Wilds of Eldraine is here, which means it’s time to get to work putting the new cards into Modern decks. Breaking into the format is historically tough, but Wilds of Eldraine has a couple cool, new toys I’d like to try out.
Dimir Death’s Shadow
Dimir Death’s Shadow has popped up a few times over the last couple of months but hasn’t done a great job sticking around in between appearances. This version plays like a hybrid of the Boomer Shadow decks (the ones with Gurmag Angler) and Murktide decks. However, in order to support Counterspell and Murktide Regent, red mana is out of the equation.
This left Dimir Death’s Shadow as a combo killer with a reasonable ability to handle smaller creatures. But once creatures got out of range of Fatal Push and Dismember, life got too hard for Dimir Shadow.
Normally, the Grixis Shadow versions have Terminate and Unholy Heat to take down the likes of Primeval Titan and Murktide Regent. Plus I’ve played Sheoldred’s Edict, Go for the Throat, Doom Blade and even Victim of Night — but they’re all too situational.
But now, The End not only can take down large creatures, but also planeswalkers. And there’s some extra text stapled on that extracts the remaining copies of whatever we remove.
While The End isn’t a great deal at four mana, it is castable if you need to. That said, Death’s Shadow is the natural home for being at five or fewer life, reducing the cost to only two mana — where The End outperforms Terminate by a lot.
I’m excited to get to try out Dimir Shadow with The End for the upcoming Modern Regional Championship Qualifier season!
Dredge
It has been a while since Dredge was really a strong player in the Modern metagame. The leading reason is likely the more powerful graveyard hate, such as Endurance.
In addition, Wizards of the Coast knows it needs to be careful about printing support for Dredge. What may seem innocuous may give the archetype a shot in the arm. And when Dredge is good, it tends to be dominant.
Due to this, Dredge hasn’t gained much in the last few sets — though Modern has certainly become much more powerful around Dredge. But explosiveness is what Dredge lacks at the moment, which is needed to pressure opponents before Endurance can make an appearance.
Breakthrough gives Legacy Dredge quite the speed boost by dumping their hand into the yard at the beginning of the game, but its Modern cousin can only get rid of two cards at a time. That said, Hearth Elemental — or more accurately the adventure on Hearth Elemental, Stoke Genius — does quite a good Breakthrough impression.
We’ll see if this effect has enough power to propel Dredge back to competitive relevance.
Devoted Druid combo seems to be picking up new cards steadily over the last year. First Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler and now, potentially, Agatha’s Soul Cauldron.
Cauldron is a big get because Devoted Druid has a noticeable weakness against decks that can kill small creatures with ease. But once you exile the first copy of a creature with an activated ability, you can pass on all of the activated abilities of all creatures exiled by the Cauldron to any other creature you have. This play pattern puts an enormous stress on opposing removal spells because now the opponent has to kill nearly every creature you play or risk losing to your combo.
In the past, Devoted Druid would play a bunch of copies of Postmortem Lunge, but Agatha’s Soul Cauldron seems like it does that job but better — which is great news for Devoted Druid players. How many copies these decks end up playing, and with exactly what configurations of creatures, will probably take some time to iron out. But I’m a believer in Agatha’s Soul Cauldron for sure.
End Step
That’s all for today. As always, I’m excited to see what cards from Wilds of Eldraine make an impact in Modern and how the format adjusts to new tools. I’ll of course be working on tuning the Dimir Shadow deck over the coming weeks to try to find the sweet spot for the upcoming RCQ season.
In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter @RappaciousOne and on BlueSky @RappaciousOne.bsky.social for questions, comments and feedback. I wish everyone a great prerelease weekend and I’ll see you back here next week!
Michael Rapp is a Modern specialist who favors Thoughtseize decks. Magic sates his desire for competition and constant improvement.