Hunter Burton Memorial Open Champion Tournament Quickie Report

Hello everyone! I am currently moving across the country so this won't be incredibly in-depth, but I wanted to touch on the basics and some of the high points of the build. Additionally, I'll be adding the updated DL and SB guide to patron-only post! 

Going into an open modern event, I expect to play against the following (ordered by frequency I expect to see it):
Murktide, Creativity, Hammer, Scam, Rhinos, Burn, 4C Midrange, Yawg, and Titan. While the modern format obviously covers a lot more than that, these are the decks I expect to face. Below you can see what I ACTUALLY played against at the event. I had a very strange matchup spread, but that’s paper magic for you.

*One other thing I wanted to note was that my mirror matches were actually both against teammates unfortunately, so they were also on at least ~71/75 of the same build. While there were 4 of us on the Solitude build, 2 of us made deep runs into day 2, and we had much higher win rates than the UW build this weekend.

Decklist: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/5498748#paper 

Day 1

• Rd 1 - UG Infect (2-1)
• Rd 2 - Temur Rhinos (1-2)
• Rd 3 - Temur Rhinos (2-1)
• Rd 4 - Merfolk (2-1)
• Rd 5 - Jund Saga (2-1)
• Rd 6 - Lonely Hammer Mirror (2-1)
• Rd 7 - GR Asmo Food (2-0)
• Rd 8 - Temur Rhinos (2-1)

Day 2

• Rd 9 - Lonely Hammer Mirror (2-1)
• Rd 10 - BTL Scapeshift (2-1)
• Rd 11 - Yawgmoth (2-1)
• Rd 12 & 13 - ID

Top 8

• Quarters - Hardened Scales (2-1)
• Semis - UW Control (2-0)
• Finals - RB Scam (2-1)

Key moments for Solitude and Emeria's Call

• Rd 1 - UG Infect (2-1)
• Solitude tagged a creature without triggering Rotpriest, which ended up winning me the game.
• Rd 4 - Merfolk (2-1)
• Solitude tagged a tideshaper with the trigger on the stack, saving my saga
• Rd 5 - Jund Saga (2-1)
• Drawing Solitude at any point in game 2 or 3 would’ve won me the match at multiple spots, especially since he was relying on Monkey to subsidize his mana.
• Rd 6 - Lonely Hammer Mirror (2-1)
• Solitude was a beating on both sides. So much so, that I may consider keeping 1-2 Skills in post-board vs the solitude version.
• Rd 7 - GR Asmo Food (2-0)
• Solitude tagged an Asmo G1, enabling me to suit up a paladin safely before he could deploy his 2nd Asmo.
• Emeria’s Call after getting hit by 2 Boseijus created the bodies needed when both of our decks were malfunctioning after trading removal spells.

Day 2

• Rd 9 - Lonely Hammer Mirror (2-1)
• Solitude set the tone of the matchup since there was no really effective way to play against it.
• Casting Emeria’s call with mantle enabled me to generate another pair of flying bodies to get through the board stall.
• Rd 10 - BTL Scapeshift (2-1)
• Solitudes would’ve won both games 2 and 3 by tagging dryad, turning off their combo. I didn’t draw Solitude in game 2 though, so I had to settle for the 2-1 instead. Game 3 I got to pitch cast a sol
• Rd 11 - Yawgmoth (2-1)
• Solitude tagged a Yawg, enabling me to attack for lethal the following turn with their shields down.

Top 8

• Quarters - Hardened Scales (2-1)
• OP specifically mentioned that Solitude created an entirely new dimension to the matchup, and made navigating it much more challenging from his side.
• Semis - UW Control (2-0)
• I got to pitch cast a solitude to tag their Solitude that they tried to ambush my team with, ending the game.

Some final notes:
Solitude was fantastic all weekend, and I'm obviously glad I went with my gut and played it. It gives you a ton of game in matchups like the mirror, UR, Yawg, Amulet, and a wide spread of rogue decks that you need removal in (tribal decks, Asmo, BTL Scapeshift). Having the additional mana sinks in Solitude and Call are also relevant in way more matchups than you'd initially expect. 

Solitude also makes boarding in extra protection spells feel better since you can always pitch them to the elemental.

The build is very real, but it can handle a bit differently than you'd expect, and you need to keep that in mind when resolving mulligans and sequencing your first few turns.

I am playing fewer sanctifiers since the decks it used to KO are adapting to it (RB is playing more sweepers, spellbombs, and edicts, and Murktide has been leveraging more shredders for quite a while now. As such, I'd rather just have more solitudes.

Since this build is softer than the UW lists to Living End and other combo decks, I wanted the extra hate in the form of Drannith and Moonlight.

Thank you for reading, and feel free to ask any burning questions you've got! If those questions are "how do I SB in X matchup?" however, feel free to checkout the updated guide I will be posting for my patrons in a separate post :).