URx Murktide: an in-depth primer

So many complain about Scam. I tell them I have the answer. They say they can never beat turn one Grief, reanimate Grief. I tell them, “play decks with consistency, not explosiveness. Play decks that draw well, and draw a lot”. They say their creatures die to Fury. I tell them “play fewer creatures, especially those which cannot close games alone.”  Again and again they refuse.

Now you come to me and you say: “Kazi, give me justice. Give me a deck that beats Scam.” But you don't ask with respect, you don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Grixis Godfather. Instead you come into my house with three weeks left in the RCQ season and you ask me to give you the keys to the kingdom.

Do you want to beat Scam? You’ve got a few choices. My dawg Prez just wrote a sick, amazing, and very in-depth guide to Rhinos, which, in my opinion, is Scam’s single worst matchup, let's say 60-40 for Rhinos. You could play Cascade Beans, but maybe you don’t want to lose or go to time every single time somebody decides they just aren’t going to cast any creature spells during your matches while refusing to concede. Are you like me? Did you force Delver of Secrets in modern for way too long? Do you dream of Lightning Bolting your opponent for lethal with Counterspell backup? Join me and smoke some of that Unholy Heat on your way to playing the most banging, motorcycle riding, aviator-rocking, counter-burn deck in Magic: The Gathering history.

Murktide is one of very few tempo decks to have been seriously viable in modern’s history. The deck thrives on thin margins, speed, and motility. It is important to have a basic understanding of deriving who the beatdown is, and how to make sure you are when you need to be. The deck's biggest strength is that it is able to beat nearly anything under decent conditions, and has one of the most consistent openers in the format, going one-drop into cantrip + interactive spell. It sculpts hands for explosive turns better than any other deck, and with enough hours, most matchups feel slightly favored. Picture old school Jund. It's a control deck with the ability to pivot to an aggressive axis depending on its opener. Murktide is the inverse. It is an aggressive deck with the ability to pivot to playing the control deck whenever necessary. Against the top decks in the format, your best matchups are Coffers (60-40), Titan (60-40), Scam (55-45), and Tron (55-45).

The deck falters in the face of value, especially value stapled to creatures, even more especially at instant speed (shoutout my dawg Solitude). It also has a lot of trouble with decks which can deploy a diverse array of threats multiple turns in a row, especially those which can flash a threat, untap, and play a second threat. The card Teferi, Time Raveler in and of itself can end an entire game for the deck. We’ll see some variations which try to make up for some of these intrinsic weaknesses and I’ll address which I feel are best in specific rooms. The deck's worst matchups among the top 10 or so decks are Yawgmoth (30-70), Elementals (between 30% and 50% depending on build, we’ll say 40-60), and Rhinos (45-55).

As for builds, we’ll go over what I believe to be the base build and sideboard guide, and then gloss over a couple of teched out builds. I’ll be breaking each individual card choice down for the initial build, and then for the subsequent builds addressing what we lose or gain by including and cutting certain cards in the list.

This build is our base build for Murktide. I would recommend starting with this skeleton, and building on it with specific cards. Here is the card-by-card.

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer

You’re a tempo deck. This is the best tempo creature ever printed. An efficient mana-dork, potential value piece, and aggressively statted, all this creature requires is one red mana and an untap step in order to become insane. This card is often worth playing multiple cards around to facilitate getting it to connect with your opponent, so long as you are generating resources back off of it.

Dragon’s Rage Channeler

This is Delver 2.0. Rather than inconsistently flipping on turn two, this card is now consistently a 3/3 by turn 3, with the upside of filtering your draws while fueling itself, Unholy Heat, and Murktide itself. This is actually the card which I feel wins the game most often, seeing as people often have to sandbag removal for it to hit Ragavans, or at least feel like they do.

