Beast Whisperer, a Modern Powerhouse?

Well Guilds of Ravnica is here, and players around the world have been hard at work brewing new and exciting Standard decks. Yours truly has been no exception with my last article, and I currently have three decks on MTGO I am testing for up coming articles. But today I want to talk about Guilds of Ravnica’s impact on another format. The Modern format to be more specific. For you see, during a evening of testing and tweaking I tried one of Guild’s new cards out in one of my favourite Modern decks and I… well. I think I broke Modern. 

So what is this card I speak of? What could allow me to draw most of my deck and play nearly all of my creatures by turn six at the latest? Two words. Beast Whisperer.

Beast Whisperer

This Glimpse of Nature on a stick is a ridiculous in the right deck. With enough mana acceleration and the right application of creature spells, you can chain together a single turn of pure insanity. But a card is only as good as its deck will allow it to be. So we need to find a creature based deck that can generate a ton of mana, that could really take advantage of a Glimpse of Nature effect. If only there was a deck like that in Modern. OH WAIT.

Runaway Elves

Creatures (38)
Llanowar Elves
Elvish Mystic  
Heritage Druid
Nettle Sentinel
Elvish Clancaller 
Dwynen’s Elite
Elvish Visionary
Elvish Archdruid
Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Beast Whisperer 

Sorceries (4)
Lead the Stampede
Lands (18)
18 Forest 

Sideboard  (15)
Heroic Intervention
Reclamation Sage
Beast Within
Scavenging Ooze
Dismember
Kitchen Finks

Unlike most Modern versions of elves which use Collected Company and Chord of Calling to play creatures at Instant speed, this deck is more of a straight beat down strategy. The idea is simple. Get access to lot of mana early on with Llanowar Elves/Elvish Mystic, or a Heritage Druid and two other elves. Then get down a Beast Whisperer to start drawing cards off any of our thirty-eight creatures spells. 

This might not sound that power at first glance, but just imagine having a Heritage Druid and a couple of copies of Nettle Sentinel on the board. You tap the two Sentinels and a third elf to generate three mana, use that mana to cast another elf that untaps the Sentinels and draws you a card. Rinse and repeat. Before long you will find another Beast Whisperer and then your drawing two cards with each creature you cast. Then it’s only a matter of time before you overrun the board, and if your opponent doesn’t have an answer it’s all over a turn later.

I have played a few games with the deck on MTGO and the results have been very promising. Even if you don’t get to use the card draw for crazy levels of value, the deck can still beat down opposing players with all of the lords it runs. 

(I won this game two turns later.)

The sideboard focuses on creature based answers for the most part so we can still make use of or card draw engine. Reclamation Sage handles Artifacts and Enchantments, while Scavenging Ooze helps keep graveyards clear. Kitchen Finks is our answer to Burn/Aggro decks, and Heroic Intervention can protect our team from removal. Finally, Dismember and Beast Within allow us to handle our opponents threats.

So what do you think of today’s foray into Modern? Will Elves be on the rise again? Or is there a better build for Beast Whisperer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and subscribe to the site to keep up to date with all we do here at Master of Magics. Expect more Guilds of Ravnica content soon (I might even be testing some more Legecy soon). But until next time remember. Good Luck and Have Fun.

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