Modern Deck help

[THACO]

Hello everyone,
I've been away form MtG for a long time. I last played during weatherlight/tempest.
I have an old multi-color deck that I’m trying to make legal for an upcoming modern tournament and could use your help for replacements and any other suggestions.

Creatures
4 knight of stromgald
4 man-o-war
4 black knight
4 hypnotic specter
4 nekrataal

spells
4 swords to plowshares
2 diabolic edict
4 lightning bolt
1 balance
2 dark ritual
2 mystical tutor

I liked having creatures with a “come into play effect” and using “the strongest and cheapest” spells from other colors. I liked having answers for a lot of different things. I ran 22 lands including the painlands that gave black mana since most of the deck was black and it allowed me to use other colors if necessary. This wasn’t (isn’t) the most powerful deck but it was fun and I’d like to modify it for modern.

Any suggestions to replace the non-legal pieces would be appreciated.

 

[Oversoul]

While I'm not the best person to ask about Modern, as I do not play the format and think it sucks , I do wonder what it is you have in mind here. Some of these cards were only printed in older sets, so they can't possibly be in the cardpool for Modern. My impression is that this is your existing deck (or your recollection of it) and that you want to update it for the Modern format. Is that correct?

I started playing Magic right around the time it looks like you stopped. If you do happen to have your old cards, be aware that while some of them could be very useful, a lot of them have been made obsolete by "power creep." This is more prevalent with creatures than with cards like instants. For example, the non-creature cards in your list are all still quite good, although they normally wouldn't all be used in the same deck. Oh, except painlands. Those suck now. I think you get some sort of "veteran player" credit for even knowing what they were. Don't use painlands anymore though. Maybe in a highlander deck or something, but other than that, there are just too many better options.

If you do want to play Modern, well hopefully someone with actual experience with the format can help you more. I play Legacy, myself. As for your decklist, I strongly advise some form of netdecking, if only to see what you might be up against. To put it bluntly, even if this deck were legal, it would be completely ineffective. I did a rather lazy search because I don't know anything about Modern, and it looks like here's an example of an aggro deck that may at some point have been played in Modern and looks like it's still legal...

4 Ornithopter
4 Memnite
4 Signal Pest
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Frogmite
3 Vault Skirge
3 Atog
4 Galvanic Blast
3 Shrapnel Blast
4 Cranial Plating
4 Mox Opal
4 Springleaf Drum
4 Mountain
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Inkmoth Nexus
3 Blinkmoth Nexus

Sideboard
4 Blood Moon
3 Torpor Orb
3 Etched Champion
3 Mindbreak Trap
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Relic of Progenitus

This deck looks like it would run right over yours around 95% of the time. Well, I'm just guessing. Pulled that number out of nowhere, but my point is that a format with decks like this is a completely different environment from whatever format you played in 1997. So if it's Modern that you want to play, I suggest reading up on the metagame and looking at the cardpool and figuring out what you want to play based on that. I'm not saying that you need to put a ton of work into it or anything like that. But get some sense of what's out there.

Here's a link to the Modern Primer I grabbed that decklist from. It has a lot more information about what the metagame for the new format is looking like...

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22820-A-Modern-Primer

 

[THACO]

Thanks for the link and the suggestions. You are correct that I was trying to update an old deck to make it legal. I thought I said that but perhpas I wasn't very clear. I can;t say I actually want to compete in modern but it happens to be a tournament coming up in a couple weeks that I thought I'd try. I'm actually concentrating on standard since I have been out so long I practically have to start over anyway as over half my old cards will be useless.

I've been toying with the deck some more since my original post and I must agree with you. Although it was a lot of fun back in the day (I especially liked tapping a swamp, dropping a ritual and having a 1st turn Hippie fly onto the board) I agree that it would probably be run over now.

Again, thanks for the link. I'll do some research on modern decks and see if I can throw together something.