Subtlety (Flex Slot)

This card acts as a hedge for Scam and some of your worst matchups. It provides a lot of tempo as a flash threat, and often can create the extra turn you need in order to win the game outright. This card is an absolute house when played under the right circumstances, and occasionally turns Scam completely inside-out on its own. Despite that, it is also the weakest card in the deck overall, as even though it is often tempo-positive and free, discarding an extra card means a lot, and it does cost four mana to be a value spot. Basically, the card is either broken, or feels extremely mediocre, hence its position as a flex.

Murktide Regent

The namesake of the deck, which is quite impressive considering how crazy all the creature slots are here. This card has a lot of weaknesses (being bounced, blinked, exiled, etc.) but makes up for almost all of them by just being an extremely evasive two-mana 8/8. Ragavan may be the best tempo card modern has ever seen, but Murktide could be a close second.

Mishra’s Bauble

This is a cheeky one, but still extremely good with the deck’s gameplan. Acting as a 0 mana Opt when combined with a fetch land on board, this card triggers DRC, facilitates Delirium, and is basically our Gitaxian Probe at home.

Preordain

Why wouldn’t you play Demonic Tutor for one?

Consider

This card is at its best in decks like these. Facilitating that gameplan of chucking cantrips at a wall until you generate what you need, this card often digs three cards deep when coupled with a DRC, while putting the cards you don’t want in your hand in your bin, where they are often much better. Huge fan, and if I felt like I could slot more, I would.

Spell Pierce

The single most well-designed Magic card of all-time is at its peak in this type of deck, playing very positively with Ragavan and DRC, while also outing many of the problematic turn one and turn two plays decks can have into you. The presence of this spell alone often pushes people to play at sorcery speed, or outright suboptimally in an effort to not let this card trade positively on mana and even on cards. Big fan of any deck which optimizes the presence of Spell Pierce.

Spell Snare (Flex)

This spell comes in and out of the deck as needed, right now with the presence of Orcish Bowmasters and Up the Beanstalks, it is very good. However, there are times when this card seems to hit basically nothing out of anything. Often, if you feel there are 2+ relevant hits in most of the top decks in the format, the first one of these is playable, with 3+, I think it becomes very good, and we start discussing playing two. Right now, relatively well-positioned. Soon? Maybe not.

Lightning Bolt

Card good, bolt hit face gud, bolt hit guy gud. Play 4th bolt when go face gud, play less bolt when kill sheoldred gud-er.

Unholy Heat

This is probably the best removal spell in the format, maybe second to Leyline Binding. It kills everything from Ignoble Hierarch to Primeval Titan, and all for the low, low cost of one mana. It’s also your best answer to Fury, so if your opponent is scamming you, this is the card you are playing to the most. Feels bad against Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines.

Expressive Iteration

This right here is the other big reason to pick up the deck. Played correctly, this card is almost always a 2-for-1 and is just incredibly efficient. It’s worth noting that playing it on turn 3 without playing a land is often the way to do it, but a lot of the time it is better to send it on turn 2 (this is especially true when you got scammed out of removal spells/need Unholy Heat for Fury) or turn four (so that if your opponent interacts in response you still have plays, or if you already have land and multiple spells lined up turn two). This card is absolutely insane and there is a good reason it's banned in Legacy and Pioneer.

Counterspell

Winning games of Magic feels good, so you should probably just jam four of this card whenever possible in your blue-based tempo deck that deals with value creatures poorly. It is really, really powerful to be able to play catch-all spells in a format where so many things generate value as soon as they move off of the stack. This card is excellent. There is a reason why this was the card that killed Tron for a while after MH2 despite Wizards printing no less than 6 “hate” cards in the five years prior.

Force of Negation (flex)

A lot of Murktide players will not leave home without this card, but I think it’s… fine. Unlike most of the cards in this deck, it costs extra resources, and has this weird thing where it only operates at full capacity during your opponent’s turn which seems okay, but often is not enough. Honestly, this is what I refer to as an “open decklist” card, wherein it gains points by existing in your opponent’s mind, incentivizing them to play around it even though it isn’t actually omnipresent. It fills a similar role to Subtlety, where they are really really good sometimes, or just extremely medium, and filling out the other’s weaknesses is actually a major reason the cards play really well together.

