Unfortunately, over the past few months, Modern has felt quite stale. The format has largely been dominated by all the usual suspects for quite some time. This includes Boros Energy, Belcher, Eldrazi strategies, and Broodscale combo.
So, whenever an innovative archetype puts up a solid finish in an event, it’s worth discussing. Well, just a few days ago, a unique take on mono-green ramp managed to make it to the finals of a Magic Online Modern Challenge that we felt should be highlighted.
This deck is built to abuse a cool card from Time Spiral in the form of Magus of the Candelabra that hasn’t seen much Modern play ever to this point. If you’re fortunate enough to untap with Magus, it’s easy to have a boatload of extra mana to work with.
Magus and Company
- Mana Value: G
- Rarity: Common
- Card Type: Enchantment- Aura
- MTG Sets: Dissension, Masters 25, Forgotten Realms Commander, Wilds of Eldraine Commander, Wilds of Eldraine: Enchanting Tales, Ravnica Remastered
- Card Text: Enchant Forest. As Utopia Sprawl enters the battlefield, choose a color. Whenever enchanted Forest is tapped for mana, its controller adds an additional mana of the chosen color.
Magus of the Candelabra isn’t your typical ramp creature. In most decks, Magus is just going to be worse than Delighted Halfling. Unless you have a multitude of lands that are capable of generating two or more mana each, Magus isn’t at its best.
Luckily, this deck has plenty of ways to abuse it. First of all, the Eldrazi subtheme this archetype utilizes enables you to play both Eldrazi Temple and Ugin’s Labyrinth (we’ll discuss the Eldrazi package in greater detail in the next section). Because these lands both tap for two mana, Magus has the potential to net you more than one mana if you have multiple of these lands in play.
The rest of the manabase is filled with Fetchlands and Forests. These Forests make Utopia Sprawl a reliable ramp element that also works perfectly with Magus. Overgrowth is even stronger with Magus, helping you get to your seven-drops in no time.
Using the Excess Mana
- Mana Value: 7
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Card Type: Creature – Eldrazi
- Stats: 7/7
- MTG Sets: MTG Foundations
- Card Text: First strike, vigilance. Menace, trample. Reach, lifelink. Ward- Pay 7 life.
All of this excess mana goes to good use in this deck, as there are plenty of haymakers to spend your mana on. In the Eldrazi section, both Sire of Seven Deaths and World Breaker are perfect curve-toppers. Sire instantly stabilizes the board against Boros Energy if you can play it ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, World Breaker is incredible in grindy matchups.
World Breaker is a great follow up to Sowing Mycospawn to keep your opponent off balance mana wise. Of course, you can always choose not to kick Sowing Mycospawn and simply use it as a ramp element to set up your seven mana bombs.
The last card to keep in mind as a mana sink is Kozilek’s Command. Kozilek’s Command is a Kindred Eldrazi instant, so Eldrazi Temple fuels it nicely. With Magus at the ready, you’ll be able to get some excellent card selection and can exile even the biggest of creatures from the opponent.
Elite Four-Drops
- Mana Value: 4
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Card Type: Legendary Artifact
- MTG Sets: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Card Text: Indestructible. When The One Ring enters the battlefield, if you cast it, you gain protection from everything until your next turn. At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life for each burden counter on The One Ring. Tap: Put a burden counter on The One Ring, then draw a card for each burden counter on The One Ring.
With Utopia Sprawl and Ugin’s Labyrinth in the mix, you’ll have lots of draws where you have access to four mana on turn two. This opens the door for some busted starts.
Beyond Sowing Mycospawn, playing either The One Ring or Karn, the Great Creator on turn two is a devastating play in most scenarios. With so much mana at your disposal, you should have no problem using all of your card draw to your advantage.
At the same time, Karn has the ability to tutor some gnarly artifacts from your sideboard if you have tons of mana. Cards like Cityscape Leveler and Walking Ballista are elite targets, for example.
The flexibility of Karn, Kozilek’s Command, and Sowing Mycospawn is super important. They’re fine plays to make with four mana but also get better and better as the game goes on. So, even if your Magus gets killed, there’s no need to fret. This deck has a plethora of ways to get ahead on mana and plays to make in the mid game.
An Interesting Metagame Position
- Mana Value: 4
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Artifact
- MTG Sets: Mirrodin, Eternal Masters, The Brother’s War Retro Artifacts, Mystery Booster 2
- Card Text: 3, Tap: Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card. Goblin Charbelcher deals damage equal to the number of nonland cards revealed this way to any target. If the revealed land card was a Mountain, Goblin Charbelcher deals double that damage instead. Put the revealed cards on the bottom of your library in any order.
Overall, what gives this deck a fighting chance in Modern is the speed at which it can assemble tons of mana. This archetype is capable of firing threat after threat at the opponent within the first few turns, which isn’t easy for many strategies to keep up with.
Boros Energy may present a fast clock, but this deck can put up a wall of big blockers faster than you might think. Meanwhile, sneaking one of your four-drops in under counter magic from your Dimir Murktide opponent presents an easy path to victory.
The biggest issue this deck can have is simply with its closing speed. There isn’t a ton of interaction present in the green ramp decklist. This means that decks such as mono-green Broodscale combo or Grinding Breach can sometimes ignore your big plays with the intention of just killing you before you can turn the corner.
Otherwise, you do want to make sure to be on the lookout for land destruction from the opponent, as your Utopia Sprawls and Overgrowths become liabilities if the opponent is prepared. As things currently stand, though, this shouldn’t be a major concern in Modern.
Assuming you can dodge some broken combo starts from your opponent, this deck has game against most strategies that can be thrown your way. It wouldn’t surprise me if this deck picks up steam in the next couple weeks, at least until the inevitable ban announcement later in the month.
