A field of 362 Modern decklists was submitted for Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes, and among them a number of lists stood out for doing something unexpected. While many pilots brought familiar archetypes, the most noteworthy submissions were the ones that took risks — leveraging unusual synergies and niche cards to craft nontraditional gameplans.
Highlighted strategies included everything from compact Cat-themed combos to intricate artifact loops. The Cat builds relied on tight creature interactions and combo pieces to generate explosive turns, while the artifact-oriented lists focused on recursive loops and value engines that can grind out long games or pivot into sudden wins. Together these approaches illustrate how Modern’s card pool enables very different routes to victory beyond the usual metagame staples.
These spicy lists tend to share a few features: unconventional card choices, novel interaction packages, and sideboard plans tailored to surprise deck pilots who expect mainstay matchups. In a large tournament setting such designs can pay off by sidestepping prepared answers and exploiting meta assumptions, though they also come with higher variance and steeper pilot skill requirements.
The takeaway from this Pro Tour’s Modern submissions is that experimentation remains alive and well. Lists that push boundaries — whether via creature combos, artifact recursion, or other offbeat synergies — keep the format evolving and give deckbuilders new ideas to test in future events.
