By: Dale Pon
So now you’re really excited about Modern and have invested
or traded for the lands of your favourite colours… That’s great but you
actually need creatures and spells to win.
In the following articles I will be talking about the
staples of Modern. So, “what are
staples?” you might ask; well simply put staples are the cards that are most
frequently played and are regarded as the best and most efficient at what they
do (examples include Lightning Bolt, Mana Leak, Path to Exile) and
contrary to what one might expect not all staples are ridiculously expensive.
In today’s article I will talk a little about Modern Blue staples, what makes them “staples” and provide a list of some of them.
In today’s article I will talk a little about Modern Blue staples, what makes them “staples” and provide a list of some of them.
Blue has always been the colour associated with control and
knowledge, thus it is only fitting that the basis of Blue staples are
counterspells, stalling spells and card-drawing spells. Unfortunately, in Modern we don’t have the
‘free’ counters in the form of Force of Will and Daze, and thus all
counters in Modern require untapped blue mana.
The most important and prevalent blue counterspells range from 1 to 4
mana in cost.
As you can see, they each have rather restrictive
conditions, and Dispel is used in the Sideboard vs Combo, while Spell Pierce
and Spell Snare are both used Mainboard.
Spell Pierce has the ability to stop an early Liliana of the Veil or
even just counter another counter; while Spell Snare stops numerous valuable
creatures such as Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant.
Coming in at a converted mana cost (CMC) of 2 are:
There are several less popular counterspells with a CMC of
2, such as Delay, Rune Snag, Deprive, Unified Will, Muddle the
Mixture and the current Standard familiars Negate and Essence Scatter.
Mana Leak is the classic counterspell from Standard not so
long ago, and in the early game it’s as good as a Counterspell, while later
on it forces your opponent to always leave 3 extra mana open. However late-game it’s pretty terrible,
merely adding a premium to your opponent’s spell cost. Remand is my personal favourite and for
newer Modern players it may come as a surprise, since it counters the
opponent’s spell, but then it returns the spell to their hand instead of going
to the graveyard. That’s right, your
opponent gets to cast that same spell again the following turn if they so wish,
and all you get in return is a single card.
So why is it so good? The reason
is that when you “Remand” your opponent’s spell, a fair amount of the time
they’re tapped out and have to pass the turn, while you get to draw an
additional turn; in a way you have “Time Walk”ed them, and in the your turn
following the Remand you can generally cast a spell or creature without fear
of disruption. Since Remand doesn’t
actually stop the spell overall, it just slows the opponent down and is
regarded as a strong Tempo-play (tempo is basically the rate at which you are
playing your threats, in a way it’s your momentum; you want to have a tempo
advantage since it essentially means your opponent is on the back foot).
Counters with CMC 3 aren’t very popular in Modern, since the
difference between a cost of 2 and 3 mana is huge is Modern; counters like
Dissipate see fringe play due to the exile clause, while Cancel is
horrifically bad (even in Standard) and you never want to be running any number
of them in your 75.
If the difference between a CMC of 2 and 3 is so huge, one
can only imagine the jump to a CMC of 4.
However in Modern there is one counterspell with a CMC of 4 that sees
regular play, and that is Cryptic Command.
The reason for this is its amazing versatility; it firstly counters (its
main use), it can replace itself, it can tap out your opponent’s creatures to
prepare an alpha strike or it can bounce that troublesome permanent. It is used predominantly in Scapeshift (to
protect the combo), as well as in control decks.
In my next article I will continue with Blue staples, more
specifically with card-drawing staples as well as stalling spells (such as
bounce and tap effects).
Until next time!
Thanks for reading.
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