Hey everyone and welcome to another Modern Musings!  This week we are going to be taking a peek at some of the new decks you can make with the changes to the planeswalker rule.  Since I’ve seen a bunch of Liliana tribal decks around, I thought I’d give you my take on what the Gideon decks might look like for a change.

Let’s start with Gideon.  First we should look at all the Gideons availiable to us.

The Gideons:

Gideon Jura: A solid choice, this Gideon will most likely make the final cut.  He’s good against decks with creatures as you can force them to have no blockers for your next turn or just fog to buy you some time.  The fact that he becomes a 6/6 creature with his second ability means that he dodges Dismember, a card that most of the other Gideons are weak to.

Gideon of the Trials: Basically this card is the reason to build tribal Gideons in the first place, he’s a must include in any Gideon deck we make.  His third ability keeps us from losing the game as long as we control a Gideon, so this card will be pretty important to draw during most of our games.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar: Probably our next best Gideon besides Gideon of the Trials, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar has made some appearances in modern before.  He is great at creating chump blockers, and like all other Gideons turns into a huge beater when you want him to.

Gideon, Champion of Justice: I’m not too keen on this Gideon, mostly because he doesn’t do anything by himself most of the time.  He could be a good sideboard card against swarm strategies, and make it extremely difficult for our opponent to win through our Gideon of the Trials emblem, but all in all there are most likely better options.  Considering he also competes with Gideon, Ally of Zendikar for the 4-drop slot, it makes the decision not to include him that much easier.

Kytheon, Hero of Akros // Gideon, Battle-Forged:  This would be a good include if we were going to go an aggro strategy, which is not really the direction I think the deck should take as there are some hefty opportunity costs for going that route.  It probably goes without saying, but Kytheon doesn’t really belong in a deck that isn’t going to run a lot of cheap creatures.

Gideon, Martial Paragon – Planeswalker Deck Exclusive: Like Gideon, Champion of Justice, I’m not too keen on this guy.  He doesn’t really interact with the rest of our Gideons very well, and on top of that, he almost strictly worse than Gideon Jura.

The Rest of the Deck:

We want to take full advantage of the fact that all our threats are planeswalkers, and depending on what color you want to pair with white, there are different ways to do this.  Let’s explore what the different color pairings could give us.

Red:

Red gives us some hate in the form of Chalice of the Void and Blood Moon, some temporary mana acceleration in the form of Simian Spirit Guide, and a 3-mana sweeper in the form of Anger of the Gods.  However, we would have to forsake our 1-drops in exchange for running Chalice of the Void, which is not my favorite thing to do when we have access to Path to Exile.

Blue:

Blue gives us a little more utility, card selection, and disruption allowing us to have a little more control over our draws, while Jace gives us some recursion if he flips.  On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like counterspells are very popular right now, so I’m not sure how much Supreme Verdict is an upgrade over Wrath of God.  The disruption we get from running counterspells is nice, but I think we can do better.

Black:

Black gives us access to hand disruption, card advantage, and additional removal if we need it.  This is exactly what this deck wants to be doing, thus I think black is the way to go. It provides everything that the deck is missing.  This is roughly what I think the deck will look like:

The idea here is to run hand disruption, and then drown your opponent in a tide of planeswalker after planeswalker.  They can’t ignore your Gideons because of Gideon of the Trials‘s emblem, and even despite that, they are threats in of themselves.

Well that’s all for this week folks, the age of planeswalker decks may be descending on modern.  Or not, we’ll see.

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