Those of you running a split between Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Melira, Sylvok Outcast, have you settled on an optimal split yet? I've been running 2/2 since Melira helps against both infect and affinity, and a 2/2 seems less likely to run into Legendary restrictions. However, Anafenza's bolster ability can be very helpful for a Plan B beat-down route. Thoughts? Is it worth running the 3/1 split even in the face of more dead hands with multiple Anafenza's?
Also, I'm sure most of you have been keeping an eye on the new Bx Eldrazi Processor decks that have popped up in the last couple weeks. Expectations range from them redefining Modern's midrange game to them being somewhat of a fad, but either way this deck is terrible news for us, as it's pre-boarded to hate on our graveyard strategy very hard. Anyone have experience against one of these decks yet? Advice? Any new sideboard tech needed? If anything this has further convinced me that it's unwise to go all-in on the graveyard right now.
I haven't played the Rally deck for a bit, but I had a small number of games against the Bx Eldrazi deck. It seems slightly more favorable than tron, but that isn't saying a whole lot. Biggest bit of advice would be having multiple Fulminator Mages somewhere in the 75. Keeping them off of Eye / Temple is pretty key. Pridemages help keep the incidental graveyard hate in check too.
RE Anafenza / Melira, I had 2 copies of Melira in the side and never felt like she was needed in the main, but the infinite bolster loop is pretty powerful. IF I were to main deck both, I'd probably start with 2/2, possibly going to a 3/2 (biased towards Anafenza) if I really wanted to see that combo often.
I'm adding a Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to try to hit double black in what's otherwise a WW / GG deck. I'm a little concerned but recursive LD does sound pretty brutal so I think it's worth a shot. I'll report back after testing.
Went 3-1 on my first FNM, felt a bit unlucky there. On that night there were more grindy decks and in that meta this deck is great.
Yesterday I went 3-1 in a small tourney (with good players though).
Beat Grixis Twin by bluffing decay and path the whole game while never having anything. If he knew my decklist I would have been pretty dead. Killed him when he tapped out for a pestermite and Keranos (not a good card vs us). Got a lot of value out of him not knowing how to play against this deck and being to afraid of removal to combo off.
Lost to naya zoo. Combod off first game in response to a fetch. Then get beat down by knights, goyfs and especially oozes 2 games in a row.
Won from Grishoalbranned. Lost first game. He fizzled the second game and went all in on T1 blood moon game 3 but I had 2 basics in hand and together with double toughtseize kept him off the combo. Bad matchup, was lucky.
Won from GW Hatebears G1 I combo off with Melira. G2 I mull to 6 and keep a very medium hand, then draw nothing but land so lose. G3 he gets a Scooze active, I have the combo on board with Anafenza this time but can't go for it as long as he has the ooze and a green mana. And then on my end step he taps out to cycle a Canopy and I win (he didn't realize I could combo off anafenza as well). Very lucky as he shows me the Linvala in his hand.
All in all I feel too many of the wins come from the opponent just not knowing what my deck does.
It does hurt! We need to switch over to beats against them. I haven't had much success, however, the Blood Artists are helpful. They are sacking eldrazi tokens all the time. I think it's reasonable for our gameplan to just clutter the board up with guys and look to drain them out for the win.
In other notes, I've switched back to the CC version of the deck. Grisly salvage is good, but it actually makes us slower in most games. It opens us up to die to fast decks like burn or infect and is harder to get the mana sorted out needing WW or BG on turn two. I know some of you mentioned this before. Collected Company gives us card advantage in the best way. I'll never cut it from this deck again.
On January 1st at FNM, I went 4-1 with the deck. My only loss coming from U/R Twin. In that game, I actually had the win on board, with Anafenza, Cutthroat, and an Aristocrat but was tapped out. I failed to see that I could have convoked these three to Return to the Ranks for X=1 and bring back the last combo piece. He SplinterTwinned the next turn for game 3.
