On this Rhonas vs. Walking Ballista debate,there are too many scenarios where Rhonas can't end the game to make that worth having one additional Coco hit. Examples: Ensnaring Bridge, Ad Nauseam, Angel's grace ( Ballista kills them the next turn). Not to mention that Ballista is by no means a bad card on its own. Ask Standard players!
Ensnaring bridge does nothing to stop Rhonas.
Balista is NOT a great card in coco. It's ok in the matchups where you can kill mana dorks and other small stuff.
People are just playing it for the infinite combo. Having the win con be something that is hit off coco is not to be underestimated. The question you have to ask yourself is, how many games are lost by hitting ballista off coco, or drawing it when it is bad, contra how many games you lose where Rhonas would not win, when ballista would. It's really not that hard to math out with some testing.
The argument so far is that it's better against Ad Nauseam and pherhaps Displacer, which seems narrow and not very hard matchups. (and even if they blow the angel's grace to save themselves they are down a combo piece and might just be dead anyway)
Not sure if it's better of worse, but if you wanted to you could also drop duskwatch and just run Rhonas, which is enough in most cases, but maybe it's too risky..
I suggest imaging Rhonas/ballista as a split card when testing. Every time you combo, see if it would make a difference which you had. And every time you hit either of coco, note it down.
Also, if you are running ballista, anafenza becomes better, as bolstering on ballista can be neat, but so is bolstering on a 3/2 to turn on Rhonas permanently:)
On this Rhonas vs. Walking Ballista debate,there are too many scenarios where Rhonas can't end the game to make that worth having one additional Coco hit. Examples: Ensnaring Bridge, Ad Nauseam, Angel's grace ( Ballista kills them the next turn). Not to mention that Ballista is by no means a bad card on its own. Ask Standard players!
If ensnaring bridge is a hit against rhonas, then leyline of sanctity is a hit against ballista. Which are you more worried about? The answer should be neither because you can just grab reclamation sage and then continue.
Ensnaring bridge doesn't stop from killing with Rhonas is you have a druid. Go to combat, declare druid as an attacking creature then combo to give it infinte power, bingo you have a win under bridge.
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Modern:
-Rg valakut
-U/W control
-U/R storm
-G/W value town
Playing both Ballista and Rhonas is a possibility too. In a wide meta, it's probably a good call. At this point, can't we assume both cards are good finishers which can help eachother beating corner-case situations / hate ?
It's just 1 extra slot for a finisher, it's easy to find room if the need for a sure kill takes over the need for a bullet or a Xth copy of a combo card.
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Pioneer - A bunch of stuff Modern - Humans Legacy - Grixis Phoenix / Death & Taxes
Playing both Ballista and Rhonas is a possibility too. In a wide meta, it's probably a good call. At this point, can't we assume both cards are good finishers which can help eachother beating corner-case situations / hate ?
It's just 1 extra slot for a finisher, it's easy to find room if the need for a sure kill takes over the need for a bullet or a Xth copy of a combo card.
this!
I think you have to add 2 finisher into the deck to dodge Surgical and have outs vs different cards. You even might want to play big mama Emrakul.
Favourite Deck: Elves (Modern & Legacy)
Standard: New Perspectives Combo
Modern: GW Hatebears | Death and Taxes | Eldrazi and Taxes | Abzan Liege | Abzan Company
Commander: The Gitrog Monster (Combo) | Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper (Control) | RIP Leovold Sultai (Elvestorm, no unfair locks) | Mono G (Yisan or Titania)
Tiny Leaders: Too many decks to keep track of
Pauper: RIP UR Drake | Mono B | GBx Goodstuff | Jund "Melira"
Playing both Ballista and Rhonas is a possibility too. In a wide meta, it's probably a good call. At this point, can't we assume both cards are good finishers which can help eachother beating corner-case situations / hate ?
It's just 1 extra slot for a finisher, it's easy to find room if the need for a sure kill takes over the need for a bullet or a Xth copy of a combo card.
this!
I think you have to add 2 finisher into the deck to dodge Surgical and have outs vs different cards. You even might want to play big mama Emrakul.
It's an option, but ballista is more like 2 slots, since you need duskwatch recruiter to fetch it since you cant chord or cooc it. With Rhonas you actually dont need anything beside that 1 piece. Getting your Rhonas surgicaled though it not easy since its indestructible, you'd have to draw it and it got thoughtseized:P
I am guessing lots of lists will pop up, so we'll just have to start testing to find the best stock list.
But please don't play emrakul, she is horrible in this deck.
