The selection offered by cards Search for Azcanta and Opt have made them Modern control mainstays for a while now, and before their time there was Serum Visions. Control decks thrive upon finding the right cards at the right time, and making sure to not draw the wrong cards at the wrong time. An innocent little do-nothing that fixes colours and draws cards, conditional upon you playing snow lands.Īssuming you intend to make the snow mana needed to cast Astrolabe, the opportunity cost to playing it is very low. Arcum’s Astrolabe is colorless, costs 1 to cast, draws a card when it enters the battlefield, and for the input of any one generic mana will output mana of any desired color. The card responsible for this deck’s almost miraculous consistency in colored mana production, despite the land constraints mentioned above, is an unassuming little artifact printed at common in MH1. In BUG colors, only Frost Marsh, producing UB, is currently available. But given the snow lands available to us in the format as of the time of writing, the mana producing lands for the deck must mostly be basics – the only snow duals printed thus far all enter the battlefield tapped, and are only available for allied pairs. This deck intends to consistently cast GG, BB, and UUU. Taken together, this pile of synergy evolved into something extremely powerful. Cards I did not really need to make excuses to be playing and in fact provided effects that were worth actively seeking. My hunt rewarded me with some that were just good standalone cards. I started hunting about for other snow permanents that seemed reasonably playable. Dead of Winter counts snow permanents, not snow lands – and Modern Horizons certainly provided a few goodies in that department, Ice-Fang Coatl chief among them. So is occasionally being able to wipe an early couple of creatures worth giving up the unconditional power of Damnation? Treading upon that path of skepticism, I had a rather bright idea. If we are going to Turn 4, Damnation does the job anyway. My initial thinking was that on Turn 3, a blanket -3/-3 would often be not good enough in Modern: Champion of the Parish can get out of hand, Gurmag Angler, Hollow One, and now Hogaak are massively ahead of curve for power and toughness, and Tarmogoyf has generally always been a big boy. I have never been so wrong in all of my life. I thought it was going to be a bad Damnation most of the time, usually a slight upgrade over Flaying Tendrils. I severely underestimated Dead of Winter when first I saw the card. When your removal costs 2 mana and draws a card, when you cast Plague Wind for 3 mana, and your value-scry enchantment turns into an indestructible evasive 20/20, conditional merely upon you playing lands, sit up and pay close attention. This is more than a gimmick – Dead of Winter, Marit Lage’s Slumber and Ice-Fang Coatl, when enabled, are a league above their competition. This deck only plays Snow lands, and its other permanents are to a large degree Snow. Last seen in Ice Age, Snow makes its return in MH1, and what a return it is. What is special about it, though, other than the color combination it features –a combination which unfortunately has been rather underrepresented during its lifespan in Modern thus far– is the single theme that holds it all together, and raises its strength and consistency a notch above what other decks with similar overarching game plans are currently doing. It kills critters, counters and discards stuff, draws a bunch of extra cards, and eventually wins the game with a couple of powerful, resilient, and efficient threats. To see the two come together is very intriguing. Sultai has been an underrepresented color combination as well. However, Modern Horizons has been an embarrassment of riches for the supertype. If you asked me a year ago whether snow could be Modern playable, I would have laughed in your face.
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