I looked through the deck in your signature and i have some question about some cards if you don't mind me asking
1. Can you really afford a [card]sacred foudry[/card in the deck? I would be very hesitant of playing non-combo lands that don't produce green.
2. What's the reasoning for playing the stingscourger in the side? Feels like a slightly weak card or am i missing something?
3. I can see how fiery justice could be good, but is it really better than say add a black fetch and orzhov pontiff to the side instead? Being a creature seems so much better.
4. This is more general. But from my experience decks like these have a rough time against dedicated control decks that look to 2 for 1 and wrath etch. I would try to add multiple voice of resurgence and maybe even a few tireless trackerto my sideboard and swap out some combo pieces to try shore up those matchups. What do you think about this?
5. I also feel that the big mana decks can be rough. Have you considered magus of the moon for those decks?
Sorry for all the messages, but as you probably can tell I'm pretty interested in knowing more about this archetype!
First: I play it because I don't like the lack of flex slots in GW or having to cut to 21/22 lands. My version lets me play both flex slots and 23 lands because I can play 4 wolf runs. That and I like Fiery Justice and Stingscourger and Lavamancer, since they give you a pretty substantial edge in the mirror where people are casting rampant growth for you with paths.
1) 17 green sources has been sufficient with 12 dudes that can make more green off of one. The second white source is pretty important to the game plan of needing to cast flickerwisp, vizier, rallier, and sometimes multiples in a turn, and a lot of times perfect mana is Garden+Foundry+dork. It has been OK so far. I could see the argument for it being a Fire-Lit Thicket if playing Kiki. Remember that Rallier fixes mana a lot of times, so having all your color combos being fetchable and having lots of fetchables is important.
2) Stingscourger enables revolt and can be rallied every turn you have a rallier. Generally it's nice having a catch all answer to any problem creature, even if it's temporary. I do not like path to exile or similar removal plans post-board - always felt like they compromise your combo too much and turn you into a crappy midrange deck. I have liked it thus far. Generally it enables us to gain tempo vs. decks threatening our life total while also dealing with hate creatures, all while being hittable off collected company and a low CMC chord target.
In a lot of matchups post-board it becomes more about not losing before we achieve critical mass and get ahead on board, and stingscourger is much better at this than removal spells.
3) My experience has been that the modern format is a lot more about Goyf, shadows and X/2s than it is about X/1s. Fiery Justice kills both goyfs and death shadows and x/2s.
Fiery Justice is a lot stronger vs. merfolk and elves, where pontiff killing 2 mana dorks is not nearly as impactful as fiery justice killing 3 dorks and an elvish archdruid or 2 lords and a silvergill adept.
But being both a hate card vs. DSJ and dealing with most aggro matchups brutally is a unique combination.
Best fiery justice play: Opp board is 2 glimmervoids, ornithopter, steel overseer and vault skirge. Fiery justice 5-for-1's by sweeping his entire board.
4) I have not had much trouble vs. dedicated midrange / removal heavy decks. They tend to struggle to beat the value plan without some form of dedicated hate (e.g. Cage, Leyline, Flaying tendrils) and we are able to win the game without committing to the board very much.
This is something I really love about Kessig Wolf Run, as it is a combo outlet that just sits on board being threatening. vs. a control deck I'll have a line of play like:
Play a druid, see if I get to untap with it. If they kill the druid, I rally it back and pass turn, forcing them to have removal again or 1-for-1 me with a wrath. If I get to untap they die, and if not I just crash with a wolf runned rallier until they make me stop by removing it.
Selfless Spirit is ridiculous game against most wraths and Rallier with selfless spirit is absurd. I have literally rallied the thing back 3 times until someone pathed it in my turn then untapped and verdicted to kill a hierarch and a rallier. I untapped and witnessed back the spirit and played it.
Post board, non-decay decks really struggle to beat a resolved evolutionary leap. My win rate vs. blue control historically is 100% if I resolve a leap (something like 5 games vs. Nahiri back when I was running Abzan company).
5) I am 2-0 vs. tron and 2-0 vs. eldrazi tron, but mistakes were made in all those games. My feeling is that we are about evenly matched with big mana by simply racing.
I have definitely considered magus. I only own one and the nonbo of shutting off one of my combo angles is not something I like. If I ran townships instead of wolf runs I would consider magus viable but even then township is one method of beating tron by beats.
I find mirror entity gives me a pretty substantial edge vs. those decks as I can just kill them on turn 4 or 5 if they don't have a sweeper. I have killed through a worldbreaker and a path on turn 5 by simply activating mirror entity for 5 and crashing.
My philosophy vs. those decks is: Force them to have both t3 interaction and T4-5 sweeper or bomb to have any chance of winning. Sometimes they have it and sometimes they don't. The decks are so streamlined they can't always have one of 4-6 interactive spells and a bomb.
I jammed 7 test games pre and post boarded vs. GW Tron the other day and I won 5/7 of them (4 sideboard games). Woulda been basically dead even if he had played perfectly as I should have lost one more game and could have easily lost another.
No worries about the questions. Fully admit that my design may not be perfect but it's been pretty good. 14-3-1 in the last 6-7 FNMs at least.
I notice no one seem to play the card oath of nissa in their lists. Any reason why? It's close to Ponder in a deck with so many creatures and it let you shave a land. It's also pretty good with renegade rallier since if you draw 2 and legend rule one you can always get it back with the rallier. It's also neat to be able to get it back that way through a grafdigger's cage.
Personally have definitely considered it, just unsure whether I want to essentially shave 2 fetchable lands and 2 coco hits to fit them. would need to shave 2 mana dorks and two shocklands (or 1 horizon canopy and 1 shock), and this would cut my ability to t1 dork which reduces T3 coco and # of bodies for mirror entity and mana amount for kessig, etc.
