Yeah and I believe the fact he's a bad aggro creature doesn't help either (besides the UWx MU). One reason Freebooter is good is it flies, even with that single point of attack, it deals more in a game than Collector. That's also one reason why Crusader is prefered to Witness for the Bx or Gx MUs, it blocks and attacks through the opponent's creatures and removals, while it doesn't provide CA.
That being said, Bob is better than Tracker as a SB card in a Vial deck VS UWx and all kinds of grindy decks that don't apply (too much) pressure on our life total.
Once again, it's always tough to compare creatures because they overlap in different MUs (2 separate SBs can be very different and equally efficient), for example in a meta where I expect UWx, I prefer Witness over Crusader, but if I expect Bogles and Elves along the other common Coco decks, I'd rather have Crusader as a fast clock. Bob suffers the predominance of Burn and Affinity in the first place. It also dies to Ballista, Wail and Endbringer in Eldrazi Tron, so I doubt he can be a MD card anyway.
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Pioneer - A bunch of stuff Modern - Humans Legacy - Grixis Phoenix / Death & Taxes
Haven't seen anyone mention why the vial list may have an advantage over the coco list (although I may have missed something. Apologies if I did)
- Allows you to run a lower land count
- Allows you to run a less painful manabase
- Allows you to run more rainbow lands (which can't cast coco)
- More threat-dense deck overall (so better quality of topdeck)
- Lower curve in general because you aren't over-focusing on three-drops for max value.
- Vial allows 'casting' multiple creatures a turn even when stuck on two lands.
- Less reliant on noble hierarch/mana dorks in general to make plays
- More ability to force threats through counters
- More ability to make tricky combat plays (although coco definitely allows this, you are required to hit 4 mana first which can sometimes be too late or too tricky)
Obviously coco is a powerhouse and a proven card in modern. It doesn't really need anyone backing its corner because it's an amazing tool, but I have to say. Taking a leaf out of merfolk's book could really stand up for this deck. After all, this is a fish deck.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Haven't seen anyone mention why the vial list may have an advantage over the coco list (although I may have missed something. Apologies if I did)
- Allows you to run a lower land count
- Allows you to run a less painful manabase
- Allows you to run more rainbow lands (which can't cast coco)
- More threat-dense deck overall (so better quality of topdeck)
- Lower curve in general because you aren't over-focusing on three-drops for max value.
- Vial allows 'casting' multiple creatures a turn even when stuck on two lands.
- Less reliant on noble hierarch/mana dorks in general to make plays
- More ability to force threats through counters
- More ability to make tricky combat plays (although coco definitely allows this, you are required to hit 4 mana first which can sometimes be too late or too tricky)
Obviously coco is a powerhouse and a proven card in modern. It doesn't really need anyone backing its corner because it's an amazing tool, but I have to say. Taking a leaf out of merfolk's book could really stand up for this deck. After all, this is a fish deck.
Haven't seen anyone mention why the vial list may have an advantage over the coco list (although I may have missed something. Apologies if I did)
- Allows you to run a lower land count
- Allows you to run a less painful manabase
- Allows you to run more rainbow lands (which can't cast coco)
- More threat-dense deck overall (so better quality of topdeck)
- Lower curve in general because you aren't over-focusing on three-drops for max value.
- Vial allows 'casting' multiple creatures a turn even when stuck on two lands.
- Less reliant on noble hierarch/mana dorks in general to make plays
- More ability to force threats through counters
- More ability to make tricky combat plays (although coco definitely allows this, you are required to hit 4 mana first which can sometimes be too late or too tricky)
Obviously coco is a powerhouse and a proven card in modern. It doesn't really need anyone backing its corner because it's an amazing tool, but I have to say. Taking a leaf out of merfolk's book could really stand up for this deck. After all, this is a fish deck.
I went over several reasons why the Vial list has some upside. However, I don't think topdecking is one of them, because Collected Company is far and away a better top deck than anything the Vial list could have (especially Vial itself, which is basically a brick after the first couple of turns). I think the biggest upsides are:
1) Inability to run colored non-creature spells (Path, CoCo, RIP, etc)
2) Has difficulty coming back when behind
3) Minimal on-board interaction/heavily reliant on occasionally irrelevant disruption (see: Merfolk matchup in top 8)
4) Awful top decking with Vial
5) Inability to dig through the deck for silver bullets / sideboard cards
So while there are some upsides to Vial, I think the general consensus is that the CoCo builds are more resilient and better able to interact with opposing strategies while keeping nearly all of the aggressiveness intact. We didn't see any games from the Vial list (at least that I'm aware of) where it was getting knocked around with a flurry of removal spells or anything like that; he constantly avoided bad matchups. That deck is going to struggle greatly with getting grinded out. I don't even think we saw the deck face a sweeper. I personally think that once the Bant Black CoCo decks can reliably run Mantis Rider, the Vial list won't be nearly as enticing.
