Brewing With Braids, Cabal Minion In Modern | Article by Jim Davis (2024)

When it comes to old school Magic cards, Braids, Cabal Minion is a classic.

Braids is an exceedingly powerful and punishing Magic card, back from a time when "stopping your opponent from playing Magic entirely" was a completely valid thing to happen in a normal game of Magic. It's not that difficult to get your opponent in a spot where they are sacrificing a land every turn, and it's also not difficult to see how quickly that will end a game. Braids is actually banned in Commander for this reason, but for the longest time was only ever legal in Vintage, Legacy, and Cube drafts where it was safely tucked away.

Well, aside from upending the format with a ton of really expensive Mythics, Modern Horizons 2 also brought the mean lady back into a commonly played format!

That's right, Braids has been quietly legal in Modern for a while now!

While overshadowed by many other cards from Modern Horizons 2, Braids has tons of potential that's not being explored, so today we're going to explore it.

What Makes A Good Braids Deck

Braids, Cabal Minion provides you with a very powerful effect, but a symmetrical one at that. It's definitely nice that you get to break serve because your opponent has to sacrifice first, but you do need to find some ways to break the symmetry whenever possible.

So how do we do that?

There are two main goals for a Braids deck:

1. Have A Way To Cast Braids Early

Braids is the kind of card that can tighten around your opponent like a constrictor snake, making it impossible for them to ever get anything going, but you've got to get her down in a timely fashion to do so. If your opponent has three permanents in play when you play Braids, she is taking down a third of their board every turn; if they have ten permanents, you're taking down a tenth.

It sounds simplistic to say, but the less stuff your opponent has the better Braids is.

2. Have A Bunch Of Crap To Sacrifice

Once again keeping it fairly simple; the more stuff you have, the better!

You never want to be sacrificing a land or valuable permanent to Braids. However, material that is easy to create and doesn't have much value - think 1/1 tokens, clues, treasures, and things you actually want to sacrifice - turns Braids from a drawback to almost a benefit. You get to break the symmetry of the card by having tons of fodder for Braids, while your opponent has most likely not set their deck up in this manner.

This means that while Mono-Black would be a super clean way to build a Braids deck, it only checks off one of the boxes. There are tons of great things to sacrifice in a Black deck, but very few ways to play Braids ahead of schedule without something like Phyrexian Tower legal. As such, we'll be delving into the other colors today to see what turns up.

Green offers a lot, the most important of which is mana acceleration.

The Utopia Sprawl plus Arbor Elf package one with great pedigree in Modern, as perhaps the most reliable way to make four mana on turn two. Even when you aren't drawing them in conjunction, either can help skip you from one to three mana and help deploy Braids early. This is very important in a fast and powerful Modern format.

Grist, the Hunger Tide may be even more important than the mana acceleration, as it's an already powerful card that provides threats, removal, and players perfectly alongside Braids as well as the other planeswalkers. Grist joins up with Liliana of the Veil and a smattering of other planeswalkers to form a bit of a planeswalker subtheme propped up by Carth the Lion. Add in Tireless Tracker, an already great card who's clue tokens play awesome with Braids and Vraska, Golgari Queen, and you've got a robust threat base.

Sprinkle in some Black removal and interaction as well as some of the great Green sideboard cards and you've got a very nice little deck that's capable of locking people out, interacting, as well as going long. There will be matchups when Braids underperforms like against high permanent decks like Hammertime or Affinity, but sideboarding Braids out in those matchups doesn't hurt the deck much at all.

Adding Red is another option, as Wrenn and Six solves a lot of the deck's problems.

As it stands, the deck would like a little more early removal, a two-mana play, and more planeswalkers. Wrenn checks off all of these boxes, aside from just being an extremely powerful card in the format in general. Red opens up a lot of possible avenues in both the maindeck and the sideboard, but is mostly held to a splash here.

But you can go deeper.

This is by far the most raw and untested list of the three, because frankly there's just a ton of moving parts.

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is about as perfect as can be for this deck, aside from just being one of the best cards in the format, as it provides you with both mana acceleration and extra permanents. Being able to get mana acceleration but not play Green is a huge boon and the monkey makes it possible.

While this deck has a bit less acceleration than the Green version, it does a much better job of utilizing Braids as a sacrifice outlet and providing fodder. Sacrificing an Experimental Synthesizer to Braids on your upkeep is awesome, as is having an Oni-Cult Anvil out as well. Triggers will be had, Ravenous Squirrel will get huge, and you can keep the card draw flowing as well.

This one's a little out there and would probably need some work to really fine tune the numbers.

One Of My Favorites

Braids, Cabal Minion is one of my favorite cards in my Cube and I'm super excited to keep exploring her in Modern. All I need to ask is, can we get Phyrexian Tower in Modern Horizons 3?

TAGS articles, constructed, analysis, modern, decklist, jim davis, 03252022, braids cabal minion