by Johnny Cycles, Saturday, October 24th, 2026

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Hello and welcome to another edition of Keeping Modern Janky! I knew I was going to play Hexhaven Invigorator the moment I saw it. I’m a Gruul player at heart and the 4-mana 6/6 with all kinds of upside spoke to me on multiple levels. How best can we take advantage of that giant block of text that lets us get ANY land for each damage done to it?

This isn’t the first time I’ve played Blasphemous Act in Modern. Boros Reckoner plus Blasphemous Act were the core of this deck’s strategy. With Hexhaven Invigorator, however, we get a new angle of attack.

Scapeshift on a 6/6 body? Yes!

Here’s the decklist:

Decklist – Blasphemous Invigorator

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (24)

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Ignoble Hierarch
4 Badgermole Cub
4 Hornet Nest
4 Screaming Nemesis
4 Hexhaven Invigorator

Spells (11)

4 Lightning Bolt
3 Mine Collapse
4 Blasphemous Act

Lands (25)

1 Cinder Glade
2 Commercial District
2 Dwarven Mine
3 Forest
4 Mountain
1 Roiling Canopy
4 Stomping Ground
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Sideboard (15)

2 Vexing Bauble
3 Veil of Summer
2 Brotherhood’s End
3 Endurance
3 Force of Vigor
2 Obsidian Charmaw

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

We have three ways to win the game with Blasphemous Act. Ramping into Hexhaven Invigorator with mana dorks will hopefully allow us to win as early as turn 4. We’ll need some help from our opponent, but most Modern decks play some creatures, while many want to flood the board as fast as possible.

Once we resolve Blasphemous Act, Hexhaven Invigorator allows us to get Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and enough Mountains to burn our opponent out.

Our second route to victory with Blasphemous Act involves this strictly better Boros Reckoner outside of a devotion deck. Once our opponent is at 13 or less life, we can cast Blasphemous Act and deal 13 to their face.

Our final route to victory with Blasphemous Act involves the jankiest of the jank: Hornet Nest. 13 damage to this Insect wipes the board, then leaves us with 13 1/1 Insect tokens with flying and deathtouch. And while Hornet Nest may never see play in any other Modern deck ever, let me tell you, it is really, really good in our deck.

I ran into another Hexhaven Invigorator deck made by jk63, who was using Mine Collapse instead of Blasphemous Act. With enough Mountains, we can deal 5 damage to our Hexhaven Invigorator and win with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

jk63 was also running Roiling Canopy alongside Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth. These two cards allow us to grow our Hexhaven Invigorator big enough to hit it again with our last Valakut trigger to go get three more Mountains. We then run that back until our opponent is dead.

Sideboard

Nothing too out of the ordinary here. Brotherhood’s End is another way we can wipe the board and get a few lands from Hexhaven Invigorator. Otherwise, the cards are pretty self-explanatory and should be tweaked to match your meta.

Game Play

A quick note: the first four matches are my first draft, which included Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Domri, Anarch of Bolas. I tweaked the deck to the above decklist after seeing jk63’s build. That said, I’m not sure about Mine Collapse. I really like Domri, Anarch of Bolas in our deck. Ramp, Counterspell protection, and, more importantly, a fight spell. Furthermore, it turns our mana dorks into threats. And when we can’t find our pieces, we need these janky beats to close out games sometimes.

Overall Record 2-2

Game Play 2.0

Overall Record: 2-2

Impressions from Game Play

It took me awhile to understand the extent of Hexhaven Invigorator‘s power. For instance, against Mono Black with our opponent at 7, an Invigorator on the board, and a Lightning Bolt in hand, I let them untap. I killed them on our next turn, but they never should’ve drawn another card and a possible sweeper. Instead, I could’ve targeted Hexhaven Invigorator with the Lightning Bolt and gotten two Mountains and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. Hit them for 3, our Hexhaven for 3, then get three more Mountains for the win.

All of that is to say that Hexhaven Invigorator is really, really good. Sure, it’s competing with Primeval Titan and Scapeshift for the top lands matter deck in the format, but I believe it’s a legit contender.

Far and away, Hornet Nest is our surprise all-star. Sure, Screaming Nemesis is more likely to win the game on the spot, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as getting 13 (or 26) 1/1 Insect tokens with flying and deathtouch.

I was surprised at how often opponents didn’t scoop when this occurred, choosing to die a few turns later. Good on them, I suppose, and in one game, my opponent gained so much life that it wasn’t game over and I had to kill them a different way. Post board, of course, they’ll have sweepers to draw, so maybe that’s why.

Everything about this card in conjunction with Blasphemous Act epitomizes my Keeping Modern Janky column. Two cards no one plays in Modern that actually win us games.

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is fine, but unnecessary. We should probably play something else (and we do in the above decklist).

Badgermole Cub is very, very good in our deck, as well. That was the card that allowed us to get a turn 4 win by casting both Hexhaven Invigorator and Blasphemous Act on the same turn.

Domri, Anarch of Bolas deserves a spot in the deck, in my opinion, and I’ll go back to that Planeswalker in future builds.

All said, the deck is very competitive and powerful as is, though I think it can be tweaked even more (see below).

The final thing I’ll say is this: Blasphemous Act is the one card we nearly always want (unless we already have one in hand). It is the key piece of our strategy. Many of the games we lost were because we couldn’t find a Blasphemous Act on time, while nearly every game we one involved this card. Any playable opening 7 with Blasphemous Act in it should be kept.

New Direction?

Have I found the optimal build? Has my opponent, jk63? I honestly doubt it. No disrespect. I think there are other avenues to pursue with this card to exploit it even more.

We could take a page out of Pioneer’s Mono Red Prowess deck and play Reckless Rage alongside Lightning Bolt. Sure, 2 damage isn’t 5, like with Mine Collapse, but it synergizes with Screaming Nemesis extremely well. Perhaps its unnecessary.

We could also borrow from Amulet Titan decks and run Amulet of Vigor in order to chain together a bunch of spells with all the mana we get. Similarly, we could use some of the utility lands that deck abuses. An opponent of mine suggested Boseiju, Who Shelters All as a way to ensure my Blasphemous Act doesn’t get countered. Seems like a solid 1-of, but then again, that same opponent used Consign to Memory to stop the trigger of my Hornet Nest…

jk63’s deck played both Primeval Titan and Scapeshift, alongside Green Sun’s Zenith to find Hexhaven Invigorator. I do think this is a more streamlined and consistent version than mine if you’re trying to win via Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle (as early as turn 3).

Conclusion

What a fun, janky, and powerful deck! I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I’ve played a lot of bad decks for this column. This is NOT one of them. I really believe Hexhaven Invigorator can be the centerpiece to a tier 1 Modern deck. What do you think? How would you build around it? Let me know in the comments!