In today's installment of this 5 part series, we're going to finish off White in preparation for tomorrow, where we'll end the series with R/B and G/B. Let's get into it.
G/W "Tokens"
G/W Tokens looks to win games by having a large amount of creatures in play, using cards like Irregular Cohort, Battle Screech, and Twin-Silk Spider, and taking advantage of that with mass pump spells like Scale-up and Stirring Address, and anthems like Force of Virtue and Good-Fortune Unicorn. In general, you'll be getting in for some early damage with cheap creatures, and you'll transition into the late game with ways to pump the team after a bit of setting up. It's very important to have around a 2/1 ratio of creatures to pump effects, as without having a bunch of creatures in play your spells often don't function. Cards that do double duty, like Good-Fortune Unicorn and to a lesser extent Knight of Old Benalia, shine in this deck as they add consistency. This is also where you'll find various cards that care about other creatures entering the battlefield, such as Saddled Rimestag, Answered Prayers, and Zhalfirin Decoy, and to a lesser extent, Bellowing Elk (Father Chelk). To repeatedly turn on all of these cards, you'll generally want 1-2 copies of Recruit the Worthy, which will consistently enable you to have creatures enter play whenever you want once you can afford the buy back cost.
Key Commons: Irregular Cohort, Twin-Silk Spider, Trumpeting Herd (Enablers)
Rhox Veteran, Stirring Address, Knight of Old Benalia (Pay-offs)
Unlike in R/W Slivers, you are going to want a bunch of copies of the same cards, which means as many Trumpeting Herds, Twin-Silk Spiders, and Irregular Cohorts as you can find, and about half as many pay-off cards, with the best at common being Rhox Veteran. As 3/4 of the aforementioned cards are 4 mana, you're going to have to be mindful about adding other 4 mana cards to this deck, as you're inherently aggressive and need to come out of the gate at a reasonable speed. This deck in general gets better the more copies of Trumpeting Herd you have, so prioritize it highly and plan accordingly. Unlike other White decks which all have bad mana, G/W benefits off of Krosan Tusker and more importantly Springbloom Druid to help smooth out potential issues at a relatively low cost. Scale-Up is your best pay-off, but is often easier to come by than the first Good-Fortune Unicorn, which works a lot better in multiples and should be picked accordingly.
General Pick Order for Tokens Decks: Serra the Benevolent, Deep Forest Hermit, Winds of Abandon, Hexdrinker, Crashing Footfalls, Force of Virtue, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Giver of Runes, Battle Screech, Trumpeting Herd, Savage Swipe, Springbloom Druid, Good-Fortune Unicorn, Ranger Captain of Eos, Scale-Up, Mother Bear, Irregular Cohort, Twin-Silk Spider, Rhox Veteran, Zhalfirin Decoy, Treetop Ambusher/Imposter of the Sixth Pride/Trustworthy Scout/Enduring Sliver, Stirring Address, Recruit the Worthy, Knight of Old Benalia, Winding Way.
Two mana creatures are all fairly interchangeable in this strategy, but you're going to want at least 4 of them and ideally 6+ as they'll work well with your pay-off cards in the mid-game. This deck is all about transitioning a good start into a really powerful mid-game, so a good curve is going to be essential to your success. Don't worry about killing your opponent straight away with your various go-wide pay-off cards, just set yourself up to end up with a larger advantage than you started the turn with and you can generally build up a cascading advantage from there. I am not a fan of Squirrel Nest as I think it's too slow against other aggressive strategies, and not high impact enough against slower decks, but if you have snow lands to put it on and Rime Tenders to untap them, go nuts. Remember with Squirrel Nest that you're effectively sacrificing a land when you cast it, so keep that in mind when building your mana base. Of White decks, Tokens and Slivers are the two best strategies, so don't be shy about committing early just remember to take Green cards early and expect White cards to come back later.
This deck can splash easily, as long as you have a Springbloom Druid or two, and I find my most commonly splashed card here is Mob, as this deck lacks a way to kill creatures at instant speed, and with the Tokens you already want it often costs 1 mana.
Takeaways
This deck was an important lesson in paying attention to what other people are doing for me, as I ended up in good versions of this deck and liked this deck much more than other people. The answer was Trumpeting Herd, a card I was not only picking highly but more importantly valuing above what others drafters were. While I don't think I was in the wrong, it drastically affected what decks I liked and cards I valued, and for just a singular differing valuation of one common, the fact that it led me down such different paths than others really shocked me. Over time I started taking Springbloom Druid above Trumpeting Herd, which led to me getting into G/W less but into Snow more, increasing the amount I was winning. Sometimes it's easy to see something strong, only to not see the card that's clearly stronger and leads to winning more often.This deck was both fun to draft and to play for me, and I think the "creature entering the battlefield" mechanic present over Green and White led to some interesting gameplay, where you could combine Recruit the Worthy and Zhalfirin Decoy to bog down grindy games, or use Squirrel Nest to make Bellowing Elk indestructible whenever you wanted.
