Marvelous Modern - Getting into It

By: Dale Pon
Last time I wrote an introduction to Modern, a basic overview and outline. So you may be sitting there thinking “This format sounds interesting and a lot of fun, but it doesn’t rotate, so it’s going to be rather expensive to actually get into”.

In the beginning, Modern requires a decent investment, however over time it works out cheaper than Standard, since in Standard each year you have to invest more when rotation comes round and cards cycle out.

In this article I begin explaining about how I’d recommend getting into Modern.



Before deciding exactly what deck you’re going to be playing in Modern and forking out big bucks for specific cards for decks, such as Dark Confidant or Tarmogoyf, the first place to start is LANDS! Fortunately, the Shocklands, so-called since you have the option of them dealing 2 damage to you (i.e. a “Shock”) when they enter play so they enter untapped, are currently in Standard and are thus easily available and relatively inexpensive (the Return to Ravnica dual lands are sitting between $8 and $10 at present). Many Standard players may ask why I suggest the Shocklands over the M13 and Innistrad dual lands such as Glacial Fortress and Sulfur Falls; and it’s for the reason of the Land type. Even though Glacial Fortress adds blue mana or white mana when tapped, it doesn’t have any basic land types; whereas Hallowed Fountain is a “Plains Island”. You may wonder how this is relevant. In Standard, this fact isn’t really relevant and if you’re playing a Blue-White deck you would run 4 Glacial Fortresses and 4 Hallowed Fountains.

However, in Modern, one has access to a series of very powerful lands, called “Fetchlands”. These lands allow you to pay 1 life, tap and sacrifice to search for a land card with 1 of 2 basic land types (depending on which Fetchland, e.g. Scalding Tarn allows one to search for “an Island or Mountain card”. Initially you may argue that Evolving Wilds is just better, since you don’t have to pay the 1 life. However, Evolving Wilds can only fetch a Basic land and it comes into play tapped. With Fetchlands, for a low price of 3 life, you can fetch a Shockland and bring it into play untapped, allowing one to have access to 4 different colours of mana as early as Turn 2. Since you have used 1 card to get rid of 2 cards from your library you are thinning your deck, meaning that you are more likely to draw into actual creatures and spells instead of lands. This allows Modern decks to have very greedy manabases, some decks run as little as 20-21 lands, and run all 5 colours. Recently though, the price of these Zendikar Fetchlands have gone up tremendously, and while starting out it may be better to get really into Modern before investing. I remember when I was starting to get into Modern, I was mulling over buying Scalding Tarns at R120 a piece, and was very apprehensive of the cost, but a very good friend eventually convinced me, by pointing out that they will always be useful and are only to go up in price. I forked out a bit and bought them, and to this day I’ve very glad I did, especially when Scalding Tarn and Misty Rainforest went up to $35.

Naturally forking out $140 for a set of Fetchlands is rather hefty for most people, thus while starting out one can make do with the Scars of Mirrodin, M13 and Innistrad dual lands. Once you have the manabase and have decided on your colour or colours then you can work on getting specific staples. In future articles I will write about staples of the various colours and why some of them are considered staples.

Until next time!