Up the Beanstalk: New Modern Allstar
In Modern, it is not often standard cards provide a significant impact. There are typically a few cards each year, Boseiju, Who Endures, Leyline Binding, Ledger Shredder, and Sheoldred are good examples of cards from the past 2 years that see common play. Wilds of Eldraine, however, has provided 2 major modern players. Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, a combo/synergy piece that I have gone over extensively, and Up the Beanstalk, a card draw engine dubbed “Way better than the Ring” by popular Streamer and Pro-Tour player AspiringSpike, are powerhouse cards taking down tournaments left and right.
Up the Beanstalk, AKA “the beans”, is a non-legendary, two-mana enchantment that draws a card when it enters and when you cast a spell with a mana value of five or greater. This seems difficult at first in Modern, a format of the most efficient cards, but with the presence of cards like Solitude, Fury, and Leyline Binding it is very easy to cast five-mana spells for 0-1 mana. This is because Fury and Solitude both have an evoke cost of exiling a card from your hand of the right color, often referred to as “pitching”. Leyline Binding on the other hand costs one mana less for each basic land type you control, something with very little cost due to the presence of fetchlands, triomes, and shocklands. All in all, Up the Beanstalk costs significantly less mana, stacks (due to not being legendary), draws tons of cards, and doesn’t lose you life.
Though all lists tend to include the package of Leyline Binding, Fury, and Solitude different decks go for more all-in approaches to maximize its’ power or just play it with the typical package.
4-Color Omnath
In 4-color Omnath, the Beans are just an additional card draw engine. This list went 8-1 in the Modern Showcase challenge and simply runs both 4 Rings and 4 Beanstalk. Other than that there is nothing much unique about the list. One cool thing is that Prismatic Ending can be overpaid to cost 5 mana and draw a card.
Scam-Zoo with a Side of Beans
This deck, originally made by Dack_Fayden07, combines Scam and Doman Zoo to enable a high amount of high-cost cards that can be cast for cheap. It includes the Scam package of Fury, Grief, and Not Dead After All, it includes domain cards such as Territorial Kavu, Scion of Draco, and the previously mentioned Leyline Binding. Depending on the list it also runs some amount of Murderous Cut. Scion of Draco is especially notable here as it is consistently a 2 mana 4/4 with flying that draws a card in this deck.
Cascade Beans
Another Spike list that has started to see real success is a deck that, in my mind, is just crazy. The deck runs no cards of 2-mana and under to turn Shardless Agent into Up the Beanstalk. It even runs Bloodbraid Elf as a card that can be hit off Nissa, Resurgent Animist, and can Cascade into any selection of powerful cards such as Nissa, Teferi, the Beans, or Shardless Agent (which cascades into the beans). The consistency of finding the Beans enables Commandeer to be an absolutely broken card. He is 20-5 with this list in leagues:
Bring to Light
In the Showcase challenge this weekend, a list that uses this same concept went 8-1 getting 7th place. The pilot opted to of Ardent Plea, Bring to Light, and better mana. This list effectively combines Spike’s theory of maximizing the number of beans you see with the Bring to Light decks to create an abomination of extra turns and discarding to hand size.
Bant Control
Another very cool deck is one made by popular streamer Anuraag Das. He won one of the 4 existing secret lair Brainstorms in Magiccon Vegas with Blue-White control with small splashes for 2 Up the Beanstalk, 1 Cosmic Rebirth, and 1 Omnath. Additionally, the splash is essentially free as to enable domain you get access to these colors very easily. Das chose to only run 2 Up the Beanstalk in this deck, a smart choice as over-committing to the beans would be especially punishing in a control deck. In my opinion, the inclusion of Logic Knot is one of the coolest ways to trigger Up the Beanstalk. When there are only 2 in the deck in addition to literal Counterspell Logic Knot provides important redundancy.
4 Color Control
CatatonicWalrus, an early adopter of the Beans holds a strong opinion in regards to its power and longevity. They have put up results online with 13th on the 9/16 Modern Challenge, almost immediately after Up the Beanstalk came out. They also won their local RCQ with the same archetype. The list they used was a Bring to Light 4-color control list.
Their evaluation from the challenge and numerous leagues they have had with the deck is that:
“Up the Beanstalk is a multi-format all-star. It will replace the One Ring in 4c as the defacto card advantage engine, as one of the few ways 4c can lose a game that's in the bag is getting burned out by the ring. Eliminating the ring life loss while maximizing the potential card draw of the bean is the way forward with 4c, a deck that has historically been a worse ring deck than Tron, Coffers, and Amulet. Additionally, removing the one ring from 4c easily allows the deck to come down to 60 cards.”
I believe Catatonicwalrus is right and I think we will see the one ring dropping in copies in 4-color very soon. Derrick Davis, who won the Triple Modern 10k from the NRG, was only running 2 in his 4-color list after all.
When Up the Beanstalk is Good
Up the Beanstalk is incredibly powerful but needs specific conditions to be met to be played. The reason it sees so much success in these shells is due to the fact that they all include cards that cheat on mana. The only card that is actually cast for 5 mana is Bring to Light and even Bring to Light then casts a second spell for free. Every other card is cast with some sort of cost-reducing or eliminating effect. Delve, Evoke, and Domain-related cost reduction all allow card draw from the Beans without spending a full 5 mana.
Up the Beanstalk is a great card and I would highly recommend either putting it in your own deck or making sure you are registering your Bowmasters or Sheoldreds.
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