Glad you liked rallier Definitely strong vs. unfair decks -- sometimes just the ramp is enough to get ahead.
I have really seriously considered Lili heretical healer. she is super duper strong as the second value creature. The issue with her is she is going to be best in a shell with a sac outlet and if you're playing a sac outlet you might as well play finks combo. It's tough to say.
She also screws with the manabase a lot. It almost surely means cutting back on horizon canopies. I have no idea how you'd build a manabase that wants to go heavy on flip lily. It would be awkward. It is possible she's the right card for a Leap-based vizier combo deck (e.g. that plays leap instead of chord).
Re: Lavamancer - I would go up to 9 fetches minimum if playing a second lavamancer if you are not already there. I have been super happy with one. The card is really great in modern right now despite it seeming like it'd be bad. There are still a number of decks that auto lose to a t1 grim lavamancer. It is definitely a big draw to red for me being able to play creature interaction that's so cheap.
I think 9 fetches is probably best if you're playing 4x Rallier. Fetches are just the easiest way to turn on revolt, although Horizon Canopy does a decent job too. Also Lavamancer is a pretty tempting reason to consider the red splash, but I prefer to play 4x Township
Here's my updated list btw:
I've been OK with 8 fetches but I can see the reasoning.
I like your list a lot. I had an out there idea the other day that you may want to consider, with 4 rallier and all those fetches -- you may want to try playing a Scattered Groves in lieu of the 3rd temple garden. ETB tapped is awkward but you have a lot of situations where you could cycle it, and because you only have 7 1drops a lot of times you will be able to fetch for a grove on turn 1.
I really like the second storm hate card. It's super nice to just draw one. Your board looks pretty rock solid to me either way though.
With your high revolt count you may also want to consider trying a deadeye harpooner. It was very good for me.
Large non-trampling creatures are typically easy. You take the damage until you can put down a board they can't swing into. With Abzan it's quite easy -- a finks, a couple dorks and a township is a scary board to swing into. With Naya it's tougher, but mostly I look to double block, threaten a coco/chord blowout, or wolf run activation that allows me to trade.
My Naya build is somewhat unique in that I have a Lavamancer to kill bobs and opposing druids, so I'll try to talk mostly about the main build - abzan.
Kiki chord's combo is very slow. Abzan company has an abundance of turn 4 kills and several routes to a t3 kill, and will generally combo by turn 5 through disruption in a lot of games. Kiki chord is extremely lucky to combo turn 5 and will rarely be able to do so through disruption, because they run less acceleration and no coco.
You can out-value and race a Bob. It's not ideal, but it's achievable. Township is the card that lets you win there. Focus on generating card advantage--chord for witness to get a coco back instead of jamming for the combo. The only card you should live in fear of is Scavenging Ooze. That's just something you need to decide - personally if I were playing Abzan I would just try to dodge ooze right now. It's not incredibly popular in main decks. If it gets more popular again, you probably jam a fiend hunter or something again.
As an side, you do not want to play this deck without horizon canopies. 2 is the bare minimum imho. I am considering 4.
Some people do play a single fiend hunter in the main to act as removal.
It's slightly better for the builds that run viscera seer.
It's like having access to 5-9 semi removal spells because of your chords/coco's.
I found the 1/3 body a bit fragile and low impact, but it's good in some matchups.
Posting one last time this week for last minute input. After watching the Open this weekend, I am thoroughly convinced that the issue Company is having as a deck is that it's going too hard on the combo. A worthy mistake to make, the combos are what make the deck powerful, but we need aggro to open the way for combo. That said, the MD is basically non-negotiable, but input on the side is welcome:
Yes, it's 61 cards, but I'm actually pretty happy with that since I wanted less dorks and less mana flooding. This lets me play 30 mana sources and still feel like I've "cut" on them.
Some of the logic revolves around the fact that T2 Voice has always been one of the strongest things this deck has to offer; Rallier + Finks + Voice + EWit creatues a huge "sticky creatures" package that opponents must face down and spend removal on. This makes things like T3 and T4 Druid better overall since the early removal is more likely to hit a non-druid creature because reasons. I'd like the 1x Choke in the side to be 2x Choke, but I felt like I needed to make a concession to Tron, so the 2nd Choke became a Fulminator Mage. Looking at the board again, I'm not sure I really want Pontiff, should I take him out and put Choke #2 back in? Rec Sage vs Pridemage #2 - a worthy consideration, especially considering that Pridemage brings Exalted triggers if he's not killing Cages.
I've done a bit of testing with this list online, and I am fairly happy with it. The prime example being that I went up against a Jeskai Control list yesterday and ended up shaving down to 0 Nobles and 2 Druids. I beat my opponent's face in with Voices, Elemental Tokens, and Ralliers. Combo was never an option and, frankly, I didn't need it. My opponent hit me with Supreme Verdict at one point and I had 4 creatures on the board ready to attack before I untapped. Slow up on the combo, get em when the getting is good with beats.
I just cannot get on board with that design. I think you're expecting way more control than there is likely to be and your approach is too aggressive in the other direction. 5 CMC 1 spells leaves you with an incredibly slow curve and not much acceleration. I could see discard decks stalling you at 2 mana often enough.
I hope it works out for you but I think you're giving up what makes the deck tick and trying to play a mediocre version of kiki chord.
It's a stellar example of how you can go all-in on the combo but have a stellar backup beatdown plan in the same deck without throwing out the explosiveness of mana creatures.
Trying to wrap my head around your deck and give some reasonable sideboard feedback, here's what I think:
1) Fulminator mage is a terrible singleton. I would just cut it if you aren't going to run 2-3.