Dress Down (flex)

This slot is often Blood Moon, but tapping out at sorcery speed has been really difficult for me lately. I think Dress Down has a lot of good spots against matchups you have trouble with, and also is still extremely strong in the matchups you are fine in. You tend to struggle with undying creatures, etbs, Urza's Saga tokens, etc. Also this card beats the HELL out of Titan, good LORD.

6x Blue Fetch

You play no mountains, so you do not need to run Scalding Tarn exactly. I would even encourage running less in order to throw off opponents on turn one and two, particularly at RCQs where decklists are usually unknown. I personally have a mix like 2x Flooded Strand, 2x Misty Rainforest, 1x Polluted Delta, and 1x Scalding Tarn, as there is a corner case where you can get Pithing Needle’d (I know, I know, it happens almost never, but the one place it did happen to me was at PT LOTR, and I almost lost that match because of it). Additionally, Flooded Strand represents 4c Elementals, a matchup where many decks keep creature heavy or interaction light hands against, while Misty Rainforest represents Rhinos, where people will attempt to keep stack interaction and mulligan one-for-one removal heavy hands into.

4x Spirebluff Canal

Gotta beat burn somehow, right?

3x Island

Trust me, play em. There is an argument for going to two and playing Fiery Islet, but I have been loving 3.

3x Steam Vents

You don’t really need the full four. Your mana requirements are not really color intensive, and there are plenty of games where you have one Steam Vents and two Island and win pretty easily.

1x Otawara, Soaring City

The deck hits lands pretty consistently after the first two because of the dig you play, so having a utility land to draw to which outs a lot of problematic things for the deck is strong, and basically free seeing as it makes blue mana, and even with Blood Moon is still functional from the hand.

The sideboard should be approached in a significantly looser manner than the maindeck, which has a lot of cards which I would call staples, and only a few flex slots. Most of the cards in the sideboard are obviously fulfilling specific purposes, and if you would like to see my thoughts on the cards NOT included in this sideboard in further depth, I might address them in a seperate article. But here is a breakdown of why I include these specific cards, at least for the moment.

Engineered Explosives (x2)

This card has found its way in and out of the deck depending on two major archetypes: Rhinos and Hammer. It still finds a place against most go-wide strategies (think certain domain lists and other more rogue typal archetypes, while also being great against Creativity if the deck ever comes back), but really shines against those two lists as it threatens them on board while also being relatively difficult to interact with, especially when played proactively. I think that right now, this card is on the downturn and may potentially be cut to one, but for now I think two is perfectly reasonable.

Stone of Erech (x1)

This type of lockpiece is important against decks like Scam and Yawg, which I consider the best decks in the format right now. I would also bring it in against other graveyard decks, even if the first line of text doesn't matter a lot of the time against decks like Living End or strategies built around reanimation. The option to hold up the pop at any given point is a great asset and something they have to play through or play around. It being legendary and also somewhat narrow is why I like one at the moment.

Alpine Moon (x1)

This card is really good against most any deck which is also weak to Blood Moon. Usually I want this against Titan, Tron, or Hammertime. It feels very strong at exactly one copy, and is in the same boat as Stone where the second one would feel worse than playing a similar effect on a different card to diversify not only the names, but also pressure points of your sideboard attack.

Flusterstorm (x2)

This card is really good against Cascade strategies, and I often bring it in for the mirror. Additionally, you want this card against people playing classic Hard Control (think UW draw-go or UB Ring). Outside of that, the card suffers, but is still powerful enough against specifically Rhinos and Living End that I think playing two is necessary for the time being.

