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Much Abrew: 80-Card Yorion Soulherder (Modern)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Ikoria is here, and today, we're jumping to Modern to play a deck fearing my favorite of the new companions: Yorion, Sky Nomad. If you think about it hard enough, Yorion, Sky Nomad is the closest thing we have to a Panharmonicon that starts in our hand every game, coming down to blink all of our stuff to reuse all of our enters-the-battlefield creatures. Better yet, Yorion, Sky Nomad already has a ready-built home in Modern thanks to the blink- and enters the battlefield–heavy Soulherder archetype. As such, we're heading into a Modern league today to see if 80 cards is the wave of the future for Soulherder in Modern! How good is Yorion, Sky Nomad in the format? How much does having 80 cards reduce the consistency of our deck? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!

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Much Abrew: 80-Card Yorion Soulherder

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The Deck

  • Record-wise, we finished 3-2 in our Modern league, which is fine although somewhat disappointing after we started off our five-match set 3-0 in matches and 6-0 in games.
  • Digging a bit deeper into our matchups is pretty revealing: we crushed an Abzan Fiend Artisan deck, Humans, and Bant Snow Control to get off to a fast start but then lost our last two matches to Lurrus Burn and Infect. This isn't really a surprise: Soulherder can win the late game against most decks in Modern, even more so now that Yorion, Sky Nomad is hanging out in our hand each game, but it struggles with fast combo decks, especially ones like Burn and Infect that don't care about our ability to build a board of blockers early in the game. 
  • As for Yorion, Sky Nomad, it felt great in general. I'm pretty sure we would have lost at least a couple of additional games if it wasn't for the Bird Serpent's power. Even just a 4/5 flying blocker is relevant in some situations, and we had some absurd games where Yorion, Sky Nomad drew us five-ish cards when it entered the battlefield only to do the same thing again the next turn, thanks to Ephemerate or Restoration Angel.
  • On the other hand, I think that being 80 cards did hurt us a bit against decks like Infect. We have four copies of Path to Exile in our sideboard, which is our single best card against Infect. Playing 80 cards does mean that we're about 9% less likely to start the game with a Path to Exile in hand, which can be the difference between winning and losing against a combo-aggro deck like Infect. That said, even traditional (i.e., non–Yorion, Sky Nomad) builds of Soulherder get crushed by Infect—it's a bad matchup in an absolute sense. Did Yorion, Sky Nomad make it worse? Probably, but since we aren't going to beat Infect often anyway, it isn't a huge issue, especially considering how instrumental Yorion was to winning our other matchups. 
  • As for the non-Yorion cards in the deck, they're mostly just a bunch of ramp, creatures that draw us cards when they enter the battlefield, and silver-bullet one-ofs to tutor up with Chord of Calling. Oh yeah, and the combo kill of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Restoration Angel to make infinite hasty Restoration Angels (by repeatedly blinking Kiki-Jiki to untap it) to close out the game quickly, if needed. 
  • If you decide to pick up the deck, keep in mind that Yorion, Sky Nomad is a really good way to grow Soulherder, which gets a +1/+1 counter whenever a creature gets exiled. As such, it's often correct to blink random creatures like Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch if we have Soulherder on the battlefield, just to get another +1/+1 counter. 
  • So, is Yorion, Sky Nomad the future of Soulherder in Modern? I think the answer is most likely yes. While Soulherder can win its good matchups even without Yorion, and an extra five-drop in hand doesn't fix the fast combo matchup (instead making it slightly worse), Yorion, Sky Nomads does seem to shift a lot of the 50/50 matchups in the middle, where having an extra card in hand and occasionally just drawing a whole new hand when Yorion, Sky Nomad enters the battlefield is a huge, huge deal. I'd be surprised if anyone was playing 60-card Soulherder a month from now. Yorion, Sky Nomad is too easy to fit into the deck and too powerful to pass up!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today! Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos! 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.



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