2) I would consider swapping 2 paths for 2 maelstrom pulse. I think people are going too all-in on cheap interaction. when the best deck in the format is super vulnerable to maelstrom pulse is a good time to be playing them and it also kills hate pieces. There have been a LOT of leyline of the void lately and will likely be more.
3) Choke feels just unnecessarily aggressively anti-blue and a singleton you have very little likelihood of finding. I would consider replacing it with literally anything.
I got the orzohv pontiff to replace minister and picked up two rhonas, the indomitable for the classic in day two. I need horizon canopies but can't afford them yet.
I won against grixis death shadow, eldrazi tron, bant eldrazi, titanshift, RW prison, esper control.
Prison I have reps against and feels very easy to me. I bring in rallier to make sure I can fetch my basics on turn 2 and ramp into my chord/cocos. I beat death shadow by going wider then him. I raced eldrazi tron easily. The other matches felt fine. I knew I wasn't on a very tuned list but it was okay. i felt like I was in control all these games. My combo turns were around T4-6 usually.
I lost to Jund death shadow, pox, and the mirror (no ballistas two rhonas). traverse the ulvenwald let Jund keep pace with my threat width. Pox is horrible and I just rolled over and died. The mirror had natural T3 on me both games.
Take aways from day one:
3 recruiter/3 witness is wrong, I needed to tune my numbers to probably 2/4. Viscera seer felt mediocre all day long - I always was unhappy to see it. It's just very fragile. 28 creatures for company (not counting ballistas here) feels weak, but I am used to elves. I muligained a ton because of awkward openers flush with 3-4 drops and no dorks. Going forward I'm going to get canopies if they ever dip and I'll be drop I dropping probably? Another guy said he was on win collector (mirror in he classic day 2 who also t3'd me twice in a row) and said they were phenomenal all day during the open. He was also 6-3. My plays weren't horrible for the most part but I did get messy with my flip triggers on recruiter and did mess up a few sequences. I'll be going up to 23 lands for sure. Selfless main was to retain board against removal or sweepers which I expected more of. I saw very few bolts outside of the burn decks for the death shadow decks. I'm not sure I even want black. If I keep it it'll be 1 seer 1 tomb with the same fetch base to trigger revolt.
My only turn 3 kill was a devoted druid on T2, then T3 untapped land, tap druid, activate druid, tap druid, tap 3 land, chord for 2 to get vizier and go off with mana to use the ewit in hand to grab chord and go get recruiter to dig to the ballista. It felt amazing and super cheesy since a single creature on two mana is pretty innocent looking. The deck has plenty of routes to victory.
I've found choke to be invaluable throughout my history of playing Abzan Company since blue-based control is such gear shift for us and Choke is one of the pieces that I feel has historically made it a good MU. Like I said, I'd rather it be 2, not 1, and your argument convinces me I need to find a spot to move it up. Especially when the best deck in the format is heavily reliant on Islands, I feel fine with it in the deck, and probably should have never shaved the 2nd one to begin with.
Being stuck on 2 mana is A-ok with me. I can play several turns on 2, the bigger concern would be having the right colors.
2/2 Path/Pulse split sounds good, I might move that direction.
Part of the appeal with Fulminator Mage is with the recursion available and the 1-of is very much so saying "I'd rather just not play against Tron to begin with" while still giving me something relevant to bring in and it has meaningful interaction with Grixis Shadow as well. The deck plays 3 red sources, 3 black sources, and 4 blue sources. Saffi, Rec Sage, and Reveillark all offer paths to destroy multiple lands and choking them off a single color can have huge ramifications on their tempo. It's won me games already, but not so many that I want to go all-in on the land destruction plan, especially with so few black sources of my own. It's also good against oddball situations like blowing up a mountain with exactly 6 Valakut triggers on the stack, another consideration I'd rather avoid but feel like I should have SOMETHING to do should I come up against that.
He made some different choices and going on a 4C build with Retreat Knight combo.
His thoughts in the first 17 min are prettig decent, and yeah, it is GerryT.
I gut feeling says I need to stuck with Abzan build. Finks is great but is it better than Knight? And how about the infi life combo and sb material as Decay, push and tidehollow?
There where a couple of lists that went day 2 and some lists on the top tables of the scg classic.
Cedric's fluff at the end of the stream yesterday resonated with me a lot since it's basically the same thing I've been feeling - and it's why I'm moving to 4x Voice in the main.
The combos are obviously powerful, a T3 kill has GOT to be worth playing in Modern... but something is missing with the deck, that is also obvious. In my experience, the part that has been missing is resilient creatures that put the opponent on the back foot and open the way for combo kills out of nowhere. I have had too many games where they kill something, I reload, they wipe the board, I CoCo, hit a druid and a bird, and draw a Vizier off the top. Without a meaningful way to force our opponent to spend their removal, they can spend the whole game shooting down Druids and Viziers, and never let the combo get off the ground.
There was a single AbzCo deck in the top 32 at the Open yesterday. Elves and Humans made it too, but those are both fundamentally different decks, and thinking about what is different about them that got them here and what is holding AbzCo back, I keep coming back to same thing over and over. Not enough aggro.
We'll see how it goes in Vegas later this week, but for now, I'm sure the direction to move is AWAY from the combo. What we've been missing is the ability to flood the board with creatures that cannot be easily ignored. The deck that DID make it played 3 Voices in the side. I, personally, have always felt that Voice is a card you want in the main or not at all. For me, at least, it's significantly harder to lose a G1 and decide THIS is a MU I want Voice for compared to losing G1 and realizing Voice isn't doing anything for me here.