G/R "Lands in Graveyard"
G/R Lands in Graveyard, easily the most bizarre archetype in Modern Horizons, is a deck based around playing nothing but creatures and copies of Winding Way. Winding Way always draws you 3-4 cards for 2 mana, and all of your cards get benefits from the lands you'll mill over when you name creature. Sarcasm aside, the theme manifests itself more as G/R Land in Graveyard, as the key card, Igneous Elemental, only ever asks that you get a single land in there to enable the cost reduction. While Winding Way is certainly important here, it's generally going to be pretty high variance. There are plenty of games where it'll consistently act as 2 mana draw 4 with selection, and other times where it repeatedly fails to do anything other than make you sad. This deck is aggressive, so you'll want lots of cheap creatures, but as you're going to be playing games that last a tad longer than R/W for example, and you'll have access to Springbloom Druid, your curve will often end up at 6, topping out with Murasa Behemoth, rather than stopping at 4-5.
Key Commons: Winding Way, Springbloom Druid (enablers)
Igneous Elemental, Magmatic Sinkhole (pay-offs)
I can't possibly emphasize enough how important Winding Way is here. Every R/G deck should have at least 2, and that means keeping the spell count low and the creature/land count high. Ideally, you should have 14 creatures for the first Winding way, 16 for the 2nd, 18 for 3+, and I don't recommend playing more than 4. I'd also advise playing 16 lands if you have 2 or more Winding Ways, as you can easily name Land and either Scry 4 towards the next land or be set with lands for the rest of the game. Lastly, as Winding Way will often draw 2 or more cards, don't cast it with 6-7 cards in hand unless you're looking for lands or some specific creature that you need immediately. This card is deceptively complicated and leveraging it the best will be key to winning in R/G.
Magmatic Sinkhole is often the best removal spell here, as it's much easier to pay for when you're actively milling yourself with Winding Way.
General Pick Order for R/G Lands in Graveyards: Hexdrinker, Seasoned Pyromancer, Deep Forest Hermit, Crashing Footfalls, Genesis, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Wren and Six (Cha-ching!), Prismatic Vista, Firebolt, Reap the Past, Saddled Rimestag, Hollowhead Sliver, Green or Red Horizon Lands, Tranquil Thicket/Forgotten Cave, Springbloom Druid, Savage Swipe, Magmatic Sinkhole, Pyrophobia, Mother Bear, Igneous Elemental, Wall of Blossoms, Bogarden Dragonheart, Ruination Rioter, R/G Filler Creatures (Spinehorn Minotaur, Treetop Ambusher, Orcish Hellraiser, etc.), Winding Way
Winding Way is largely last on this list as no one else will value it nearly as highly as you, and you should be always looking to take it when a pack makes it around the table. If you find you can't wheel Winding Way in pack 1, or you haven't seen other copies yet and you're in pack 2 or 3, you should be taking it over any common/uncommon. Nantuko Cultivator and Ore-Scale Guardian are weird here, the Cultivator you only ever want one of, and that singular copy will either be a 10/10 or 2/10 and nothing in between. Ore-Scale Guardian is an incredible sideboard card, but will only be a good maindeck card in already incredible decks with a bunch of Winding Ways, Cycling Lands, and a good curve to support them. Spells in general need to really drop in your pick order once you have a few, as the first to second copy of the removal spells are great but more copies interfere with Winding Way. Trumpeting Herd is great in this deck, and if you're playing a non-Winding Way version you should jam as many in as you can.
Takeaways
I love this deck to death, I always enjoyed drafting it, as I found lots of hidden depth in the ways the cards worked in general especially Winding Way but also cards like Murasa Behemoth, where sometimes you could use a Cycling Land as surprise +3/+3, or Spinehorn Minotaur which could often consistently gain double strike off of Cycling and cards like Excavating Anurid. Mechanically, cards that only required one land in the graveyard such as Murasa Behemoth, functioned consistently, and cards like Ore-Scale Guardian took too much work and often still didn't work appropriately. Often your game plan involved setting cards on fire with Bogarden Dragonheat, and I found success combining it with Wall of Blossoms and Goblin Champion to repeatedly attack my opponent for 5 in the air until they died. Sideboarding here could be unbelievably important, as often the only way to have game vs. Snow decks was with multiple Ore-Scale Guardians, or you'd sideboard in a pile of Lava Darts to beat Ninjas. On the other end, smart opponents could beat this deck by attaching Treefolk Umbra to anything with keyword: big on it, and watch as the damage based removal didn't help.Until Next Time,
Kevin
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