Much Abrew: Mono-Blue MDFC Combos (Modern)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! We finally got some bannings, so today, we're heading to our new Modern format to play one of my favorite mechanics from the last decade of Magic: MDFCs! Thanks to the new Modern Horizons 3 MDFCs, it's now possible to play a 24-land mono-color deck with an all-MDFC mana base, and a full half of our lands even come into play untapped! Why would our mono-blue deck play only MDFCs? Well, we've got not just one but two combos that only work if our deck plays zero real lands. The first is Goblin Charbelcher. With zero "real" lands in our deck thanks to our MDFCs, if we activate a Belcher, we'll hit our opponent for damage for damage equal to the number of cards in our library, which should be 40 or 50! The second is Selective Memory, which can exile any number of non-lands from our deck. Thanks to our all-MDFC mana base, this means that Selective Memory can exile our entire deck, letting us win with Thassa's Oracle (or, if we don't have Oracle in hand, we can exile everything but a Thassa's Oracle and win with it the following turn). Are MDFCs good enough to make a new combo deck in Modern? What does the format look like now that Nadu and Grief are banned? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Mono-Blue MDFC Combos
Conclusion
While the deck might look a bit janky on paper, it performed super well in practice. We finished our league 4-1 and might have punted away our one loss! While the main reason we're playing all MDFCs is to enable our combos, it's also nice to get so much value out of our mana base. Cards like Sink into Stupor let us bounce hate pieces that can shut down our combo, and we even managed to get someone with Jwari Disruption.
If you decide to give the deck a try, a couple of quick notes. First, if we're going to win all in one turn, we need seven mana to win with Goblin Charbelcher and six to win with Selective Memory. (We can split up the mana between two turns if we need to, although this is less than ideal.) As a result, Lotus Bloom is one of the most important cards in our deck. If we have a Lotus Bloom on Turn 1, it will come off suspend on Turn 4 and give us enough mana to win the game right away.
Second, pay attention to the order in which you play your MDFC lands because some are valuable as spells. Beyeen Veil, Silundi Vision, and Sea Gate Restoration are the MDFCs we play as spells the least often, so it's generally safe to run them out as lands first. We don't often play Hydroelectric Specimen, but sometimes, having a 1/4 blocker is helpful against aggro. The two most castable MDFCs are Sink into Stupor and Jwari Disruption. If possible, try to hold onto them in case you need to use them as spells.
Oh yeah, you probably noticed the Island in the sideboard. The idea is we can bring it in against decks with cards like Boseiju, Who Endures or Cleansing Wildfire so we'll have a land to tutor up to replace the MDFC that gets destroyed. The problem is that bringing in the Island can fizzle our combos. We ended up losing the one match we brought it in for because we cast a Selective Memory and, since we couldn't exile the Island, ended up with it in our library alongside the Thassa's Oracle. And of course we drew the Island the following turn and died before we found the Oracle. While there are matchups where it is worth bringing in, be careful because adding a "real" land to the deck can be problematic.
So, should you play Mono-Blue MDFC Combos in Modern? I think the answer is yes, assuming you like combo decks. The deck felt surprisingly strong. The counters and bounce let it fight through disruption. And while our Turn 4 combo kills aren't super fast for Modern, they are fast enough to race most decks. If you're looking for something different and spicy to play, give it a shot!
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.