Well, I think a situation in which the attacking creature gets removed afterngoing infinite is very narrow. Either they intervent before that happens or they do not have removal. Displacer, ok...
I had some situations in which Rhonas came out of coco. He always puts pressure on the board even if you just have dorks. Another upside of him is, that you do not need to play Duskwatch Recruiter as you can Chord Rhonas. I don't like Recruiter very much as a not in combo creature. He is slow and dies easily without getting any value out of him.
That said Rhonas as finisher gives you one more creature spot and +1 coco hit.
In 90% I go in the combo via Chord. Rhonas always won (I played around 20 games). Very classic situation: T2 Druid, T3 Chord into Vizier, inf mana, Witness on Chord, Chord Rhonas, attack with Druid.
Well, if people start playing TurboFog my opinion may change
Have you ran into the spot where coco hits dork and god and then god gets path'd and you're out your wincon before you can use it? I don't think that's too crazy of a scenario.
Well, first imagine same scenario with Ballista as wincon: You get a dork out of CoCo, they still have their Path and you have -1 land.
Second, pathing Rhonas does not mean taking my win con. This deck consists of 3 core combos that all can finish in different ways. It feels like people forget about the original combo why this deck exists in the first place.
I can go infinite life, infinite bolster, drain/ping with Blooad Artist/RedCap, infinite life and +1/+1 via Archangel and township my team. All without this new wincon. That is how the deck played 2 weeks ago and it was good.
Adding a new edge does not mean we have to put everything into that spot. The art with a toolbox deck is to keep calm and not be too greedy. I don't want to say that Rhonas is better or whatever but the deck needs to be smoothed out over the weeks. And probably there will never ever be a stock list as this is the nature of this deck.
Whenever we talk about the new wincon, be it Ballista or Rhonas we primarily talk about the combo turn itself. If people have removal an do understand the new combo they will never let you untap with a Druid. Once you untap and have a CoCo/Chord in hand you have the momentum on your side.
First I thought let's wait and see how it works out with this new design. However, I think the new combo will for sure get integrated into this deck. These are my reasons:
Vizier elegantly has synergy with both, the old and the new combo although he is not green (sometimes you feel that when you want to chord) und 2/1 which is annoying against ping effects.
The combo is super fast and reliably. T3 kills are real, finally making Tron and Titan decks good MUs. They ramp and in the critical turn you can kill them instead of going infinite and dying to Ugin/Karn/saltyopponentwhowantstogototime.
Druid is actually a really good dork. If you play him T2 and stuck on T2 lands you still can play a CoCo. That is huge. Also playing him T2 and getting to 3 lands naturally on T3 with a Chord in hand already means infinite. Add another Chord/Witness or CoCo into Witness into Chord means kill.
The combo does no need much space. Actually I think in total the combo needs maybe +1 dork spot (I really would recommend to play 4 Druids) and +1 (Rhonas) or +2 (Ballista) wincon spot. Vizier exchanges Melira/Anafenza. That's it. Yet the deck feels totally different to play and has some really strong plays.
Question/point still stands. If you hit Rhonas and don't have the combo going and then they path it you're out the combo. Where as balista would still be in your deck to make your combo complete. Everyone understands the original deck (even though some are dropping the kill and just keeping the inf life) we're discussing the 2 win cons for the new combo. The deck is great no one is arguing that we're just trying to figure out like 3-6 card preferences.
I think 4 druid is correct as well. It just improves our bad matchups immensely! You can now commit just 1 druid to the battlefield and threaten a combo. They have to anger/kozileks return or even path it right away in their mainphase or risk being dead. And getting a mana dork pathed on their turn feels good.
They cannot even do it in our upkeep as they risk being severely punished if we have coco.
It just makes the deck really hard to play against, and even 4 untapped mana can mean hitting a druid EOT and winning. We are now 1 turn faster than most our bad matchups. I feel 4 vizier is not needed, 3 has felt great. Druid needs to be played first, so it's more important to have more of. Playing vizier and chording for druid is worse than playing druid and chording for vizier.
I think we are actually lucky that the combo is easy to interact with, because turn 3 wins with fairly high consistency is ban worthy. I think this deck is definitely tier 1 now, and we just have to work on finding the optimal list.
So alot of theoretical talk about cards here. Has anyone done actual testing? If so what are your results? Better/worse matchups?
If you go back through the pages you'll see that many of us have tested yes. I have about 30 matches in so far and the core of the deck is great. Once/now that cards are released and we can play in paper testing will be much easier.