Stern Scolding (x2)

There are a reasonable amount of matchups where spell pierce/FON feel extremely less than medium, and in those matchups you usually want this card. It counters every creature/Grist (which is a creature on the stack) in the traditional Yawg list except Sheoldred and Endurance, and is very strong against the creatures in Scam not named Fury (or Sheoldred). Additionally, it's also just good against Hammer and into other decks which have small things you don't really want to allow on the battlefield. I am also a proponent of bringing this in for the pseudo-mirror depending on deck construction.

Unlicensed Hearse (x1)

This is the other graveyard hate piece of choice for me right now, mostly because a lot of decks have significant issues interacting positively with it, it can win games, and while two cards a turn is not better than a full one-time exile in a lot of decks, Murktide games against GY strategies and especially Living End and Yawg go long enough to the point where you really want this effect to be recursive over the course of ten turns rather than extremely potent on only one of them. It is expensive, hence it only being at one, but with two pieces and a relatively decent amount of interaction in your deck regardless, you'll usually find your way to one to close the game out against those types of strategies.

Cast Into the Fire (x1)

This card is pretty medium, but there a lot of decks which play rings or are incidentally weak to this card. Originally included to combat ring strategies, the matchup where I bring it in the most nowadays is Yawg, as it deals with Cauldron and trades cleanly for Bowmasters as well as clearing paths for plenty of other cards. This is another one of the loosest slots in the board, but for now The One Ring is still prevalent enough to keep it, while the second mode is just barely good enough to include it over other options.

Dress Down (x1)

Again, an absolute banger of a card, the second one comes in against a lot of the matchups where the first one is already good. Often drawing this card can swing entire games, as it is absolutely devastating when it is good. I just don't think that playing 3 of most any sideboard/marginal card is worth it in these shells considering how many cards we see, or else I would consider playing even more.

Blood Moon (x1)

This moon effect is a lot more variable than alpine in terms of card choice, but I still like playing the first original enchantment more than the first Magus of the Moon. I would include the first Magus before going to two of either or these enchantment versions, however. That being said, yes, Blood Moon, especially in a tempo oriented deck that can get ahead very quickly in a single turn, can represent huge issues for a plethora of different strategies. Just having access to it in the 75 can often scare opponents into fetching sub-optimally, or slow rolling explosive plays because they would get blown out by removal spell into an untap and slamming Blood Moon. It's also juts one of my favorite cards.

Force of Negation (x1)

Like I said above, this card is either bonkers or very mediocre. Because of that, slipping an extra one in the SB for decks which lean excessively on particular non-creature spells is a good spot. I will say like a lot of sideboards which contain cards that are already in the main, this card is significantly more flexible than most but feels extremely good against Cascade decks or decks which lean on noncreature value engines to pull ahead after trading.

Narset, Parter of Veils (x1)

A newer inclusion, and some decks are experimenting with maindeck copies because of the Beans menace. It's certainly applicable there, but I still prefer this single copy in the sideboard for the generic build. It is strong, but I don't like it as a naked value piece; you definitely need a reason to play it. For example, I'll bring in Fury for any matchup where I want to go over the top, like Scam or the mirror, and I wouldn't bring this because sorcery speed spells with no board impact are pretty rough.

Fury (x1)

This card is nuts. Obviously. However, as much as I have considered swapping this and Subtlety around, the flexibility of instant speed ultimately  means a bit more than Fury does in terms of being able to trade up. That being said, I bring this in a ton. I like it against almost any deck actively playing creatures, including decks like Scam, Murktide, even Titan because it specifically kills Dryad. Good card. I still wouldn't play more than 2 because you'd much rather draw to it than open on it, I have found.

That's the breakdown. Here is my sideboard guide for what I consider to be the top 11 decks in modern, with play and draw considerations.

And to wrap the portion on the general base Murktide list and strategy: matchup analyses for the top decks, alongside some rambling thoughts on keeps and mulls.

