by Johnny Cycles, March 22, 2024

Hello! This is Johnny Cycles and welcome to another edition of Dragons in Modern! This month, we’re trying something old and something new. The old – Sarkhan the Masterless making our Planeswalkers into 4/4 Dragons. The new – Gideon! That’s right, we’re in Boros colors this week, which means we have access to the Clark Kent of Planeswalkers. Readers can fill in the gaps of my Magic: The Gathering lore and give me a better superhero analog in the comments, but Gideon is the Planeswalker I most associate with justice, sacrifice, and doing the right thing. Of course, the right thing is subjective, as is all of reality, but this is not the place for metaphysical or existential questions…

This is the place to talk about Gideon Tribal plus Sarkhan the Masterless!

Decklist – Boros Gideon Tribal with Sarkhan the Masterless

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (15)

4 Esper Sentinel
3 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4 Doorkeeper Thrull

Planeswalkers (15)

3 Gideon Blackblade
4 Gideon of the Trials
4 Karn, Scion of Urza
4 Sarkhan the Masterless

Spells (4)

4 Lightning Bolt

Artifacts (4)

1 Expedition Map
1 Pithing Needle
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Shadowspear

Lands (22)
4 Arid Mesa
2 Elegant Parlor
2 Flooded Strand
2 Mountain
4 Plains
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Urza’s Saga

Sideboard (15)

4 Alpine Moon
2 March of Otherworldly Light
3 Containment Priest
1 Cursed Totem
3 Rest in Peace
2 Wrath of God

Deck Tech

Primary Gameplan

For readers of my Gruul Superfriend Dragons deck, our gameplan will be familiar. We’re looking to manage the board state with interaction and Planeswalkers until we can stick a Sarkhan the Masterless, turn all of our Planeswalkers into 4/4 Dragons, and fly over for the win. Along the way, we’re playing some low-to-the-ground threats that can pressure our opponent’s life total, assuming we don’t get blown out by Orcish Bowmasters, and some powerful 3-drop Gideons that can lead to some aggressive and powerful starts.

Our secondary game plan is to flood the board with Constructs from Urza’s Saga and Karn, Scion of Urza, that we can grow with various silver bullets or with Esper Sentinel (though the Human Soldier is not tutorable with Urza’s Saga).

Ideal Hand and Game Play

It’s easier to talk about what we don’t want in our opening seven, than what we do… We don’t want to see either Sarkhan the Masterless or Karn, Scion of Urza. The two Planeswalkers cost too much mana and both require set-up to get maximum value out of them. Rather, we really want some of our 1-drop creatures and interaction, plus a 3-mana Gideon, along with three lands. In today’s Modern, we also really want Doorkeeper Thrull. This unheralded rare from Murders at Karlov Manor protects our 1-drops from Orcish Bowmasters, while also nerfing such Modern all-stars as Stoneforge Mystic and Primeval Titan. The hate card hasn’t gained much, if any, traction in Modern, but it is an on-curve and late-game answer to many splashier and more powerful cards.

Weaknesses

It’s probably a sign of things to come that the cards we’re built around are included in this section…Sigh. In this regard, our deck is one big double-edged sword. We want early pressure and have chosen 1-drops that synergize with our gameplan. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is the best 1-drop creature in Magic. If you’re playing a creature strategy in Red, you better have a really, really good reason not to play the stupid monkey. Kytheon, Hero of Akros is baby Gideon in more than one way, while Esper Sentinel draws us cards and grows our Constructs. That’s the good edge of the sword.

The bad edge? Even without Fury in the format, X/1 creatures are favorite targets of the bow-wielding duo of Sauron’s Orcish Archers.

Urza’s Saga, meanwhile, is great at making an army, tutoring up an answer, and generally wining a game by itself. However, we play 22 lands and want to cast a 5-drop at some point in the game. Even with all its upside, Urza’s Saga comes down with a clock that often leaves us behind on mana.

Finally, our deck’s namesake card, Sarkhan the Masterless, is a lot of mana for something that doesn’t drastically change the dynamic of the game if we don’t have other Planeswalkers in play. It doesn’t do a good job of catching us up all on its own, and it can frequently rot in our hand as we wait to hit five mana. Still, it is the card we’re built around, so we aren’t cutting it. This is Dragons in Modern, not Keeping Modern Janky, so we aren’t going to go all in on the Gideon Tribal plan just yet. We’ll save that for another month.

Practice Match 1 vs. Omniscience Combo

The deck list evolves over the course of my practice matches before I settled on the 75 listed above. Of note, I played Mishra’s Bauble, Lightning Helix, and Anger of the Gods in the main for several games – card draw/Urza’s Saga synergy and ways to keep the board clear – before sticking my Planeswalkers.

Practice Match 2 vs. Burn

Practice Match 3 vs. Arclight Pheonix

Practice Match 4 vs. Carth Superfriends

Practice Match 5 vs. Hammer Time

Practice Match 6 vs. Domain Zoo

Practice Record: 2-4

I played three other matches with versions of the deck and won two of three. Unfortunately, my sound wasn’t working and so I’m not posting those videos. However, that puts us at 4-5 with the deck, which isn’t great, but is acceptable, given the jank level of our strategy. I’m excited to see how it does in a league. Some of our losses were against other midrange decks that had more powerful late-games, but that we probably won’t encounter in league play. Does that mean we’ll have better game against Izzet Murktide and Yawgmoth than against Arclight Phoenix and Carth Superfriends? There’s only one way to find out!

Friendly League

Match 1 vs. Hardened Scales

Match 2 vs. Mardu Scam

Match 3 vs. Mono Black

Match 4 vs. Jund Insidious Roots

Match 5 vs. Storm

 

League Record: 2-3

Wrap-up

Conclusion

We went a somewhat disappointing 2-3. It’s never great to end with a losing record, particularly when the deck felt competitive in most of the matches. However, given our level of jank and what we’re up against in today’s Modern, 2-3 is an acceptable record. What it tells me is that the deck has potential to compete and win some treasure chests, while also being a lot of fun. Had I taken a different line here, or drawn better there, we could’ve gone 4-1. Our one loss that felt really bad was against Mardu Scam. The other two losses, one against Hardened Scales Affinity and one against Storm, both felt like matches we could’ve won. They’re both decks that we have the tools to fight against, at least.

That being said, we never got to execute our primary gameplan of turning our Planeswalkers into Dragons and swinging in for the kill. Sarkhan the Masterless was almost always a liability when he was in our hand because we rarely had the mana to cast him. This is the central contradiction of the deck: we are an aggressive, low-to-the-ground creature build looking to abuse Urza’s Saga in support of this angle of attack, but we also want to hit 5 mana to take full advantage of Sarkhan the Masterless. Too often we’d have a Gideon or two in hand or on the battlefield and the board state to keep them alive for Sarkhan to turn them into Dragons, but we wouldn’t have the lands to cast the 5-drop. This was, in large part, because we were constantly going down a land with Urza’s Saga.

For this gameplan to work, we need to cut the Urza’s Sagas, play more lands, or both. Unfortunately, Urza’s Saga is a busted Magic card that won us a lot of our games. I think rather than trying to make Gideon Tribal work with Sarkhan the Masterless, I would instead cut Sarkhan and lean more into the Gideon Tribal plan, or a Boros Prison strategy with Gideon and Urza’s Saga as our finishers. That deck sounds like a lot of fun, too!

Does Sarkhan the Masterless have a home in a Boros shell? What would you play to support this janky strategy? Let me know in the comments and be on the lookout for more Sarkhans in Dragons in Modern! Thanks for reading and watching!