Much Abrew: Orzhov Blink (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. This week, we're heading back to Modern to see if we can blink our way to some wins! The main goal is to evoke Grief or Solitude early in the game but keep them around with the help of a blink effect like Ephemerate or cards like Undying Evil or even Persist. With the right draw, our deck can potentially Thoughtseize our opponent with Grief four times by Turn 2 or turn Solitude into a really weird wrath that just eats away our opponent's board! When it comes time to win the game, we can either blink Blade Splicer a bunch of times to build a big board of Golem tokens or use Stoneforge Mystic to snag a finisher, like Batterskull, Kaldra Compleat, or new Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty equipment creatures, like Lion Sash or Blade of the Oni. How many Grief and Solitude blinks does it take to win in Modern? Let's get to the video and find out on this week's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: Orzhov Blink
Discussion
- Record-wise, things are complicated. I started playing a league with the deck and went 2-1 but then ran out of time because of a stream. I had to drop since you can't be in two Modern leagues at once on Magic Online. The next day, I tried again and this time completed the league, going 3-2, giving us a total record of 5-3 with the deck, which is pretty solid!
- Orzhov Blink has two somewhat related parts. The first part of the deck is our evoke-Elemental blink package, featuring Grief and Solitude as well as cards like Ephemerate, Touch the Spirit Realm, Undying Evil, and friends. The most explosive thing our deck can do is evoke a Grief on Turn 1 and blink it to keep it around, which gives us not only a 3/2 body but also two Thoughtseizes. We potentially can follow this up with even more blink on Turn 2 (we had a game where we resolved four Grief triggers]] on the first two turns), which should leave our opponent with very little action. The same tricks work with Solitude, except that rather than attacking our opponent's hand, we attack the creatures on their board. With enough blink effects, Solitude can turn into a really weird exile wrath that sweeps away our opponent's board. While blinking evoke Elementals a bunch of times can put our opponent very far behind and essentially win the game, the only real downside is that Grief and Solitude aren't very big, so they are slow ways to close out the game. This is where the second part of our deck comes in...
- Part two of Orzhov Blink is our Stoneforge Mystic package, which can snag finishers like Kaldra Compleat, Batterskull, Sword of Fire and Ice, and Maul of the Skyclaves to speed up our Elemental clock. We can also snag equipment creatures Lion Sash and Blade of the Oni, which do double duty in our deck. While we do sometimes use them as creatures (especially Lion Sash, which is great graveyard hate as a white Scavenging Ooze), the other upside of Lion Sash and Blade of the Oni is that they are white or black cards to pitch to Grief and Solitude. This is surprisingly important to the deck because one way our Elemental-blink plan fizzles is not having enough cards (or the proper color of cards) to exile to evoke them into play. This is the same reason our deck has a bunch of MDFCs in the mana base—we don't really plan on casting cards like Agadeem's Awakening or Emeria's Call, but they help up our count of black and white cards to support our Elementals.
- While our main blink targets are Grief and Solitude, we do have a backup plan in Blade Splicer, which can build a massive board all by itself if we can blink it a few times.
- By far the biggest new Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty addition to the deck is Touch the Spirit Realm, which is pretty absurd in the deck. While it's not great as removal or blink, the fact that it's one card that does both is incredibly powerful. On Turn 2, it gives us another way to pull off our evoke shenanigans; then, later, it can just exile an artifact or creature as a bad Oblivion Ring.
- In general, I really enjoyed playing Orzhov Blink, and the deck felt really solid, although I'm not in love with the sideboard. In a lot of matchups, it felt like we had very few cards to bring in. While the current sideboard isn't bad, I do think it could probably be tweaked a bit with things like Leyline of the Void.
- So, should you play Orzhov Blink in Modern? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes. The deck's explosive and fun, and it seems pretty competitive too! If you like crazy blink shenanigans or equipment decks, or just want to win some games, it seems like a really solid option for our new post-Lurrus-ban Modern format!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
