In this Power Rankings, you’ll find a direct link to a Deck Guide and a veedeo for every archetype. Our content is brought to you by Reid Duke, Gabriel Nassif, the rest of Team ChannelFireball and of course myself. To read the articles with Sideboard Guides, you have to subscribe to CFB Pro, whereas the veedeos have a direct link to the ChannelFireball YouTube channel and my YouTube Channel.
This is my personal Top 15 Modern decks. I want to remind you that I’m trying to be as objective as I can, but I recognize that player experience means a lot in Modern, and a player that knows their deck extremely well can be much better off playing their rogue deck rather than an established deck.
We have three new entries this month! Let’s meet them!
15. Domain Zoo
Tribal Flames is a very powerful card, and same can be said for Scion of Draco and Territorial Kavu. Playing domain decks has never been easier between fetchlands, shocklands and Triomes.
Domain Zoo is an excellent aggro deck that can punish greedy mana bases and burn people out. There isn’t a general consensus on which list is better between Tarmogoyf and Nishoba Brawler, but I personally prefer the first one since it usually survives Lightning Bolt.
14. Mono-Green Tron
As the metagame gets slower, with Elemental decks rising and Izzet Murktide decks cutting Dragon’s Rage Channeler in favor of Seasoned Pyromancer, Green Tron found its way back into Modern’s best decks.
Don’t treat this as a combo deck but embrace it as a well-oiled machine, able to fight through countless counterspells and Blood Moon effects to inevitably cast overcosted permanents like Karn, the Great Creator and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.
13. Dimir Mill
Jace, the Perfected Mind is the newest addition. It’s not only a way to get card advantage with its -3, but it can also mill up to 15 cards if hardcast for four mana. It’s a versatile card for the grindy matchups as well as an additional way to mill your opponent.
Tasha’s Hideous Laughter is an incredibly good card that can mill half your opponent’s deck against Hammer Time or Jeskai Breach.
As long as Dimir Mill can fly under the radar and you won’t battle against too many main-deck Eldrazi, it’s definitely is back in business!
12. Burn
The most recent lists are cutting Eidolon of the Great Revel, which trades too often with Leyline Binding or Solitude. I personally think it’s a good card to have in the deck but it’s important to know when it’s time to sideboard it out, especially on the draw.
Overall, Burn is a good choice that’s also budget friendly.
11. Jund Sagavan
There’s two viable versions of this deck. One plays the delirium package of Dragon’s Rage Channeler alongside Unholy Heat, keeping its mana curve extremely low, as if it had Lurrus of the Dream-Den in the companion zone, and the other with some three-drops like Tireless Tracker and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker.
I think Jund adopting Urza’s Saga is the only way to go to be successful with this archetype, since Urza’s Saga guarantees you a good late game alongside Wrenn and Six because it’s able to fetch up important toolbox cards like Nihil Spellbomb and Haywire Mite.
Jund is officially back in Modern!
10. Four-Color Omnath
There’s a lot of viable options if you want to play Elementals with Omnath, Locus of Creation and you can even play up to 70 or 80 cards with success since Eladamri’s Call and Oath of Nissa can give you consistency and improve your mana base.
If you add Cavern of Souls to your deck, you’ll have a good time against Izzet Murktide and other Counterspell decks, but it does suffer against Blood Moon and Indomitable Creativity as it plays four colors without any access to counterspells.
You’re still playing some of the best cards in the format such as Wrenn and Six and Teferi, Time Raveler, so the card advantage can carry you through most unfavorable matchups and Oath of Nissa helps bounce Blood Moon with Teferi so you can fetch your basics to play all your spells.
9. Amulet Titan
The Mycosynth Gardens is the most impactful Phyrexia: All Will Be One card in Modern and it perfectly slots into Amulet Titan as an additional way to copy Amulet of Vigor. A Primeval Titan backed up by two Amulet of Vigors will be lethal and thanks to this tech, the deck gained a lot of consistency.
Amulet Titan is a great deck, but takes a lot of expertise to fully master, since most sequences need to be learned and can’t just be brought over from other decks or formats like they can for Izzet Murktide or Azorius Control.
8. Rakdos Scam
Rakdos Scam is a great Blood Moon deck that can win any matchups on the back of its busted turn one play. It’s the best Thoughtseize midrange deck we have in Modern right now!
