Seismic Swans on the Horizon

Do you want to play a combo deck with near immunity to turn 1 thoughtseize? Do you want to confuse your opponents who are newer to the format? Do you want play a deck that nobody has a sideboard plan for? Do you want u/SaffronOlive to envy your ascenion to jank-vana? Do you want to pilot a deck so shoddy, u/hooglandreddit won't play it without being paid to pick it up? Do you REALLY like making your land drops? Then look no further, dear reader, and prepare yourself to crush some dreams with sweet ass memes at your LGS, as I've got two and two-thirds words for you.

Seismic Fuck'n Swans

I, for one, welcome the new Swan Meta.

Briefly, for those that don't know this deck. The cards below form the primary part of the answer to "Why have I done this to myself?"

[[Seismic Assault]]

[[Swans of Brynn Argoll]]

[[Molten Vortex]]

Together, you target swans with seismic assault or molten vortex, and then draw two cards. Rinse and repeat until you have 10 lands in hand and then dome your opponent for 20. Keep the salt buckets nearby. You'll need them to harvest the overwhelming amount of salt your opponents will produce.

So, what could modern Horizons bring this dumpster fire that it was missing?

[[Forgotten Cave]], [[Lonely Sandbar]], [[Fiery Islet]] and lastly, [[Throes of Chaos]]

These bad boys adds 12 lands that draw a card for 1 Mana, which decreases the virtual size of the deck dramatically and adds cards with actual text to the deck. [[Throes of Chaos]] feels like a swan song from Wizards directly for our earth shaking avian.

The biggest problem with this deck, as anyone who has played more than 1 game of magic will tell you, is that it runs way too many lands. Well, this card let's us forget about our questionable deck building decisions and skip right to the cards that put us on this course.

Enough of that, let's get to the list. As expected we run

4 [[Seismic Assault]]

4 [[Swans of Brynn Argoll]]

2 [[Molten Vortex]]

But we can't just draw a land per turn, we'll run out of lands to throw if we don't stick a swans, so what do we do then? We need to make sure we draw action spells. So how do we do that with a deck made up of primarily lands? Well, we use:

4 [[Treasure Hunt]]

2 [[Day's Undoing]]

2 [[Throes of Chaos]]

But certainly we need something more! What about cantrips? Other decks play those spells and, boy howdy, we do too (somehow).

4 [[Temple of Epiphany]]

4 [[Fiery Islet]]

4 [[Forgotten cave]]

4 [[Lonely Sandbar]]

Since we're also greedy with the casting cost of our spells, we need a fair amount of cards that come into play untapped that help us produce RRR and UU.

4 [[Steam Vents]]

2 [[Sulfur Falls]]

4 [[Spirebluff Canal]]

3 [[Island]]

3 [[Mountain]]

2 [[Reflecting Pool]]

1 [[Cascade Bluffs]]

To stave off how slow we are, we also have to gain life!

2 [[Radiant Fountain]]

4 [[Swiftwater Cliffs]]

But sometimes, we've just gotta get to our answers or sideboard hate. So we run:

2 [[Tolaria West]]

1 [[Blast Zone]] main deck to make sure that we can deal with some early aggression.

Sideboard:

1 [[Molten Vortex]]

3 [[Countryside Crusher]]

2 [[Anger of the God's]]

2 [[Stubborn Denial]]

2 [[Pact of Negation]]

1 [[Sphinx's Tutelage]]

2 [[Tormod's Crypt]]

1 [[Jace, Wielder of Mysteries]]

1 [[Shatterstorm]]

We've got Pact of Negation and Tormod's Crypt out of the sideboard as Tolaria targets for Dredge, Phoenix and UW control.

Stubborn Denial becomes the best anti-Path to Exile card we have, as it becomes a 1 Mana negate when swans is on the field. This also is to hate on opposing hate pieces.

Some pilots prefer enchant hate for those leyline decks. Me? No sir. I prefer Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Why interact if I don't have to? This is, after all, modern.

We also run Countryside Crusher as a way to race and further shrink the size of our deck.

Molten Vortex and anger of the gods we bring in against aggro decks.

Notable interactions:

Seimsic Assault + Day's Undoing: this is usually GG. T3, seismic assault, t4, dump your hand for 4-6 damage, then redrew 7 and kill your opponent in their upkeep.

Throes of Chaos + Day's Undoing: Throes gets exiled. This is but a small price to pay for glory.

Seismic/Vortex + Countryside Crusher attacking and unblocked: your lands become lightning bolts

So, /R/ModernMagic, are you gonna join the flock?