Discussion Forum

have you looked at the Modern Meta? What kind of decks people play. Do you feel you have a strategy that interacts with those decks, that can keep up with them?

Most decks in modern use Fetchland right? So why not play Archive Trap and Trapmaker's Snare? They interact with the format.

Instead of playing a card like Tome Scour that likely isn't going to have any impact on the game what so ever you might concider Hedron Crab that is actually pretty good at milling and can block when needed.

With most of your creatures being defenders or really weak what is up with playing Paranoid Delusions? How will you Cipher? Without Cipher the card is even worse then Tome Scour. 3 cards for 2 mana, even with cipher it's terrible.

I think you're on the wrong track. Modern being a very expensive format where you either run into combo decks or very agressive aggro decks. Just sitting there and letting the other guy do whatever he wants while milling a few cards every turn isn't going to be much fun for you.

I don't know if there are any good budget decks in Modern. You should do some reserach. Either way, playing magic without constant defeat costs money.

Multiplayer formats are usually less costly then 1 vs 1 formats. Playing multiplayer Commander for instance is still reasonbly affordable (I think you probably still can have an ok deck for 100$ that can hold its own)
Finding a Cube Draft group is also a good way to go, Cube Draft is free (for everyone but the builder of the Cube) and awesome :)

I would recommend Phenax, from the new set if you're aiming for defender mill.

I would replace some of the mill spells with control spells and maybe even combo with Phenax and Undead Alchemist + Intruder Alarm/Grimgrin/etc.

You also need to be sure you can exile a graveyard at instant speed since Eldrazi can see a lot of play in the format and at least will be sideboarded in vs mill.

Thank you both very much for the information. I have never really played magic outside of casual as the area I live in is small and doesn't have any game/card stores unless you drive 30+ minutes away.

Do either of you have a link to a site that can explain the current meta for each format? I'd like to study it and get more familiar with the different play styles.

Also, what removal/control cards would you add in place of the mill spells Seth pointed out as unneeded?

Thank you again for your help.

this is a good site to keep up with the top decks

http://www.mtgdecks.net/formats/view/Modern

If your local FNM community plays really casual low budget and doesn't really follow the high end meta you're lucky, that means you can homebrew a lot and still have fun. Not saying you can't homebrew in a place where everyone plays netdecks but playing an untested deck versus very well tested decks isn't really a fair game.

Supreme Verdict would be reliable removal in combo with a few black spot removal spells. It would mean splashing white though and that makes your landbase more complex. I used to play damnation in UB mill but it's expensive and I don't think it's actually that great in Modern as it can be easily countered.