To further discussion on my sideboard, here's another list, now that I'm looking at it, I'm not so sure I want the Maelstrom Pulses or moving up to 3 Fulminators:
I just keep seeing the same mistakes we made before with this deck.
A streamlined version focused on the combo with a township backup plan does well. It starts losing to tailored midrange/control decks so people respond by pre-sideboarding against midrange decks, then the deck gets mauled by combo/big mana so we try to figure out sideboard plans to beat big mana and wind up with stuff like 4 tidehollow scullers or thoughtseizes.
My conclusion has been that the midrange-control matchup is good enough. You can have a couple sideboard cards but finks, township and 4 witnesses with 3 canopies, you're going to have a reasonable shot against most midrange and control decks if you play well.
Playing mana dorks is what allows us to beat big mana and combo decks, which are MUCH worse matchups game 1.
In short I think a lot of folks are approaching design wrong by aggressively trying to improve our already decent matchups while neglecting our bad matchups.
Edit: Re Gerry T's videos
One of the issues with playing cards like Knight of the Reliquary in these decks is that Knight does not fix the problems inherent in playing mana dorks.
You want your payoff cards for playing dorks to provide card advantage. It's why Abzan with Finks and Witness is better than Kotr builds. It's why GW with Rallier and Witness is better than Kotr builds.
The issue with the Kotr builds is you can much more easily lose to drawing just dorks and knights than you can drawing just dorks and Finks or Dorks and Witnesses. The Knight allows your opponent to kill your baneslayer and leave you with crap. The witness and finks make removal pretty mediocre.
In general I think playing fewer than 7 sources of actual card advantage at 3 CMC is just wrong.
Conceptually this is similar to any other ramp deck. Tron ramps into Ostone / Karn / Ugin that all represent 2+ cards. Scapeshift ramps into Cryptic or Titan. We ramp into Coco, Chord and Witness/Finks. Not exactly the same but conceptually similar.
If your payoff cards die to fatal push you're gonna have a bad time.
I have to agree with Pokken, midrange has never been the issue for Abzan CoCo, CoCo/e-witness/kitchen finks/township mostly suffice to make these MU's even to, with a few dedicated SB slots, favorable for us. The issue with Death's Shadow, which is currently almost the only viable midrange deck, is its hyper efficiency, some games we don't even get the ball rolling because they rip our hand apart and land a fatty leaving us stranded with dorks/uncastable chords etc. In this specific MU Voice are decent but just jamming 4 maindeck has a significant toll on the rest of the MU's since they are mostly very mediocre against a myriad of tier 1/2 decks, specifically combo/big mana decks which tend to be our harder MU's.
Imo the ideal approach is to be very combo oriented game 1 and then adjust your SB according to the expected metagame, this configuration has always given us the best chance to outrace combo and get under big mana decks while keeping a solid aggro/midrange/control MU.
Although I do agree that *something* is missing for this deck to be top tier 1, I can't imagine going midrange is the answer. I'm currently testing a straight Selesnya build, completely dropping the finks combo which frees up a lot of slots. I've been time restricted these past few weeks so unfortunately I have not had the desired time to thoroughly test the build but my current list is actually similar to Felonious Crap's.
The reasoning behind the Mirror Entity as the combo finisher is that it greatly benefits from the ramp the dorks+rallier provide, even if we can't go off and are in the worst case scenario of flooding out with nothing but dorks and lands to rally back, Mirror Entity will be able to take advantage of this scenario ala Gavony, while conveniently still providing the MD LE hate we lose when removing Viscera Seer from our deck. Out of Ballista, Rhonas and Entity I believe he has the most utillity outside of the combo, but there is no denying that Ballista is the cleanest finisher.
4x Rallier let us both be very resilient and efficient when going for the combo which I find crucial due to the Devoted Druid's summoning sickness, whilst also helping us dig for the missing combo pieces in conjunction with the 4x canopy.
The 2x Devout lightcaster are mostly a concession to Grixis DS's current dominance and to take advantage of the straight G/W manabase.
I am a bit skeptical about the 2x Voice since I mostly have only liked them as a 3/4-of due to a single one on the battlefield often being lackluster, but I feel that when we're not going for the combo it is the best creature available to rally back. I have been going back and forth for these last few slots testing a 1x Surgical/1x Tracker split and the like.
The MU which definitely suffers the most due to these changes is Burn, and the 4- Canopy obviously do not help in this aspect which is why I felt the necessity of including Kor Firewalker in the SB even though I have never liked him in the standard abzan coco variants, but bar Skullcrack it is just a massive beating for them.
I feel the rest is self-explanatory, I do have to say that I miss Spellskite and the current Dredge iterations running MD Darkblast make me want to reconsider adding a singleton somewhere in the 75.
I'd consider Lone Missionary over firewalker. Been better for me. They're more inclined to swing at it, which results in you being able to eat it or rally it back. I even had someone searing blaze it for 1 to jam some damage through once Untap, rallier, gg.
I'm (unsurprisingly) a fan of that list too. I really think 4x Rallier is the way to go. Some opinions:
-I like playing 4 Recruiters. With Rallier you can play them out fearlessly even if you're not trying to combo anytime soon. Also consistency is good.
-Mirror Entity vs Waling Ballista. I'm pretty sure most will agree this is preference. I like killing people ASAP regardless of blockers/summoning sickness.
-4x Horizon Canopy. I'd be careful about this. Drawing two or more of them early game can hurt a lot.
-3x Gavony Township. Given the number of dorks this deck plays, colored mana is rarely a problem and supporting the full set of these is very doable and very worth it. I basically want to draw one every game.
