Greetings again! Stephen here with another post on Modern Cheerios, or Puresteel Storm as some like to call it. Some changes have been made to the previous list, and I have some games to report to you all on how this list is performing and my thoughts on whether or not it is tournament playable.
For those who have not read the previous article, my original list was this:
Cheerios:
4 Kite Shield
4 Accorder's Shield
4 Sigil of Distinction
4 Bone Saw
4 Paradise Mantle
4 Spidersilk Net
4 Mox Opal
4 Retract
4 Noxious Revival
4 Spoils of the Vault
4 Puresteel Paladin
2 Grapeshot
2 Manamorphose
12 Lands
Sideboard:
4 Gemstone Caverns
3 Mana Tithe
1 Storm Entity
1 Laboratory Maniac
2 Apostle's Blessing
4 ?
This one was brutal, in more than one sense. On the one hand, you won with incredible speed. On the other hand, you died with incredible speed. Spoils of the Vault was capable of both closing out the game by giving you exactly what you needed, but also putting you in bolt range or just killing you instantly. I began to look around and try to find the best tutor possible for our Paladin, and while Plunge into Darkness looked promising, Muddle the Mixture won out. As such, the list changed, and here is where we stood before my 4 rounds last night.
Cheerios:
4 Kite Shield
4 Accorder's Shield
1 Sigil of Distinction
4 Bone Saw
4 Paradise Mantle
4 Spidersilk Net
4 Mox Opal
4 Retract
4 Noxious Revival
4 Muddle the Mixture
4 Puresteel Paladin
1 Grapeshot
1 Echoing Truth
3 Turn Aside
1 Plains
2 Mystic Gate
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Glimmervoid
3 Gemstone Mine
Sideboard:
4 Salvage Titan
4 Silence
4 Angel's Grace
3 Gut Shot
With Muddle the Mixture, the deck (insert finger quotes here) "slows down," and by that I mean, no it doesn't. This list still retains just as much power as its predecessor with the added ability to counter spells if need be. Going into the 4 rounds I knew I wanted more Puresteel Paladins. We have the 4, and the 4 Muddle to help find them, but I wanted somewhere around 11. After testing with Riddlesmith, I decided against him. While similar, watching my hand disappear into nothing did nothing but cause my later draws to be miserable, so he was sacked for the Turn Aside's. I thought, 'hell why not' and went with this. (Foreshadow Moment: it was bad)
With the new tutor engine, the mana base becomes easier to sustain. Fetches and shocks do everything, but I like my WUBRG lands to pay for Noxious Revival in a pinch. Well, enough of that. On to some matches, eh?
Practice Game:
I win the die roll and keep 3x Mox Opal, Paladin, Retract, Kite Shield, Accorder's Shield. Cast both shields, mox for white, mox for white, mox for blue and cast both Paladin and Retract. Draw 2 cards, find a Shield and another Retract, and keep going, drawing my entire library and Grapeshot for lethal on turn one on the play.
With my hopes up, the rounds begin.
Round 1 vs Infect:
G1 he mulls to 4. My hand is capable of going off turn 2, but I wait for turn 3 just to see what he's on. I board in the Gut Shots.
G2 I keep a decent turn 3 hand, but die on turn 2 from quad pump spell on a Glistener elf.
G3 I keep a one land Gut Shot hand. I shoot the first elf which slows him down enough to for me to find a pally and go for it.
I take a mental note here about my land count. 14 seems low, even for a deck like this. Finding the second land was rough.
Round 2 vs G/W Things:
G1: She goes turn 1 Dryad Militant (who plays this? lol) and I wtf face. Noxious Revival loops are off unless I Echoing Truth that. She follows up with Thalia, and I just scoop. The only out I reasonably have is generating a storm high enough to kill both, which seems unlikely given the board.
G2: I go turn 2 Salvage Titan because I didn't draw the second land (recurring theme here) to go for the Paladin loop. She path's my guy and plays a Thalia. Yep. Tastes like Ranch.
At this moment I am cursing myself for not going up to 15 lands, but I have to take my licks I guess.
Round 3 vs Phyrexian Unlife Lightning Storm
G1: We both start off the game doing very little. He cantrips and suspends Lotus Blooms while I try to find a Paladin. We end up fighting over the Paladin, and he wins the battle. Angel;s Grace into Ad Nauseum and he proceeds to Lightning Storm me to death.
G2: I bring in Angel's Grace for the blow out here. If he picks up his library again, I can Grace and he loses. Or Silence, which is just as good. However, what actually unfolds is even more silly. I watch as he can't find the Ad Nauseum (combo deck nightmares, believe me I know) and I resolve a Paladin. After drawing roughly 4 cards with some cereal (or O's) I cast a Silence. He responds with Angel's Grace. I shrug, and after the Grace resolves use Revival to put Silence on top of my deck and wait with Angel's Grace of my own in hand. Next turn I draw and cast Silence again, so he Peer Through Depths into Angel's Grace. So I attack with Paladin for 3 and use another Revival. I then draw and cast Silence AGAIN which resolves (I give him a piece of paper with F6 written on it lol) and he dies.
G3: This game was dumb. Same thing happens in the beginning, but he ends up casting a Simian Spirit Guide and attacking with it (remind you of some tournaments Travis?). We trade Silence's for Grace's until I run him out and combo again.
After this game, we had a good laugh, and I lamented the lack of a 15th land again. Drawing land number 2 was a real pain in the ass.
Round 4 vs Splinter Twin:
G1: Aside from UWR, this is another poor matchup game one as we don't have infinite Paladins. This match, games one and two basically involved Paladin dying, followed by me dying.
In hindsight, 14 lands may have not been enough. I struggled with finding a second land more often than I needed to, and I lost some very fast games because of it. One more than one occasion the second land would have ended the game, as my opponents left no mana up to try and slow me down, as they needed to develop their own hands to try and keep up. Also, Turn Aside was shit, and met the sideboard every game. If I wanted a one mana counter, I might as well be playing Silence in the main.
What I do want to try are 2 copies (or 3 if I can find the space) for Erayo, Soratami Ascendant. While we can't flip him on turn one (we require Darksteel Citadel for Metalcraft to make sure we don't use him as the 4th spell, which doesn't work), turn 2 is just as good against basically every deck in the format. It would give this deck the time it needs to be able to combo out. He does function as Paladin's 9 and 10, in essence, as he tries to win the game on the spot. Also, most Modern decks are going to be tapping out turns 1 and 2 to develop their own board states, giving us just enough time to go for glory. However, don't worry about the long game. If you aren't under any pressure, you can amass Muddle's and Revivals and grind most players out of answers before you run out of ways to either cast the Paladin or protect him.
I will continue to play this deck, and intend on taking it to states on April 12th to compete. I have one week to find everything I need and fine tune the list, so I hope you all will wish me luck!
Thanks for reading! You guys are awesome!
-Stephen D.
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