Scam
55-45 in general
I like this matchup much more than most modern players like their matchups into Scam. We are one of few decks that beat Scam's busted starts at a somewhat regular pace, and their midrange starts are a complete dog to us. Virtually any seven of lands and spells is keepable in the matchup, but never keep more than 4 lands because you'll probably just die on turn one. You usually want to draw the game out against them, as the longer the game goes, the worse Scam gets. Usually you can stabilize on turn 3 or 4 and turn that corner into a win outright. Obviously this is easy against their midrange start, but harder against Scam starts, which is fine, you just have to understand how to maximize the amount of cards you see to contest what they are doing.

Yawg
30-70 in general
This matchup sucks. There aren't a ton of cards that matter here on their side, but they are excellent at finding them and a lot of their cards limit your ability to play aggressively at all. Your Ragavans are an outright liability thanks to cards like Young Wolf. Often, you are really looking to cheese out game one's behind double DRC starts or quick Murktides, and the postboard games are much closer, but not quite enough to make up for the abysmal game one on the play OR draw. Remember in this matchup, Ragavans in the opener are basically mulligans.

Rhinos
45-55 into Temur
50-50 into 4c

This matchup spread swings between 45-55% depending on which versions of Rhinos are currently popular, usually hinging on their numbers of Solitudes and Dead//Gone vs. Furys and Fire//Ice. Fetch passively, as often giving Ice targets is negative gaming if you don't have a reason to. Ragavan is a good keep, and force them to have interaction, because they often have to let you untap with it, but it only gets to hit once or twice before it's going to die somehow. I wouldn't keep hands with multiple copies unless I had a serious incentive from the other cards in my hand. Murktide is HUGE in this matchup, but difficult to resolve cleanly; you often need to be ready to protect it once or twice to get it all the way through. Dealing with Rhinos is really difficult if they have the EOT cascade with Violent Outburst into untap-mainphase cascade. That being said, you can definitely win your post-board games because you have a lot more tools, especially against 4c with your access to Blood Moons and having the luxury of playing against fewer Dead//Gone is really big. Super deep matchup. Might have to film some matches.

Tron
55-45  in general
Keep one drops, mulligan any hand without one. You need to beat them up to force pressure so they don't just get to play spells for relatively free. Each spell should cost them not only the card it took, but also ~3 life. Your goal is to win the turn before you run out of gas. You don't have to mulligan to Blood Moon postboard, but if you open on one and multiple counterspells with a Murktide and no one-drops on the play, you can keep that. Other than that specific scenario, again, one drops, one drops, one drops.

Amulet Titan
60-40
This matchup is free, and each of the recent innovations (Subtletys, Dress Downs, them cutting Caverns) has made the matchup better and better. There are still ways to lose, certainly, but I think this matchup is very good, and if you have a skill edge, it can feel unlosable at times. You can keep a lot of hands and draw into wins (just make sure you aren't actively throwing), and try to kill Dryads on sight and Titans on the stack. Urza's Saga and The One Ring can be a problem, which are often the only ways they really have of killing you.

4c Beans
50-50 into Cascade
30-70 into any other build
This matchup is mad irritating. First and foremost, the Beans build is not nearly as good as the traditional builds against us. They don't contest turn one Rag at all, countering their Beanstalks actually makes it pretty difficult for them to hit their lands properly, and if they are paying for their spells you can usually afford to pay to counter them, which is the only way they generate value without Beans on board. Leyline Binding is always going to be very strong against us, but it is what it is. The other builds give us more problems. Every card they play is a two for one, they have Wrenn and Six in addition to Prismatic Ending/Lightning Bolt for removal, and recoup value on axes which also potentially close games and aggregate value while also progressing the game state. Either way, this matchup is not particularly fun. Its important to keep one-drops, and even more important to understand when to concede to give yourself the opportunity to win the match.

