Tamiyo asks your opponent to spend resources while you slowly accrue more from her +1, casting Lingering Souls, or from simply hitting land drops with Tireless Tracker. Beyond mana concerns though, dropping Liliana is a concession to the stylistic change in gameplay that adding Tamiyo begets. She's great against control and combo, but her double black mana cost is a bit much in a deck that ideally wants to curve Lingering Souls into Tamiyo. It helps that we already outlined what makes a good Tamiyo deck (a step that I highly encourage all brewers to not skip), and with our groundwork as a reference point, it wound up being a fairly elegant swap out of Liliana of the Veil for Tamiyo. Once you have the bones of a proven archetype, ideally built by one of the best in the game, the trick is finding what you can cut without losing the reasons you chose those bones to begin with. Whenever I am testing out new ideas or cards, I want to make sure I start from a place of proven performance and Reid Duke's most recent Abzan list was that for me. With all that in mind, I realized the ideal Tamiyo deck (by these parameters) was actually a commonly played Modern archetype: Abzan! Abzan Blue, Tierfun 4 Tamiyo, Field Researcher Being able to keep the battlefield clear, letting her +1 bury your opponent in card advantage, is also something we are after. The deck will also have creatures that are good on both offense and defense, taking maximum advantage of her ability to both push through damage and set up an impenetrable defense. The ideal Tamiyo deck will need to be intrinsically good against creature-less strategies to cover for the fact that if your opponent doesn't care about the combat step - Tamiyo is essentially spinning her wheels until her ultimate. The particularly powerful, yet currently homeless, Planeswalker that I found is a card I had almost completely forgotten about: Tamiyo, Field Researcher.Ī +1 that generates card advantage? Check.Ī minus that protects both the Planeswalker and you? Check.Īn ultimate that makes losing the game very difficult? Check (but not nearly as game ending as Teferi's, sadly).īut if Tamiyo is such a slam dunk, why don't we see her in Modern? The issue with Tamiyo is that she is only at her best with AND against creatures, so there are some deck building and metagame constraints you need to have her be at peak performance. Armed with this knowledge and the fresh taste of defeat, I set my sights on Modern legal Planeswalkers that could do a Teferi impersonation (given the right circumstances).

The trick is protecting them, and UW Control does a fantastic job keeping the board clear with tons of removal and counterspells. Planeswalkers that generate card advantage, doubly so.

Without further ado, let's embark on our journey.Īfter having my will to live drained by Teferi, Hero of Dominaria (real talk: are we sure Teferi isn't a vampire?) for the millionth time, I realized something: Planeswalkers are good. I am Andrew, your guide through Modern, and this is a bi-weekly column where I scour the Modern Magic-verse for any and all signs of Spice. A Guide Through Modern's Road Less Traveled

Scg maelstrom pulse