-Devout lightcaster. I guess this would be a reason not to play 4x Township. Seems great against Grixis Death's Shadow and decent against Jund, but WWW is brutal.
-Voice of Resurgence. Pokken sold me on Evolutionary Leap as a sideboard card against control and midrange. It completely wrecks decks that lean heavily on spot removal to beat us, which happens to be quite a few of them. You can even get it back with Rallier if someone points an Abrupt Decay at it.
First: I play it because I don't like the lack of flex slots in GW or having to cut to 21/22 lands. My version lets me play both flex slots and 23 lands because I can play 4 wolf runs. That and I like Fiery Justice and Stingscourger and Lavamancer, since they give you a pretty substantial edge in the mirror where people are casting rampant growth for you with paths.
1) 17 green sources has been sufficient with 12 dudes that can make more green off of one. The second white source is pretty important to the game plan of needing to cast flickerwisp, vizier, rallier, and sometimes multiples in a turn, and a lot of times perfect mana is Garden+Foundry+dork. It has been OK so far. I could see the argument for it being a Fire-Lit Thicket if playing Kiki. Remember that Rallier fixes mana a lot of times, so having all your color combos being fetchable and having lots of fetchables is important.
2) Stingscourger enables revolt and can be rallied every turn you have a rallier. Generally it's nice having a catch all answer to any problem creature, even if it's temporary. I do not like path to exile or similar removal plans post-board - always felt like they compromise your combo too much and turn you into a crappy midrange deck. I have liked it thus far. Generally it enables us to gain tempo vs. decks threatening our life total while also dealing with hate creatures, all while being hittable off collected company and a low CMC chord target.
In a lot of matchups post-board it becomes more about not losing before we achieve critical mass and get ahead on board, and stingscourger is much better at this than removal spells.
3) My experience has been that the modern format is a lot more about Goyf, shadows and X/2s than it is about X/1s. Fiery Justice kills both goyfs and death shadows and x/2s.
Fiery Justice is a lot stronger vs. merfolk and elves, where pontiff killing 2 mana dorks is not nearly as impactful as fiery justice killing 3 dorks and an elvish archdruid or 2 lords and a silvergill adept.
But being both a hate card vs. DSJ and dealing with most aggro matchups brutally is a unique combination.
Best fiery justice play: Opp board is 2 glimmervoids, ornithopter, steel overseer and vault skirge. Fiery justice 5-for-1's by sweeping his entire board.
4) I have not had much trouble vs. dedicated midrange / removal heavy decks. They tend to struggle to beat the value plan without some form of dedicated hate (e.g. Cage, Leyline, Flaying tendrils) and we are able to win the game without committing to the board very much.
This is something I really love about Kessig Wolf Run, as it is a combo outlet that just sits on board being threatening. vs. a control deck I'll have a line of play like:
Play a druid, see if I get to untap with it. If they kill the druid, I rally it back and pass turn, forcing them to have removal again or 1-for-1 me with a wrath. If I get to untap they die, and if not I just crash with a wolf runned rallier until they make me stop by removing it.
Selfless Spirit is ridiculous game against most wraths and Rallier with selfless spirit is absurd. I have literally rallied the thing back 3 times until someone pathed it in my turn then untapped and verdicted to kill a hierarch and a rallier. I untapped and witnessed back the spirit and played it.
Post board, non-decay decks really struggle to beat a resolved evolutionary leap. My win rate vs. blue control historically is 100% if I resolve a leap (something like 5 games vs. Nahiri back when I was running Abzan company).
5) I am 2-0 vs. tron and 2-0 vs. eldrazi tron, but mistakes were made in all those games. My feeling is that we are about evenly matched with big mana by simply racing.
I have definitely considered magus. I only own one and the nonbo of shutting off one of my combo angles is not something I like. If I ran townships instead of wolf runs I would consider magus viable but even then township is one method of beating tron by beats.
I find mirror entity gives me a pretty substantial edge vs. those decks as I can just kill them on turn 4 or 5 if they don't have a sweeper. I have killed through a worldbreaker and a path on turn 5 by simply activating mirror entity for 5 and crashing.
My philosophy vs. those decks is: Force them to have both t3 interaction and T4-5 sweeper or bomb to have any chance of winning. Sometimes they have it and sometimes they don't. The decks are so streamlined they can't always have one of 4-6 interactive spells and a bomb.
I jammed 7 test games pre and post boarded vs. GW Tron the other day and I won 5/7 of them (4 sideboard games). Woulda been basically dead even if he had played perfectly as I should have lost one more game and could have easily lost another.
No worries about the questions. Fully admit that my design may not be perfect but it's been pretty good. 14-3-1 in the last 6-7 FNMs at least.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Lots of cascading effects
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I have really seriously considered Lili heretical healer. she is super duper strong as the second value creature. The issue with her is she is going to be best in a shell with a sac outlet and if you're playing a sac outlet you might as well play finks combo. It's tough to say.
She also screws with the manabase a lot. It almost surely means cutting back on horizon canopies. I have no idea how you'd build a manabase that wants to go heavy on flip lily. It would be awkward. It is possible she's the right card for a Leap-based vizier combo deck (e.g. that plays leap instead of chord).
Re: Lavamancer - I would go up to 9 fetches minimum if playing a second lavamancer if you are not already there. I have been super happy with one. The card is really great in modern right now despite it seeming like it'd be bad. There are still a number of decks that auto lose to a t1 grim lavamancer. It is definitely a big draw to red for me being able to play creature interaction that's so cheap.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Here's my updated list btw:
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Devoted Druid
4x Duskwatch Recruiter
4x Vizier of Remedies
1x Selfless Spirit
1x Flickerwisp
4x Eternal Witness
4x Renegade Rallier
1x Walking Ballista
4x Collected Company
4x Windswept Heath
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Misty Rainforest
3x Temple Garden
3x Horizon Canopy
4x Gavony Township
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
2x Lone Missionary
1x Kataki, War's Wage
2x Scavenging Ooze
2x Qasali Pridemage
1x Burrenton Forge-Tender
2x Evolutionary Leap
3x Path to Exile
I'm waffling between 1x Ethersworn Canonist and the third Path in the board, but I think I'm ok with just Eidolon right now.