Here's what I've been playing with. Just added the Chord of Calling and I've only used it twice when I have played. The mana cost is pretty steep with GGG, but it works great when I can grab Melira for infect or a missing piece for the combo. Might even add one Kitchen Finks so I could grab that if I have an Anafenza and a sac outlet out.
Also the Chalice of the Void on the sideboard is amazing. Set it for 1 against burn, infect or affinity. Also setting it for 2 is great. It counters all our creature spells, but a ton of theirs too and we can just Rally or Return our guys out of the graveyard.
Playing around with an idea of adding more one off creatures like Kataki, War's Wage or other ones that kill decks to the sideboard and adding 4x Chord of Calling to get them in. But at this point I'm not sure if I should just play Abzan Company.
Where does this deck stand now that Twin and Bloom are gone? I'm thinking about switching over to this from UW control because my tron MU is terrible; how does this deck fare against tron?
I think we are much better favored now. If they Karn, we sac whatever they target in response. If they O-Stone, it puts everything into our graveyard. Ugin is the hard one. But theoretically, we can sac our board in response to their minus. Overall, I think tron is highly in our favor. They can't even counter our reanimation spells in the late game.
The only matchups I've had serious issues with are Goryo's Vengeance and Restore Balance. But most decks without counterspells have this issue.
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Modern Build BWGRallyFenzaGWB Current Record (Paper) 18W - 11L - 1D
I'll let others chime in on how the deck currently sits since I haven't been playing it recently, but the tron match up is rough (maybe 40/60 G1). The sideboard can certainly help quite a bit. Some number of Fulminator Mages, Stony Silence (or Kataki, War's Wage) can help. Adding in Ghost Quarters is a solid plan as well. The biggest problem with Tron is if they get a T3 Karn / T4 Ulamog. The deck just really doesn't have a great answer to that (Thoughtseize out of the board). Additionally, adding in a more aggressive sac outlet like Bloodthrone Vampire could be useful to add additional pressure through combat. Overall I was 50/50 against tron, but that was a small sample size (4 or 5 matches total) and it always felt rough.
With Twin and Bloom gone, the deck can become a little less interactive (all in on the combo). The deck plays a similar game plan to the Abzan Company decks, but I actually like this build better simply because it has a great top deck thanks to the lack of mana dorks (personal preference, but hitting birds off of Collected Company feels bad).
@Matt: Highly Favored vs Tron? o__O I'm curious to see what list you're running right now.
Sac in response to exile does work if we have an outlet down and they target a creature, yes. However, I think the optimal play may be for Karn to exile a white land and keep us off of our high-impact four drops, CoCo and Rally for a couple turns due to our relatively low land count. I've had this happen several games and it left me durdling a bit as I hoped to top-deck the infinite combo.. which didn't work out and gave Tron enough time put out another threat and finish taking over the game. Maybe I just got especially unlucky, though.
I'll try it out some more. I don't think there's much room for Ghost Quarter in the main as we're already strained between GB, GG, and WW not to mention BB for those trying to run Fulminator... running any significant amount of grey land sounds like a little much for our mana needs. Plus, with the need to hit 4+ mana sac'ing a land seems like it might slow us down as much as it'd slow them down.
More aggro via Bloodthrone Vampire is an interesting direction, though I think one achilles heal of the deck is when people realize they can remove a sac outlet at instant speed to shut down the infinite drain combo until you can recur the outlet or play another one. I only run 2x Cartel Aristocrats but I think they pull their weight in that even against a versed opponent who's gunning for the sac outlet the protection helps keep your gameplan going, plus they enable valuable 2-for-1 chump blocks.
In other news it's nice to see that some of the Eldrazi decks are down-playing or entirely removing the grave-hate processing aspect in favor of running more fatties via heartless summoning etc. This is probably OK for us as they generally lack evasion other than Reality Smasher, making them good for our chump-block plan.
