MTG Salvation

Went to a 38-player modern tournament and went 4-0-2 but lost during the quarterfinals. I seldom do paper tournaments due to family issues. I usually play on Cockatrice and I am pretty happy with my list.

Round 1: Junk 2-0
Round 2: Esper Control 2-0
Round 3: Burn 2-1
Round 4: Jund 2-0
Round 5: ID
Round 6: ID

Quarter finals: Ponza 0-2. Game 1 turn 2 blood moon into stone rain my basic forest. Game 2 mulled to 5 and eventually having not enough gas.

My list:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble hierarch
4 Devoted Druid
3 Vizier of Remedies
2 Duskwatch Recruiter
4 Knight of the reliquary
4 Tireless Tracker
3 Eternal Witness
1 Walking Ballista
1 Rhonas the indomitable

4 Chord of Calling
4 Collected Company

5 Forest
1 Plains
4 Windswepth Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Ghost quarter
1 field of ruin
2 Temple garden
1 Stomping ground
1 Kessig Wolf-run

SB:
3 Path to Exile
2 Stony Silence
1 Kataki
1 Burrenton forge-tender
1 Selfless spirit
1 Qasali pridemage
1 Scavenging ooze
1 Eidolon of rhetoric
1 Bujoka bog
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Luminesce

Overall, I think the mashup of value town and counters company is very strong. It can combo fast, grinds as well and beats face at the same time. I think luminesce is also a good sideboard card but only have used it once during the tournament. Usually siding it in on burn, decks with red sweepers (Mardu pyro, Affinity whipflares, Jeskai), Storm and Deathshadow.

I am having success with Bant Company with Jace on cockatrice. Here is my list.

22 Lands
3 Forest
1 Plains
1 island
2 Temple Garden
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Breeding Pool
4 Windswept Heath
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Ghost quarter
1 Gavony Township

28 Creatures
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Voice of Resurgence
1 Qasali pridemage
1 Scavenging ooze
2 Selfless Spirit
4 Spell Queller
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Reflector Mage
2 Tireless Tracker

Spells
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Collected Company
4 Path to Exile

SB
2 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Ethersworn Cannonist
4 Kitchen Finks
1 Worship
2 Negate
2 Unified Will
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant


I like the curve progression of the deck. Mana dork turn 1. Turn 2 have mana for spell queller. If I have no spell queller, I just ramp or cast knight. Turn 3 have company mana up or cast Jace if they have nothing to pressure it. It is just insane value. Love this deck already.

I am also experimenting on this and I am also on the same line as dropping the finks combo. Also entertaining of putting blue for spell queller or knightfall mix and having counter spells in sb. Unfortunately I havent got time to playtest much because of work. Please post if you have any results.

I like the synergy between knight of the reliquary and tracker. I think 4 knights and 2 trackers are a good number. Dont like courser since sometimes it doesnt provide any value.

I think 4 duskwatch recruiters are too slow. Yes they give you card advantage but in the late game. It losses so much tempo. I am also not a fan of renegade rallier since it is too situational, must get to trigger revolt and a value card in graveyard. Haven’t tested it with ghost quarters, which may work.

Quote from Pokken »

That manabase is an absolute disaster, and you're sacrificing all the good parts of value town (the land destruction plan primarily) for the vizier combo. You're trying to do way too much in my opinion.

If you wanna a value town style build you should keep it to GW, run 4 ghost quarters (or potentially field of ruin if you can't get any ramunap excavators in there), 4 renegade ralliers and see what fits from there. Probably shave down on trackers/knights to get all the ralliers in there since they bring your combo pieces back and also work with the land destruction plan.

I've done a ton of thinking on the combined deck and I think you want the playset of duskwatch instead of voices. They're deceptively very powerful when you're running more baneslayers like Knight and Tracker, as they act kind of like a spellskite, and they're great topdecks.

The mana base seem like a mess but it works alright with knights and birds to fix colors. Maybe thinking of dropping down black but will be losing good sideboard cards.

I totally excluded the land destruction part of the gw company and focused more on cards that give card advantage and beats. In my opinion land destruction works best if you have complete package of azusa and ramunap which I think cannot be accomodated by the deck. If you will build your version, what list are you thinking? I would like to see it. Thanks.

