Dragons of Tarkir Modern - Podless Pod

Hi Everyone,
Since I returned to Magic and started on Magic Online I have always been fascinated by Birthing Pod decks. I loved the way they could search up creatures to solve various problems like a box of tools. I suppose it started back when I started playing in 1994 that having general answers that could be searched for was a cool idea.

Later Gifts Ungiven let me create situations that were great for me and awful for my opponent using a deck full of one-ofs and four Gifts Ungiven.

Now that Pod is gone from modern and the format (not unlike before) is merely a field of combo decks and the best non-combo deck (Abzan).

One of the great strengths of Pod was that it was able to disrupt to keep the combo opponents from going off while still having good creatures that could win the game without a combo win.

An idea I have always kicked around is podless pod. An Abzan color beatdown deck that contains the combo pieces for the "Melira" combo finish from Pod decks.

I have always liked the idea of Melira but let's face it, she's just a combo piece and isn't good against anything except infect and in weird special board states where it lets you infinity block with a finks or redcap and your opponent can't remove Melira or the finks.

How about the new Anafenza from Dragons of Tarkir? She's double white but that's not that big of a deal in Modern with 10 fetch lands and all the shock, filter, and whatever other lands there are. She can serve as a better Melira in beatdown decks. She makes all your stuff bigger and gets rid of that pesky -1/-1 counter on your finks or redcap.

It seems like there are eight different ways to have "infinity persist" and sacrificing creatures isn't hard with cards like Viscera Seer and Spawning Pit (I'm sure there are more cheap sacrifice outlets that I'm overlooking right now).

I think the main benefit of Anafenza in podless pod is that it's a good card on it's own, it beefs up Finks, Redcaps, Voices, and even Birds. I'm not sure if this card could make a non-combo beatdown deck a playable deck in Modern, but I think it can make a decent combo deck.


Once Dragons is out online, I'm going to brew a little and see if I can come up with some sweet podless pod variants. I think it's a cool idea that could do will in a format like the current Modern format.

The only thing I am unsure of is that later Pod decks turned into value decks and lost any combo completely. I just wonder if running more good cards that kill the opponent is better than having a combo deck that has some good creatures.

Keep an eye out for a follow up article with a video once Dragons is available on Magic Online.