by Johnny Cycles, January 15, 2024
Welcome to our first league with Lukka Surprise! We went 3-0 in our practice games and I’m excited to see how the deck plays in a league. You can find the full article and deck tech here.
I did tweak our sideboard since making the deck tech in anticipation of playing against some of the best decks in the format. I took out Abrade, Tamiyo’s Safekeeping, and Questing Beast in favor of Blood Moon, Force of Vigor, Brotherhood’s End, and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. I kept a lot of artifact hate in the sideboard to battle opposing Pithing Needles and Ensnaring Bridges, among other things. Brotherhood’s End also fights against low-to-the-ground creature strategies. Blood Moon feels like a necessary inclusion to fight against Tron and Amulet Titan, and our practice games proved its worth. The one-of Ulamog is a way to diversify our threats against decks playing Surgical Extraction or other ways to remove Emrakul from our deck.
Now, let’s get to the game play!
League 1
Match 1 – Hardened Scales
Immediately glad I found room for Brotherhood’s End in the sideboard, but will it matter?
Match 2 – Living End
Can we be faster than Living End? Will our utter lack of graveyard hate come back to haunt us?
Match 3 – Crashing Footfalls
Another cascade deck…can we overcome a bunch of 4/4 Rhinos with trample?
Match 4 – Izzet Murktide
We’ve yet to win a match against Izzet Murktide since starting this site. Will this be our time?
Match 5 – Izzet Murktide
Back-to-back match-ups against Izzet Murktide. I would hate to finish a league without playing U/R at least twice…
League Record: 2-3
Impressions from League Play
For those of you not wanting to watch the video, I’ll sum up my impressions and thoughts about the direction of the deck going forward.
Overall, we were 2-3 in league play. If we take into account the practice matches we played (both recorded and those that didn’t), our record is a better 5-5. We lost to Izzet Prowess and Mill off camera, while we beat Rakdos Midrange, Tron, and Amulet Titan in our practice games for the article.
In the league, we played two cascade decks and two Murktide decks, neither of which we are particularly prepared for in our sideboard. We do have Veil of Summer to help fight through counter magic, but it felt woefully unimpressive against opponents who play Counterspell, Spell Pierce, and Force of Negation, among other things.
The cascade decks felt nearly unbeatable. Living End without graveyard hate is an exercise in futility. We are simply hoping they don’t have it before we can go off. Being on the draw game 1 made that unlikely, while it almost worked in game 2, thought not to plan. Still, having something in the sideboard against this strategy feels right. Endurance is a non-bo with our strategy, which leaves us with Leyline of the Void or Relic of Progenitus and the like. We do have access to via our Ignoble Hierarchs and Treasure tokens from Ragavan, which means we will have a chance to hard cast any copies we draw. And, we have ways to discard them for value with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Bitter Reunion. Leyline of the Void would also help slow down Murktide decks, even if it’s not at its best against them.
Crashing Footfalls is a different beast than Living End. Graveyard hate does nothing against them. Engineered Explosives is a powerful answer, but they play a lot more counter magic after sideboard and so it will be unreliable at best. We have access to with Noble Hierarch and Treasure tokens, so we could play Hallowed Moonlight in our sideboard. I’m not sure going this deep to beat a single deck is a good idea. In our match against them, we were on the draw in game 1, which puts us already behind them in assembling our combo. In game 2, opponent had the dream of Gemstone Caverns, allowing them to make Rhinos on turn 2, even after mulling to 6. I’ll play some more games against Crashing Footfalls before making this change.
As to the main deck, the only card I was mostly unimpressed with was The One Ring. I never cast it and I almost always boarded it out. It’s possible this is not the right deck for it, even if it seems like a good fit. In its place we could play a bit more spot removal or Wrenn and Six to fight against all the Ragavans and Dragon’s Rage Channelers out there. Alternatively, we could play Blood Moon in the main to give us another way to jank our opponent out and get a free win since we have the potential to cast it on turn 2 and ways to discard it for value when it’s a dead card.
What would you change in the 75 after seeing the deck in a league?
That’s all for now. I’ll think about these possible changes and run the deck through another league in the near future. Be on the lookout for my next Modern post. Right now I’m leaning towards trying out Questing Druid in my Gruul Dragons deck. Let me know in the comments if you have a preference for my next video!
Thanks for reading and watching!