I'm testing my bant version tonight and will play a lot of test games other than FNM most likely.
Next week I'll probably be testing my Naya version with 4 wolf runs as the finishers.
Overall the more I brew the less I like this in Abzan; this combo is so elegant and so many ways to stick it that I think we're probably best focused on that. Being able to play 3-4 combo pieces as lands almost for free seems like it'll likely be the go-forward design.
I'm testing my bant version tonight and will play a lot of test games other than FNM most likely.
Next week I'll probably be testing my Naya version with 4 wolf runs as the finishers.
Overall the more I brew the less I like this in Abzan; this combo is so elegant and so many ways to stick it that I think we're probably best focused on that. Being able to play 3-4 combo pieces as lands almost for free seems like it'll likely be the go-forward design.
So are you saying you think the Naya or Bant version will be better than Abzan moving foward?
I am pretty sure yes, but obviously no testing yet.
Wolf run + Druid + Vizier is just a much more compact and efficient combo from a deck building perspective. Yeah it loses to removal but it can t3 kill which places pressure on big mana decks and combo decks that we've never had.
Pokken, what is the main role of Flickerwisp in your Naya build? Any reason you prefer it in that shard but not in other colors?
It does a lot of things:
1) Reactivates rallier/witness to combo out
2) flies over blockers with mirror entity -- in general I think if running entity should run slightly more fliers. possible rhonas is better but I think rhonas is a worse card independently than entity thus far. May change after testing.
3) blinks problem permanents to allow you to combo (suppression field, revoker, pithing needle, linvala)
4) helps win the value war
5) can protect your stuff in pinch off coco/chord, acting as a skite or similar
Time will tell if it's right or not.
Re: Leap
Leap is a solid sideboard card if playing finks, but would not MD since it dilutes gameplan.
Leap is a solid sideboard card if playing finks, but would not MD since it dilutes gameplan.
Quite the contrary : it perfectly serves the deck. The fact that it can serve triple duty as a pseudo-infinite-mana-sink, a grindy value engine and a sac outlet for Finks + Vizier makes it very appealing to me, especially if you eschew black.
I haven't actually ran the numbers and I guess it depends a lot on how many non mono-green creatures you have in your deck, but I think it will be pretty rare that you do not win on the spot with Devoted Vizier combo active and an Evolutionary leap, especially if you have any number of other creatures in hand or on the board or any amount of leftover white mana.
It dilutes the gameplan by cutting into your coco-able creatures or your chord/companies.
I think there is very likely a separate deck that doesn't play company/chord, goes abit bigger, and plays a more midrangey game with leap. This combo is perfect for a leap deck.
Seer is by far the best sac outlet available and you want to be playing finks. You can splash whatever color you want but black also gives you cards like decay/ts/tidehollow in the sb. I personally don't see how running a land (as a 4 of) as your win con is much better than a creature but I'd love to hear how it works out. All versions where you have the combo t3 with something to sink the mana into will win/be good. The only thing in question is what is/are the best finisher(s)/cards around it. It seems to me though that's only about 7ish cards different in lists no matter what 3rd color you splash.
+1. Kessig Wolf Run is not chordable or collectable, which makes it worse than Viscera Seer or Rhonas the Indomittable.
I mean, yes a different splash is interesting, but it's way too early to claim that Abzan is the wrong combination of colors.
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Pioneer - A bunch of stuff Modern - Humans Legacy - Grixis Phoenix / Death & Taxes
In games (wins/losses) went 0-2, 2-1 vs death shadow jund, 2-1 vs grixis control, 1-2 vs eldrazi tron
Overall, the deck felt better than old abzan company. The beatdown plan of old abzan coco is slow and mediocre (compared with bant, GW and naya counterparts). With the old deck I usually had to board out combo pieces vs heavy removal decks and tried to play the midrange game from the start. Now I've tried leaving all combo pieces, maybe shaving 1 druid depending on how many SB cards I wanted to include. With such a density of combo pieces trying to execute the combo first is a good plan, thus going for the midrange route only if things go wrong (which I like much more than the old strategy).
The main use for the infinite mana is #value with duskwatch. Cast all finks, restock hand with 7 creatures and stack the top cards of the library in case that I need more good draws. Rhonas is a really good magic card and it's worth running it by itself, being a mana sink is just extra value. Cheap, clocks hard, impossible (or really expensive) to remove for some decks like grixis or jund, and has the side benefit of being a mana sink for the combo.