I've been thinking about these bad matchups and had a thought;
- Collins dude running the vial deck said that the jeskai/UW control lists were basically the worst matchup, and decks like affinity and Elves were tricky.
He beat elves and affinity at the tournament and I can see easy inroads to beating those matchups without any serious changes to the deck.
Death's shadow runs maybe 6 pieces of removal total, so while the deck is grindy it's also full of a lot of air, cantrips and such.
Jeskai seems like the poor matchup he said it was, with a higher density of removal and also legit sweepers.
What do we think about incorporating eternal witness in the deck? Tireless tracker is already in the sideboard and I can see why, the grindyness and value that can be generated is potentially high, but there could be legit reason to run maybe 1x or 2x sideboard witness or something, because with vial it's a powerhouse (with two vials it gets crazy). Really great at rebuilding and forcing your way through spot removal.
I realise the card's been considered before but having an extra dimension in terms of grinding is a nice option.
In this deck, witness is basically a snapcaster for creatures and it's on-tribe. That's something elves would kill for and here it is.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I'd like to point out the fact that Aether Vial, while providing nice tricks and preassure early, is burning trough your hand twice as fast, whereas CoCo provides pure card advantage as a two for one most of the time.
I'd like to point out the fact that Aether Vial, while providing nice tricks and preassure early, is burning trough your hand twice as fast, whereas CoCo provides pure card advantage as a two for one most of the time.
well yes, kind of. Is that a problem though? are we in the game of grinding people out with meagre synergistic 1/2s and stuff, or are we an aggressive-as-possible deck that hopes to utilise soft disruption to off-balance an opponent just enough to close out a game by quickly overwhelming their mana-squeezed first three or so turns?
it's a fair question, right? I never thought this was a partularly grindy deck if i'm honest. not compared to what else is out there in modern, surely.
it's like - do you want to be doing mostly setup for the first couple of turns and then 'level up' through a coco on turn 3 or 4 when most of what your opponent wants to do is fully online, or do you want to blast out the gates with disruptive creatures as quickly as possible to shut down spells and pressure their life total from turn 2. I know which i'd rather be doing in Modern for sure. currently i'm on the Aether Vial side of the fence.
take another deck as a close analogue - vizier CoCo. that's a deck which uses CoCo to its fullest. it plays up to 4x eternal witness to chain CoCo over and over, it plays up to 12 maindeck mana dorks (including devoted druid) and if their turn 3 infinite mana combo doesn't pay off, they have a strong grindy gameplan with 3+ maindeck gavony townships and plenty of ways to beef up their board-state while chording into powerful silver bullets.
in this deck you sort of wear your disruption on your sleeve because it's front-loaded. you proactively play stuff out as strategy-denial rather than "here hold on let me fetch my answer to this thing you've put on the battlefield with chord of calling". With that in mind, you benefit greatly from the ability to rush out these front-loaded hatebear style disruption cards as quickly and aggressively as possible to take every last bit of advantage from the delay or disruption they cause.
I've been thinking about these bad matchups and had a thought;
- Collins dude running the vial deck said that the jeskai/UW control lists were basically the worst matchup, and decks like affinity and Elves were tricky.
Yep, and these are all matchups that are better with CoCo.
Death's shadow runs maybe 6 pieces of removal total, so while the deck is grindy it's also full of a lot of air, cantrips and such.
Agreed. Death's Shadow is quite a favorable matchup for just about any Humans list, due to the proactive interaction (Reflector Mage, Freebooter etc) and threat density.
Jeskai seems like the poor matchup he said it was, with a higher density of removal and also legit sweepers.
These decks are very difficult for his list to beat. In contrast, in my experience with the Bant Black CoCo list against Jeskai Control, the matchup felt very favorable.
well yes, kind of. Is that a problem though? are we in the game of grinding people out with meagre synergistic 1/2s and stuff, or are we an aggressive-as-possible deck that hopes to utilise soft disruption to off-balance an opponent just enough to close out a game by quickly overwhelming their mana-squeezed first three or so turns?
it's a fair question, right? I never thought this was a partularly grindy deck if i'm honest. not compared to what else is out there in modern, surely.
CoCo does not make the deck grindy, it makes the deck resilient. There's a big difference. I watched most of Collin's games this weekend and it did not have much (if any) extra aggression that the CoCo decks don't have, but it did lack the resilience. A T1 Aether Vial is not significantly faster than a T1 mana dork (of which CoCo decks have extras of). Here are some things to consider:
- Vial is only close to CoCo's power level when played on T1. A T2 Vial is mediocre and anything after that is basically a skipped draw step. Vial loses value very quickly, whereas CoCo does not.
