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Modern: 8 Decks to play the format in 2025

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In this article, we show eight competitive deck options to get you started playing Modern in 2025!

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The 2025 competitive circuit will focus on Magic in two formats: Standard, where cards rotate and a new set with potential for impact comes out every six months, and Modern, an environment with a higher monetary cost but greater deck longevity and biannual releases of expansions dedicated to its high-power level.

While Standard is more intuitive to get into, Modern is one of the most popular Magic formats and has one of the most solid player bases in the history of the competitive scene, and is also one of the environments with the greatest complexity of interactions and breadth of strategies available.

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In this article, check out eight decks to start playing Modern in 2025, based on their recent competitive results, position in the Metagame, and learning curve!

Eight Decks to Play Modern in 2025

The following criteria were used to define the decks on this list:

  • Archetype results between December 2024 and January 2025. Modern is an expensive format, and if someone is willing to invest in it, they should at least do so with a competitively viable strategy.

  • Game plan. The more intuitive the deck is, the easier it is for a player new to the format to pilot the deck and understand its lines. There is no point in recommending an archetype with hundreds of micro-interactions (Amulet Titan is a good example) when a player is just starting out in the format.

  • In some cases, ease of acquiring cards and deckbuilding restrictions were considered. For example, Boros Energy wants cards that interact with its core mechanics, or constant sources of value that are superior to what it currently has, or specific answers to the Metagame. All three scenarios are unlikely to happen in 2025, unless Aetherdriftlink outside website brings back Energy or if the Universes Beyond expansions have an absurdly high-power creep - unlikely given that they will enter Standard.

  • Prices were not considered. Again, Modern is an expensive format, and there is no way to create competitively viable decks and/or decks that perform well in tournaments without investing a certain amount of money. It is better to invest money in a deck X that performs consistently, than to invest half that cost in a list that will always leave you 0-4 at your local store - if prices are an issue, I recommend looking at formats like Pioneer, or Pauper.

  • Long-term investment is no longer an option. When Modern Horizons 4 comes out, there's no guarantee that its deck will remain one of the best in the competitive scene, and the wave of power creep that MH2 caused with MH1 and MH3 caused with MH2 proves that there's no way to predict the future of Modern in two or three years.

    Boros Energy

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    Boros Energy is not only one of the best decks in the format, it's also one of the most reliable. Previously considered oppressive and the target of three bans, today it's a super efficient Aggro that dictates the clock of Modern today with the relentless board presence of the interaction between Guide of Souls, Ocelot Pride and Ajani, Nacatl Pariah.

    Synergy and interaction are also central to its strategy: cards like Goblin Bombardment benefit from the amount of tokens created by the above cards, while Ajani, Nacatl Pariah becomes removal because the enchantment is a red permanent. Meanwhile, cards like Static Prison and Galvanic Discharge are easily fed by Guide of Souls.

    Its other side, focused on attrition, relies on the interaction of Seasoned Pyromancer with Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury to feed the graveyard. In addition, this has synergies with Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd - which also reuses the ETB effects of Ajani, Nacatl Pariah - and Phlage, our late-game bomb, which can win games in a single attack when combined with Guide of Souls.

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    All of these elements make Boros Energy very consistent and requires a good mix of interactions and/or a faster-than-it-can-hold game plan to overcome it, making it the current deck to beat in Modern.

    Eldrazi Ramp

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    Eldrazi Ramp can be found in Magic Symbol RMagic Symbol G versions, or variants with Magic Symbol U for Nulldrifter and cards in the Sideboard, and more recently with versions using the famous toolbox with Karn, the Great Creator. Above is a standard list of the archetype, as it is a good starting point for any other variants that emerge in the coming months.

    As the name implies, its plan involves accelerating mana to cast one Eldrazi after another - creatures known for their high impact on the board the moment they are cast. To help with this plan, cards like Malevolent Rumble put tokens into play that can be sacrificed to generate mana while finding threats to play, and ideally, you'll cast Sowing Mycospawn before turn four.

    What makes Eldrazi Ramp one of the best decks in Modern today is its combination of “Sol Lands”, lands that can generate Magic Symbol 2 for specific situations, all of which, in this list, involve an Eldrazi or having cards with high mana value in hand. Combined with the Talisman cycle and spells like Kozilek's Command and Malevolent Rumble, casting World Breaker or even Emrakul, the Promised End very early is almost guaranteed for this deck.

    Belcher

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    There are several combo decks available in Modern, but we'll stick to the ones that have a more straightforward and easy-to-understand game plan. Belcher is one of them and involves casting and activating Goblin Charbelcher to win the game: since the artifact requires us to reveal cards from the top until we reveal a land, we just need to use no lands to extract the maximum value from it and deal 40 or more damage in one activation.

    Modern Horizons 3 graced the format with a cycle of spell-lands (known as double-faced lands) that enter untapped if we pay three life, allowing Goblin Charbelcher to find monocolored variants that culminated in this (almost) Mono Blue version.

    This almost is important because we need Magic Symbol W to activate Tameshi, Reality Architect's ability to return a land to the hand and return Lotus Bloom from the graveyard to the battlefield - virtually, we can generate three mana for each land we return to the hand and there are small interactions we can do with this, such as generating a lot of mana while returning Sink into Stupor to the hand and thus having extra protection for the combo.