7. Golgari Yawgmoth
It has a tough time against Fury, and the card is seeing a lot more play than it used to because of Temur Rhinos and Rakdos Scam. Scam in particular is a terrible matchup for Yawgmoth since it dreads both its turn one Elemental-plus-evoke starts as well as the main-deck Blood Moons.
6. Living End
There are several ways you can disrupt Living End plan, starting from graveyard hate like Unlicensed Hearse or Endurance, counterspells like Flusterstorm, and finally permanents that stop the deck from functioning like Teferi, Time Raveler, Drannith Magistrate or Chalice of the Void.
Living End players will be ready for these hate cards with Force of Vigor and Foundation Breaker to protect their plan and consistently put Living End on the stack on turn three thanks to their eight cascade spells in Shardless Agent and Violent Outburst.
5. Hammer Time
If you’re a combo player, Hammer Time is an excellent choice for you. You need to know when it’s time to jam a Colossus Hammer or when it’s time to wait for the Blacksmith’s Skill or for your opponent to leave their guard down.
Hammer Time doesn’t suffer against many bad matchups in particular and it’s the only deck that can play Esper Sentinel, a card capable of winning games by itself on turn one by creating a huge tempo advantage that will make your opponent eventually perish, unable to deploy their spells on time.
There’s two versions of Hammer Time going around. I prefer playing 10 Plains and sticking to mono-white, but you can splash blue for some copies of Spell Pierce in the main deck and Lavinia, Azorius Renegade in the sideboard to be better against combo decks and dropping some percentage points against Blood Moon.
4. Crashing Footfalls
Despite Crashing Footfalls being one of the easiest decks to play in Modern, there are certainly challenges in deckbuilding, but those won’t take away from the fact that Rhinos is one of the best decks in Modern right now!
3. Jeskai Breach
We’re used to seeing Underworld Breach in combination with Grinding Station and Thassa’s Oracle in a combo version, but recently there’s a new version that’s very successful called “Value” Breach or “Sagaless” Breach that’s relying on Underworld Breach as a value card and giving up on the combo and cards like Urza’s Saga, Mox Amber and Grinding Station.
Jeskai Breach is both a combo deck that can win out of nowhere thanks to Underworld Breach, Grinding Station and Mishra’s Bauble as well as a deck playing the best Modern cards such as Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Expressive Iteration and Urza’s Saga.
It’s also one of the hardest decks in the format to pilot that requires a deep knowledge of sequencing as well as how to play around sideboard hate like Endurance and Wear // Tear. The perks of playing difficult decks are often that also your opponent doesn’t know how to play against you, giving expert Breach players an important edge.
This deck can grind well thanks to Urza’s Saga and Underworld Breach giving raw card advantage to help facilitate your game plan and combo smoothly.
2. Izzet Murktide
I love Murktide and have a weekly content column on YouTube with it, but it’s time to lose the crown as a better deck has emerged in these past weeks.
Blood Moon is back in the main deck to fight a metagame of four and five-color deck as well as all the Urza’s Sagas that sit at the top of the metagame.
It’s a very complicated deck that sometimes may feel underpowered when the opponent resolves an Endurance or equips a Colossus Hammer on an Esper Sentinel, but it’s a deck that has the tools to beat every deck in the format thank to its very customizable sideboard.
I think that Murktide is a deck that, post-sideboard, turns every bad matchup into a slightly positive one. It’s a well-oiled machine with a very refined game plan that leaves no room for mistakes and requires you to optimize every single card in your hand.
1. Indomitable Creativity
Indomitable Creativity is a four-mana one-card combo that gets an Archon of Cruelty into play just by fetching Dwarven Mine on turn four. Thanks to Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, this deck is able to play a midrange game and very often reaches the eight-mana threshold to hardcast the Archon.
There’s many different ways you can build your Creativity deck, and I’ve talked about them at length in my Deep Dive. There’s my favorite version (five-color with Teferi, Time Raveler and Leyline Binding) or other options if you enjoy having a reanimator package with Persist and Bitter Reunion.
Five-Color Creativity suffers against Blood Moon, both because it’s a five-color deck and also because Blood Moon will shut off the main way to create tokens: Dwarven Mine. You’re able to get Treasure with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Prismari Command, but my favorite ways to fix my mana are Abundant Growth and Strike It Rich from the sideboard!
There’s plenty of tools to fight this archetype, the best one being Orvar, the All-Form, and if you want to succeed in Modern, you’ll likely need to put some copies of Orvar in your sideboard as well!
This is it for my March Modern Power Rankings. See you next month!
Where is the Bant Control guide update?