- A T1 Vial curve is actually not much different from a T1 mana dork curve. In my experience with various CoCo humans decks, none of them have struggled to kill opponents on T4. I didn't see the Vial list doing much more than that.
- By the time a T1 Vial is at 3, which is when it most helps the curve, you could just be playing CoCo instead and hitting 2 creatures.
it's like - do you want to be doing mostly setup for the first couple of turns and then 'level up' through a coco on turn 3 or 4 when most of what your opponent wants to do is fully online, or do you want to blast out the gates with disruptive creatures as quickly as possible to shut down spells and pressure their life total from turn 2. I know which i'd rather be doing in Modern for sure. currently i'm on the Aether Vial side of the fence.
Yeah...CoCo decks don't "set up" for anything. They curve out aggressively just like the Vial list does, then when the opponent tries to claw back in, you shut the door with a CoCo (assuming they're not just dead already). Every CoCo list I've played, even the slower ones, don't have issues killing on T4. In some cases, the CoCo deck is actually faster. While we're here, I want to loop back real quick on the point I made above about the curves not being much different. Lets have a little exercise to elaborate. In this exercise, one deck will have Vial, the other deck will have Avacyn's Pilgrim and CoCo and both decks will have similar creature curves:
Turn 2
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CoCo deck - Land, Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant - 6 damage on board, 3 creatures 2/2, 3/3, 1/1
Vial deck - Land, Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutanant - 4 damage on board, 2 creatures 3/3, 1/1
Turn 3
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CoCo deck - Land, CoCo into Mantis Rider + Mayor of Avabruck - 18 damage on board, 2 cards in hand, 5 creatures 3/3, 6/6, 4/4, 4/4, 1/1
Vial deck - Land, Mantis Rider + Mayor of Avabruck - 15 damage on board, 1 card in hand, 4 creatures 6/6, 4/4, 4/4, 1/1
Yes, I know these are both great draws and we're not accounting for opponent interaction, but they're equally great draws from both decks. The idea here is that, even in the best scenarios, Vial is not much, if any more aggressive. Sometimes less. With all factors considered, I'd venture to say that they're very close in terms of aggressiveness. Then when things are bad, they're not even in the same galaxy.
As you can see, without some very specific scenarios playing out, the CoCo lists do not suffer from a lack of aggression. In fact, they often do a just as well if not better job at it while enjoying all of the other upsides of CoCo over Vial. I stick by my opinion that the biggest draw to the Vial list right now is that it can reliably run 5 colors with Mantis Rider. But even if we swap out Mantis Rider in the above scenario with something like an Anafenza, the Foremost, the difference is not terribly large.
take another deck as a close analogue - vizier CoCo. that's a deck which uses CoCo to its fullest. it plays up to 4x eternal witness to chain CoCo over and over, it plays up to 12 maindeck mana dorks (including devoted druid) and if their turn 3 infinite mana combo doesn't pay off, they have a strong grindy gameplan with 3+ maindeck gavony townships and plenty of ways to beef up their board-state while chording into powerful silver bullets.
in this deck you sort of wear your disruption on your sleeve because it's front-loaded. you proactively play stuff out as strategy-denial rather than "here hold on let me fetch my answer to this thing you've put on the battlefield with chord of calling". With that in mind, you benefit greatly from the ability to rush out these front-loaded hatebear style disruption cards as quickly and aggressively as possible to take every last bit of advantage from the delay or disruption they cause.
Humans is not comparable to a combo Chord of Calling deck. The reason Humans are so good with Collected Company is the fact that they snowball quickly and overpower just about any other deck. You want the most ways to have a critical mass of humans on board. Without the card advantage of CoCo, it is not very difficult for the opponent to remove the first 2-3 creatures and cruise to victory. Without a critical mass, the creatures have a very difficult time doing what they need to do.
TL;DR - CoCo decks have 95% (or more) of the aggressiveness while also having vastly more resilience, better top decks, etc.
@kingcars You make several solid arguments for the merits of Bant Black Company - it’s a deck archetype I enjoyed playing ever since the results from GP Birmingham. However, the problem with CoCo in Humans is that a lot of the threats you can pull from CoCo aren’t really impactful. Usually, I was getting something like a mana dork and maybe a Thalia or Lieutenant, but even with nut hits considered the overall expected value of each CoCo felt a little low to justify saving mana or tapping out for the card.