    Protection is, in fact, the other reason to play Mono Blue: with a base of efficient creatures that delay the opponent's turns, we can use Flare of Denial as a free spell without difficulty, in addition to paying the alternative costs of Disrupting Shoal and/or Force of Negation consistently.

    Dimir Murktide

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    Dimir Murktide, or Dimir Oculus, is one of the most skill- and knowledge-intensive archetypes to pilot well in Modern, but it has such a famous strategy in other formats that it is common for players to associate it with classics like Delver decks.

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    In essence, this is a Tempo strategy trying to extract maximum value from cheap cantrips and cards that put others in the graveyard to cast Abhorrent Oculus or Murktide Regent early and have it carry the game while holding the game with Counterspell removals.

    A key point of this version, however, is that it doesn't rely exclusively on the graveyard to work: Psychic Frog is one of the most efficient creatures in Modern today as a cheap source of card advantage, and in addition to the synergy it has with Abhorrent Oculus and Unearth, it is a win condition that can also carry games if we keep the board clear and it protected.

    The challenges of Dimir Murktide, however, lie in decision-making: it punishes your bad choices heavily, from the moment you build your Sideboard and decide to have one less copy of a key card for a given game to the moment you sequence a combination of spells incorrectly and extract little value from the cantrip used at the end of the opponent's turn - and even so, it is by far one of the best decks to build in Modern even for those who have little experience with the format... After all, it will make you gain that experience if you want to win games.

    Jund Creativity

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    Driven by the unban of Faithless Looting, Jund Creativity is what would happen if Pioneer's Indomitable Creativity and Legacy's Reanimate decks had a baby. Their game plan involves cheating on the mana value of Archon of Cruelty and getting it into play as early as turn two, discarding it with Looting and bringing it back with Persist.

    If this plan doesn't work, Creativity becomes an attrition deck with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Wrenn and Six, which can recur Fetch Lands to bring Dwarven Mine onto the battlefield and use its token with Indomitable Creativity to put Archon onto the battlefield.

    This mix of proposals, combined with the positive value that Wrenn and Six offers along with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Faithless Looting, in addition to the abundance of cheap interaction available in its colors, makes Jund Creativity one of the most powerful, straightforward, and fun combos to play in Modern today.

    Domain Rhinos

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    Rhinos is another combo deck that tries to mix an unfair strategy with a fair game plan. In this case, we want to use Shardless Agent or Ardent Plea to bring Crashing Footfalls to the stack and have two 4/4 Rhinos with Trample staring at our opponent - a strategy that is perhaps too fair for Modern in 2025.

    So we complement this combo with another equally powerful two-card interaction: Leyline of the Guildpact grants all land types for your lands and all colors for your creatures, turning Scion of Draco into a 4/4 with Vigilance, Hexproof, Lifelink, First Strike and Trample for just Magic Symbol 2 and still granting this keyword soup to the other creatures - which is usually enough to win most fair games in the format.

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    Despite the cost restrictions, Domain Rhinos has several efficient cards to interact with the opponent: from spells like Fire // Ice that “bypass” the Cascade stack to free spells like Subtlety and removals with reduced costs like Leyline Binding, making it quite explosive, but also with enough tools to hold attrition games.

    Hollow One

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    Once a forgotten strategy of times gone by, Hollow One not only benefited from the return of Faithless Looting, but also gained several powerful tools in Modern Horizons 3 with Nethergoyf and Detective’s Phoenix that make it an efficient Aggro in the Metagame.

    Much of its explosive potential involves the interaction of Hollow One with cards like Faithless Looting, Street Wraith and Burning Inquiry, where we draw and discard cards to reduce the creature's cost and, preferably, play more than one copy of it for free, putting a lot of pressure on the board as early as the first turn.

    The benefit of MH3 for this archetype is due to the expansion of the Delirium mechanic with Nethergoyf and the interactions with the graveyard, using Detective's Phoenix and Street Wraith to give evasion and a fast clock for your creatures.

    Merfolks

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    Merfolks is an Aggro-Tempo focused on the interaction between creatures of the same type and their individual quality through their ETB effects. This is one of the oldest archetypes in Modern history, and the fact that it is still present in the format - even though it is not a Tier 1 - makes it a great option for players who like high-synergy strategies.

    Its plan involves using cards like Tide Shaper and Harbinger of the Seas to turn your opponent's lands into Islands and clear the way for your creatures to attack when Master of the Pearl Trident or Lord of Atlantis come into play. To get the most out of your plays, Aether Vial allows cheating on mana costs and putting creatures into play at any point in the game - cost reduction, in fact, is another core theme in Merfolks with cards like Force of Negation and Flare of Denial.

    Wrapping Up

    That's all for today.

    It's worth noting that Modern has countless other archetypes besides the ones listed here, and while our focus was on strategies that are more inviting for those who have never played the format before, perhaps decks like Golgari Yawgmoth, focused on sacrifices and loops, or the micro-interactions of Amulet Titan with lands, or even the possibility of exploding with multiple spells in a turn of Ruby Storm might be to your liking, so we recommend that you research in depth which deck you like the most and ask colleagues or even on social media about how this strategy behaves in the format and if it's worth putting together a list.

    Thanks for reading!