Over the last few weeks, several variants of an aggressive artifact-focused red deck featuring Galvanic and Shrapnel Blast, commonly referred to as “8-Blast,” have reemerged into the Modern metagame. Despite several conflicting ideas amongst players as to which of these variants is the strongest, 8-Blast has been putting up several impressive results in tournaments including a Modern Challenge win by Caleb Scherer with a mono-red variant of the deck and a 12-match win streak in the hands of Twitch streamer d00mwake with a variant of the deck splashing green. Good results like these are of course great indicators for the strength of any deck, but it’s especially notable when a deck is putting up several impressive results while the strategy is both still being tuned by the community and the archetype has far fewer pilots than some of the more popular strategies in Modern.
Ultimately, the strategy for all 8-Blast variants is relatively a standard aggro strategy: get ahead on board early, overwhelm your opponents with your incredibly low mana curve and if your early threats can’t finish off your opponent, use your considerable amount of burn (Bolts and Blasts) to deal with any lingering life total. In order to enable your Blasts, you do need to fill your deck with artifacts that complement your deck’s game plan like Experimental Synthesizer, Bomat Courier and Voldaren Epicure.
