by Johnny Cycles, May 16th, 2025

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Keeping Modern Janky! I’m continuing my focus on Tarkir: Dragonstorm cards with Magmatic Hellkite as the new centerpiece to an old archetype: Ponza. Bringing further joy to my Dragon-loving heart is Obsidian Charmaw, an oldish new card from Modern Horizons 2 that also destroys nonbasic lands. These two evasive beaters give Ponza something it’s lacked in previous iterations: legitimate finishers that continue the gameplan of destroying all the lands.

Decklist – Gruul Ponza with Magmatic Hellkite

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (16)

4 Arbor Elf
4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4 Magmatic Hellkite
4 Obsidian Charmaw

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Wrenn and Six

Enchantments (7)

4 Utopia Sprawl
3 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker

Spells (12)

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Molten Rain
4 Stone Rain

Lands (23)

1 Arena of Glory
2 Commercial District
3 Field of Ruin
4 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Stomping Ground
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)

3 Blood Moon
3 Brotherhood’s End
3 Endurance
3 Force of Vigor
3 Glorybringer

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

We want to start blowing up our opponent’s lands on turn 2 and not stop until they have no more for us to target, or they are dead from our Dragon beats. To make this plan a reality, we’re playing 8 turn 1 mana dorks and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. The latter is a powerful, must-answer threat all by himself, while also serving to ramp us into a turn 3 Stone Rain if he connects on turn 2.

From there, we want to cast either Stone Rain or Molten Rain while making land drops on our way to resolving Magmatic Hellkite and Obsidian Charmaw. These two evasive threats put a very fast clock on our opponent, while also furthering our game plan of attacking their resources.

Match 1 vs. Affinity

Match 2 vs. Lantern Control

Match 3 vs. Eldrazi

Overall Record: 3-0

Nothing about our practice matches made me think Ponza isn’t well-positioned in the format right now. So many utility lands and so much big mana! But can we do better?

With all the artifacts running around in the format, why aren’t people playing Pillage over Molten Rain, I thought to myself as I reflected on the deck. Maybe it’s not Modern legal?

Yup, it’s not only Modern legal, but it was reprinted in Modern Horizons 1…

This feels like quite the oversite by myself (and the field of Modern players). It goes to show you that getting your sideboard ideas from other winning decks should not be the first and final step in building one. Molten Rain is no doubt a powerful card that can help burn out an opponent, but I can’t help but think Pillage is currently strictly better.

Should we just play both, alongside Stone Rain? Why not?!

It does mean that we’ll have to cut Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, but wouldn’t we rather have another land destruction spell to bridge the gap between the early and late game?

The other change of note is that I cut Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer in favor of Strike It Rich. As much as I love stealing other people’s cards, the monkey isn’t as good in our deck as in some others. Furthermore, we really, really want to start the land destruction party on turn 2. A turn 1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer has to make contact before we get the Treasure token that will enable a turn 2 Stone Rain. And while most people will do almost anything not to take a hit from Ragavan, the same people will almost always ignore the turn 1 Treasure token, meaning we’re more likely to get to three mana on turn 2.

Let’s see how these changes play out!

Match 4 vs. Eldrazi Aggro

Match 5 vs. Infect

Match 6 vs. Eldrazi

Overall Record: 2-1

Overall, I was very happy with Pillage and Strike It Rich. But, unlike our first few matches, we saw some of the weaknesses of the deck more clearly here. Starting fast with a couple of land destruction spells is great, but if we don’t keep drawing them (or a Dragon), then our opponent will frequently get out from under our hate and execute their game plan. Given how efficient Modern decks are, this is more likely than not.

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker helped this problem in the first iteration of our deck, but we’re already pretty flush with 3 drops AND the saga has to stick around a turn before we get the card draw. Bitter Reunion comes down a turn earlier, gives us two cards for the price of one, and gives us the added benefit of giving our non-hasty Dragons haste for a turn. Let’s see how it works!