The more I play with the Aether Vial variation both in paper and on modo (been consistently going 4-1 with a 5-0 and never going below 3-2), the more I’ve appreciated the intangible benefit of being able to hold cards in your hand to play at instant speed while also applying pressure by tapping out to cast aggressive threats like Mantis Rider and Lieutenants. I can’t stress how amazing the benefits are of being able to tap out for Mantis Rider for 3 (potentially 4+ with exalted) immediately, and follow it with a Freebooter or Little Thalia at instant speed on their draw step to disrupt any plans to remove or gain tempo. Collins even emphasized in his interview (and demonstrated in his play) how powerful Mantis Rider is in combination with disruption + lords.
Topdecks with the vial build aren’t nearly as bad as you’re making it out to be. Sure, drawing a vial is pretty annoying in the lategame, but by the same axis drawing an Avacyn’s Pilgrim, Path or land with Bant Black against both Humans styles’ weaker matchup in UW and Jeskai control also feels pretty bad.
I don’t want to discredit Bant Black, as it’s still a very powerful and resilient threat package. Still, the merits of potentially giving all your creatures flash and incredible pressure/defense from backswing with Mantis Rider is my reasoning for why the vial build is, from my experience, equally powerful. Both styles have their merits, and modern is a rewarding enough format that as long as you learn your deck strategies inside and out, you can succeed on any axis, be it vial or CoCo!
@kingcars You make several solid arguments for the merits of Bant Black Company - it’s a deck archetype I enjoyed playing ever since the results from GP Birmingham. However, the problem with CoCo in Humans is that a lot of the threats you can pull from CoCo aren’t really impactful. Usually, I was getting something like a mana dork and maybe a Thalia or Lieutenant, but even with nut hits considered the overall expected value of each CoCo felt a little low to justify saving mana or tapping out for the card.
If the creatures aren't impactful off of a Collected Company, are they any more impactful off of an Aether Vial? Collected Company does have an element of luck to it, but I've had zero issue with getting consistently powerful hits. I think some of the early tournament finishing lists from a few months ago that were running no real beef at 3cmc had weaknesses there, but I always make sure to have big 3cmc hits in my lists (Anafenza, the Foremost being the best one in black).
The more I play with the Aether Vial variation both in paper and on modo (been consistently going 4-1 with a 5-0 and never going below 3-2), the more I’ve appreciated the intangible benefit of being able to hold cards in your hand to play at instant speed while also applying pressure by tapping out to cast aggressive threats like Mantis Rider and Lieutenants. I can’t stress how amazing the benefits are of being able to tap out for Mantis Rider for 3 (potentially 4+ with exalted) immediately, and follow it with a Freebooter or Little Thalia at instant speed on their draw step to disrupt any plans to remove or gain tempo. Collins even emphasized in his interview (and demonstrated in his play) how powerful Mantis Rider is in the deck in combination with disruption + lords.
Yes, I have agreed that draw step Freebooters along with Mantis Rider are two of the biggest reasons to play the Vial deck (the latter being something within reach for the CoCo deck). Necromancer is another great card with Vial. However, generally speaking, we want to be doing most of our creature casting pre-attack phase in order to get extra damage off of Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant, which makes draw step creatures usually sub-optimal.
And as a counter point, casting Company and landing a pair of Mantis Riders or a Mantis Rider + lord or Mantis Rider + Freebooter is insanely good. The common theme here being that Mantis Rider is a really good card, which is definitely not news in this thread .
Topdecks with the vial build aren’t nearly as bad as you’re making it out to be. Sure, drawing a vial is pretty annoying in the lategame, but by the same axis drawing an Avacyn’s Pilgrim, Path or land with Bant Black against both Humans styles’ weaker matchup in UW and Jeskai control also feels pretty bad.
Land top decks don't really count here, as that's a bit of a double edged sword. That 1 extra land will be the difference between mana screw and a decent curve just as often as it's a bad top deck. Like Vial, Pilgrim is a great T1 play, but unlike Vial, it's not completely dead later on as it can grow other creatures, block, and be the recipient of later lord affects. Path is rarely a dead card, and when it is, it gets sided out for stuff like Sin Collector. A late Vial does nothing (well, unless the game goes on for a bunch of turns and you draw into stuff, but that's quite a corner case). I think my other big issue with Vial is that it's super crucial to have it on T1 (T2 can be ok sometimes, but meh); anything later and it's just too slow to matter as you've already dumped your hand by the time it's ready to go. It's just very timing sensitive. Collected Company just requires mana to cast and it's always a great card to draw and have in hand.
I don’t want to discredit Bant Black, as it’s still a very powerful and resilient threat package. Still, the merits of potentially giving all your creatures flash and incredible pressure/defense from backswing with Mantis Rider is my reasoning for why the vial build is, from my experience, equally powerful. Both styles have their merits, and modern is a rewarding enough format that as long as you learn your deck strategies inside and out, you can succeed on any axis, be it vial or CoCo!
