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Introduction

What is Prowess?

Prowess is an aggressively slanted deck that aims to try and end the game by attacking with small creatures that get a benefit from you casting non-creature spells. While there are multiple versions of prowess running around the format the one that has become the most popular as of late is the Blue Red variant. So that is what today’s guide will be focussing on.

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What are its biggest strengths?

The prowess deck excels when your opponent is playing some non interactive combo deck as you tend to be able to goldfish most of the combo decks before they are able to go off, while also offering a lot of flexibility in the post board games to play a very interactive game and become something more adjacent to a blue red control deck. The main reason to play this deck over something like Boros Energy is that you have a lot more tools to take on the more “unfair” decks of the format with tools such as Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, and Consign to Memory. The most recent addition to this decks arsenal is Cori-Steel Cutter which provides a powerful sustained threat through traditional removal spells. This shines the most in matchups such as UW control and the blink decks.

What are its weaknesses?

The largest issue with the deck is that it has always been cheap and efficient removal spells. However with Cori-Steel Cutter in the equation now, this tends to be much less of an issue for the prowess deck. What hinders the deck more now is cards such as High Noon, Wrath of the Skies, Chalice of the Void, Pest Control, Ensnaring Bridge, Trinisphere, and Orim’s Chant. These aren’t listed in any sort of order, but more so just problematic cards that I wouldn’t be the most happy seeing in my opponent’s decklist. While all of these cards present problems for the prowess deck as a whole, we have a lot of room in our sideboard to try and prepare to overcome these obstacles, so it isn’t the end of the world if you see you’re against any of these.

The main gameplan

Prowess at its core is linear aggro deck that is trying to take your opponents life total from 20 to 0 as quickly and efficiently as possible. No silly cute combo’s here, just turning cards sideways into the red zone and casting Lightning Bolt at your opponents face. The most critical skill with this deck is recognizing when you are supposed to be using your burn spells to trade with creatures instead of going upstairs. I am personally a big fan of the phrase “in order for your opponent to misplay you must allow them windows to make mistakes.” The idea of this message is allowing your opponent to make simple mistakes that you can punish pretty severely. I plan on making a short video to explain this concept a bit more in depth.

Maindeck

The list for this deck at this point in time has been basically solved. I would probably recommend running at least 70 of the 75 stock cards at any given event. Obviously if there is a significant change in the format feel free to deviate to your hearts desire.

• 18 lands
• 8 one mana threats
• 4 Slickshot Show-Off
• 4 Cori-Steel Cutter
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Lava Dart
• 3-4 Mutagenic Growth
• 2-3 Violent Urge
• 4 Expressive Iteration
• 4 Mishra’s Bauble
• 3-4 Preordain

Creatures

The creature suite in the deck at the moment is Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Monastery Swiftspear, and Slickshot Show-Off, all in full playsets. Each of them serve a critical role when it comes to how the game plays out so I’ll do my best here to outline how I approach the opening turns if I have multiple options on how to deploy my hand. 

As you can imagine, the sequencing of these things are all very matchup dependent, but the order I’ve more or less settled on is DRC > Swiftspear on turn one. The idea here is that you want your non haste threat to be able to attack as soon as possible, so the same rule goes for Soul-Scar Mage if you play that (it’s rarely seen with currently played two drops). With DRC specifically I think it’s important to remember that you can cast noncreature spells in your upkeep to try and surveil a specific card to the top of your library.

• Monastery Swiftspear: the golden staple as far as one drops are concerned for these aggressive red decks in Modern. While often best on turn one, this card threatens to deal a ton of damage and is the best target you have for Mutagenic Growth. Being able to have a one drop that isn’t susceptible to Orcish Bowmaster is huge for this deck, and should be considered when sequencing your early turns of the game. 
• Slickshot Show-Off: in my opinion, Show-Off has been very underplayed in Modern since its release in Outlaws of Thunder Junction. The plot mechanic allows you to play around spot removal and counterspells if your opponent is representing interaction. Casting your Plotted Slickshot can assist in triggering your Cori-Steel Cutter. Lastly it is your best card to cast Mutagenic Growth and Violent Urge on, in the right spot this card can easily end the game in a single combat step.
• Dragon’s Rage Channeler: the flexibility and pressure that this card provides allows your early and mid game to be so much smoother than it has been with past iterations of the deck. I find that the more aggressive you are with surveilling cards to the graveyard the better the games tend to go. You want to turn on Delirium as quickly as possible and get resources for Violent Urge as well as dig to cards that help you in any specific board state you find yourself in. Midgame you can aggressively dig for your Expressive Iterations or Preordains if you need to sculpt your hands, or if your opponent is at a lower life total you can dig for any of your burn spells to just close out the game upright.

