Much Abrew About Nothing: Tezzerator (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to the new and improved Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week in our Instant Deck Tech voting, Tezzerator in Modern blew past the competition and was easily the most popular deck of the week. As such, this week, we are heading to Modern to figure out if the combination of Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek is enough to make Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas playable in the super-fast Modern format. Will our life gain be enough to stay alive against Burn? Can our chump blockers keep Infect at bay? Let's find out!
One last thing before getting to the videos. Next weekend is Pro Tour Kaladesh, which means we'll have a ton of content coming out over the course of the weekend. As a result, we're taking a one-week break from Much Abrew About Nothing to make room for all of the Pro Tour goodies. Don't worry—the series will return the following week!
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Tezzerator: Instant Deck Tech
Tezzerator vs. Infect (Match 1)
Tezzerator vs. Naya Burn (Match 2)
Tezzerator vs. Grixis Control (Match 3)
Tezzerator vs. UR Storm (Match 4)
Tezzerator vs. Merfolk (Match 5)
Tezzerator (Wrap Up)
Discussion
- First off, our record wasn't great. We finished with only two wins in our five matches, although in our defense, many of our losses were in hard-fought three-game matches, so with a bit more luck, it's possible that our record would have looked better.
- My overall impression of the deck is that the power level is high, but it's slow. The combo of Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry is amazingly good at grinding out incremental advantage and closing out long games. If we can make it to Turn 6 or 7, our odds of winning will be pretty high. The challenge is finding a way to live that long against all of the fast decks in Modern.
- Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is similar to our combo—extremely powerful when the games go long but fairly slow. His ultimate works well to close out the game with Thopter tokens (when we aren't getting hit by Hurkyl's Recall), the −1 provides solid protection, and the +1 generates not just card advantage but good card advantage, digging to find our combo pieces and other powerful artifacts.
- From a more meta perspective, the biggest problem with the deck is that everyone comes prepared to beat Affinity and nearly all of the sideboard hate that is good against Affinity (like Stony Silence, Shatterstorm, and Ancient Grudge) is very good against us as well. Actually, it's probably better against us than it is against Affinity, since at least Affinity can just beat down with creatures when there's a Stony Silence on the battlefield, which is a luxury Tezzerator doesn't have.
- As for individual cards, as much as it pains me to admit it, Time Sieve simply doesn't belong in the deck. While it gives us the opportunity to take infinite turns once we get the combo assembled and have at least five mana sources, our problem isn't winning once we get the combo and five lands—our problem is living long enough to assemble the combo and five lands, which Time Sieve doesn't help with. I'm also fairly confident that Black Sun's Zenith should be Damnation or Supreme Verdict, since there were some situations where Black Sun's Zenith simply felt too slow or could hit all of our opponent's creatures.
- Speaking of too slow, I think the way to improve the deck is to embrace the slowness by dropping cards like Vault Skirge (which severely underperformed) and replacing them with cards like Ensnaring Bridge and Chalice of the Void, for example. It also feels odd that we are essentially a controlling UB deck and only have a Duress (in the sideboard) for discard. Basically, instead of trying to win by making Vault Skirge into a 5/5, build a version of Tezzerator that looks to keep the opponent under control and then win with Thopters and the ultimate of Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas.
- The good news is there are a lot of powerful options for embracing the slowness, especially if we go full-on Esper, rather than UB splashing for Timely Reinforcements. Not only are there are lot of powerful artifact possibilities, but adding some more white mana gives us access to many powerful sideboard options like Leyline of Sanctity, which could help against some fast combo decks.
- So, should you play Tezzerator? Probably not this build. I like the namesake planeswalker and the deck enough that I think it's worth revisiting, but the current build just doesn't feel fast or disruptive enough to keep up in the current Modern format. While we seem to have the ability to compete with more controlling and midrange decks, these good matchups are few and far between in a world where Infect, Burn, and Death's Shadow are among the most played decks in the format.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Even though we are skipping next week's episode for Pro Tour Kaladesh coverage, don't forget to vote for the following 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 comment, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
