Tribal Laboratory: Modern Wizards

Welcome back to another tribal laboratory article, today i decided to take a look at some new cards in Dominaria. Not too long ago, a large portion of cards were leaked for Dominaria, much earlier than intended. Some of those cards caught my eye, so i decided to see how they would do in modern. I have a Young Pyromancer shell, very heavy on cantrips and burn spells, plus a few wizard pals to help facilitate the beatings. Let’s take a look at the list!

The deck plays very familiarly, the idea of course is that you want to disrupt your opponent’s game plan with counterspells, protecting your creatures. Young Pyromancer is the strongest wizard in this deck, he synergizes well with the new wizard cards, Wizard’s Retort and Wizard’s Lightning. Wizard’s Retort is a counterspell for 1UU that costs one less if you control a wizard. Counterspell is a pretty good card, being able to reasonably cast this card for 2 mana is extremely powerful. Wizard’s Lightning is a lightning bolt for 2R that costs two less if you control a wizard, having a second set of bolts is also very helpful in this strategy, as you pretty often will win by bolting them upstairs.

Modern already has a ton of sweet and extremely powerful wizards in it, Young Pyromancer for starters is a card that has seen play in numerous decks in modern and legacy. The card is an army in a can, if you can play this card and untap with it, you’re in a great position. Some consider the card so powerful, they put in a cycle of two drops along with, Dark Confidant, Stoneforge Mystic, Tarmogoyf and lastly Snapcaster Mage. Oh, did I mention the deck also plays Snapcaster Mage? Snapcaster Mage is a must have for blue decks, especially spell decks, which our deck happens to be.

Our next creature is Vendilion Clique, this creature is a 3/1 body with flash and flying for three mana. A reasonable clock, that also has the ability to push away cards from your opponent’s hand that you might have trouble dealing with, or it can push cards you don’t need/aren’t relevant in the matchup you are playing. Vendilion Clique is legendary, so we’re only playing two.

There are some sweet new Dominaria wizards to go along with these modern all stars, the first being Adeliz, the Cinder Wind. Adeliz is a 1UR 2/2 flying haste Wizard, with whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell Wizards you control get +1/+1 until end of turn. A strong card to pair with Clique, potential 7 damage in the air or more if you cast a burn spell to their face is no laughing matter. The final wizard in our sweet wizard suite is Naru Meha, Wizard Master. Naru is a Dualcaster Mage for 2UU and on top of that he’s a Wizard lord, meaning that he’s a flash creature that when he enters he copies an instant or sorcery on the stack that you control. The possibilities are seemingly endless with this card, but usually i’ll just copy a burn spell.

The instants and sorceries with this deck are extremely normal, burn spells and counterspells. We have some pretty decent counter spells to slow down your opponent’s tempo so that we can get our wizards into play and start slinging burn spells. 

There are many wizards that are reasonable to play in the sideboard of this deck. My personal favorite definitely has to be Glen Elendra Archmage, this creature is a powerhouse because of it’s ability to counter instants and sorceries. Izzet Staticaster is a powerful addition to the sideboard as usual. You can also play, Magus of the Moon because you’re a two color deck and reasonable non-wizard cards like Counterflux and Ceremonious Rejection. I like Sower of Temptation against creature decks.

As always thank you for reading my article, please be sure to check out the other content available here at flipsidegaming.com and leave a comment if i missed your favorite Wizard or Wizard spell!