Disruptive strategies have long been a feature of eternal formats, be it Death and Taxes in Legacy or Hate Bears in Modern. Whilst modern Hate Bears has predominantly been a Green White deck, choosing Red over Green gives the deck access to a powerful single card strategy; Blood Moon.

This kind of deck looks particularly powerful in the current modern meta-game due to the wide range of greedy mana bases popular decks are sporting. Traditionally greedy archetypes such as Tron are as popular as they always were, and we have seen the rise of heavily land reliant decks such as Amulet Bloom.

Junk and Jund decks have become increasingly reliant on their creature lands, and even 2 colour decks such as Splinter Twin have popular 3 colour variants. Blood Moon is very powerful against any deck that plays a relatively low number of basic lands, and it is possible to win some games just by resolving one on turn 3. A Hate Bear style deck can easily run more than 4 of this effect by including a number of Magus of the Moon, ensuring the card is drawn often and providing redundancy. Whilst 8 Blood Moon effects seems like too many, a split of 3 and 3 allows a full 10% of the deck to interrupt the opponent’s mana base. The list I settled on is a mixture of classic Hate Bear cards, a few new additions from recent sets, and a couple of older cards that have gone out of fashion lately;

Main Board                                                                                             Side Board

Creatures (27)

2 Anafenza, Kin Tree Spirit                                                                     2 Trinisphere

3 Aven Mindcensor                                                                                 2 Archangel of Tithes

4 Dryad Millitant                                                                                     2 Ethersworn Canonist

4 Leonin Arbiter                                                                                      2 Jotun Grunt

2 Linvala, Keeper of Silence                                                                  2 Kataki, War Wage

3 Magus of the Moon                                                                             2 Kor Firewalker

4 Mirran Crusader                                                                                  3 Path to Exile

3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

2 Vryn Wingmare

Instant (4)

4 Lightning Bolt

Enchantment (3)

3 Blood Moon

Planeswalkers (4)

2 Koth of the Hammer

2 Ajani Vengeant

Land (22)

4 Arid Mesa

4 Sacred Foundry

2 Cliftop Retreat

2 Cavern of Souls

10 Plains

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben has long been an auto-include in White based disruptive strategies in both Modern and Legacy. Whilst it is slightly counter synergistic with the goal of casting Blood Moon on turn 3, it is still an incredibly powerful card that will slow down many mana hungry decks. Magus of the Moon is not interrupted by Thalia, and resolving these 2 creatures in the first few turns will leave many opponents in a very difficult position. Thalia’s biggest downside is her legendary status, however Magic Origin’s has given us a slightly more expensive, non legendary alternative in Vryn Wingmare. Whilst costing 1 more mana is a significant downside in a deck which wants to make as many disruptive creatures as fast as possible, the ability to play Wingmare alongside Thalia and thus increase the tax on non-creature spells more than makes up for it. The addition of flying is also very helpful as Thalia can often be walled by ground based creatures.

Many of the creatures are the same as we would see in Green White Hate Bears, and provide much the same function for this deck as they have always done. Leonin Arbiter, Aven Mindecensor, Dryad Millitant and Linvala, Keeper of Secrets are all very versatile and make life difficult for a number of archetypes. Whilst these cards are very good at locking the game up, they are not always the best at closing out games. This kind of deck often opts to include various Swords to suit up the disruptive creatures and finish off the opponent. However, the growing presence of Kolaghan’s Command weakens this strategy as many decks have a way to remove the Swords mainboard. Whilst the loss of the Swords from the list makes a card like Mirran Crusader less powerful, it is still worthy of inclusion as it provides a tangible clock and forces opponents to find a way to remove it. It works particularly well with Anafenza, Kin Tree Spirit, which not only buffs your whole board over the course of a few turns, but allows Mirran Crusader to grow into a truly terrifying threat.

The inclusion of the 6 Blood Moon effects is inevitably going to leave us with a relatively high number of mountains on the battlefield. Koth of the Hammer is ideally suited to taking advantage of this, and provides a win condition that survives through board sweepers the opponents might use. 4 power attackers are a significant threat and as lands they avoid common removal such as Abrupt Decay.

Unsurprisingly the sideboard is filled with cards that interrupt particular archetypes. Trinisphere for example is back breaking for Storm, whilst Kor Firewalker is excellent against Burn decks. Archangel of Tithes is another Magic Origins card that offers us something different. It is not only hard to remove but can tie up the opponents mana preventing from both attacking and developing their board state. Its triple white mana cost is not ideal in deck with so many Blood Moon effects, but it is very powerful against decks such as Merfolk or Burn where we are likely to be side boarding out of this strategy.

Path to Exile is another card that is counter synergistic with our mainboard as it helps our opponent to find the basic lands they need to ignore Blood Moon. However, it is a very powerful spell and again is well suited to games where we will be taking the Moons out for games 2 and 3.

So if you are in the mood to punish greedy land bases and enjoy leaving your opponent frustrated as you lock them out of the game, Moon Bears may just be the deck for you. If you have any comments on the deck, queries, or just want to question some of my card choices, post below or tweet me @TTMalfico