There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
Do you know how many other creature types there are in Modern? Literally hundreds. It’s time to go deep in the tank, brainstorm, and figure out which ones might also have become contenders or at least interesting flings.
There are a couple requirements for Unclaimed Territory to actually be good in your deck: You need a creature type that span three or more colors. Two colors is too easy with normal Modern mana, and getting to play real spells is too good compared to a bit of damage saved. Your blue-green Merfolk deck should stick with Breeding Pools.
You need a creature type that either want to attack fast or have very interactive creatures. Cavern of Souls and Unclaimed Territory only make colorless mana for non-creatures, and Ancient Ziggurat doesn’t do any of that mana for spells thing. Your deck is going to be almost all creatures, so you need to be able to win games against less interactive decks just your chosen type of doofuses. This sadly means no Dinosaurs.
Changelings The Changeling mechanic from Lorwyn means every creature type has access to a few unique options.
Metallic Mimic is an honorary Changeling here. It isn’t as good as a true Lord of Atlantis style effect as it doesn’t provide a boost to your attackers the turn you play it, but sometimes you need another good turn two play. Adaptive Automaton offers a similar effect, but three mana pump without any other upside has me skeptical.
Tried And True Two creature types already had an extra Unclaimed Territory style land: Ally Encampment and Sliver Hive. Well, sorta three, but Primal Beyond for Elementals has some extra hoops.
The problem with Allies is that the extra fixing isn’t that important. Almost all the good Allies can be played without blue and black mana. Unlike Humans, adding colors doesn’t give you good interactive creatures, so you need the sideboard spells you can’t cast off the creature-only lands. Allies are also extra powerful with Collected Company as both Allies you put into play trigger each other, and that’s yet another spell creature-only lands can’t cast
4 Mindlash Sliver 4 Galerider Sliver 2 Striking Sliver 4 Leeching Sliver 4 Sinew Sliver 4 Predatory Sliver 3 Manaweft Sliver 4 Diffusion Sliver 1 Two-Headed Sliver 2 Blur Sliver 2 Necrotic Sliver 1 Shadow Sliver 1 Bonesplitter Sliver 4 Aether Vial 4 Mutavault 4 Ancient Ziggurat 4 Unclaimed Territory 4 Cavern of Souls 4 Sliver Hive
Sideboard 3 Harmonic Sliver 3 Syphon Sliver 3 Dismember 2 Warping Wail 4 Thought-Knot Seer
Look at those sixteen colorless producing lands for the Sliver-Eldrazi crossover! Thought-Knot Seer is just a great card, and you can Manaweft Sliver to get it out a turn earlier. There aren’t a lot of cards that provide the all around greatness it does when you need to interact a bit. Warping Wail is a card existing Slivers lists have played that got me to this point. It isn’t always the card you need, but it helps out in weird spots.
I did consider Frenzy Sliver as yet another pump effect. It honestly might be better than Manaweft Sliver.
Covering New Ground This is where things get fun. What of the tons of other options can we play with?
After the existing shells, I looked at the four creature types of Ixalan. Sadly they didn’t pan out. There aren’t nearly enough Pirates or Dinosaurs yet to build a full Modern deck. Merfolk is green-blue in Ixalan and was white-blue in Lorwyn, but the only good white Merfolk is Sygg, River Guide which can’t be activated off the five color lands. Vampires is in white-black and was red-black in Innistrad, but none of the white Vampires is great enough to change from two color mana.
Spirits is a deck that exists now in a Bant Collected Company form, utilizing Drogskol Captain, Selfless Spirit, Rattlechains, and Mausoleum Wanderer to make their creatures really obnoxious to remove. I’m not quite sure enough from red and black to drastically change the deck. Eidolon of the Great Revel and Bloodghast are the Spirits I found on a search of the format. Bloodghast isn’t that impressive with an Aether Vial and no fetchland mana base, and even if it is good I don’t know if Eidolon of the Great Revel adds enough. The Bant list has enough combo interaction via Spell Queller and other counters and Eidolon of Rhetoric, plus moving to the five color mana costs you Noble Hierarch and possibly Collected Company.
