I was going to discuss my pre-release today, but the site for creating decks that look good on the web-page does not have M13 up yet, so I will share my experience with M13 sealed at a later date.

Luckily I had a Budget Modern deck that I have been playing on MTGO that I thought might be of interest to you readers! Without further ado, I present the deck-list for the Deck I like to call Hide and Seek.

Hide and Seek

Main Deck (60) 4 Lightning Helix 4 Genesis Chamber 2 Howling Mine 4 Ajani’s Pridemate 4 Soul’s Attendant 4 Norin the Wary 2 Ghostly Prison 4 Suture Priest 4 Soul Warden 4 Lodestone Myr 4 Lightning Bolt 10 Plains 10 Mountain

Sideboard (15) 2 Dawn Charm 4 Pyroclasm 4 Disenchant 2 Kami of False Hope 2 Avacynian Priest 1 Condemn

This deck is basically a Modern version of what is called “Soul Sisters.” Basically it’s a RW life gain deck that revolves around playing  Soul Warden, Soul’s Attendant, and/or Suture Priest and then gaining a ton of life and powering up things like Ajani’s Pridemate. I kind of think of this as a deck to just have fun with. It’s silly, it gains a ton of life, and it can usually find a way to win.  I put this deck together for ~6 tickets, so it truly is budget (I’ll discuss how I would improve it later on).

This build is really centered around one of my favorite cards in the game: Norin the Wary. He’s basically Sir Robin (the Not Quite So Brave as Sir Lancelot) who runs away… a lot. The first time I saw this card, I knew I wanted to find a deck that it played in. This list is actually an update to the multiplayer build I used to run (except it had win cons such as Mob Justice, which is not Modern Legal). The deck wants to abuse Norin in two main ways: Constant Life Gain, and Token Generating.

Key Cards:

Norin the Wary: Duh

Soul Warden, Soul’s Attendant, and Suture Priest: This is your life gain engine. The best addition to this deck from my initial build is actually Suture Priest since she punishes your opponent’s for playing creatures and rewards you for playing yours. Priest can actually win games outright

Genesis Chamber: Pairs with Norin. Everytime he enters the battlefield he brings a little 1/1 friend with him, and each of these creatures trigger your Soul Sister’s. More importantly those little 1/1s that your opponent gets will cause them to lose extra life from Priest

Ajani’s Pridemate: This is the biggest threat in your deck

Ghostly Prison: This deck wants to make it hard for people to attack you so that you can sit back and have an insane life total.

Some tips to remember:

1. Norin the Wary is legendary. You cannot have two of them in play at the same time. I’ve forgotten this before especially because I am like oh well if I play a 2^nd one then the 1^st one leaves play… and then it comes back at EOT and legend bombs itself
2. If you have Lodestone Myr and Howling Mine out, you can tap the Howling Mine during your opponent’s upkeep.
3. Use your removal wisely, don’t just kill anything that hits the board. This is a lifegain deck, so you can take a fair amount of attacks. Early game threats are often good to get rid of so that you can stabilize

I have mainly been playing this deck in the Just for Fun room on MTGO. It’s a casual deck and is going to have a hard time against most Tier 1 decks (even though I have taken it into the tourney practice room and had some awesome games with it, it really makes people say WTF?). It does fairly well in the casual games, and I could even see playing it in multiplayer games (this was how I played it initially). If I wasn’t going to play it as a Modern deck I would add Last-Ditch Effort and Mob Justice back in (they are hilarious win cons).

If I wanted to add some more money to the deck (or was building it in paper where I could trade for the cards) I would add the following: 4 Path to Exile, 4 Sacred Foundry, 4 Clifftop Retreat, 4 Serra Ascendant, 2 Ensnaring Bridge, 2 Felidar Sovereign. I often cannot deal with large creatures (duh) and so path to exile would be an auto-include. The Ascendant’s and the Felidar’s take advantage of the life gain (and it is very easy to meet the thresholds needed to activate them). Finally, Ensnaring Bridge is really good at grinding out long games. You are able to sit behind it and make them either deal with it, or not attack you (since this deck wants to overcommit). It has always been a standout in my paper version, but they were too expensive for an initial budget build.

The purpose of today was to give people a cheap, easy to build budget deck that can sneak a lot of wins and is pretty hilarious in my opinion. I used mainly CardNexus bots and MTGOtraders bots to get the cards from the deck and recommend both of those. You can even visit their websites (www.thecardnexus.com, www.mtgotraders.com)  to purchase the cards and then pick them up online!

I want to thank all the readers who have been coming to check this out. I have been pretty shocked by the amount of traffic I have gotten, and I want you all to know how much I appreciate it. I want this blog to be for everyone and to really help cut down on the intimidation factor that can come with joining the magic community. I can be reached on the comments here and @HobbesQ on twitter! I appreciate any and all feedback.

p.s Thanks to @EdGuise88 for his help with how to use HTML tags for the deck! Also congrats to @metaknightmare who won the Iphone Case from last article’s giveaway! I will do more in the future when I get something cool to offer