Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/5jmz90/the_most_degenerate_deck_in_modern_a_primer/

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The most degenerate deck in Modern - A Primer self.ModernMagic

submitted 8 hours ago by DressedSpring1 Wx Death and Taxes, Turn 1 thought knots, Naya Evolution

Hi all, with the recent interest in Eldrazi Tron coming off a Todd Stevens stream and subsequent weak showing at the Player's Championship, I thought I'd do a write up on what is in my experience a much more consistent and powerful version of that deck, namely colourless Eldrazi Stompy. This is a deck that aims to play somewhere between Legacy Eldrazi stompy and the old pro tour eldrazi lists that heralded months of the most unfun and one sided magic seen in years. First, the deck list.
Turn one chalice off a mull to 8

by DressedSpring1
Mainboard (75)
Creature (25)

    4 Eldrazi Mimic
    4 Endless One
    4 Eternal Scourge
    1 Matter Reshaper
    4 Reality Smasher
    4 Simian Spirit Guide
    4 Thought-Knot Seer

Artifact (8)

    4 Chalice of the Void
    4 Serum Powder

Land (23)

    2 Blinkmoth Nexus
    4 Eldrazi Temple
    3 Gemstone Caverns
    4 Ghost Quarter
    4 Sea Gate Wreckage
    1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
    5 Wastes

Instant (4)

    4 Dismember

Sideboard (15)

    1 Basilisk Collar
    1 Batterskull
    2 Endbringer
    1 Grafdigger's Cage
    3 Ratchet Bomb
    4 Relic of Progenitus
    3 Spatial Contortion

Compared to colourless Eldrazi Tron, we give up late game power (in which that deck aims to eventually find Tron pieces by naturally drawing into them or using 4 Expedition Maps) for early game consistency. Instead of having opening hands which we hope will payoff and allow us to cast our huge spells or draw into our huge spells when we open with natural Tron, we look to consistently do something degenerate and power out threats way ahead of curve on turn 2 at the absolute latest. With this deck I have consistently hit Chalice on 1 on turn 1, Thoughtknot Seers on Turn 1, Swung for 10 on turn 2 all with one of the most resilient threats in the format (Eternal Scourge) and a powerful Backup Plan that can see us drawing 2 cards per turn once we've emptied our hand. First some of the interactions;

Gemstone Caverns - This land is quietly one of the most broken cards in the format, and our deck allows us to often times cast it for no downside by exiling Eternal Scourge which we can then cast on turn 2. With this card we can often end up ahead of our opponent while being on the play, untap turn 1 and play a land and cast Chalice of the Void on turn 1, effectively locking some decks out of the game having allowed them only one play before doing so. Other common lines involve Cavern + Temple openers that can allow us to power out a 4/4 Endless One with SSG help, hit a turn 1 thoughtknot seer with SSG help, or play a mimic on turn one and a 4 drop on turn 2 to swing for 4 with Eldrazi Mimic. Because our deck is colourless we're also not punished for drawing Gemstone Caverns in the late game, because it taps for 1 mana in our colour(less).

Eldrazi Temple - Nobody who's played Modern in the past year needs to be told how broken this land can be. Combined with some of our other accelerants we can be up two mana or more over our opponent very quickly, and a hand with 2 temples and almost anything is usually going to be fast enough that many decks can't keep up.

Serum Powder - Another card that is floating under the radar in modern, this card is quietly maybe the worst card in Modern allowing us to produce 1 extra mana by turn 4 at the low low cost of doing absolutely nothing on our turn 3. This is an excellent card to pitch to Gemstone Caverns as it's best use is being uncastable junk that you discard. So why do we run it? Because it enables some pretty broken lines when we open a hand with Eternal Scourge in it, as well as Serum Powder. Serum Powder allows you to use a substitute effect anytime you would mulligan where you discard your hand and draw 7 new cards instead of mulliganning. This means you can discard Eternal Scourge, draw 7, and still have access to Eternal Scourge in exile giving you an effective 8 card hand. This is a deck that wants to mulligan fairly aggressively as a hand with no acceleration is usually not going to be good enough to beat a deck with access to such powerful strategies as literally anything in the colour pie, but we can consistently hit acceleration because of the sheer amount we run.