Agreed. I most certainly understand the merits of a Vial build and it can obviously be successful. We've been working a bit on making Mantis Rider work in a 5C Collected Company shell, and I think that has the potential to eventually be the best build. The mana is just tougher without being able to utilize Ancient Ziggurat.
While we're on the subject, I think Duskwatch Recruiter could be an awesome draw engine for the Vial build. You could spend the 3 to grab a creature, then Vial it in. I guess the main issue is the need for green non-creature mana and having Ancient Ziggurat in the deck. Hmm.
You have my support! CoCo is one of my favorite cards in Magic, and I’d really like for a 5c build to work consistently! The only problem has just been how polarizing it is to balance both. If you run mana confluences and a bunch of fetches you risk having a bad burn/affinity matchup, and if you run more fastlands/nonpainful lands, you risk not having the right colors to hardcast your creatures and/or CoCo. The vial build went the complete opposite build, emphasizing the prospect of “what if we lost the explosiveness of CoCo, but had a completely painless manabase and vials for acceleration?”
In the end though, both Vial and CoCo-based Humans decks allow for tons of interaction and non-linearity with instant speed tricks, and that’s probably why I personally find the archetype so much fun
I tested the vial build today..but only against burn.
The matchup is close but even without sideboard I won 80% of games (only 10 games however). It felt much much better than the coco version.
Vialing in Lords is amazing in regards to combat tricks. To be fair, I had vial in every game t1...so I can see that the deck gets much worse if you don't have it. I felt as if I was topdecking less lands than I usually do in the Coco build, however, I have not tested the new CoCo build with 7 Fetches yet.
There were some games shown on screen where Collins actually had both vial and Hierarch in hand, but played Hierarch first to be able to turn 2 Mantis Rider (and I’d imagine Big Thalia works too) and swing for 4. What Vial on 1 allows is for turn 2 to be Vial to 1 -> tap for Champion of the Parish -> play Thalia 1.0 or other 2 drop. This immediately gets 2 potentially problematic bodies on the board and pressures the opponent very early.
It goes to show that even Vial on turn 1 isn’t always the optimal play!
Yes, And this is exactly why the vial lists sport a greater concentration of two drop creatures. I think Vial on two is usually optimal in those humans lists.
Another pro for the vial strategy is that it's not susceptible to "bolt the bird" scenario's in terms of ramp disruption.
I guess both strategies have different merrits, whereas personal preference is key. I opt for the more resilient and more spell based list, but my list is quite different. Still haven't lost a casual match with it against a variety of tier X decks though. Will give it a shot at FNM soon.
Hello all...fish player here but I'm considering giving humans a go...question...anyone ever consider giving frontline medic a go? the indestructible function seems really good...it becomes a removal magnet, and the counter X effect is good for chord of calling, sphinx's revelation and walking ballista. Anyways, just curious.
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Hello all...fish player here but I'm considering giving humans a go...question...anyone ever consider giving frontline medic a go? the indestructible function seems really good...it becomes a removal magnet, and the counter X effect is good for chord of calling, sphinx's revelation and walking ballista. Anyways, just curious.
Welcome to the party! Man, Frontline Medic brings back some memories. I used to run him in RTR/Theros standard in a UW aggro shell that also ran Supreme Verdict that I would use to surprise opponents after triggering Medic's battalion ability. Anyways, that aside, the problem with him in the Humans lists is the amount of competition at 3cmc. When we have access to stuff like Mantis Rider, Reflector Mage, Anafenza, the Foremost, Thalia, Heretic Cathar etc, there just isn't room for a situational card.
Another idea is blink effects...most of the humans have enter the battlefield triggers, and something like eerie interlude or essence flux can be killer in certain instances. Problem with this deck is very similar to merfolk...the spots for certain creatures are so locked in, making changes feels terrible, as you have to take something out you really like.
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I haven't really played this deck yet, so who am i to talk, but I feel that eerie interlude is WAY nastier than Xathrid Necromancer...you bounce your entire team from a wrath effect, or lethal damage from blocking, then they all come back, and ALL triggers happen at the same time. So as you can imagine, that can get pretty gross and give you a potential lethal swing on the turn around, especially with champions and lieutenants in the mix.
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That being said, Bob is better than Tracker as a SB card in a Vial deck VS UWx and all kinds of grindy decks that don't apply (too much) pressure on our life total.
Once again, it's always tough to compare creatures because they overlap in different MUs (2 separate SBs can be very different and equally efficient), for example in a meta where I expect UWx, I prefer Witness over Crusader, but if I expect Bogles and Elves along the other common Coco decks, I'd rather have Crusader as a fast clock. Bob suffers the predominance of Burn and Affinity in the first place. It also dies to Ballista, Wail and Endbringer in Eldrazi Tron, so I doubt he can be a MD card anyway.
