Much Abrew: Simic Eldrazi (Modern)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! Nearly a decade ago, Modern lived through Eldrazi Winter, where Eldrazi utterly dominated the format after the release of Oath of the Gatewatch, eventually leading to the banning of Eye of Ugin. In the years since, Modern's power has increased a lot, mostly thanks to the first to Modern Horizons sets, and Eldrazi have faded from the format. But now, they might be back. Modern Horizons 3 is overflowing with powerful Eldrazi—our deck today has six new main-deck Eldrazi along with honorary Eldrazi land Ugin's Labyrinth. Can cards like Sowing Mycospawn, Devourer of Destiny, Nulldrifter, and Emrakul, the World Anew bring Eldrazi back to prominence in the format? Let's find out!
Much Abrew: Simic Eldrazi
Thoughts
Record-wise, Simic Eldrazi felt great! We ended up going 4-1 with the deck, thanks mostly to the power of the new Modern Horizons 3 cards. By far the most important new addition to the deck isn't technically an Eldrazi; it's Ugin's Labyrinth. Back during Eldrazi Winter, the deck was fueled by two Sol lands in Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. Once Eye of Ugin was banned, Eldrazi lost a lot of its consistency. Ugin's Labyrinth fills this void, helping make sure that we have access to a Sol land every game, which is really important to our deck being able to function since our curve is so high. Even outside of allowing us to turbo out big Eldrazi, the land works really well with colorless two-drops like Talisman of Curiosity and Chalice of the Void, the latter offering free wins out of the sideboard in the right matchup.
The other card that really impressed me in the deck is Devourer of Destiny. As I mentioned before, having a Sol land on Turn 1 is incredibly important to our deck. Devourer greatly increases our odds of having one since we can reveal it in our opening hand to dig for one in our top four cards. In some ways, it works like Once Upon a Time. Even better, if we find an Ugin's Labyrinth, we can exile Devourer of Destiny to its important ability to make some extra mana and then put it back in our hand to cast it later in the game as a big-bodied removal spell.
Nulldrifter and Drowner of Truth are mostly in the deck to help power up Ugin's Labyrinth, as seven-drop colorless cards that we can play for much less mana. Drowner of Truth does this by being an MDFC. If we have an Ugin's Labyrinth, we can exile Drowner to turn it into a Sol land. If we don't have Ugin's Labyrinth, we can simply play it as a tapped dual land. While not an exciting card, it does serve a very important purpose in the deck. Meanwhile, Nulldrifter gives us some cheap card draw thanks to its evoke ability, and later in the game, it's a reasonably effective creature as a 4/4, flying annihilator.
Sowing Mycospawn gives us some absurd draws. For example, we can play an Ugin's Labyrinth and a Talisman of Curiosity on Turn 1, giving us four mana once we make our land drop on Turn 2. Then, we can Sowing Mycospawn to find an Eldrazi Temple on Turn 2, which, combined with another land drop on Turn 3, gives us enough mana to start slinging seven-drops like Nulldrifter and Drowner of Truth. We also get the extra upside of slowing down our opponent by blowing up one of their lands.
The one Eldrazi that wasn't especially impressive in the deck was the new Emrakul. The idea is that we could use Sowing Mycospawn to find Geier Reach Sanitarium to discard Emrakul and then madness it into play for just six mana, but this never happened in practice. If we can't madness Emrakul, it's simply too expensive—even with all of our Sol lands it's super hard to get to 12 mana. Next time I play the deck, I'll sadly be cutting Emrakul. It might work better in a deck that has Tron lands (or cheaper discard outlets) to actually get it into play.
The last card I wanted to mention is Kozilek's Command. I only played a single copy in the deck, but it felt great every time we drew it. We should probably be playing more and might actually want the entire playset. While it looks a bit inefficient, it's incredibly flexible. The combination of being ramp, removal, card draw, and graveyard hate means it's almost never a dead card. Worst case, we can make some Spawns and Preordain, the ceiling is incredibly high, being able to nuke the graveyard against Dredge or Reanimator and killing our opponent's best creature.
All in all, I think Eldrazi are back in Modern. Maybe they won't be Eldrazi Winter good, but that's probably a positive. Ugin's Labyrinth is absurd, and the rest of the new additions are quite powerful as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see some build of Eldrazi at least be tier two in post–Modern Horizons 3 Modern, and it might even end up tier one!
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.