I noticed that abzan company has been putting up less results. Maybe due to the rise of control decks like jeskai and decks with lots of removal like death shadow. I am thinking of merging gw value town and abzan coco. List looks like this

30 creatures
4 birds of paradise
2 noble hierarch
4 devoted druid
3 vizier of remedies
2 duskwatch recruiter
2 voice of resurgence
2 courser or kruphix
3 tireless tracker
3 knight of the reliquary
1 rhonas
4 eternal witness

8 spells
4 collected company
4 chord of calling

22 lands
3 forest
1 plains
2 temple garden
1 overgrown tomb
1 blooming marsh
1 stomping ground
4 windswept heath
4 verdant catacombs
1 wooded foothills
2 horizon canopy
1 gavony township
1 kessig wolfrun

Sideboard
1 burrenton forgetender
2 tidehollow sculler
2 path to exile
1 abrupt decay
1 maelstrom pulse
1 sin collector
2 kor firewalker
1 aethersworn cannonist
1 eidolon of rhetoric
1 kataki, war’s wage
1 qasali pridemage
1 orshov pontiff

It still has pretty consistent turn 3 kills but has pretty good beatdown backup plan.

For those using the knight of reliquary package, has anyone tried a singleton Hall of the bandit lord? Fetch the hall at end atep of opponent with knight, then on your turn cast a haste druid and combo off?

Quote from Pathrogas »

Some more testing... 6-1 (12-3 in games) today (xmage) vs Tezzerator, Grixis Shadow, 2x Mirror (abzan and abzan blue), BUG midrange, Affinity, only loss to Eldratron.
Combo'd with Druid 8 times (2 of which involved Knight/Kessig) and 3 times with Finks (one could've been prevented if the opp wasn't greedy with Ooze).

Glad to hear your results. I am also testing Knight of reliquary but replaced Kessig wolfrun with Ghost quarters. I found them helpful in Tron matchups and decks with manlands. How do you find Kessig wolfrun? Is it worth the extra red color?

@torpf I like your list a lot! I would only remove the ralliers and selfless spirit. Replace them with finks and seer. Having redundancy is the strength of abzan company. Maybe also change walking ballista with rhonas since it has nice synergy with big knights.

Thanks for the input. Your SB sounds reasonable. Will try it. My reason for including stony silence that it shuts down so many stuff like o-stone, ballista, map, relic of progenitus and mana fixers. I wish wizards would increase the number of SB to 20.

I have never thought of phyrexian revoker as a SB. It may help but usually creatures have a downside that it can be easily answered. I would still like to keep some amount of stony silence in my 75. How do you side against tron matchups? How to deal with walking ballista?

I finally been able to join my LGS for modern tournaments. I had this deck for a year now but haven't played it competitively til recently. I have been having success with my list with a record of 7-1 on matches for the past 2 weeks. My meta consists of Naya Zoo, 8-rack, GB tron, Eldrazi tron, Jeskai control, Mardu burn, Naya burn, Grixis Death Shadow, Grixis delver, Bogles, Storm and Krark Clan Ironworks Combo.

Here is my list



I have not been impressed with Worship and Orshov Pontiff in the SB. Maybe I will be changing them to Aven Mindcensor.

So far my Record for games
8-Rack 4-2
GB Tron 0-2
Mardu Burn 2-1
Naya Zoo 4-2
Storm 2-0
KCI 2-0

The only hard loss was to GB tron. Walking ballista wrecked the deck. I was unable to find stony silence. Any suggestions in my list will be great. Thanks.

I am playing 4 eternal witnesses in the main. I find them very useful and makes coco very good and comboing off turn three much consistent when you also have chord in hand. I usually side out 1-2 e wit when I am facing aggro decks. But in attrition matchups, e wit is king.

Has anyone tried Glare of subdual as side board? I think it can help against shadow decks and eldrazi tron since they only have few creatures. We can then turn our mana dorks and viziers useful and tap their fatties. It can help buy time to set up. Thinking also of running lingering souls to make more blockers and tap them with the enchantment

Would intrepid hero be a good sideboard with many people playing eldrazis, death shadows and goyfs? Has anyone tried it before?