After months of hanging out in the lower part of the first tier, Preordain has brought Izzet Murktide back to life! Many players assumed that Preordain would improve Murktide, but now we have the scoreboard to prove it.
This past weekend was the Kadou Series, a major Chinese Modern tournament featuring 252 players. Going undefeated in the tournament, Di Wang ended up in first place after going 10-0-2 with Izzet Murktide, beating Rakdos Scam in the finals. With Murktide making up only 5% of the total meta, it had a reasonable 56% overall win percentage and an impressive 76% win percentage against Rakdos Scam, which was the most heavily featured deck of the tournament.
Di Wang’s decklist is pretty stock, including everything you would expect to see in a Murktide list, including four copies of the newest edition to the deck, Preordain. One of the most important things to notice about Di Wang’s list is the exclusion of a card that is a usual auto-include in Murktide; Blood Moon.
With Rakdos Scam being the boogeyman of Modern, and with Burn seeing a resurgence in popularity, Blood Moon doesn’t have as much play as it used to. While it can be very powerful against mana-greedy decks like 4-Color Omnath, Amulet Titan, and Tron, including it in the mainboard will sometimes cause unwanted pseudo-mulligans or blank draws.
Instead of Blood Moon, Di Wang chose to include one version of Alpine Moon, Obsidian Charmaw, and Magus of the Moon in the sideboard. Alpine Moon has a similar effect as Blood Moon, except that it can be played on turn one and doesn’t affect your lands. Magus of the Moon and Obsidian Charmaw also help to turn off mana-greedy decks, except instead of just sitting on the battlefield like Blood Moon, they can attack your opponent, helping to close out the game faster.
I believe Di Wang’s list is the optimal version of Izzet Murktide, and the scoreboard doesn’t lie. Going undefeated in a 252-player tournament is no easy task, and I think this perfectly showcases the new powerhouse that is Izzet Murktide. With The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters being the hot topics of Modern, many players are overpreparing for those two cards and forgetting all about Murktide.
With the Modern RCQ season on the horizon, the discussion about the optimal choice of deck continues. While most players still believe that the fastest way to victory is to scam their opponents or get to seven mana on turn three, many of those players overlook the impact that Preordain is having on the Modern meta.
When choosing a Modern deck for this season, I used to think that you had to have The One Ring or Orcish Bowmasters in your deck if you wanted to succeed. Now, however, I think it’s between The One Ring, Orcish Bowmasters, and Preordain. If you can play two of them in the same deck, that’s awesome. If you can play all three? Even better.
You can also find Di Wang's winning decklist here.
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