Team Modern Super League 2 Week 1 Decklists

The Team Modern Super League begins today at 9 PM Eastern (GMT -4) on twitch.tv/magic. Zack Kanner also contributed to this post.

Week 1 of the Team Modern Super League pits the Play Design Team against Team Pamplemousse! The Play Design team has changed slightly since we last saw them, featuring a large lineup this season: Melissa DeTora, Paul Cheon, Donald Smith, Andrew Brown, Michael Hinderaker, Jadine Klomparens, Adam Prosak, and Michael Majors. Pamplemousse, on the other hand, returns all three of their players: Reid Duke, Gabriel Nassif, and Logan Nettles.

What Will The Teams Be Playing?

Team Pamplemousse

The five decks Team Pamplemousse chose to battle with this week are: Goryo’s Vengeance, Humans, U/W Control, Grixis Death’s Shadow, and Jund.

Goryo’s Vengeance seems a bit out of place here given how measured and balanced the rest of the decks are, but it might be a good way to attack the format of Team Modern Super League. Pamplemousse has chose to leave the new hotness, Ilharg, the Raze-Boar at home in favor of the tried and true build of Goryo’s Vengeance. Boasting positive matchups against Play Design’s R/G Valakut, Jund, and Dredge, it seems positioned to do well—assuming it can dodge Ad Nauseam and U/W Spirits.

Naturally, a team containing Reid Duke, Logan Nettles, and Gabriel Nassif will have Jund, Grixis Death’s Shadow, and U/W Control. These players are out to grind and their deck choices reflect that. Assuming their decks line up properly, Pamplemousse seems to be in a good place with Grixis Death’s Shadow checking Ad Nauseam, U/W Control checking Jund, with Jund checking UW Spirits. We will have to wait and see how both teams sequence their decks to see who really gets the edge!

Play Design Team

Play Design Team’s five decks are: Ad Nauseum, Dredge, Jund, U/W Spirits, and R/G Valakut.

They have two decks here that seem interesting that haven’t seen a lot of play lately but have a chance to be good in the format. The first one is the Ad Nauseam list—it sees play every once and a while but I think it is decently positioned in Modern right now. It has a decent Dredge, Phoenix, and Titan Shift match ups, all of which are pretty popular as of late. There isn’t much out of the ordinary with the list itself but I think this is a good choice for this week’s match up against Pamplemousse.

The second interesting list is U/W Spirits. Spirits has died down in popularity a bit but Play Design has figured it was a good call this week and, quite frankly, I don’t think they’re wrong. Granted, this isn’t the most popular tribal deck we’ve been seeing—that would be Humans—but it does have a bunch of disruptive elements backed up with solid pressure. In the maindeck, having cards like Mausoleum Wanderer and Spell Queller allows it to disrupt combo decks, while having Geist of Saint Traft and Drogskol Captain will put pressure and beat the slower midrange decks. White is known to have the best sideboard plans in Modern and having access to both Rest in Peace and Stony Silence really helps the deck.