- Allows you to run a lower land count
- Allows you to run a less painful manabase
- Allows you to run more rainbow lands (which can't cast coco)
- More threat-dense deck overall (so better quality of topdeck)
- Lower curve in general because you aren't over-focusing on three-drops for max value.
- Vial allows 'casting' multiple creatures a turn even when stuck on two lands.
- Less reliant on noble hierarch/mana dorks in general to make plays
- More ability to force threats through counters
- More ability to make tricky combat plays (although coco definitely allows this, you are required to hit 4 mana first which can sometimes be too late or too tricky)
Obviously coco is a powerhouse and a proven card in modern. It doesn't really need anyone backing its corner because it's an amazing tool, but I have to say. Taking a leaf out of merfolk's book could really stand up for this deck. After all, this is a fish deck.
Another advantage is that we can run Thalia, Guardian of Thraben without hurting ourselves.
I went over several reasons why the Vial list has some upside. However, I don't think topdecking is one of them, because Collected Company is far and away a better top deck than anything the Vial list could have (especially Vial itself, which is basically a brick after the first couple of turns). I think the biggest upsides are:
1) Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is almost purely a 1-sided effect
2) Xathrid Necromancer is a much better surprise trick, like in the face of a sweeper
3) Kitesail Freebooter on opponent's draw step
4) Ability to run 5 colors (Mantis Rider!!) without much pain
However, there are downsides:
1) Inability to run colored non-creature spells (Path, CoCo, RIP, etc)
2) Has difficulty coming back when behind
3) Minimal on-board interaction/heavily reliant on occasionally irrelevant disruption (see: Merfolk matchup in top 8)
4) Awful top decking with Vial
5) Inability to dig through the deck for silver bullets / sideboard cards
So while there are some upsides to Vial, I think the general consensus is that the CoCo builds are more resilient and better able to interact with opposing strategies while keeping nearly all of the aggressiveness intact. We didn't see any games from the Vial list (at least that I'm aware of) where it was getting knocked around with a flurry of removal spells or anything like that; he constantly avoided bad matchups. That deck is going to struggle greatly with getting grinded out. I don't even think we saw the deck face a sweeper. I personally think that once the Bant Black CoCo decks can reliably run Mantis Rider, the Vial list won't be nearly as enticing.
- Collins dude running the vial deck said that the jeskai/UW control lists were basically the worst matchup, and decks like affinity and Elves were tricky.
He beat elves and affinity at the tournament and I can see easy inroads to beating those matchups without any serious changes to the deck.
Death's shadow runs maybe 6 pieces of removal total, so while the deck is grindy it's also full of a lot of air, cantrips and such.
Jeskai seems like the poor matchup he said it was, with a higher density of removal and also legit sweepers.
What do we think about incorporating eternal witness in the deck? Tireless tracker is already in the sideboard and I can see why, the grindyness and value that can be generated is potentially high, but there could be legit reason to run maybe 1x or 2x sideboard witness or something, because with vial it's a powerhouse (with two vials it gets crazy). Really great at rebuilding and forcing your way through spot removal.
I realise the card's been considered before but having an extra dimension in terms of grinding is a nice option.
In this deck, witness is basically a snapcaster for creatures and it's on-tribe. That's something elves would kill for and here it is.
Modern: WUBRG Humans - GBW Traverse - GWU Knightfall - GRW Bushwhacker Zoo -
well yes, kind of. Is that a problem though? are we in the game of grinding people out with meagre synergistic 1/2s and stuff, or are we an aggressive-as-possible deck that hopes to utilise soft disruption to off-balance an opponent just enough to close out a game by quickly overwhelming their mana-squeezed first three or so turns?
it's a fair question, right? I never thought this was a partularly grindy deck if i'm honest. not compared to what else is out there in modern, surely.
it's like - do you want to be doing mostly setup for the first couple of turns and then 'level up' through a coco on turn 3 or 4 when most of what your opponent wants to do is fully online, or do you want to blast out the gates with disruptive creatures as quickly as possible to shut down spells and pressure their life total from turn 2. I know which i'd rather be doing in Modern for sure. currently i'm on the Aether Vial side of the fence.
take another deck as a close analogue - vizier CoCo. that's a deck which uses CoCo to its fullest. it plays up to 4x eternal witness to chain CoCo over and over, it plays up to 12 maindeck mana dorks (including devoted druid) and if their turn 3 infinite mana combo doesn't pay off, they have a strong grindy gameplan with 3+ maindeck gavony townships and plenty of ways to beef up their board-state while chording into powerful silver bullets.
in this deck you sort of wear your disruption on your sleeve because it's front-loaded. you proactively play stuff out as strategy-denial rather than "here hold on let me fetch my answer to this thing you've put on the battlefield with chord of calling". With that in mind, you benefit greatly from the ability to rush out these front-loaded hatebear style disruption cards as quickly and aggressively as possible to take every last bit of advantage from the delay or disruption they cause.