Isn't that sort of magical christmas land though? - Sounds like it, doesn't it? If you look at the numbers though, with 4 Eldrazi Temples, and 4 Simian Spirit Guides, and 3 Gemstone Caverns, on the draw we run 11 pieces of acceleration. Hitting one of 11 cards is actually extremely easy to do, particularly if we can often mulligan for free.

But, the card disadvantage! - Casting a turn 1 Thought Knot Seer can put us down 2 cards that we'll never get back in some circumstances (card exiled to Gemstone Mine, Simian Spirit Guide), that seems kind of bad doesn't it? Not so! Ideally, you're aware of your matchups and where it is worth going down in cards to go up in tempo, but once we're out of cards we're running 4 copies of Sea Gate Wreckage which in our deck reads "this land taps for any colour you need. 3(T) draw a card". Going hellbent is not at all something this deck struggles with doing, and once we do so we start drawing two cards a turn and burying our opponent with card advantage and a threat that is impossible to keep dead (Eternal Scourge).

Well, almost impossible to keep dead, what about wraths or combat damage? - Which decks are liable to force us into combat damage with our Eternal Scourges? Jund, and Dredge. Which decks are liable to cast wraths to put our scourges in the graveyard? Snapcaster based control decks. What's a reliable way to put something from our graveyard into exile, that also hates on Dredge, Jund, and Snapcaster Mage? Relic of Progenitus, which we run 4 of in the board (or main if you predict it will be better positioned). With a relic in play, Eternal Scourge becomes a threat that our opponent first must kill without targetted removal, and have also destroyed our Relic of Progenitus or forced us to pop it, which we're rarely going to do if it's disadvantageous to us. Post sideboarding into relic, Eternal Scourge goes from being one of the most resilient threats in modern, to the single most resilient threat in modern.

This seems like a worse Bant Eldrazi though... - So does Jund and people still play that!

I'm kidding. It's a different deck than Bant Eldrazi, that isn't necessarily worse in my experience. Against decks with inevitability like Tron you can simply Turn 3 them with accelerated Reality Smashers. Against some of the faster decks like Burn or Dredge you can race them because you're so fast, or rip out a critical piece of their combo on turn 1 with thought knot seer. You don't lose to Blood Moon. You don't lose to wraths because you keep drawing off Seagate wreckage. You don't lose to grindy matchups because Eternal Scourge comes back forever. You can dig for your hate thanks to Serum Powder and find your chalice on 1 turn 1 plays very consistently.

So why isn't this the best deck ever? - Because you can still lose to good Jund draws (hand disruption ruins your day, Bob is unsurprisingly great against us, as is Lilly, and if they can draw those good Jund hands of disruption + a clock, we probably lose), and sometimes we lose to ourselves. In this format with so many uninteractive decks, we don't mind trading our entire hand to play 2 big creatures way ahead of curve because people aren't running a ton of interaction. We don't mind the card disadvantage of Simian Spirit Guide because Chalice just automatically wins sometimes. We don't care that we don't have affinity hate because affinity is missing in action in the paper meta right now. A lot of things have come together to make this meta deck extremely well positioned right now, but I won't make the argument that it is objectively powerful in all metas because it probably isn't. You do however get a significant amount of free wins off turn 1 Chalice of the Void, or just killing your opponent on turn 3, and it's a deck I'll continue exploring in the coming months.

Most Recent Match Report - Opponent on the play against Sun and Moon. Turn 0 Gemstone Caverns exiling Eternal Scourge. Opponent plays a scryland and passes. Untap, play Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, Thoughtknot Seer and take my opponent's Blood Moon. Opponent says "That's insane... that is literally insane". Go on to run opponent over shrugging off Anger of the Gods.