League Play

Match 1 vs. Mono White Bogles

Match 2 vs. Boros Storm

Match 3 vs. Eldrazi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD05rcnNrYU

Match 4 vs. Eldrazi Breach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEOgn5sO5r0

Match 5 vs. Izzet Prowess

League Record: 1-4

Overall Record: 6-5

Impressions from League Play

When conceiving of this deck, I did not have Mono White Bogles in mind…so, of course, that’s our first match-up. This was followed by Storm, another deck that does NOT play a greedy mana base AND can function on few resources. No surprise, then, that we started league play 0-2.

We finally ran into a big mana deck in match 3 and we did what we came to do in game 1. A timely Torpor Orb that lined up nicely with our hand of Dragons gave our opponent enough time to find their own land destruction attached to a body and beat down. We executed our plan in game 3 early, but durdled just a little too much in the mid game. Our opponent got around our land hate with Kozilek’s Command and resolved an Ugin.

Sigh.

It just goes to show you that even a deck built to beat another one still needs to draw the right cards at the right time.

In match 4 we finally got a win against Eldrazi Breach, executing our game plan beautifully in games 1 and 3.

Match 5 saw us get steamrolled by Izzet Prowess.

Thus, our Gruul Ponza deck looking to hate on greedy and/or big mana bases went 1-1 against those decks. Against the two hyper aggressive strategies we got fairly crushed, while against the combo deck we got a game, but our opponent was able to buy enough time with Orim’s Chant to prevent us from keeping them off their lands in the crucial turns after we blew some up.

Overall, it was a rough set of matches. The deck performed about how I expected it to, though. I knew we’d struggle with aggressive decks that are super mana efficient. It’s unfortunate that we ran into two such decks. The Eldrazi match-up could’ve gone our way had we had a bit of a better draw (or found one of our seven artifact destruction cards in game 2).

Storm is just one of those decks that doesn’t much care what the opponent is doing, as long as they can resolve their stuff. Being a Gruul deck means they’ll always resolve their stuff.

Conclusion

Gruul Ponza is a fun, hateful strategy that punishes a certain archetype (big mana), while struggling against Aggro and Combo decks. I was hopeful that our ramp plan would enable us to resolve enough Dragons to compete against Aggro, but it didn’t shake out like that, unfortunately.

I have a few thoughts on how to play the deck and what it’s weaknesses are.

1. Mulligan aggressively to find a turn 2 land destruction spell in game 1. In game 2, when our opponent can play around our plan (by not cracking their fetches, for example), we can be less aggressive, particularly if we have a sideboard card in our opening 7.
2. There comes a time in the game when our opponent has made enough land drops that our sorcery-speed land destruction is less impactful. It’s here that we hope to pivot to Dragons.
3. The mid-to-late game can be brutal if we miss land drops or make too many. There were games when I destroyed three lands from turns 2 to 4, only to run out of gas and watch my opponent continue making land drops and execute their game plan. Bitter Reunion helped in these situations, so it’s possible we need to add more such effects.
4. Many of Modern’s best decks can function on 2 lands pretty well. If we can’t back up our early land destruction with a clock, then our great starts will end in losses, as this league shows. It’s possible we need to find room for additional threats.
5. Tweak the sideboard more to shore up the Aggro match-up. Looking at our 15, we have cards we can bring in against popular meta decks. Glorybringer is the odd one out, which gives us three slots to work with. Pyroclasm maybe?

So, we need more card draw and more threats. What can we cut to make room for these cards? The only two places to look are among our 11 ramp spells or our 13 land destruction spells. I’m reluctant to cut from either, though, since we want our opening 7 to have turn 2 land destruction capability. Still, perhaps trimming one spell from each to make room for the final copy of Bitter Reunion and something else is worth it.

The Ponza I played against in the mid 2010s used Bloodbraid Elf both to find another land destruction spell and to pressure the opponent’s life total. Perhaps it’s worth trying in our build. Seasoned Pyromancer is another possibility that can help find us what we need and put bodies on the battlefield.

The deck has been a ton of fun to play these past few weeks. If you watch all the matches, I think you’ll get a good sense of both its strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think Gruul Ponza is a tier 1 deck, but I’d consider putting it in tier 2, particularly if the meta stays Eldrazi, Tron, Amulet Titan, and Affinity. If Modern moves more towards aggressive decks or Control, Ponza will become less competitive.

As always, thanks for reading and watching!