Modern
Value Town
Amulet Titan
Legacy
4C Loam
My Peasant Cube
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/11667
I like your list a lot. I had an out there idea the other day that you may want to consider, with 4 rallier and all those fetches -- you may want to try playing a Scattered Groves in lieu of the 3rd temple garden. ETB tapped is awkward but you have a lot of situations where you could cycle it, and because you only have 7 1drops a lot of times you will be able to fetch for a grove on turn 1.
I really like the second storm hate card. It's super nice to just draw one. Your board looks pretty rock solid to me either way though.
With your high revolt count you may also want to consider trying a deadeye harpooner. It was very good for me.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Modern
Value Town
Amulet Titan
Legacy
4C Loam
My Peasant Cube
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/11667
My Naya build is somewhat unique in that I have a Lavamancer to kill bobs and opposing druids, so I'll try to talk mostly about the main build - abzan.
Kiki chord's combo is very slow. Abzan company has an abundance of turn 4 kills and several routes to a t3 kill, and will generally combo by turn 5 through disruption in a lot of games. Kiki chord is extremely lucky to combo turn 5 and will rarely be able to do so through disruption, because they run less acceleration and no coco.
You can out-value and race a Bob. It's not ideal, but it's achievable. Township is the card that lets you win there. Focus on generating card advantage--chord for witness to get a coco back instead of jamming for the combo. The only card you should live in fear of is Scavenging Ooze. That's just something you need to decide - personally if I were playing Abzan I would just try to dodge ooze right now. It's not incredibly popular in main decks. If it gets more popular again, you probably jam a fiend hunter or something again.
As an side, you do not want to play this deck without horizon canopies. 2 is the bare minimum imho. I am considering 4.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
It's slightly better for the builds that run viscera seer.
It's like having access to 5-9 semi removal spells because of your chords/coco's.
I found the 1/3 body a bit fragile and low impact, but it's good in some matchups.
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Devoted Druid
Value (17)
4x Voice of Resurgence
4x Kitchen Finks
3x Renegade Rallier
3x Eternal Witness
1x Saffi Eriksdotter
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
Anemic Combo Pieces I'm sad to draw unless I'm killing my opponent (6)
3x Vizier of Remedies
1x Duskwatch Recruiter
1x Viscera Seer
1x Walking Ballista
4x Chord of Calling
4x Collected Company
Land (22)
2x Forest
3x Gavony Township
1x Godless Shrine
3x Horizon Canopy
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Plains
1x Swamp
2x Temple Garden
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Windswept Heath
1x Burrenton Forge-Tender
1x Choke
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Fulminator Mage
1x Orzhov Pontiff
4x Path to Exile
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Reveillark
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Selfless Spirit
Yes, it's 61 cards, but I'm actually pretty happy with that since I wanted less dorks and less mana flooding. This lets me play 30 mana sources and still feel like I've "cut" on them.
Some of the logic revolves around the fact that T2 Voice has always been one of the strongest things this deck has to offer; Rallier + Finks + Voice + EWit creatues a huge "sticky creatures" package that opponents must face down and spend removal on. This makes things like T3 and T4 Druid better overall since the early removal is more likely to hit a non-druid creature because reasons. I'd like the 1x Choke in the side to be 2x Choke, but I felt like I needed to make a concession to Tron, so the 2nd Choke became a Fulminator Mage. Looking at the board again, I'm not sure I really want Pontiff, should I take him out and put Choke #2 back in? Rec Sage vs Pridemage #2 - a worthy consideration, especially considering that Pridemage brings Exalted triggers if he's not killing Cages.
I've done a bit of testing with this list online, and I am fairly happy with it. The prime example being that I went up against a Jeskai Control list yesterday and ended up shaving down to 0 Nobles and 2 Druids. I beat my opponent's face in with Voices, Elemental Tokens, and Ralliers. Combo was never an option and, frankly, I didn't need it. My opponent hit me with Supreme Verdict at one point and I had 4 creatures on the board ready to attack before I untapped. Slow up on the combo, get em when the getting is good with beats.
I hope it works out for you but I think you're giving up what makes the deck tick and trying to play a mediocre version of kiki chord.
I would recommend you try Felonius Carp's GW list from this page:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/tier-1-modern/605889-abzan-company?page=227
It's a stellar example of how you can go all-in on the combo but have a stellar backup beatdown plan in the same deck without throwing out the explosiveness of mana creatures.
-------------------------------------------------------
Trying to wrap my head around your deck and give some reasonable sideboard feedback, here's what I think:
1) Fulminator mage is a terrible singleton. I would just cut it if you aren't going to run 2-3.
2) I would consider swapping 2 paths for 2 maelstrom pulse. I think people are going too all-in on cheap interaction. when the best deck in the format is super vulnerable to maelstrom pulse is a good time to be playing them and it also kills hate pieces. There have been a LOT of leyline of the void lately and will likely be more.