SB considerations: Walking ballista is a bullet vs ensnaring bridge, it's unnecessary in the maindeck. Thought about melira, but infect is nonexistent ATM. Stony is mediocre and I can understand arguments for cutting them for other stuff. Terastodon is tech that I'm testing vs tron and other big mana decks. Big stupid cards like craterhoof shouldn't be played maindeck just because we can generate infinite mana, but I think we could include really expensive bullets that straight up win the game. Fiend hunter was played as a maindeck out to scavenging ooze, now with a second combo that doesn't get disrupted by it we might cut it (as it has been said, card is bad vs any kind of removal).
As you see, I've tested three matchups that I felt were complicated for the old deck. Jund/grixis decks are winnable with the aforementioned strategy, eldrazi tron is miserable though (which is surprising since bant eldrazi is favorable). All is dust is a beating, to be honest. I can't see any reasonable strategy G1 vs them, post sideboard it gets slightly better with stony and maelstrom pulse, still bad. Gaddock teeg is bad in this deck, so maybe I should swap some cards for 3-4 fulminator
Ensnaring bridge does nothing to stop Rhonas.
Balista is NOT a great card in coco. It's ok in the matchups where you can kill mana dorks and other small stuff.
People are just playing it for the infinite combo. Having the win con be something that is hit off coco is not to be underestimated. The question you have to ask yourself is, how many games are lost by hitting ballista off coco, or drawing it when it is bad, contra how many games you lose where Rhonas would not win, when ballista would. It's really not that hard to math out with some testing.
The argument so far is that it's better against Ad Nauseam and pherhaps Displacer, which seems narrow and not very hard matchups. (and even if they blow the angel's grace to save themselves they are down a combo piece and might just be dead anyway)
Not sure if it's better of worse, but if you wanted to you could also drop duskwatch and just run Rhonas, which is enough in most cases, but maybe it's too risky..
I suggest imaging Rhonas/ballista as a split card when testing. Every time you combo, see if it would make a difference which you had. And every time you hit either of coco, note it down.
Also, if you are running ballista, anafenza becomes better, as bolstering on ballista can be neat, but so is bolstering on a 3/2 to turn on Rhonas permanently:)
If ensnaring bridge is a hit against rhonas, then leyline of sanctity is a hit against ballista. Which are you more worried about? The answer should be neither because you can just grab reclamation sage and then continue.
-Rg valakut
-U/W control
-U/R storm
-G/W value town
Legacy :
-Storm
It's just 1 extra slot for a finisher, it's easy to find room if the need for a sure kill takes over the need for a bullet or a Xth copy of a combo card.
this!
I think you have to add 2 finisher into the deck to dodge Surgical and have outs vs different cards. You even might want to play big mama Emrakul.
Favourite Deck: Elves (Modern & Legacy)
Standard: New Perspectives Combo
Modern: GW Hatebears | Death and Taxes | Eldrazi and Taxes | Abzan Liege | Abzan Company
Commander: The Gitrog Monster (Combo) | Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper (Control) | RIP Leovold Sultai (Elvestorm, no unfair locks) | Mono G (Yisan or Titania)
Tiny Leaders: Too many decks to keep track of
Pauper: RIP UR Drake | Mono B | GBx Goodstuff | Jund "Melira"
It's an option, but ballista is more like 2 slots, since you need duskwatch recruiter to fetch it since you cant chord or cooc it. With Rhonas you actually dont need anything beside that 1 piece. Getting your Rhonas surgicaled though it not easy since its indestructible, you'd have to draw it and it got thoughtseized:P
I am guessing lots of lists will pop up, so we'll just have to start testing to find the best stock list.
But please don't play emrakul, she is horrible in this deck.
Question/point still stands. If you hit Rhonas and don't have the combo going and then they path it you're out the combo. Where as balista would still be in your deck to make your combo complete. Everyone understands the original deck (even though some are dropping the kill and just keeping the inf life) we're discussing the 2 win cons for the new combo. The deck is great no one is arguing that we're just trying to figure out like 3-6 card preferences.
They cannot even do it in our upkeep as they risk being severely punished if we have coco.
It just makes the deck really hard to play against, and even 4 untapped mana can mean hitting a druid EOT and winning. We are now 1 turn faster than most our bad matchups. I feel 4 vizier is not needed, 3 has felt great. Druid needs to be played first, so it's more important to have more of. Playing vizier and chording for druid is worse than playing druid and chording for vizier.
I think we are actually lucky that the combo is easy to interact with, because turn 3 wins with fairly high consistency is ban worthy. I think this deck is definitely tier 1 now, and we just have to work on finding the optimal list.
