Tibalt's Trickery Broke Modern, and So Can You

Modern has been pretty stable, even stale, for months—but that's changing with Kaldheim. Already released on Magic Online, it started breaking Modern immediately by spawning one of the most extreme and ingenious Magic decks ever created.

It's all because of Tibalt's Trickery.

Once upon a time,

was more likely to show up in a punchline than in a decklist. Now he's the one laughing.

How Does It Work?

The idea is to use

not as a funky counterspell, but as a tool to turn against your own spell to trade it up for something better—like , the biggest and baddest card in Magic. Actually controlling what flips into is easier said than done under normal circumstances, but it happens to be simple with cascade spells like .

Cascade from

digs into a single as the only hit in the deck, and Trickery will then counter the that's still sitting on the stack waiting to resolve. At that point the only spells left in the deck are other copies of (which are passed up for sharing the same name) and , which Trickery will cast.

Unlike other common methods for sneaking

into play, actually casts it, triggering Emrakul's extra turn ability. That ensures Emrakul can attack and annihilate the opponent's board and life total, setting you up to win the game easily on the following turn.

That equates to a turn-three kill, and with what's essentially a one-card combo. That sort of speed and consistency is hard to come by, and it makes this strategy a legitimate threat in Modern. It's also incredibly simple to play, so it will be easy to unlock the power of the deck.

How Do I Win With the Deck?

The entire deck is built to do just one thing. All you need to do is mulligan until you find

and cast it ASAP. If through bad luck you actually draw , your only choice is to hard-cast it on Violent Outburst, so you have to wait a couple extra turns before you combo off.

All of the "play" to the deck is in its lands, which don't interfere with

 and allow for a huge variety of potential options. adds the potential to be even faster with a turn-two , so it's an enormous asset for the deck. So is , which can recur or when they run into discard or countermagic. adds a bit of removal, whether it's against creatures or hosers interfering with the combo.

Because the deck plays over 50 lands,

adds a very powerful backup plan that will inevitably produce many tokens. This certainly is very slow and won't beat many opponents, but it's the perfect tool against control decks that might be great at stopping the main combo but are poor at actually winning the game quickly.

How Does the Deck Lose?

Unfortunately, this deck's speed and power does come with fragility, and it folds easily to disruption.

can beat discard by recurring , but opponents can hold countermagic for itself, which means you'll have to recur it and find another to target. Effects like or shut things down completely.

The best way to fight back is simply speed, and comboing off as early as turn two may beat the opponent before they can even cast their disruption. Otherwise, the deck can turn to its sideboard.

How Do I Sideboard?

Normally this deck can't sideboard any spells without interfering with its combo, so besides just sideboarding utility lands, the only real option is to swap into a whole new strategy altogether. Luckily, the

land plan in the maindeck forms a great backbone for a transformational sideboard plan against opponents who have too much disruption, especially countermagic.

acts as a perfect sideboard pivot. With , it can be found reliably. accelerates it. So does , which also unlocks as an alternate win condition. Copies of (already in the maindeck) help accelerate into play, while pushes it through countermagic.

The post-sideboard deck won't be quite as good as a normal

deck, but with 15 cards to bring in and the maindeck already set up to support it, it does a surprisingly fine impression.

You'll want to transform most often against countermagic. Cut all nine combo pieces, four

, and some combination of , , and depending on what utility you may need in the matchup. Then bring in all 15 sideboard cards.

What Does Tibalt's Trickery Mean for Modern?

The

strategy is certainly gimmicky, but it's also very powerful. used to be used to cast as one of the top decks in Modern before fading away as the metagame moved on. This is the sort of upgrade that could bring cascade back into the picture, because is a lot better than a few random cycling creatures, and requires no setup.

The deck does suffer from disruption, but the option to transform from the sideboard will keep opponents honest. This deck is also still very early in development, and will only improve as players further tune the deck and discover new secrets and strategies for making the most of

.