Additionally, the rise in infect (and to a lesser extent affinity) might be a good reason to reconsider running 1-2x Melira mainboard (or at least side!) for anyone who hasn't done so yet.
@Matt: Highly Favored vs Tron? o__O I'm curious to see what list you're running right now.
Sac in response to exile does work if we have an outlet down and they target a creature, yes. However, I think the optimal play may be for Karn to exile a white land and keep us off of our high-impact four drops, CoCo and Rally for a couple turns due to our relatively low land count. I've had this happen several games and it left me durdling a bit as I hoped to top-deck the infinite combo.. which didn't work out and gave Tron enough time put out another threat and finish taking over the game. Maybe I just got especially unlucky, though.
I'll try it out some more. I don't think there's much room for Ghost Quarter in the main as we're already strained between GB, GG, and WW not to mention BB for those trying to run Fulminator... running any significant amount of grey land sounds like a little much for our mana needs. Plus, with the need to hit 4+ mana sac'ing a land seems like it might slow us down as much as it'd slow them down.
More aggro via Bloodthrone Vampire is an interesting direction, though I think one achilles heal of the deck is when people realize they can remove a sac outlet at instant speed to shut down the drain combo until you can recur the outlet or play another one. I only run 2x Cartel Aristocrats but I think they pull their weight in that even against a versed opponent who's gunning for the sac outlet the protection helps keep your gameplan going, plus they enable valuable 2-for-1 chump blocks.
In other news it's nice to see that some of the Eldrazi decks are down-playing or entirely removing the grave-hate processing aspect in favor of running more fatties via heartless summoning etc. This is probably OK for us as they generally lack evasion other than Reality Smasher, making them good for our chump-block plan.
Additionally, the rise in infect (and to a lesser extent affinity) might be a good reason to reconsider running 1-2x Melira mainboard (or at least side!) for anyone who hasn't done so yet.
Reading through my response now, I should have added a paragraph break. I meant we are more favored in general now that twin and bloom are slowed/gone. Then I went on to explain about our tron matchup. To be honest, I think we are close to 50/50 on tron, but I haven't had a ton of games against them yet. No one in my meta plays it for some reason. However, if you think about it, what sideboard hate does tron have against us? They need to hit turn 3 tron or they can die to combo on turn 4. Pyroclasm can actually help us in some situations Wait, does tron play relic? I don't think they do normally, right?
I'm currently running 1x Melira 3x Anafenza in the main and might go to 2x Melira and 2x Anafenza soon depending on how much infect I see. It's a good thing to keep in mind.
Bloodthrone was played in SaffronOlive's original list. However, I don't know if we can go up to 8 sac outlets. It's possible we could trim some numbers to allow 4x Seer, 2x Aristocrat, and 2x Bloodthrone. If I had this deck on MTGO, I'd be grinding all this out and see what sticks, but I'm not there yet.
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Modern Build BWGRallyFenzaGWB Current Record (Paper) 18W - 11L - 1D
My suggestion for Bloodthrone is only if the deck needs to become more aggressive and actually attack our opponent (such as tron... possibly). For the most part I'd consider Cartel Aristocrat strictly better since the appeal of the deck is that it can just simply clog up the ground and win without even attacking.
Tron can sometimes pack Relic, though I don't think it is common. Torpor Orb is another one that I've had sided in against me which is really annoying until you find a pridemage. The biggest thing is keeping them off of Karn / Newlamog. Ugin is annoying, but rarely do we not have a sac outlet. We don't really care about Wurmcoil, and should finish out the game before something like Emrakul makes an appearance. For specific SB hate, I'd say Thoughtseize and Stony Silence (shutting down expedition map) are more important. Fulminator Mage is great, but the mana constraints on this deck are real and it is usually best as a 4 of in that match up.
I have experimented with both and they are both fine, but borderline win-more. I would definitely recommend trying them out though. I think back on page 1 I posted a list with both Flip Lili and Grim. It did reasonably well online and at my LGS. With Twin out of the way, it may be safer to try out those types of 3 drops.