UR Murktide
55-45 ('cause you're better)
This is a skill matchup. A lot of this matchup will come to leveraging and pressing even the smallest advantages, or resource building over a long game. Unfortunately, it's really hard to distill all the tricks and tips that go into playing the Murktide mirror, but here's at least a couple things.
Dress down makes Murktide a 3/3 as it enters the battlefield.
Passing combat to MP2 can matter a LOT when your DRC is not yet delirious, and you want it to potentially block, but still want to play cantrips and the like.
This is one of the Expressive Iteration on turn 4 matchups I mentioned above, seeing as it allows you to still play or represent a powerful spell if it is countered.
Dashing Ragavan turn 2 is often better than leading with it unless your hand has double Rag.
Expressive Iteration is the most powerful card in the matchup PREBOARD. Post-board, it is hate pieces first, then Fury, then card advantage spells like Expressive Iteration.
Dealing with a Murktide on board is really difficult. Often, sandbagging an Otawara instead of hitting your turn 4 land is correct.
Whoever cantrips more tends to win. Sculpting is king.
Dress Down can be an absolute blowout when going to blocks, or to setup really big Furys.
Texturally, the sideboard guide changes a lot. If your opponent isn't on Ledger Shredder, you want more Engineered Explosives. If your opponent is on a version without 2 mana creatures, you want more Flusterstorm. Do not be afraid to modify my sideboard guide based on what you see from opponent. This is probably your most variable matchup.
You are better than your opponent. Play like it. Open up the opportunities to make mistakes, and watch them blunder. A lot of the time it is correct to take the simple lines in the matchup, rather than outplaying yourself.

Hammertime
55-45 in general
This matchup feels extremely tenuous, and that's because it is. Often, if a player has an edge, they will win. Despite that, with everything else being equal, Murktide has all of the tools necessary to beat Hammer handily, albeit not as consistently as a lot of other matchups because of Hammer's capacity to grind through your interaction. Your post-board games are significantly better than pre-board, Engineered Explosives is incredibly difficult for them to beat.

Burn
55-45
It feels a little weird to play a blue deck that routinely beats Burn game one, but honestly this matchup is pretty good. Often, you win on pretty thin margins, but you do win. Post-board, Sanctifier en-Vec can be an issue, but often you'll still find yourself doing alright against it. The best card in this matchup is Murktide Regent, as it tends to close games quickly and your graveyard should get big extremely quickly. Try to fetch passively, and if you open on 2+ Spirebluff you win for free because its the best Burn consideration in your list.

Mono-Black Coffers
60-40 against traditional coffers
50-50 against Urza's Saga Coffers
This matchup is pretty good, especially as most lists are no longer on Urza's Saga. Their gameplan is inherently slow, and as long as you don't let Bowmasters crush you or blow you out, you are usually winning. They have a lot of trouble dealing with both a delirious DRC and Murktide, and often you can play the exact type of tempo game your deck is designed to have. That being said, they can sometimes draw perfectly while you draw medium and lose those games.

Living End
???? - more testing needed
50-50 for sure tho
I haven't played against this deck enough to get a really strong opinion on it. However, I feel like post-sideboard games are extremely good for us, while pre-board games are, as always against Living End, miserable. I personally have felt we are one of few decks capable of pulling games out pre-board (albeit rarely), but at the same time, my testing against the deck is minimal considering how present it has been at certain points this season. Virtually nobody in San Diego is playing it, but there are a lot of killers in LA who have been crushing with it, including Collector Legion's Vinnie Fino, who qualified for Denver in the third week of the season on it. Living End players think they are favored, Murktide players think we are favored, it's probably 50/50.

So that should be the basics you need to know in order to play the base version of Murktide. But there are some modifications you can make. Let's take the time to address a few I like, and we'll include some words on the ones that I don't.

First up: Ledger Shredders!

