Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Grinding Station - a Modern Budget deck


As you may be well aware, we are doing a Modern Silverblack league on magicgatheringstrat.com right now. Modern Silverblack is Modern with only commons and rares. In the third round of the league I got crushed by Tazerdadog playing a Grinding Station deck. I was aware of this list because my old buddy and MagicGatheringStrat streamer Farfishere won the last Modern Silverblack event on Gatherling.com with such a deck.




This is the list Farfishere played.


MAINDECK (60 Cards)
12 Creatures
Etherium Sculptor
Myr Retriever
Riddlesmith
32 Spells
Chromatic Sphere
Chromatic Star
Conjurer's Bauble
Grinding Station
Ichor Wellspring
Locket of Yesterdays
Terrarion
Thoughtcast
16 Lands
16 Island
SIDEBOARD (15 Cards)
Tormod's Crypt
Echoing Truth
Gigadrowse
Rapid Hybridization
Spell Pierce

Tazerdadog had improved the list by adding Hibernations in the sideboard.

This deck may be the fastest deck in Modern Silverblack having about 15% T3 kills and consistenly winning on T4 if not hated (according to Tazerdadog).

The combo
With a Myr Retriever in the graveyard you kill a Myr Retriever in play using Grinding Station, retrieving My Retriever. You need to reduce the cost of playing a Myr Retriever to zero using either Locket of Yesterdays and/or Etherium Sculptor. Riddlesmith will have enabled Locket of Yesterdays and provided the Myr Retriever in the graveyard. At that point you go infinite and mill your opponent out.

You will beat anything that is not packing enough sideboard hate to stop you. The most efficient such sideboard hate is probably Suppression Field.

Is this deck playable in "normal" Modern?
Tazerdadog had several wins in the JFF room on Magic Online with the deck. I think the deck is viable BUT there is a lot of sideboard hate that is rare that will just destroy you. Stony Silence comes to mind immediatly. The deck is very cheap to put together so why not give it a try and see how you do?





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