I've goldfished Cauldron Haze in place of Safehold Elite but I didn't feel like it added that much relative to its drop in CoCo consistency as a non-creature. I'd be curious to hear if anyone else has had success with it, though.
Once again it looks like the Eldrazi presence has been a little overhyped, which is great for us in terms of grave hate. With that said linear aggro swarm decks are everywhere. Have people updated their builds to reflect this in the last month? For reference my build is here.
I find myself siding out 1-2x Eternal Witness pretty frequently. Getting CoCo back to run successive T4, T5 CoCo is obviously tremendously high value regardless of whether it finds the infinite and can be backbreaking in grindier match ups but against aggro you're not guaranteed a T4 let alone a T5, so Witness can feel a little win-more.. So I'm on the fence about how many spots (if any) Witness deserves in the main right now.
I'm going to try running 2x -> 1x Eternal Witness and moving 1x Lingering Souls to the main, then bulking up on a third Stony Silence in the board. Other options are to go from 3x Safehold Elite, 2x Kitchen Finks to 2x Safehold Elite, 3x Kitchen Finks, at the risk of further devaluing Return to the Ranks. Finks is such an all-star against aggro even outside of the infinite that I could definitely see running 3x, but unfortunately it lacks reach. Is Affinity + Delver common enough that 1x or even 2x MB Lingering Souls is justified? Or would additional copies of Finks do enough against aggro while also keeping CoCo's hit rate up + acting as an infinite piece?
Alternatively has anyone had success stalling long enough to get Wrath of God online? The prevailing opinion seems to be to run Souls over Wrath but I need to do some more testing here.
I will be stress testing options against Affinity & Tron here in the next week, trying to fine tune the optimal board strategy for each. I'll try to report back soon.
Just built this as my first deck on MTGO. Excited to start testing it, I will edit this post with my first few matches today. It is still a WIP as far as purchases go so I am running a few cheaper lands and a limited sideboard. I will complete the deck with fetches and another collected company + better sideboard with my next paycheck. For now the core is there and I am confident enough to start testing it. Eventually I would like my plan against eldrazi to be 4 thoughtseize and two surgical extraction in the sideboard along with 3 ghost quarters main.
Edit 1: After day 1 of testing, I beat burn and zoo with ease, and just got pummeled hard by U/R delver and Grixis Control. I think mostly it was due to mulligans for lack of or not the right color lands, but there was definitely some problems against counterspells and bounce spells.
In the face of mana mulliganing issues I would up your number of Fetches if possible, the stock lists runs 9. If you're on a budget restraint I would fill out the playset of Windswept Heaths at the absolute minimum.
You can run the deck on 6-7x Sac Outlets, the 3rd/4th Cartel Aristocrats are flexible IMO. Personally I would add two more Rally effects here.
With the amount of linear aggro around I think you could stand to run Finks in the main instead of the side.
I would also run a 3rd Path in the SB over Murderous Cut. We don't really want to delve our grave away, and the exile effect of Path is great.
How has Liliana performed for you in various matchups? I'm interested in as much data as you can give. I'm torn, on one hand she's a (potential) Rally effect stapled to a body, which makes her more compatible with CoCo. Best case scenario has her played off of CoCo, sac something, get a 2/2 zombie, return a 3-drop creature to the field immediately. That's a decent amount of potential value. On the other hand the BB casting cost is a little tight in a deck that wants to hit WW & GG, and even if you do cast her she really needs a sac outlet + fodder on hand to safely/quickly flip: it would feel really bad to pay 3 mana to see her get bolted without getting any value out.
For that matter even without fulminator 1x Wooded Bastion might not be a bad idea to cover both Witness and Anafenza.
Edit: the more I think about it the less ok I am with Dryad succumbing to bolt so I've swapped it with Wooded Bastion for now.
