Modern Musings: The Top 5 Winners of the Un-Bans

Hey Everyone! This week on Modern Musings we are going to look at the state of Modern after the unbannings and see what impact it has had on the format.  Enough time has passed that I think we can draw some conclusions about how the format has shaken out before the release of Dominaria.  Specifically, I am going to be talking about the top 5 winners of the post-ban format.

#5 – KCI

KCI combo, or Krark-Clan Ironworks combo is a bit of a newer take on a very old combo.  Though not effected by the unbans, the deck has reached a point where enough people seem to be able to pilot the deck well enough that it can start posting tournament results.  Of course, while Matt Nass is one of the originators of this version of the deck, I cannot emphasize enough how technically difficult that this deck is to play in a tournament setting, and even for a seasoned pro, the deck is very easy to make a mistake with.  This deck honestly reminds me a lot of the early days of Amulet Bloom, a very good deck with no pilots that were practiced enough with the deck to post results.  Now that the deck has finally posted something, I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of it.

#4 – Ponza (R/G Land Destruction)

Ponza aka R/G land destruction, is a deck that has been sitting at the edges of modern for a long time now.  The deck utilizes the power of Blood Moon to attack it’s opponents mana base, making some decks unable to cast spells at all.  This deck further attacks its opponent’s mana by blowing up any basics they play after a resolved blood moon.  Even if you take away the blood moon from this deck though, there is a powerful ramp shell underneath utilizing the powerful combo of Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl.  Bloodbraid Elf has made this deck a little better, allowing the deck to deploy either multiple threats or a threat plus disruption in the same turn.  Also thanks to the aforementioned ramp combo, you can potentially cast bloodbraid on turn 2, which is pretty scary.

#3 – Taking Turns

The first real fringe deck that has been brought close to tier 1 with the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and the only deck on our list to feature the card at all.  It’s safe to say that Jace did not make the impact that many (myself included) thought he would.  However, for Taking Turns, it was a fairly significant upgrade as it allowed the deck to set up miracles with Temporal Mastery to potentially set up consecutive “take an extra turn” effects.  The best part is that the deck was already playing temporal mastery, making the upgrade even more significant.  On top of the ability to set up miracle turns, Jace can act as a finisher if the situation calls for it as well.

#2 – Bogles

Boggles has seen a huge uptick in play recently, mostly because of the rise of Jund.  Boggles players have taken full advantage of this and started to run the deck again, as it is an awful matchup for Jund.  Their hexproof creatures make it so that almost all of Jund’s removal sits dead in their hand, and there are too many must-remove enchantments like Spirit Mantle that it taxes their Abrupt Decays and Maelstrom Pulses.  The deck also runs a whopping play set of maindeck Leyline of Sanctitys to invalidate all of Jund’s discard and Lilianas as well.  All in all, this deck is a beating.

#1 – Jund

The deck that needs no introduction, it has been a staple of modern and arguably the deck that has benefited most from the unbanning of Bloodbraid Elf.  The deck’s plan is simple, disrupt your opponent with discard and removal, then win with the ol’ Tarmogoyf beatdown.  The reason that Bloodbraid is so good in this deck is that it allows Jund to have the potential to cast disruption while still putting a threat on the table.  Even if you hit a Goyf or a Dark Confidant with your cascade, it’s still great.  There are very few if any bad hits, if any with cascade with little to no deckbuilding effort on the part of Jund.

Anyway, that’s all for this week.  Do you agree with my picks for the winners of the new modern format? Let me know in the comments! Until next time everybody!