With the Pioneer RCQ season officially over, it’s finally time to begin working on Modern. Unfortunately, we don’t have nearly enough data to work with. It’s been one month since Daybreak shut off the unbounded data we once had access to, and for the past 2 weeks, we have only gotten access to the top 32 players of each challenge, and no MTGO Prelim data. While we don’t have nearly enough data to draw any concrete conclusions about a format that hasn’t really been explored in depth since Pro Tour MH3, let’s do our best, while also addressing the Nadu Problem.

“Out of My Way, Bird” – Dennis Reynolds

I’ve been on record in the past few weeks making statements such as “Nadu isn’t too bad, Jeskai Control has a good Nadu matchup, Boros Energy can hold its own with good SB cards”. I think it’s a good time as any to admit I was a bit incorrect there.

Nadu is really the only deck with enough total matches to draw super meaningful conclusions (1,437 games played in total this month). Over the past 2 weeks, Nadu’s playrate has risen from 11% to 15%, as players realize that Boros Energy does not win the long game versus Nadu, and that the deck is significantly more powerful than the rest of the field that it is difficult to justify playing a different deck. It is the only deck in the format that has a confidence interval with the low end being above 50% (the other being Tron variants with 3 times less playrate, we’ll get to that soon)

That being said, we are only 35 days away from the next scheduled Ban and Restricted announcement, and WOTC has said that Nadu will not be emergency banned until that point, so there is a 4 week period where you will be able to use Nadu to qualify for the upcoming RC at your local RCQs. There is a lot to discuss about this deck, and there’s a lot of different ways to build the archetype, but due to the fact that the deck will not be legal for very long, I’ll keep this next part very short.

This is the Nadu deck that my good friend Ryan (Burnt_Taco77) took to a 2nd place finish in the Modern Showcase Qualifier event, losing to a mirror in the finals. This is very close to the version of the deck that I would play going forward, Malevolent Rumble is a very good consistency piece, it seems to have mostly overtaken the Summoner’s Pact slot. It digs deep, finds Shuko, and gets you to 4 mana on turn 3.

TRON TRON TRON

In an alternate universe where Nadu is already banned, we could see Tron becoming the best deck, and I did my best to prove that last weekend. I won the MTGO Creator showdown event with a mostly stock Green Tron deck, featuring a heavy Eldrazi package. I don’t really like referring to this archetype as Eldrazi Tron, because that used to imply playing shitty cards like Matter Reshaper and Reality Smasher, but times have changed.

In this event that occurred, the participants (mostly) unilaterally agreed to ban Nadu to give a better viewer experience, and the tournament was much better for it. I decided to play Tron because RW/Mardu Energy was most likely (and ended up being) the most played deck in the room, and if we take a look at the data, Eldrazi Tron had an 83% win rate over Energy over 43 matches. This seems to be one of the main reasons why Tron has such a high win rate compared to the rest of the field, but if Mardu Energy truly is the top deck post-ban, then Tron should be a great choice. In my personal experience, the matchup really is as lopsided as the data shows it being. The One Ring and All is Dust are close to impossible to effectively answer, Mardu’s best plan is to disrupt the deck’s mana base. Obsidian Charmaw is the best card to do this, as playing cards like Damping Sphere or Alpine/Blood Moon don’t significantly advance your gameplan of “kill you”, but that card is able to be fought through, and is especially bad into The One Ring plan.

In our current timeline, Tron doesn’t have the greatest matchup into Nadu, and the lists of Tron we see today do make some deckbuilding concessions to make the matchup reasonable. Multiple maindeck dismembers, as well as multiple Haywire Mites and Boseiju to stop the Shuko/Saga plan is a good way to slow the opponent down while they just try to beat you down, but it’s not good enough to bring the matchup anywhere close to 50% win rate. At the moment, Tron isn’t going to be a great choice unless you somehow expect more RWx Energy than Nadu in your expected metagame.

“The Nadu Killer”

There are a lot of great players I know who do think that Jeskai Control does have a good Nadu matchup, and the data somewhat suggests that, but the sample size is a bit too small to tell. However, counterspells, free counterspells, and cheap removal are all stellar versus the creature combo decks, so I am ready to believe them when they say that. Although, if Nadu does hit the fan, I don’t know where Jeskai Control’s spot in the metagame would lie. It seems a bit hard to imagine that a deck with The One Ring and pitch cards will be out of favor in Modern anytime soon, but without a clear “best deck” to target, these type of control decks might begin to struggle as the other top decks (RWx Energy, Tron, Necro, Goryo’s) are all fighting from completely different angles and require a different subset of cards to interact with them all favorably.

What you are all really here for

Unfortunately I am contractually obligated to put the TLDR Tier List in this article, so go wild!