5c Answer City (Modern)

This project has been my magic obsession.

So, at it's core, this deck is a value toolbox deck that uses Bring to Light to fetch up any answer, while also just playing powerful cards every turn. This deck's win conditions are plentiful, resilient, and reliable.

So much is going on in this deck. First, the most important part of a 5c deck is the mana. 12 fetches, and all shocks are forest-based. This is important for a couple reasons. Each fetch can fetch a forest. There are only 2 non-fetchable lands in the deck, and only 1 basic plains that can be fetched by windswept. It's more for path to exile anyway.

4 Birds and 2 Sylvan Caryatid complete the mana package. With the nuts draw, you can power out a 5c bring to light on turn 3. With an optimal draw, you can go turn 4.

After mana, there is the removal package. You are playing 5 colors. You pay for the best you can afford. I didn't want to fuck around with lightning bolt. 4 path to exile, and 4 terminate. The 8 cheapest, most unconditional removal spells in Modern. No frills.

Okay, then there is the non-bring to light creature package. 2 Siege Rhino, 3 Knight of the Reliquary, and 2 Restoration Angel are your bread and butter. Powerful ground defense, solid attacks, and good trickery make this suite excellent and versatile once bring to light goes off.

Knight of the Reliquary is important. All the shocks in the deck are forest based, which means KotR can snap off any one of them to get another land into play. This helps with color fixing, boosting one mana for the turn, and saving lands from destruction. 2 Retreat to Coralhelms make Knight into a Twin-esque combo that can kill outright if played early enough.

Then the main event: Bring to Light.

This card is insane.

With proper color fixing, you can find any fix to any problem as early as turn 3 and for the rest of the game. One resolved Bring to Light spell can often end the game on it's own, if the right one is picked. The deck plays a little like reanimator in that regard. Ride the fatty you fetched to victory.

But Bring to Light allows a lot of flexibility. Mainly, it turns your one-of silver bullets into 5-ofs.

I'll get into each one in the section below on matchups, but I want to highlight 2 from the mainboard.

Kiki-Jiki and Bituminous Blast.

Picture this: Turn 1 bird, turn 2 Caryatid, turn 3 five color bring to light into Bituminous Blast- cascade into Siege Rhino and kill your opponent's first creature.

The Bituminous is an excellent tempo play as it nukes an opponent's early pressure and then efficiently gets more value. Plus it's an easy board out for non-creature matchups.

Kiki-Jiki does so much for this deck. Instant win with Restoration Angel, Lifegain and token value with Rhino and Thragtusk, Eternal Witness gets more value back in grindy games. The number of etb effects makes Kiki invaluable. Plus, he can be Brought to light.

Matchups:

Jund/Junk-

Sigarda Host of Herons is pretty much an unanswerable threat for these decks. Jund literally can't do anything, and will try to race you. Block with dorks and rhinos until you win with Sigarda in the air. Junk is a little trickier because of Lingering Souls, but Thundermaw clears the way and increases the clock speed.

Bolt misses so much in this deck. So many of your creatures are hard to interact with or they are just too tough. Abrupt decay can slow you down, but Caryatids are excellent for this reason.

Affinity-

Shatterstorm and Fracturing gust in the board make post-board nightmarish for Affinity. Mainboard has degenerate combos to win, and you can bring to light Kalitas against Arcbound Ravager to get value and blockers. Your flyers are also usually bigger, or at least trade well plus Sleep allows you to get big damage in. Just race, and post-board crush them.

Elves-

Tragic Arrogance/Cataclysmic Gearhulk also hurts elves pretty severely. A big bonus to the Gearhulk is that combined with Kiki-Jiki, you can repeat your board wipe and still get damage in every turn with vigilance.

Two smaller spells that also rip elves up pretty badly are Rakdos Charm and Kolaghans Command. Rakdos charm is extremely potent if your opponent somehow gets to critical mass, if you were applying pressure. Kolaghan's command can be used more proactively by snapping off creatures like Elvish Archdruid and Heritage Druid.

Mainboard, you can use Terminates to fight through Ezuri and strong flyers to race. With your mana and combo potential, you can race almost as fast as they can, and you will have a stronger board presence given enough stalling. Sleep also stalls really well and lets damage get through.

Tron-

This is a difficult matchup for this deck. Preboard Path and Boom//Bust are your best options for fighting big creatures and lands respectively. A resolved Karn is bad news, but Sigarda still can't be gotten. Resolved Ugin and Karn is probably game over preboard, but with enough early pressure, you can kill tron pretty quick with strong creatures.

Post-board is a different matchup. Crumble to Dust jumps out, but it is cheeky. If it can be turbo'd out Tron will have a hell of time keeping up with this deck. Kolaghan's command, Duress, Head Games, and Utter End make tron a lot less dangerous. You simply have the best answers and access to them.

Lantern Control-

Shatterstorm.

Also to a lesser extent Utter End.