If you go back through the pages you'll see that many of us have tested yes. I have about 30 matches in so far and the core of the deck is great. Once/now that cards are released and we can play in paper testing will be much easier.
Next week I'll probably be testing my Naya version with 4 wolf runs as the finishers.
Overall the more I brew the less I like this in Abzan; this combo is so elegant and so many ways to stick it that I think we're probably best focused on that. Being able to play 3-4 combo pieces as lands almost for free seems like it'll likely be the go-forward design.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
So are you saying you think the Naya or Bant version will be better than Abzan moving foward?
Modern
UWGB 4c Snow Control BGWU
Wolf run + Druid + Vizier is just a much more compact and efficient combo from a deck building perspective. Yeah it loses to removal but it can t3 kill which places pressure on big mana decks and combo decks that we've never had.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
It does a lot of things:
1) Reactivates rallier/witness to combo out
2) flies over blockers with mirror entity -- in general I think if running entity should run slightly more fliers. possible rhonas is better but I think rhonas is a worse card independently than entity thus far. May change after testing.
3) blinks problem permanents to allow you to combo (suppression field, revoker, pithing needle, linvala)
4) helps win the value war
5) can protect your stuff in pinch off coco/chord, acting as a skite or similar
Time will tell if it's right or not.
Re: Leap
Leap is a solid sideboard card if playing finks, but would not MD since it dilutes gameplan.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
It dilutes the gameplan by cutting into your coco-able creatures or your chord/companies.
I think there is very likely a separate deck that doesn't play company/chord, goes abit bigger, and plays a more midrangey game with leap. This combo is perfect for a leap deck.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Kessig Wolf Run is not chordable or collectable, which makes it worse than Viscera Seer or Rhonas the Indomittable.
I mean, yes a different splash is interesting, but it's way too early to claim that Abzan is the wrong combination of colors.
Modern
UWGB 4c Snow Control BGWU
1 Forest
2 Gavony Township
1 Godless Shrine
3 Horizon Canopy
1 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Temple Garden
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
//Instants
4 Chord of Calling
4 Collected Company
1 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
2 Birds of Paradise
3 Devoted Druid
1 Duskwatch Recruiter
1 Eternal Witness
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Qasali Pridemage
3 Renegade Rallier
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Viscera Seer
3 Vizier of Remedies
3 Voice of Resurgence
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Walking Ballista
1 Selfless Spirit
2 Path to Exile
3 Stony Silence
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Terastodon
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Tidehollow Sculler
In games (wins/losses) went 0-2, 2-1 vs death shadow jund, 2-1 vs grixis control, 1-2 vs eldrazi tron
Overall, the deck felt better than old abzan company. The beatdown plan of old abzan coco is slow and mediocre (compared with bant, GW and naya counterparts). With the old deck I usually had to board out combo pieces vs heavy removal decks and tried to play the midrange game from the start. Now I've tried leaving all combo pieces, maybe shaving 1 druid depending on how many SB cards I wanted to include. With such a density of combo pieces trying to execute the combo first is a good plan, thus going for the midrange route only if things go wrong (which I like much more than the old strategy).
The main use for the infinite mana is #value with duskwatch. Cast all finks, restock hand with 7 creatures and stack the top cards of the library in case that I need more good draws. Rhonas is a really good magic card and it's worth running it by itself, being a mana sink is just extra value. Cheap, clocks hard, impossible (or really expensive) to remove for some decks like grixis or jund, and has the side benefit of being a mana sink for the combo.
SB considerations: Walking ballista is a bullet vs ensnaring bridge, it's unnecessary in the maindeck. Thought about melira, but infect is nonexistent ATM. Stony is mediocre and I can understand arguments for cutting them for other stuff. Terastodon is tech that I'm testing vs tron and other big mana decks. Big stupid cards like craterhoof shouldn't be played maindeck just because we can generate infinite mana, but I think we could include really expensive bullets that straight up win the game. Fiend hunter was played as a maindeck out to scavenging ooze, now with a second combo that doesn't get disrupted by it we might cut it (as it has been said, card is bad vs any kind of removal).
As you see, I've tested three matchups that I felt were complicated for the old deck. Jund/grixis decks are winnable with the aforementioned strategy, eldrazi tron is miserable though (which is surprising since bant eldrazi is favorable). All is dust is a beating, to be honest. I can't see any reasonable strategy G1 vs them, post sideboard it gets slightly better with stony and maelstrom pulse, still bad. Gaddock teeg is bad in this deck, so maybe I should swap some cards for 3-4 fulminator
L: Maverick