Also, I'm sure most of you have been keeping an eye on the new Bx Eldrazi Processor decks that have popped up in the last couple weeks. Expectations range from them redefining Modern's midrange game to them being somewhat of a fad, but either way this deck is terrible news for us, as it's pre-boarded to hate on our graveyard strategy very hard. Anyone have experience against one of these decks yet? Advice? Any new sideboard tech needed? If anything this has further convinced me that it's unwise to go all-in on the graveyard right now.
RE Anafenza / Melira, I had 2 copies of Melira in the side and never felt like she was needed in the main, but the infinite bolster loop is pretty powerful. IF I were to main deck both, I'd probably start with 2/2, possibly going to a 3/2 (biased towards Anafenza) if I really wanted to see that combo often.
Sideboard (15)
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Fulminator Mage
2x Lingering Souls
2x Path to Exile
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Stony Silence
2x Thoughtseize
3x Tidehollow Sculler
I'm adding a Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to try to hit double black in what's otherwise a WW / GG deck. I'm a little concerned but recursive LD does sound pretty brutal so I think it's worth a shot. I'll report back after testing.
4 Viscera Seer
2 Cartel Aristocrat
2 Melira, Sylvok outcast
2 Anafenza, Kin-Tree spirit
4 Satyr Wayfinder
3 Zulaport Cutthroat
3 Blood Artist
4 Safehold Elite
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Spellskite
1 Eternal Witness
Spells (12):
4 Collected Company
3 Return to the Ranks
4 Rally the Ancestors
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
3 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Godless Shrine
2 Temple Garden
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Isolated Chapel
4 Toughtseize
2 Path to Exile
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Lone Missionary
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Voice of Resurgence
3 Stony Silence
Went 3-1 on my first FNM, felt a bit unlucky there. On that night there were more grindy decks and in that meta this deck is great.
Yesterday I went 3-1 in a small tourney (with good players though).
Beat Grixis Twin by bluffing decay and path the whole game while never having anything. If he knew my decklist I would have been pretty dead. Killed him when he tapped out for a pestermite and Keranos (not a good card vs us). Got a lot of value out of him not knowing how to play against this deck and being to afraid of removal to combo off.
Lost to naya zoo. Combod off first game in response to a fetch. Then get beat down by knights, goyfs and especially oozes 2 games in a row.
Won from Grishoalbranned. Lost first game. He fizzled the second game and went all in on T1 blood moon game 3 but I had 2 basics in hand and together with double toughtseize kept him off the combo. Bad matchup, was lucky.
Won from GW Hatebears G1 I combo off with Melira. G2 I mull to 6 and keep a very medium hand, then draw nothing but land so lose. G3 he gets a Scooze active, I have the combo on board with Anafenza this time but can't go for it as long as he has the ooze and a green mana. And then on my end step he taps out to cycle a Canopy and I win (he didn't realize I could combo off anafenza as well). Very lucky as he shows me the Linvala in his hand.
All in all I feel too many of the wins come from the opponent just not knowing what my deck does.
In other notes, I've switched back to the CC version of the deck. Grisly salvage is good, but it actually makes us slower in most games. It opens us up to die to fast decks like burn or infect and is harder to get the mana sorted out needing WW or BG on turn two. I know some of you mentioned this before. Collected Company gives us card advantage in the best way. I'll never cut it from this deck again.
On January 1st at FNM, I went 4-1 with the deck. My only loss coming from U/R Twin. In that game, I actually had the win on board, with Anafenza, Cutthroat, and an Aristocrat but was tapped out. I failed to see that I could have convoked these three to Return to the Ranks for X=1 and bring back the last combo piece. He SplinterTwinned the next turn for game 3.