3) Choke feels just unnecessarily aggressively anti-blue and a singleton you have very little likelihood of finding. I would consider replacing it with literally anything.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
2 plains
1 swamp
2 overgrown tomb
2 temple garden
2 brushland
1 gavony township
4 windswept Heath
4 verdant catacombs
1 marsh flats
4 collected company
4 birds of paradise
3 noble hierarch
4 devoted Druid
4 vizier of remedies
2 walking ballista
3 duskwatch recruiter
3 eternal witness
1 selfless spirit
1 scavenging ooze
1 viscera seer
4 kitchen finks
3 voice of resurgence
1 scavenging ooze
1 Kataki, War's wage
1 minister of pain
2 renegade rallier
1 phyrexian revoker
1 tidehollow sculler
2 other cards I never boarded in and can't remember now
I got the orzohv pontiff to replace minister and picked up two rhonas, the indomitable for the classic in day two. I need horizon canopies but can't afford them yet.
I won against grixis death shadow, eldrazi tron, bant eldrazi, titanshift, RW prison, esper control.
Prison I have reps against and feels very easy to me. I bring in rallier to make sure I can fetch my basics on turn 2 and ramp into my chord/cocos. I beat death shadow by going wider then him. I raced eldrazi tron easily. The other matches felt fine. I knew I wasn't on a very tuned list but it was okay. i felt like I was in control all these games. My combo turns were around T4-6 usually.
I lost to Jund death shadow, pox, and the mirror (no ballistas two rhonas). traverse the ulvenwald let Jund keep pace with my threat width. Pox is horrible and I just rolled over and died. The mirror had natural T3 on me both games.
Take aways from day one:
3 recruiter/3 witness is wrong, I needed to tune my numbers to probably 2/4. Viscera seer felt mediocre all day long - I always was unhappy to see it. It's just very fragile. 28 creatures for company (not counting ballistas here) feels weak, but I am used to elves. I muligained a ton because of awkward openers flush with 3-4 drops and no dorks. Going forward I'm going to get canopies if they ever dip and I'll be drop I dropping probably? Another guy said he was on win collector (mirror in he classic day 2 who also t3'd me twice in a row) and said they were phenomenal all day during the open. He was also 6-3. My plays weren't horrible for the most part but I did get messy with my flip triggers on recruiter and did mess up a few sequences. I'll be going up to 23 lands for sure. Selfless main was to retain board against removal or sweepers which I expected more of. I saw very few bolts outside of the burn decks for the death shadow decks. I'm not sure I even want black. If I keep it it'll be 1 seer 1 tomb with the same fetch base to trigger revolt.
My only turn 3 kill was a devoted druid on T2, then T3 untapped land, tap druid, activate druid, tap druid, tap 3 land, chord for 2 to get vizier and go off with mana to use the ewit in hand to grab chord and go get recruiter to dig to the ballista. It felt amazing and super cheesy since a single creature on two mana is pretty innocent looking. The deck has plenty of routes to victory.
Being stuck on 2 mana is A-ok with me. I can play several turns on 2, the bigger concern would be having the right colors.
2/2 Path/Pulse split sounds good, I might move that direction.
Part of the appeal with Fulminator Mage is with the recursion available and the 1-of is very much so saying "I'd rather just not play against Tron to begin with" while still giving me something relevant to bring in and it has meaningful interaction with Grixis Shadow as well. The deck plays 3 red sources, 3 black sources, and 4 blue sources. Saffi, Rec Sage, and Reveillark all offer paths to destroy multiple lands and choking them off a single color can have huge ramifications on their tempo. It's won me games already, but not so many that I want to go all-in on the land destruction plan, especially with so few black sources of my own. It's also good against oddball situations like blowing up a mountain with exactly 6 Valakut triggers on the stack, another consideration I'd rather avoid but feel like I should have SOMETHING to do should I come up against that.
He made some different choices and going on a 4C build with Retreat Knight combo.
His thoughts in the first 17 min are prettig decent, and yeah, it is GerryT.
I gut feeling says I need to stuck with Abzan build. Finks is great but is it better than Knight? And how about the infi life combo and sb material as Decay, push and tidehollow?
There where a couple of lists that went day 2 and some lists on the top tables of the scg classic.
Thoughts?
The combos are obviously powerful, a T3 kill has GOT to be worth playing in Modern... but something is missing with the deck, that is also obvious. In my experience, the part that has been missing is resilient creatures that put the opponent on the back foot and open the way for combo kills out of nowhere. I have had too many games where they kill something, I reload, they wipe the board, I CoCo, hit a druid and a bird, and draw a Vizier off the top. Without a meaningful way to force our opponent to spend their removal, they can spend the whole game shooting down Druids and Viziers, and never let the combo get off the ground.
There was a single AbzCo deck in the top 32 at the Open yesterday. Elves and Humans made it too, but those are both fundamentally different decks, and thinking about what is different about them that got them here and what is holding AbzCo back, I keep coming back to same thing over and over. Not enough aggro.
We'll see how it goes in Vegas later this week, but for now, I'm sure the direction to move is AWAY from the combo. What we've been missing is the ability to flood the board with creatures that cannot be easily ignored. The deck that DID make it played 3 Voices in the side. I, personally, have always felt that Voice is a card you want in the main or not at all. For me, at least, it's significantly harder to lose a G1 and decide THIS is a MU I want Voice for compared to losing G1 and realizing Voice isn't doing anything for me here.
To further discussion on my sideboard, here's another list, now that I'm looking at it, I'm not so sure I want the Maelstrom Pulses or moving up to 3 Fulminators:
1x Burrenton Forge-Tender
2x Choke
3x Fulminator Mage
2x Maelstrom Pulse
2x Path to Exile
2x Qasali Pridemage
1x Reveillark
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Selfless Spirit
A streamlined version focused on the combo with a township backup plan does well. It starts losing to tailored midrange/control decks so people respond by pre-sideboarding against midrange decks, then the deck gets mauled by combo/big mana so we try to figure out sideboard plans to beat big mana and wind up with stuff like 4 tidehollow scullers or thoughtseizes.
