto the board. This card acts as both a value engine as well as a combo piece. It’s perhaps one of the more convoluted combos available in Modern. Despite needing a fair few pieces to work, the combo is nonetheless powerful and deadly.

  • First, sacrifice a Young Wolf with Yawgmoth’s activated ability. Do not target any of your creatures with the -1/-1 counter. The Young Wolf will come back with a +1/+1 counter thanks to Undying. This will trigger Blood Artist, draining your opponent for one.
  • Second, sacrifice your Young Wolf that does not have a counter, targeting the Young Wolf that does have a counter. Your counters will cancel out. Your other Young Wolf will come back with a +1/+1 counter thanks to Undying. This, once again, will trigger Blood Artist.
  • You can repeat step two over and over, sacrificing the Young Wolf without a counter, targeting the one that does have a counter, thanks to -1/-1 counters and +1/+1 counters canceling one another out.

What is nice about this deck is that Yawgmoth is immensely powerful even without the combo assembled. As long as your life total is high, it is very reasonable to draw a bunch of cards with Yawgmoth’s ability right away. As a result, the deck plays multiple ways to find the namesake card, such as Chord of Calling.

This deck gets a lot of additional power from opponents simply not knowing how to play against the deck and how to insulate themselves from the combo. If you are a Modern expert, this deck might just be right up your alley.

6 | Ruby Storm

Ruby Storm

Ruby Storm was a fringe archetype in the Legacy format before Modern Horizons 3 allowed Ruby Medallion to make its presence known in the Modern format. The idea of the deck is to resolve a cost reduction piece and, basically, Storm your way to a Grapeshot win. This is achieved with a combination of Ritual effects like Desperate Ritual, Impulse draw effects like Wrenn’s Resolve, and Past in Flames as your engine piece.

Another big addition that adds a lot of game to this deck is Ral, Monsoon Mage. This Modern Horizons 3 Flipwalker does everything that the deck needs. Not only does this card function as a cost reduction effect early in your Storm sequence but if you manage to win a coin flip after passing Storm 6, you can flip Ral and immediately Ultimate it, exiling a ton of cards to cast.

Adding White to the red core of this deck allows Ruby Storm to run a bunch of removal pieces in the sideboard to deal with common pieces of hate. Get Lost and Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury gives the archetype a ton of game even in postboard games. With the rise of multiple other combo decks in the format, Orim’s Chant is also seeing play to buy some time, as well as stop countermagic.

While Ruby Storm is the most all-in combo deck in the format, a surplus of combos in the format are causing a lot of splash damage for this deck. Ruby Storm is incredibly fragile, and can have its entire sequence interrupted by one piece of hate. While the deck will destroy unprepared opponents, we wouldn’t recommend this archetype at the moment.

Ruby Storm is terrifyingly consistent and can pull off turn two wins. Heck, it can even win on turn one with Gemstone Caverns. If you don’t come prepared for this deck, it will run you over. This deck can outspeed any deck in the format, which gives it some play.

5 | Amulet Titan

Amulet Titan has long been a staple archetype in Modern for very good reason. Thanks to the titular Amulet of Vigor and lands like Gruul Turf, Amulet Titan can ramp incredibly quickly into major threats. Specifically, this deck is looking to play its other namesake card, Primeval Titan, for even more ramp.

To generate insane amounts of mana very quickly, Amulet Titan exploits bounce lands and untap triggers. Essentially, Amulet of Vigor will untap Gruul Turf, which you can then tap for mana before bouncing. A second Amulet of Vigor will let you do this twice, allowing you to generate four mana. If you have Explore in play, you can then recast Gruul Turf for four more mana. 

Ideally, with two Amulets and an Explore in hand, you can play Primeval Titan on turn two. Once in play, Prime Time can grab Hanweir Battlements and  Commercial District to immediately gain Haste. Not only does this allow them to crash in for damage, but attacking gets you even more lands too.

Should you find more Gruul Turfs or even Lotus Field, Amulet Titan can generate a disgusting amount of mana. This can be sunk into utility lands like Kessig Wolf Run to end games on turn three. Thankfully, even if you don’t hit this turn three combo in magical Christmas land, Amulet Titan can still hold its own.

Supported by The One Ring, Summoner’s Pact, and Urza’s Saga, the deck has plenty of tools to find its combo. There are even extra top-end threats in the form of Cultivator Colossus and Lumra, Bellow of the Woods. This helps to keep Amulet Titan viable against removal and the other best MTG decks in the Modern metagame.

Following the unbanning, Amulet Titan gained access to Green Sun’s Zenith, and it has proved to be absolutely monstrous for the archetype. This deck doesn’t have a ton of repeat top performances so far, but Amulet Titan is also infamously difficult to pilot. There’s a very good chance that this archetype should be higher on the list than it currently is.

4 | Eldrazi Ramp

Following the power level creep of the unbans, Tron has left the format. The deck simply takes too much time to get going for it to compete, and the haymakers don’t impact the game state enough. Instead, players who want to cast gigantic creatures will be casting Emrakul, the Promised End. Temur Eldrazi is certainly one of the headliners in this format, and it is deceptively powerful.