Red removal spells

Lightning Bolt, and Lava Dart are the deck’s primary removal spells. Both of them are powerful in their own right, but I’m going to break them down a little bit more to hopefully share some insight with you on how I view these spells and how I try to optimize their timing.

• Lava Dart: as a stand alone card is quite unimpressive, as playing a one mana ping in terms of Modern’s power level is frankly hilarious. The reason that this is a critical spell in the deck is how good it is at enabling our creatures to become ridiculously sized for little to no mana. The way I view Lava Dart is that it’s a two part card, if you’re able to kill a creature with it at any point in the game I think that it should be looked at as getting a two for one as you’ve effectively used half of a card for an entire card from your opponent. I also think that Lava Dart has also gotten significantly better with Cori-Steel Cutter as it turns flashed back Darts into meaningful game material when it triggers.
• Lightning Bolt: there’s not much more praise I can give to this card. It’s been a format staple since inception and for a good reason. One mana for three damage is the golden standard as far as red removal and burn spells go. Never leave home without four of these in your deck. 

Card advantage

The card advantage engine in this deck mostly hinges on two cards: Cori-Steel Cutter and Expressive Iteration. They both accrue advantage in slightly different ways, so let’s get into it!

Cori-Steel Cutter

The strength of this card comes in a few different forms, but the main ones that I want to highlight are its token generation, resilience against removal, and the usefulness of the equipment part in general. 

• Token generation: One of the largest obstacles that Prowess as an archetype has faced from its inception has been finding the correct mix of creatures and noncreature spells. Cori-Steel Cutter fulfills both roles simultaneously, as it’s a significant threat that also triggers prowess. This card is truly the glue that holds the deck together and I think that without it, the deck would struggle to find much success. 
• Resilience against removal: While past iterations of Prowess have struggled quite a bit against a high density of cheap creature interaction, Cori-Steel Cutter allows us to sidestep this problem, as it’s immune to many commonly played removal spells. This allows it to generate a lot of value over time and overwhelm our opponents with a swath of prowess tokens.
• Equipment benefits: Those of us who played Modern a couple years ago know how strong cards like Batterskull and Kaldra Compleat have been in the past with their Living Weapon trigger essentially giving a ‘free’ equip. Cori-Steel Cutter having a ‘free’ equip every time you trigger it shouldn’t be overlooked in how strong of an effect that is. However, it should always be on your mind that you can also equip a Cori-Steel cutter to a freshly summoned Channeler for a surprise attack in the air if the game goes long. 

Expressive Iteration

I believe Iteration to be the most versatile card in Prowess. Between its card selection and cost efficiency, it is hard to have anything but good things about this card. The main things I want to point out with this card are as follows:

• Card Selection: Card selection is widely accepted as powerful,  as long as it comes at a reasonable cost. Being able to sculpt your hand provides you with the ability to create gameplans and find the most relevant cards for any given situation you may find yourself in. 
• Cost Efficiency: As previously mentioned, card advantage is only powerful if it comes at a reasonable cost. Iteration passes this test with flying colors, as it’s far and away the most cost effective draw spell compared to any similar card. It also synergizes extremely well with our low curve, as we can get maximum value off of it reasonably often as early as turn three.
• Versatility: Expressive Iteration has been one of the best cards in Modern at various points due to it being good at almost every stage of the game. It can be used on turn three if you really need to hit your third land drop, or on turn six if you want to find two action cards to close out the game. Expressive Iteration is great at finding whatever you need in any situation at any point in the game.

Others

• Mutagenic Growth: it was once much more popular in the modern format that has fallen a bit out of favour with decks like Shadow Zoo and Infect falling off. Growth is definitely one of the flex slots and can be swapped for your local meta. It’s really good at pushing damage early against the combo decks as well as acting as a pseudo counterspell against red based removal decks. It’s often correct to board some amount of these out on the draw, while bringing them back in on the play. Sometimes the threat of having this card in your deck has a larger impact than the card itself in a given game. 
• Violent Urge: a card that enables a solid portion of the turn three kills. Usually it gets paired with Slickshot Show Off and Monastery Swiftspear, but basically every other creature will like it, assuming you played enough spells to pump your guy. The card’s power gets shown when you have access to Delirium. Without it, it sometimes acts as weird removal spell in combat.
• Mishra’s Bauble: a top tier card for Prowess. Having a free enabler that replaces itself is exactly what we’re in the market for. There are a ton of benefits of running it, such as turning on Delerium for DRC/Urge. It also allows you to maybe keep more borderline hands, for example I usually wouldn’t recommend keeping one landers, however if you have a DRC and a Bauble these hands become much more keepable. 