Also, if you aren't in post-board, the main problem you'll face is fighting through Ensnaring Bridge. Resolve a knight of the reliquary and a bird of paradise asap in this matchup. Bring to light them if you can. Then, sac a land with Knight to get kessig wolf-run. Attack with bird, because 0 power, then pump after declare attackers and get in damage. Then pray. Otherwise just try to combo out early or otherwise apply as much pressure as possible.

Other post-board options include Rakdos Charm, Kolaghan's command, Fracturing Gust, and Tragic Arrogance.

RG Valakut / Scapeshift-

Combo decks are tricky, but this one plays a lot like Tron. Boom//Bust and Crumble to Dust are great in this matchup, but you can also try racing. Anger doesn't hit a lot of your stuff but if it's fired off early enough you are probably dead. Post-board is a lot easier with Crumble and Head Games. Best bet in this matchup is to interact with their hand, blow up their lands, and smash them to paste before they can do anything truly devastating.

Burn-

Easy matchup. Do you know how demoralizing it is to be a burn player and have your opponent go turn 4 cast primal command, gain 7 life and put thragtusk in hand? That's like 4 timewalks against burn.

Siege Rhino crushes Burn flat. Dead. On impact. Kalitas is out of bolt range and has lifelink against nacatls. Thragtusk can be bolted, but it leaves behind more pressure and gains 5 life anyway. If you manage to stick kiki-jiki AND thragtusk, they will most likely scoop.

This matchup should not be a problem.

Blue Moon/Delver Decks-

This deck flavor of blue decks is not fun to fight as a midrange deck, which is what this is. While you definitely have more powerful spells, sticking them becomes a problem. Blood Moon is also a bitch to fight through, but you have a mono red powerhouse you can draw into mainboard as well as some sweet options in the side. The cheekiest tech ever invented against blood moon is probably kaleidostone. Can be cast and paid for with mono red, it nets you a card, and can fire off one bring to light for 5 that can go get fracturing gust and get you out of a jam.

Thrun and Slaughter games are strong against permission decks, as well as being able to stick Sigarda. An important note about counter magic: Bring to Light fetches a spell, exiles it, and then you cast the card from exile for free. If you can cast it, it can be countered. Don't let your opponent fool you if they let a bring to light resolve. Be suspicious of open mana.

Dredge or other graveyard based decks (Bridge from below, zombies, Anafenza combo decks)-

Bojuka bog is a fun one for this. You have to have fun with these many options. It can be fetched at instant speed with Knight of the Reliquary and a modern opponent will never see that shit coming (Thanks Legacy). Mainboard you have Kalitas but he's a little fragile and your opponent will be prepared for that kind of resistance. It's better than nothing though.

Post board you have Bojuka Bog, Rakdos Charm, Slaughter Games, Primal Command's grave shuffle ability to break up a variety of combos. Fair matchup, and is usually pretty fun to play.

Infect-

Path and Terminate are really good against this deck and are both main. You also have a ton of flyers, one with flash even, to cheese inkmoth nexus while you race.

Post board this matchup becomes more of a breeze. Head games really shines in this deck due to your ability to just flood your opponent and breakup the critical mass in their hand. Sometimes you just get unlucky and die to the nuts though. That's a combo deck. Fight hard and dirty, and you should eek out more wins than not.

Fish-

Merfolk are a lot like elves, though you end up not blocking as well. Don't let your opponent get out of control and you should be fine.

Jeskai Control / Nahiri Control-

Haste flyers and pressure beat this deck. They can really only path your big stuff, and even then you can fight extremely hard with your mainboard pressure. Post board, again, use Head Games and Slaughter games to make a control opponent lose the game.

Due to your powerful answers and a ton of resilient pressure, you basically just turn control matchups like this into a gutter-fight. Use an answer to hit their best thing, and then beat them to death with creatures.

Zoo-

All flavors of Zoo die to removal and blockers. Siege Rhino beats just about everything shy of death's shadow and you can kill that pretty fast. Most other situations you answer the same way as with Burn, just lifegain and counter pressure. Primal Command into Thragtusk can usually beat any zoo deck. Again, you can die to the nuts in Death's Shadow but holding up removal can make that game easier.

Ad Nauseum-

Combo deck. Just interact as much as you can, side in artifact and enchantment hate, and then just run them down with a ton of pressure.

Eldrazi-

I love this matchup. It is such a fun matchup, and it's always exciting to play. Their threats are on par with yours, and they hit the field as fast, or faster. They have a hard time fighting through combo, so go crazy making a million Restoration Angels and killing them outright. This is a deck where Terminate eventually won the bid out against Lightning Bolt. You know what you can't bolt? Worldbreaker.

Dealing with their threats while maintaining your own is an interesting game of back and forth. Honestly, the threat density of both decks are pretty similar and winning matches is going to be exciting.

Fringe Decks (Bogles, Ponza, Esper, Reanimator, Humans)

Just because they aren't popular doesn't mean they aren't powerful. Tier 2 is the wild west. This is currently where Answer City sits, but Answer City asserts it's dominance in a lot of ways. Fighting Tarmogoyfs, Karns, and other scary shit in Tier 1 is very doable with this deck, so smashing through other decks will take knowledge of the meta you are in and good piloting skills when tutoring cards.