4 Cursecatcher 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender 4 Meddling Mage 3 Qasali Pridemage 4 Dark Confidant 2 Yixlid Jailer 1 Pain Seer 1 Asylum Visitor 2 Stonybrook Banneret 3 Harbinger of the Tides 3 Vendilion Clique 4 Reflector Mage 1 Shadowmage Infiltrator 1 Sower of Temptation 2 Dismember 4 Aether Vial 4 Ancient Ziggurat 4 Cavern of Souls 4 Unclaimed Territory 4 Darkslick Shores 1 Seachrome Coast 1 Concealed Courtyard 2 Mana Confluence
Sideboard 2 Magus of the Moon 3 Izzet Staticaster 2 Yixlid Jailer 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender 1 Sower of Temptation 3 Chameleon Colossus 1 Aven Mindcensor 2 Tidebinder Mage It’s a weird card churny, hate bears pile. The idea is Dark Confidant and the cards like it let you keep playing multiple mediocre yet annoying creatures per turn, which is hopefully enough to let you cross the finish line. There’s a little bit of all the specific answer creatures in the main deck for the hope you draw the right one at the right time, then more in the sideboard to maximize those odds.
Beware the sideboard Magus of the Moons. They are for matchups where you assume your opponent’s deck is even less capable of functioning with them in play, because this deck sure can’t do anything off Mountains.
Wizards did bring me in one cool direction via Stonybrook Banneret. There is a full color cycle of these Bannerets from Morningtide that cover cost reduction of ten creature types. Scanning through those lead me to Warriors.
Sideboard 2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet 3 Chameleon Colossus 2 Dismember 3 Grafdigger’s Cage 2 Relic of Progenitus 3 Gut Shot
This deck is more dedicated aggro than the other options, which makes me a little skeptical of it. There exists a Reckless Bushwhacker green-red deck that might just do what this deck is trying to do better. Warriors isn’t faster than the Hidden Herbalist - Burning-Tree Emissary deck, it has worse one drops than Kird Ape and Wild Nacatl, and Gatekeeper of Malakir isn’t that big of a interactive payoff.
As you can also see, the sideboard here is rough at best. Shockingly Warriors are really only good at attacking and not doing fiddly stuff. Not the best selling point for a deck I already described as too aggressive.
Warriors is almost there but not quite. Probably still a fun deck to try one Friday Night Magic, which isn’t the worst fate for a secondary creature type.
4 Flamekin Harbinger 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Burning-Tree Emissary 3 Fauna Shaman 3 Bosk Banneret 2 Metallic Mimic 4 Wolf-Skull Shaman 4 Rage Forger 4 Eternal Witness 1 Fulminator Mage 4 Collected Company 4 Cavern of Souls 1 Unclaimed Territory 4 Wooded Foothills 4 Windswept Heath 3 Stomping Ground 5 Forest 2 Mountain
Sideboard: 2 Chameleon Colossus 2 Loaming Shaman 2 Burning-Tree Shaman 3 Vithian Renegades 3 Fulminator Mage 1 Sulfur Elemental 2 Dismember
This deck is solely focused on getting Rage Forger to trigger as many times as possible a game. Almost accidentally this lets you play Eternal Witness and Collected Company as a more resilient long game.
The other cool thing being focused on Rage Forger gets you is a lot of ways to find good Elementals. Flamekin Harbinger and Fauna Shaman let you Fulminator Mage opponents as much as you want when that is good. There might want to be a second Sulfur Elemental to absolutely lock out the Leonin Arbiter white creature decks, but the first one does a fine job against Lingering Souls.
The mana here might be a little over optimized. There isn’t a huge reason to play tons of fetch lands beyond minor interactions where you shuffle away a card after Wolf-Skull Shaman shows you a land. More Unclaimed Territory, some Copperline Gorge, and not taking extra damage might just be better than this.
Or it might be under optimized. Adding a splash is relatively easy with Birds of Paradise, and you might want a better piece of combo interaction like Negate. Or hard removal like Fatal Push, Dismember, or Path to Exile.
Despite covering a lot of options here, I feel like I’m only scraping the surface. Let me know if I missed an important creature for any of these decks, or better yet what your favorite creature type I didn’t cover is that might be the next place for Unclaimed Territory to find a home!
Looking Ahead The Standard action continues with a GP Portland this weekend, with a quick jaunt to Team Limited over in Lyon the following weekend. Some of my teammates will be competing in Portland and I will be in Oklahoma City and New Jersey next month so be on the lookout! It should be interesting to see how the metagame might continue to shift after Pro Tour Ixalan. Soon, the focus will be on Modern in preparation for the next Pro Tour: Rivals of Ixalan in Bilbao, Spain. Thanks for reading, and good luck in your upcoming games!
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