Yep, and these are all matchups that are better with CoCo.
I didn't see the elves matchup, but I did see the affinity one. He had a bit of luck on his side to get by that one.
Agreed. Death's Shadow is quite a favorable matchup for just about any Humans list, due to the proactive interaction (Reflector Mage, Freebooter etc) and threat density.
These decks are very difficult for his list to beat. In contrast, in my experience with the Bant Black CoCo list against Jeskai Control, the matchup felt very favorable.
CoCo does not make the deck grindy, it makes the deck resilient. There's a big difference. I watched most of Collin's games this weekend and it did not have much (if any) extra aggression that the CoCo decks don't have, but it did lack the resilience. A T1 Aether Vial is not significantly faster than a T1 mana dork (of which CoCo decks have extras of). Here are some things to consider:
- Vial is only close to CoCo's power level when played on T1. A T2 Vial is mediocre and anything after that is basically a skipped draw step. Vial loses value very quickly, whereas CoCo does not.
- A T1 Vial curve is actually not much different from a T1 mana dork curve. In my experience with various CoCo humans decks, none of them have struggled to kill opponents on T4. I didn't see the Vial list doing much more than that.
- By the time a T1 Vial is at 3, which is when it most helps the curve, you could just be playing CoCo instead and hitting 2 creatures.
Yeah...CoCo decks don't "set up" for anything. They curve out aggressively just like the Vial list does, then when the opponent tries to claw back in, you shut the door with a CoCo (assuming they're not just dead already). Every CoCo list I've played, even the slower ones, don't have issues killing on T4. In some cases, the CoCo deck is actually faster. While we're here, I want to loop back real quick on the point I made above about the curves not being much different. Lets have a little exercise to elaborate. In this exercise, one deck will have Vial, the other deck will have Avacyn's Pilgrim and CoCo and both decks will have similar creature curves:
Turn 1
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CoCo deck - Land, Avacyn's Pilgrim 1/1
Vial Deck - Land, Vial
Turn 2
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CoCo deck - Land, Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant - 6 damage on board, 3 creatures 2/2, 3/3, 1/1
Vial deck - Land, Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutanant - 4 damage on board, 2 creatures 3/3, 1/1
Turn 3
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CoCo deck - Land, CoCo into Mantis Rider + Mayor of Avabruck - 18 damage on board, 2 cards in hand, 5 creatures 3/3, 6/6, 4/4, 4/4, 1/1
Vial deck - Land, Mantis Rider + Mayor of Avabruck - 15 damage on board, 1 card in hand, 4 creatures 6/6, 4/4, 4/4, 1/1
Yes, I know these are both great draws and we're not accounting for opponent interaction, but they're equally great draws from both decks. The idea here is that, even in the best scenarios, Vial is not much, if any more aggressive. Sometimes less. With all factors considered, I'd venture to say that they're very close in terms of aggressiveness. Then when things are bad, they're not even in the same galaxy.
As you can see, without some very specific scenarios playing out, the CoCo lists do not suffer from a lack of aggression. In fact, they often do a just as well if not better job at it while enjoying all of the other upsides of CoCo over Vial. I stick by my opinion that the biggest draw to the Vial list right now is that it can reliably run 5 colors with Mantis Rider. But even if we swap out Mantis Rider in the above scenario with something like an Anafenza, the Foremost, the difference is not terribly large.
Humans is not comparable to a combo Chord of Calling deck. The reason Humans are so good with Collected Company is the fact that they snowball quickly and overpower just about any other deck. You want the most ways to have a critical mass of humans on board. Without the card advantage of CoCo, it is not very difficult for the opponent to remove the first 2-3 creatures and cruise to victory. Without a critical mass, the creatures have a very difficult time doing what they need to do.
TL;DR - CoCo decks have 95% (or more) of the aggressiveness while also having vastly more resilience, better top decks, etc.
The more I play with the Aether Vial variation both in paper and on modo (been consistently going 4-1 with a 5-0 and never going below 3-2), the more I’ve appreciated the intangible benefit of being able to hold cards in your hand to play at instant speed while also applying pressure by tapping out to cast aggressive threats like Mantis Rider and Lieutenants. I can’t stress how amazing the benefits are of being able to tap out for Mantis Rider for 3 (potentially 4+ with exalted) immediately, and follow it with a Freebooter or Little Thalia at instant speed on their draw step to disrupt any plans to remove or gain tempo. Collins even emphasized in his interview (and demonstrated in his play) how powerful Mantis Rider is in combination with disruption + lords.
