I don’t play much modern. I just lack the knowledge of the format. I’ll probably accumulate that over time, but I’m not in a real hurry. I’m much more interested in the formats with limited cardset I can master on my own. Since I don’t have that much time, I’d much rather stay with standard and block, as well as limited.

What I do know is that aggro is pretty bad in modern. Sure, there’s affinity, but that’s pretty much it. What I’ve heard from more active players is that affinity is just so good that it simply displaces all other aggro decks. Well, at least to me this means I should be playing aggro, and not affinity.

Reasoning: I see [scryfall]Lightning Bolt[/scryfall] all the time. That’s the premier removal in modern. I see other removal as well, but Bolt is definitely the most common since it can handle so many creatures and be also used against your opponents directly. Since most people do a pretty good job of killing themselves in modern, Bolts are even stronger than one might initially think. My opponents went down to 11-13 life routinely without me doing any damage to them.

Also, there are answers to affinity and they are regularly played. [scryfall]Hurkyl’s Recall[/scryfall] wrecks their board state and people have plenty of them in their sideboards.

Therefore, people aren’t ready for an aggro deck that isn’t affinity and that can stand the bolts. I know how to play those. I know plenty of cards to go in them. Sure there are always going to be problematic cards, such as [scryfall]Abrupt Decay[/scryfall], [scryfall]Tarmogoyf[/scryfall] (since I’m not going to get my own) and, of course, how could we forget, [scryfall]Liliana of the Veil[/scryfall]. Others too. I saw at my last modern FNM a [scryfall]Countryside Crusher[/scryfall] which can quickly get out of hand. Don’t really know what I’d do against [scryfall]Thundermaw Hellkite[/scryfall] or [scryfall]Olivia Voldaren[/scryfall] either.

That being said, my collection of more or less resilient threats:

[cardlist title=Modern Green Beatdown]
[Creature]
4 Dryad Militant
4 Dungrove Elder
4 Experiment One
4 Kalonian Tusker
4 Predator Ooze
4 Strangleroot Geist
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
4 Vengevine
[/Creature]
[Land]
20 Forest
2 Treetop Village
[/Land]
[Other spells]
4 Vines of Vastwood
4 Rancor
[/Other spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Beast Within
2 Pithing Needle
2 Plummet
1 Raking Canopy
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Traproot Kami
4 Viridian Shaman
[/Other spells]
[/cardlist]

There’s many places I could probably find something better here, but I’m not going to dish out for those Tarmos. [scryfall]Vengevine[/scryfall]s are expensive enough. I’d like to find something better than the [scryfall]Kalonian Tusker[/scryfall] for the cmc=2 spot on the curve, but I don’t know what it could be. [scryfall]Scavenging Ooze[/scryfall]? [scryfall]Vines of Vastwood[/scryfall] is another question mark. As I already have six hexproof creatures, is it really needed? I’d say yes. I do need it. Partly because it doesn’t give hexproof, per se, but rather takes away the ability for your opponents to target the creature. This means I can counter equips and stuff like that. Not the best use for it, but flexibility is always nice. Also, my opponents won’t probably have very many answers to stuff like [scryfall]Predator Ooze[/scryfall], so its nice to be able to protect it when my opponent does have something.

I do know that most opponents just won’t be ready for many of the cards in this deck. Sure, there’s [scryfall]Path to Exile[/scryfall], which can do some damage here, but who’s ready for 30 creatures in modern? On top of that, mix of hexproof, regeneration, recursion, and indestructibility is going to be hard for many decks to handle. Maybe I should put in a few uncounterable ones too.

Sideboard is a problem for me, as always. I just put in plenty of answers for different stuff. I don’t really know why I seem to be so afraid of fliers, so maybe I should put something else in instead. If I’m afraid of [scryfall]Liliana of the Veil[/scryfall], maybe I should have [scryfall]Obstinate Baloth[/scryfall] in the sideboard. Or maybe [scryfall]Wilt-Leaf Liege[/scryfall] would be better? Maybe [scryfall]Young Wolf[/scryfall] as well. Or maybe just discard common wisom completely and play [scryfall]Masked Admirers[/scryfall].

People will play answers, but the thing is, will they play enough. Probably not. I’ll probably try this out, after mulling through the sideboard a while.