Much Abrew: Heartless Mom (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. I'm still pretty obsessed with Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, so today, we're heading to Modern to play a very different take on an Elesh Norn deck: Heartless Mom! The idea is to play Heartless Summoning on Turn 2, which lets us play Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines on Turn 3, and then, on Turn 4, have a huge turn of playing cheap Mulldrifters, Wall of Omens, and Avalanche Riders, with the end result being that we draw a ton of cards, generate oodles of value, and, maybe, if we get lucky, blow up all of our opponent's lands! Is Heartless Summoning the best way to Mom in Modern? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: Heartless Mom
Discussion
- Record-wise, Heartless Mom was great! We went 4-1 in a league and beat several of the best decks in Modern along the way. Even better, our one loss was mostly self-inflicted thanks to us not playing around the possibility of our opponent tutoring a Pithing Needle with Urza's Saga to lock down a fetch land multiple times. While Heartless Mom might look a bit strange, it plays great!
- The core of the deck is two Turn 2 plays: Heartless Summoning and Brought Back. If we play them correctly, either one will let us cast Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines on Turn 3, Heartless Summoning by reducing the cost of Mom and Brought Back by returning two fetch lands to the battlefield to double ramp. While the main reason both cards are in our deck is to offer these explosive starts, both also offer a lot of value later in the game. Heartless Summoning lets us chain together value creatures like Mulldrifter, Avalanche Riders, and friends on the cheap. Sure, it makes them smaller, but our creatures aren't really for attacking with anyway—they are for generating value. Once we generate overwhelming value (and blow up all of our opponent's lands), a 1/1 Mulldrifter wins just as well as a 2/2 Mulldrifter. Meanwhile, Brought Back has a bunch of sneaky synergies, like evoking Mulldrifter or Solitude and putting them back into play or not paying the echo on Avalanche Riders and then reanimating it on the cheap.
- Things get crazy pretty quickly once we get Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines on the battlefield, thanks to all of our enters-the-battlefield creatures and Ephemerate to blink them. It's pretty easy to have turns where we end up drawing eight cards, blowing up multiple lands, and flooding the board with random dorks.
- One of the stranger aspects of the deck is that even though we are four colors, every non–fetch land in our mana base is a Plains, which lets us play Emeria, the Sky Ruin for even more late-game value. We even have a Golos, Tireless Pilgrim to find Emeria!
- Normally, this is where I'd talk about how I'd change the deck, but honestly, I'd just run this one back. It was super fun to play, generated an absurd amount of value, and won a lot of matches against the best decks in Modern. If you're looking for a Mom deck in Modern, this is the one I'd recommend trying. It's a blast!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