Anyone else have reports? Here's my current list:
4 Viscera Seer
2 Cartel Aristocrat
1 Melira, Sylvok outcast
3 Anafenza, Kin-Tree spirit
4 Satyr Wayfinder
4 Zulaport Cutthroat
4 Blood Artist
4 Safehold Elite
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Eternal Witness
4 Collected Company
3 Return to the Ranks
4 Rally the Ancestors
Lands (20):
1 Forest
2 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
2 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Godless Shrine
2 Temple Garden
2 Overgrown Tomb
4 Guttural Response
4 Lone Missionary
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Darkblast
2 Spellskite
BWGRallyFenzaGWB
Current Record (Paper)
18W - 11L - 1D
Also the Chalice of the Void on the sideboard is amazing. Set it for 1 against burn, infect or affinity. Also setting it for 2 is great. It counters all our creature spells, but a ton of theirs too and we can just Rally or Return our guys out of the graveyard.
Playing around with an idea of adding more one off creatures like Kataki, War's Wage or other ones that kill decks to the sideboard and adding 4x Chord of Calling to get them in. But at this point I'm not sure if I should just play Abzan Company.
2 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
4 Blood Artist
3 Cartel Aristocrat
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
4 Safehold Elite
4 Satyr Wayfinder
4 Viscera Seer
4 Zulaport Cutthroat
Spells (13):
4 Return to the Ranks
2 Chord of Calling
4 Collected Company
3 Rally the Ancestors
1 Forest
2 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Plains
3 Swamp
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Duress
4 Path to Eile
1 Qasali Pridemage
4 Thoughtseize
The only matchups I've had serious issues with are Goryo's Vengeance and Restore Balance. But most decks without counterspells have this issue.
BWGRallyFenzaGWB
Current Record (Paper)
18W - 11L - 1D
With Twin and Bloom gone, the deck can become a little less interactive (all in on the combo). The deck plays a similar game plan to the Abzan Company decks, but I actually like this build better simply because it has a great top deck thanks to the lack of mana dorks (personal preference, but hitting birds off of Collected Company feels bad).
Sac in response to exile does work if we have an outlet down and they target a creature, yes. However, I think the optimal play may be for Karn to exile a white land and keep us off of our high-impact four drops, CoCo and Rally for a couple turns due to our relatively low land count. I've had this happen several games and it left me durdling a bit as I hoped to top-deck the infinite combo.. which didn't work out and gave Tron enough time put out another threat and finish taking over the game. Maybe I just got especially unlucky, though.
I'll try it out some more. I don't think there's much room for Ghost Quarter in the main as we're already strained between GB, GG, and WW not to mention BB for those trying to run Fulminator... running any significant amount of grey land sounds like a little much for our mana needs. Plus, with the need to hit 4+ mana sac'ing a land seems like it might slow us down as much as it'd slow them down.
More aggro via Bloodthrone Vampire is an interesting direction, though I think one achilles heal of the deck is when people realize they can remove a sac outlet at instant speed to shut down the infinite drain combo until you can recur the outlet or play another one. I only run 2x Cartel Aristocrats but I think they pull their weight in that even against a versed opponent who's gunning for the sac outlet the protection helps keep your gameplan going, plus they enable valuable 2-for-1 chump blocks.
In other news it's nice to see that some of the Eldrazi decks are down-playing or entirely removing the grave-hate processing aspect in favor of running more fatties via heartless summoning etc. This is probably OK for us as they generally lack evasion other than Reality Smasher, making them good for our chump-block plan.
Additionally, the rise in infect (and to a lesser extent affinity) might be a good reason to reconsider running 1-2x Melira mainboard (or at least side!) for anyone who hasn't done so yet.
Reading through my response now, I should have added a paragraph break. I meant we are more favored in general now that twin and bloom are slowed/gone. Then I went on to explain about our tron matchup. To be honest, I think we are close to 50/50 on tron, but I haven't had a ton of games against them yet. No one in my meta plays it for some reason. However, if you think about it, what sideboard hate does tron have against us? They need to hit turn 3 tron or they can die to combo on turn 4. Pyroclasm can actually help us in some situations Wait, does tron play relic? I don't think they do normally, right?