My conclusion has been that the midrange-control matchup is good enough. You can have a couple sideboard cards but finks, township and 4 witnesses with 3 canopies, you're going to have a reasonable shot against most midrange and control decks if you play well.
Playing mana dorks is what allows us to beat big mana and combo decks, which are MUCH worse matchups game 1.
In short I think a lot of folks are approaching design wrong by aggressively trying to improve our already decent matchups while neglecting our bad matchups.
Edit: Re Gerry T's videos
One of the issues with playing cards like Knight of the Reliquary in these decks is that Knight does not fix the problems inherent in playing mana dorks.
You want your payoff cards for playing dorks to provide card advantage. It's why Abzan with Finks and Witness is better than Kotr builds. It's why GW with Rallier and Witness is better than Kotr builds.
The issue with the Kotr builds is you can much more easily lose to drawing just dorks and knights than you can drawing just dorks and Finks or Dorks and Witnesses. The Knight allows your opponent to kill your baneslayer and leave you with crap. The witness and finks make removal pretty mediocre.
In general I think playing fewer than 7 sources of actual card advantage at 3 CMC is just wrong.
Conceptually this is similar to any other ramp deck. Tron ramps into Ostone / Karn / Ugin that all represent 2+ cards. Scapeshift ramps into Cryptic or Titan. We ramp into Coco, Chord and Witness/Finks. Not exactly the same but conceptually similar.
If your payoff cards die to fatal push you're gonna have a bad time.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Imo the ideal approach is to be very combo oriented game 1 and then adjust your SB according to the expected metagame, this configuration has always given us the best chance to outrace combo and get under big mana decks while keeping a solid aggro/midrange/control MU.
Although I do agree that *something* is missing for this deck to be top tier 1, I can't imagine going midrange is the answer. I'm currently testing a straight Selesnya build, completely dropping the finks combo which frees up a lot of slots. I've been time restricted these past few weeks so unfortunately I have not had the desired time to thoroughly test the build but my current list is actually similar to Felonious Crap's.
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Devoted Druid
2x Duskwatch Recruiter
4x Vizier of Remedies
4x Eternal Witness
4x Renegade Rallier
1x Mirror Entity
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Selfless Spirit
4x Chord of Calling
4x Collected Company
23x Land
4x Windswept Heath
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Wooded Foothills
3x Temple Garden
4x Horizon Canopy
3x Gavony Township
2x Forest
1x Plains
2x Devout Lightcaster
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Kor Firewalker
1x Kataki, War's Wage
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Burrenton Forge-Tender
3x Path to Exile
2x Voice of Resurgence
My thought process for some of the picks-
The reasoning behind the Mirror Entity as the combo finisher is that it greatly benefits from the ramp the dorks+rallier provide, even if we can't go off and are in the worst case scenario of flooding out with nothing but dorks and lands to rally back, Mirror Entity will be able to take advantage of this scenario ala Gavony, while conveniently still providing the MD LE hate we lose when removing Viscera Seer from our deck. Out of Ballista, Rhonas and Entity I believe he has the most utillity outside of the combo, but there is no denying that Ballista is the cleanest finisher.
4x Rallier let us both be very resilient and efficient when going for the combo which I find crucial due to the Devoted Druid's summoning sickness, whilst also helping us dig for the missing combo pieces in conjunction with the 4x canopy.
The 2x Devout lightcaster are mostly a concession to Grixis DS's current dominance and to take advantage of the straight G/W manabase.
I am a bit skeptical about the 2x Voice since I mostly have only liked them as a 3/4-of due to a single one on the battlefield often being lackluster, but I feel that when we're not going for the combo it is the best creature available to rally back. I have been going back and forth for these last few slots testing a 1x Surgical/1x Tracker split and the like.
The MU which definitely suffers the most due to these changes is Burn, and the 4- Canopy obviously do not help in this aspect which is why I felt the necessity of including Kor Firewalker in the SB even though I have never liked him in the standard abzan coco variants, but bar Skullcrack it is just a massive beating for them.
I feel the rest is self-explanatory, I do have to say that I miss Spellskite and the current Dredge iterations running MD Darkblast make me want to reconsider adding a singleton somewhere in the 75.
I'd consider Lone Missionary over firewalker. Been better for me. They're more inclined to swing at it, which results in you being able to eat it or rally it back. I even had someone searing blaze it for 1 to jam some damage through once Untap, rallier, gg.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
-I like playing 4 Recruiters. With Rallier you can play them out fearlessly even if you're not trying to combo anytime soon. Also consistency is good.
-Mirror Entity vs Waling Ballista. I'm pretty sure most will agree this is preference. I like killing people ASAP regardless of blockers/summoning sickness.
-4x Horizon Canopy. I'd be careful about this. Drawing two or more of them early game can hurt a lot.
-3x Gavony Township. Given the number of dorks this deck plays, colored mana is rarely a problem and supporting the full set of these is very doable and very worth it. I basically want to draw one every game.
-Devout lightcaster. I guess this would be a reason not to play 4x Township. Seems great against Grixis Death's Shadow and decent against Jund, but WWW is brutal.
-Voice of Resurgence. Pokken sold me on Evolutionary Leap as a sideboard card against control and midrange. It completely wrecks decks that lean heavily on spot removal to beat us, which happens to be quite a few of them. You can even get it back with Rallier if someone points an Abrupt Decay at it.
Oh and what Pokken said about Lone Missionary.
Modern
Value Town
Amulet Titan
Legacy
4C Loam
My Peasant Cube
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/11667