Topdecks with the vial build aren’t nearly as bad as you’re making it out to be. Sure, drawing a vial is pretty annoying in the lategame, but by the same axis drawing an Avacyn’s Pilgrim, Path or land with Bant Black against both Humans styles’ weaker matchup in UW and Jeskai control also feels pretty bad.
I don’t want to discredit Bant Black, as it’s still a very powerful and resilient threat package. Still, the merits of potentially giving all your creatures flash and incredible pressure/defense from backswing with Mantis Rider is my reasoning for why the vial build is, from my experience, equally powerful. Both styles have their merits, and modern is a rewarding enough format that as long as you learn your deck strategies inside and out, you can succeed on any axis, be it vial or CoCo!
If the creatures aren't impactful off of a Collected Company, are they any more impactful off of an Aether Vial? Collected Company does have an element of luck to it, but I've had zero issue with getting consistently powerful hits. I think some of the early tournament finishing lists from a few months ago that were running no real beef at 3cmc had weaknesses there, but I always make sure to have big 3cmc hits in my lists (Anafenza, the Foremost being the best one in black).
Yes, I have agreed that draw step Freebooters along with Mantis Rider are two of the biggest reasons to play the Vial deck (the latter being something within reach for the CoCo deck). Necromancer is another great card with Vial. However, generally speaking, we want to be doing most of our creature casting pre-attack phase in order to get extra damage off of Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant, which makes draw step creatures usually sub-optimal.
And as a counter point, casting Company and landing a pair of Mantis Riders or a Mantis Rider + lord or Mantis Rider + Freebooter is insanely good. The common theme here being that Mantis Rider is a really good card, which is definitely not news in this thread .
Land top decks don't really count here, as that's a bit of a double edged sword. That 1 extra land will be the difference between mana screw and a decent curve just as often as it's a bad top deck. Like Vial, Pilgrim is a great T1 play, but unlike Vial, it's not completely dead later on as it can grow other creatures, block, and be the recipient of later lord affects. Path is rarely a dead card, and when it is, it gets sided out for stuff like Sin Collector. A late Vial does nothing (well, unless the game goes on for a bunch of turns and you draw into stuff, but that's quite a corner case). I think my other big issue with Vial is that it's super crucial to have it on T1 (T2 can be ok sometimes, but meh); anything later and it's just too slow to matter as you've already dumped your hand by the time it's ready to go. It's just very timing sensitive. Collected Company just requires mana to cast and it's always a great card to draw and have in hand.
Agreed. I most certainly understand the merits of a Vial build and it can obviously be successful. We've been working a bit on making Mantis Rider work in a 5C Collected Company shell, and I think that has the potential to eventually be the best build. The mana is just tougher without being able to utilize Ancient Ziggurat.
While we're on the subject, I think Duskwatch Recruiter could be an awesome draw engine for the Vial build. You could spend the 3 to grab a creature, then Vial it in. I guess the main issue is the need for green non-creature mana and having Ancient Ziggurat in the deck. Hmm.
In the end though, both Vial and CoCo-based Humans decks allow for tons of interaction and non-linearity with instant speed tricks, and that’s probably why I personally find the archetype so much fun
The matchup is close but even without sideboard I won 80% of games (only 10 games however). It felt much much better than the coco version.
Vialing in Lords is amazing in regards to combat tricks. To be fair, I had vial in every game t1...so I can see that the deck gets much worse if you don't have it. I felt as if I was topdecking less lands than I usually do in the Coco build, however, I have not tested the new CoCo build with 7 Fetches yet.
It goes to show that even Vial on turn 1 isn’t always the optimal play!
Another pro for the vial strategy is that it's not susceptible to "bolt the bird" scenario's in terms of ramp disruption.
I guess both strategies have different merrits, whereas personal preference is key. I opt for the more resilient and more spell based list, but my list is quite different. Still haven't lost a casual match with it against a variety of tier X decks though. Will give it a shot at FNM soon.
Modern: WUBRG Humans - GBW Traverse - GWU Knightfall - GRW Bushwhacker Zoo -
—Radha, Keldon warlord
Welcome to the party! Man, Frontline Medic brings back some memories. I used to run him in RTR/Theros standard in a UW aggro shell that also ran Supreme Verdict that I would use to surprise opponents after triggering Medic's battalion ability. Anyways, that aside, the problem with him in the Humans lists is the amount of competition at 3cmc. When we have access to stuff like Mantis Rider, Reflector Mage, Anafenza, the Foremost, Thalia, Heretic Cathar etc, there just isn't room for a situational card.
Awesome writeup. I was wondering if he sided out Vials in grindier matchups.
—Radha, Keldon warlord
—Radha, Keldon warlord