I'm currently running 1x Melira 3x Anafenza in the main and might go to 2x Melira and 2x Anafenza soon depending on how much infect I see. It's a good thing to keep in mind.
Bloodthrone was played in SaffronOlive's original list. However, I don't know if we can go up to 8 sac outlets. It's possible we could trim some numbers to allow 4x Seer, 2x Aristocrat, and 2x Bloodthrone. If I had this deck on MTGO, I'd be grinding all this out and see what sticks, but I'm not there yet.
BWGRallyFenzaGWB
Current Record (Paper)
18W - 11L - 1D
Tron can sometimes pack Relic, though I don't think it is common. Torpor Orb is another one that I've had sided in against me which is really annoying until you find a pridemage. The biggest thing is keeping them off of Karn / Newlamog. Ugin is annoying, but rarely do we not have a sac outlet. We don't really care about Wurmcoil, and should finish out the game before something like Emrakul makes an appearance. For specific SB hate, I'd say Thoughtseize and Stony Silence (shutting down expedition map) are more important. Fulminator Mage is great, but the mana constraints on this deck are real and it is usually best as a 4 of in that match up.
It doesn't allow you to go infinite, but I guess it gets you a ton of blood artist/cutthroat triggers?
Once again it looks like the Eldrazi presence has been a little overhyped, which is great for us in terms of grave hate. With that said linear aggro swarm decks are everywhere. Have people updated their builds to reflect this in the last month? For reference my build is here.
I find myself siding out 1-2x Eternal Witness pretty frequently. Getting CoCo back to run successive T4, T5 CoCo is obviously tremendously high value regardless of whether it finds the infinite and can be backbreaking in grindier match ups but against aggro you're not guaranteed a T4 let alone a T5, so Witness can feel a little win-more.. So I'm on the fence about how many spots (if any) Witness deserves in the main right now.
I'm going to try running 2x -> 1x Eternal Witness and moving 1x Lingering Souls to the main, then bulking up on a third Stony Silence in the board. Other options are to go from 3x Safehold Elite, 2x Kitchen Finks to 2x Safehold Elite, 3x Kitchen Finks, at the risk of further devaluing Return to the Ranks. Finks is such an all-star against aggro even outside of the infinite that I could definitely see running 3x, but unfortunately it lacks reach. Is Affinity + Delver common enough that 1x or even 2x MB Lingering Souls is justified? Or would additional copies of Finks do enough against aggro while also keeping CoCo's hit rate up + acting as an infinite piece?
Alternatively has anyone had success stalling long enough to get Wrath of God online? The prevailing opinion seems to be to run Souls over Wrath but I need to do some more testing here.
I will be stress testing options against Affinity & Tron here in the next week, trying to fine tune the optimal board strategy for each. I'll try to report back soon.
Edit 1: After day 1 of testing, I beat burn and zoo with ease, and just got pummeled hard by U/R delver and Grixis Control. I think mostly it was due to mulligans for lack of or not the right color lands, but there was definitely some problems against counterspells and bounce spells.
You can run the deck on 6-7x Sac Outlets, the 3rd/4th Cartel Aristocrats are flexible IMO. Personally I would add two more Rally effects here.
With the amount of linear aggro around I think you could stand to run Finks in the main instead of the side.
I would also run a 3rd Path in the SB over Murderous Cut. We don't really want to delve our grave away, and the exile effect of Path is great.
How has Liliana performed for you in various matchups? I'm interested in as much data as you can give. I'm torn, on one hand she's a (potential) Rally effect stapled to a body, which makes her more compatible with CoCo. Best case scenario has her played off of CoCo, sac something, get a 2/2 zombie, return a 3-drop creature to the field immediately. That's a decent amount of potential value. On the other hand the BB casting cost is a little tight in a deck that wants to hit WW & GG, and even if you do cast her she really needs a sac outlet + fodder on hand to safely/quickly flip: it would feel really bad to pay 3 mana to see her get bolted without getting any value out.