The manabase

• Thundering Falls: having a tapland in your aggro deck may look awkward, but I think at this point it’s become well established that the surveil lands are powerful enough to warrant their inclusion in any deck that is multicolour. It also allows you to keep more one landers than you could have reasonably kept in the past. Getting that extra look is so big, especially in a deck that already has some amount of deck manipulation in the form of DRC, Mishra’s Bauble, and Preordain.
• Fetchlands: you want a high density of fetches as they serve a plethora of benefits in this deck, such as helping turn on Delerium for DRC/Violent Urge, grabbing the surveil land, and for deck shuffling in combination with Mishra’s bauble for a pseudo scry.
• Basic Mountains: three Mountains to avoid taking too much damage for no reason.
• Fiery Islet: useful when you run out of fuel in the late mid game. You can’t play too many of them though because it’s quite painful in multiples and it’s not a Mountain, so it doesn’t work that well with Lava Dart.

Sideboard options

Consign to Memory

Hands down I believe this card to be the best sideboard tool for any blue deck in the format. Provides a major tool against all the Eldrazi decks, combo decks, and a great card at keeping any sort of nonsense in check. Since it covers so many archetypes and strategies at once, it’s a mistake not to play four copies. Prowess is probably not the best home for it since the deck naturally wants to tapout to apply pressure early, but it’s simply too powerful to ignore it.

Soul-Guide Lantern//Surgical Extraction

Soul-Guide Lantern and Surgical Extraction are both excellent options to combat graveyard centric strategies. I do think that SGL is better if you’re worried about Living End, but Surgical Extraction is better at beating cards such as Phlage or Goryo’s Vengenance. I have also been testing Tormod’s Crypt, but am not completely sold on it yet. For now I would say my preferred order for graveyard hate is Surgical > SGL > Crypt, but they are all defensible, and choosing which one to run largely depends on what the expected metagame is.

Unholy Heat

The best red removal spell in the format. Six damage covers a lot of the issues that this deck struggles to overcome, some of the best cards to hit with it are Guide of Souls, Riddler, Phlage, Titan, Frog, Emperor of Bones, Abhorrent Occulus, etc. I wouldn’t recommend leaving home without four of these within your 75.

Murktide Regent

An alternative threat when you’re facing against decks that play things such as High Noon or any sort of scenario where Cori-Steel Cutter isn’t really at it’s best. The high cmc and big body makes it quite hard to kill for many decks – outside Solitude, there aren’t many effective ways to deal with a big flying body.

Spell Snare

With modern becoming more mana efficient within the last few years I think this card has just become better and better. At this point I would say just play it, hits frog, goryo’s, high noon, etc, never leave home without the first copy if not more. In most Modern metagames, I opt for two copies.

Violent Urge

I like bringing the 3rd copy in the board as it is the best thing to do when you need to go fast in specific matchups.

Important plays and tricks you must know

• With DRC in play, you can cast noncreature spells in your upkeep to try and surveil towards whatever you want to draw for the turn.
• Remember that Violent Urge checks for delirium upon resolving, so if you cast it without delirium while you have DRC in play, it’s possible to turn on the spell before it resolves. Conversely, if you have delirium when you cast it but your opponent disrupts it prior to Urge’s resolution, your creature won’t get double strike.
• Remember that your Murktide Regent will get an extra counter when you flashback Lava Dart.
• Cori-Steel Cutter can be equipped to a freshly summoned creature to surprise your opponent with a hasty attacker.
• You don’t always have to equip the new Monk created with Cori-Steel Cutter. Sometimes, it is correct to not do that if you need the currently equipped creature to have trample.
• Double spelling at your opponent’s end step to create an additional Monk is often game winning. I have seen too many people forgetting about Lava Darts in their graveyard. If you end up having to cast one spell on your opponent’s turn already, it is often correct to cast a second spell for minimal value, like Lava Dart to their face, to create an additional token. 
• Plotting Slickshot is often your best turn two play against any slower deck, as it can offer additional Cutter triggers as the game progresses.
• I would often recommend going for lethal if there’s at least a decent chance that you will die in the next turn or two. Even if you attack into open mana, sometimes you just have to hope that they don’t have interaction. 
• It’s very important to count the damage beforehand in your head prior to committing to any large attack, since this deck often works on extremely thin margins.