So, the biggest reason to play this version is if you feel your metagame is oversaturated with midrange plans like Rhinos, Beans, or Coffers and lower on faster, more explosive decks like Hammertime, Scam, and Yawg. The value attached to Shredder is really strong and the additional filtering can help you drive multiple Murktides in a single game, as well as the Shredders just being huge on their own. The downside is that you often want to tap out for it on turn two and there are not a ton of places where that's very viable. Many decks punish extremely hard for proactive turn two plays in a way dissimilar to how they punish turn ones. Turn ones are often traded with, but turn two plays tend to allow for open windows to create advantage. Certainly merit here, but not my preferred way to play into a ton of Scam and Yawg.

Next we have: Murktide splashing Bowmasters!

This deck draws a bit clunkier than the standard Murktide build without the smoothing out of the Shredder build, but scrapes together a lot more points against decks with Rings, or even just against Scam because it creates more bodies and buys more time. I would still likely not feel very comfortable on this version, but I think with work and some understanding of play patterns it is pretty strong. I would play this in a room with lots of Scam, Murktide, or Beans. Right now, in Southern California specifically, this deck has been a terror as after the week of Beans we had, Scam and Murktide feel almost omnipresent at top tables between rounds three and give of your average RCQ.

This one is a bit of a throwback, but let's talk about Murktide splashing Teferi.

This one is a bit of a throwback, but I think it has legitimate potential. While Teferi certainly has bad matchups (Coffers, Yawg, Tron, Hammer), it also houses Cascade and controlling matchups, and answers Scammed creatures on curve in a way they do not interact positively with. I do think you have to have a room that is basically all Scam, Rhinos, and Murktide to make this one a significantly better choice than the base deck, but we are seeing rooms like that here in California right now.

The other Murktide iteration I really think has viability is this one, which Peter Yee was playing in SoCal before switching off to Beans and immediately winning an invite to Denver:

There are not a ton of changes with this list, but the most important is how those few small changes affect the philosophy behind the play patterns. While I lean heavily aggressive in my playstyle on this deck, Peter tends to want to play significantly more reactive. In order to facilitate this, Peter has put in more one mana and free spells with narrower interaction points in to his main, and even moreso his side, while slightly ticking up his land count and decreasing his cantrip count. What this leads to is a lot more consistent hitting of the third and fourth lands off of cantrips and EI, and extra potential time to turn the corner during endgame boardstates, whereas a list like the stock one is playing for more explosive openers (double Ragavan openers are really hard for a lot of decks to beat) and more cantrips create a kind of pseudo-velocity. I think this more reactive list is playable in the same ways the stock list is, with different attention paid to the axes of winning games.

So, the builds I am not a fan of. First and foremost, I dislike the Questing Druid builds. I think they could be viable if for some reason graveyard hate becomes significantly more saturated and permanent than is now, but I do not anticipate that being the case anytime soon. My litmus tests is if non-black decks start playing Leyline of the Void, I'll probably start playing Questing Druids.

There are lists floating around which are more dedicated to playing a control game, cutting DRC and sometimes even Ragavans. I think that version was much better against decks like Rhinos, Titan, and Tron, but they also suffer greatly against Yawg and Elementals. I feel like if the meta is more linear this deck gets better, but there are many decks which attack you on different axes right now, which makes control worse.

There are also decks out there playing cards like Sleep-Cursed Fey and Snapcaster Mages, but I wouldn't consider those part of this archetype even though they do often play some number of Murktide. Those decks are more value-oriented than tempo-centric, as often their threats are not online very quickly at all, and their plan is to fully grind out the opponent before deploying real threats (or at least I think that is the goal). I'm not saying those decks are even bad, I just don't think they fall under this archetype.

That's all for now! Whether you've been on the deck or are just picking it up, hopefully you've walked away with the skills and knowledge needed to defeat the Scam menace and earn yourself that RCQ invite (or take down your local FNMs). Until next time, and may all your monkeys survive to deal combat damage.

-Kazi Baker