Emrakul, the Promised End usually does exactly what it promises. Thanks to most decks either being unable to deal with a 13/13, or risk self-destructing when having their turn taken, this is a unique solution to the entire format. Grinding Breach, for example, can draw from an empty library rather easily if Emrakul takes the reigns.

Even if Emrakul can’t end the game outright, there are a series of other threats in the deck to make sure your opponents can’t keep up. Sowing Mycospawn helps accelerate your endgame, while also acting as a toolbox, capable of finding lands like Bojuka Bog.

Following Modern Horizons 3, this archetype has been empowered by Ugin’s Labyrinth. Synergizing with Devourer of Destiny specifically, this card offers powerful ramp while storing the Imprinted card for later. Alongside Eldrazi Temple, you have lots of fast starts in the deck, even without the Urzatron lands.

3 | Grinding Breach

Grinding Breach has been an archetype in Modern for a long time, but the unbanning of Mox Opal has made this deck both blisteringly fast and incredibly consistent. While its not as popular as our top two selections, there is a very good chance Grinding Breach is the best deck in the format.

Utilizing a combo involving Underworld Breach and Grinding Station, Grinding Breach can win as early as turn two. All you need is Grinding Station, Underworld Breach, and a zero-mana artifact. As long as there is a Moxen that can generate mana in your deck with your boardstate, you can mill your entire library, generate a decent amount of mana, and win the game with a variety of different win conditions. This gives the deck a very good matchup against linear strategies unable to interact with the combo.

If the combo won’t work, Urza’s Saga can generate a board state prepared to take over the game. A variety of different cards can provide different win conditions alongside it, like Kappa Cannoneer, Song of Creation and Basim Ibn Ishaq.

Temur is largely considered to be the best Breach archetype at the moment, splashing green for Malevolent Rumble and some sideboard tech, but a huge amount of variants are proving successful with the Grinding Breach combo its its centerpiece. Between all of its variants, the deck does have a strong matchup against both of the decks above it on this list.

Because Mox Opal is a four-of in Grinding Breach, this is the most expensive archetype in the Modern format.

2 | Dimir Murktide

Dimir Murktide

Now that bans have shaken up the Modern metagame, a familiar face is back in a new shell. Instead of Izzet, this time the namesake Murktide Regent has found a new home in Dimir alongside everyone’s second favorite Frog. That’s right, just as expected, Psychic Frog is putting in work after the latest Modern bans, though perhaps this deck should be called Dimir Oculus at this point.

Ostensibly, Dimir Murktide is a tempo-control deck that eventually drops one hell of a threat to finish games. You’ve got all the best counterspells and removal options that are Modern legal with Harbinger of the Seas providing disruption too.

Considering it’s a control deck that’s in black, Orcish Bowmasters is a four of must-have for this deck. The same is true for Phsyhic Frog, which is arguably the deck’s real killer card. As strong as Murktide Regent can be, Psychic Frog is an earlier threat that offers card draw and evasion too.

Thanks to the litany of cheap spells in this deck, activating the Frog’s third ability is a breeze. While this is good enough on its own, if you have Murktide in play both creatures get that much better. This gives the otherwise fiercely controlling deck a lot of power that stops it from falling out and floundering.

That said, Duskmourn also added to the potency of this archetype. Thanks to the combination of Abhorrent Oculus and Unearth, Dimir Murktide now feels a lot like the problematic Dimir Reanimator archetype in the Legacy. This deck has both a fair and an unfair gameplan that are very powerful. win the game with Psychic Frog over time, or reanimate an Abhorrent Oculus early and start polluting the field with Manifested cards.

Looking at recent results, Dimir Murktide is an almost oppressive force with how much it’s winning tournaments. While some are concerned that Dimir Murktide may be a little too good, results suggest that the king of the format before the bans has not descended from its throne.

1 | Boros Energy

Boros Energy

Bizarrely, even though Boros Energy was targeted in the December bannings, it is still likely the best deck in the Modern format. Without early answers, Boros Energy, and its Mardu counterpart, can quickly run away with games. With this thanks to the sheer speed at which it can build a board and deal damage.

At the core of Boros Energy, Ocelot Pride and Ajani, Nacatl Pariah put in serious token-generating work. Dropping these cards in succession will have you gaining the City’s Blessing on turn three. From here, the tokens you create are effectively doubled, and the steamrolling doesn’t stop.

While the Energy theme, with Guide of Souls at its core, still exists in this archetype, Boros and Mardu Energy has become more midrange-y in nature. Thanks to the unbanning of Mox Opal, in particular, the format has sped up significantly. As a result, the deck is forced to run a lot of hate pieces in the sideboard, slowing the deck down considerably.

Should all this not be enough, Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury provides extra removal and slower, but nonetheless damaging swings. Should this be too slow, Goblin Bombardment can repurpose your creatures to end games early. Boros Energy is even running The One Ring nowadays because, of course it is.

Overall, Boros Energy is one of the most consistent and efficient decks in Modern right now. While it’s not steamrolling every event, thanks to the meta’s volatility, it’s nonetheless a dominant force that’s more than capable of blitzing through opponents.

Read More: Wizards Admits Recently Banned MTG Card Was a Design Mistake

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