Sell them. It's not played in the non-rotating formats (well, Jeskai Ascendancy, but I don't think anyone in Modern cares so much about that following Treasure Cruise completely redefining everything), which typically means value plummets post-rotation.
Could you play Enduring Ideal? How did the Extended deck do it, Lotus Blooms, right? And I guess a counter/control shell for the rest of the deck. Not super-efficient compared to something like, say, Twin, but who cares that you'd be tier 2 at best when you win by turning into a dragon and burninating the countryside your enemies?
Just because we are a pod deck doesn't mean you sideboard like one. Running a bunch of ones to "slow down" or stop a deck that can kill you in 4 to 5 turns and plays countermagic is probably the worst plan. The reason you can play 1 of Sigarda's or Thruns is because the game will go that long. You will have time to get them out and they will make a difference. To play multiple 1 ofs of 2cmc or less creatures all of which do different things in pod seems awful. You're hedging on drawing a 1 of, or hoping a 1 or 2 drops fits into your pod chain? Which you're hoping to resolve through removal and countermagic? That seems like a sure fire way to lose to delver and burn. I'm also confused how double white is that hard to cast in a deck with 7 one drop fixers and 4 to 5 lands that come in untapped for white. Temple Garden, Bird, tapped land firewalker. Take 2 damage? To advance mana and net life on each spell? Seems very fine by me.
If we were talking about tackling later games decks I'd agree to diversify answers or threats but that's simply not the case against burn or delver. You first pod or chord almost always wants to be a finks. Playing 3 cards that have pro red and gain you life on each red spell and don't require you to micromanage seems fine. I'm also not sure how anger is such a huge deal from delver decks when they kill their own creatures as well, don't answer your firewalker and don't kill your pod (which is the only way they would probably anger,as so to stop all voice and persist triggers.)
It's all well and good to say "jam trips Firewalker, win forever against Cruise", but as much as the hysteria machine would have you believe otherwise, there are decks that are not Delver and Burn. For the same reason that you don't just keep four Leyline of the Voids in the sideboard of your Legacy deck because today might be the day that Dredge is out in big numbers, the final solution cannot be something that takes up so much space and is dead in every other game. What does Kor Firewalker do against Bogles? Soul Sisters? Green Stompy? UWR Control? Not a lot, but you can bet you'll see those decks out in force to prey on the new all-stars. Eventually, one of two things is going to happen: Cruise gets banned for making Burn and Delver oppressive, or the meta adjusts to keep those decks from being oppressive. Going all-in on one piece of hate might work in the short-term when it looks like nothing but Burn and Delver is putting up results, but it won't hold forever.
Also... diverse hatebears are bad, the first card you typically Chord for is CMC3 Kitchen Finks, and of course a mana dork survives long enough to tap for the second White? What?
The question in my eyes about what to do about the two Cruise-fueled decks is not so much what hate to run but how much. Pod already has a lot of maindeckable cards that punish both Burn and Delver to varying degrees (Finks, Pontiff, Spellskite), and there's a lot of hatebears to pick from that can be boarded in in other matches (Eidolon, Forge-Tender, Firewalker, Thalia, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Aegis of the Gods). No one card is going to be the solution, you have to throw a few of them out and hope they slow your opponent down enough for you to get stable again.
I think a second Pontiff is the best way to attack Delver, at least for Melira with the sac outlets and the potential to Plague Wind their whole board by haunting an X/1 with the Pontiff's ETB trigger on the stack. Even without that bit of trickery, it still undoes everything Young Pyromancer is involved in. Eidolon of Rhetoric also seems strong here, by taking away their ability to make a prowess guy huge and forcing them to slow down; a 1/4 for 3 is also not an irrelevant defensive creature. Combined with the already-in-place discard, Decays, and lifegain, that should be enough to at least level out the matchup.
Burn looks a bit more awkward. Eidolon doesn't hamper them as much, since they'll just toss sorceries at you on their turn and instants on yours; that's vaguely helpful if you're in a position to gain some life during their turn, but in most circumstances you'll be in critical condition already. Kor Firewalker knocks a point of damage off every burn spell and doesn't die unless it blocks and you're Skullcracked, but WW means you're most likely going to have to hurt yourself if you want to cast it from your hand. Burrenton Forge-Tender, Thalia, and Aegis of the Gods all do the same thing, more or less: soak up one burn spell that would have otherwise hit you. Spirit of the Labyrinth is something I'm considering, because of its ability to blank Treasure Cruise at the time when Burn needs it most to reload; if you can bunker up with a Wall of Roots and/or Kitchen Finks and get them to run low on cards, then taking away their Draw 3 gives you a real chance to get back in the game, plus they'll have burnt up their graveyard for zero benefit and you get a body out of it. I also need to fiddle with my mainboard, which means no more being greedy with reaching into a fourth colour; more basics, Siege Rhino, either Ooze or Eidolon in the main.
So, in conclusion, here's the stuff I'm aiming for:
3 Kitchen Finks, 1 Siege Rhino, 1 Restoration Angel - gain life.
2 Orzhov Pontiff (1 MB, 1 SB) - sweep pests.
1 Scavenging Ooze - eat graveyards.
1 Spellskite - eat Bolts.
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric - general-purpose stop-sign.
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth - counters Cruise.
3 Inquisition of Kozilek - painless discard.
and maybe 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender, for when people remember that Volcanic Fallout destroys Delver.
A bit of an odd one that happened to me in a commander game the other night. Someone played a Japanese Ajani Vengant and tried to claim his +1 tapped the permenant as well as stopping it untapping. Possibly just an honest mistake but when playing with cards that you can't actually read for reference then it is probably not a bad idea to check exactly what the wording should be. This also goes for textless promos that you aren't familiar with.
The poster child for this is Cryptic Command, where it matters which order the modes are printed on the card. The Faeries players with their textless Commands and foil Japanese Cliques must have been real fun on judges.
Burrenton Forge-Tender. I'm not sure how serious that suggestion is.
No, but Dryad Militant is a good fit, it's easy to cast and it hurts spell-based decks way more than our creature-based one, and anything that disrupts Bolt-Snap-Bolt is worth considering. You can Chord for Militant with their spell on the stack and have it go to the bin on resolution, right? So that's a thing. I like Fume Spitter too, but getting B early is much harder than (G/W).
Bloodsoaked Champion is okay, but I think Ranger of Eos already covers getting enough disposable 1-drops. Not being able to block is kinda awkward, sitting in the graveyard and inviting removal is kinda awkward... I could imagine Reassembling Skeleton being a lot better for the deck and that card's not very good.
No Spellskite(s) main, or am I just overestimating their value against Burn since they can't swerve Skullcracks and such? Although I don't know what you'd move to the side that wouldn't be as good or better against Burn anyway (Scooze, go down a Finks, etc.).
With full disclosure that I'm very big on Tidehollow Sculler over the standard Sin Collector/Entomber Exarch 1-2 punch, I think that Sculler might work better against the influx of Burn and Cruise-fueled Delver tempo. Scullers are straight up better against Burn because they are down a card whether it lives or dies, they're cheaper, and you can take their Eidolon if that's the right thing to do at the time. Cost is also a factor against Delver, and since Ancestral Recruise laughs at any notions of grinding out card advantage (like Podding Collector into Exarch) it's perhaps more valuable to have more targeted take-anything discard. With your list specifically, you could switch discard guys, go down a Wall of Roots because your curve is lower, and put in another Decay/a Spellskite/something else good.
Viridian Emissary VS. Sylvan Ranger? I've gotta assume it's the Viridian as his effect actually ramps...but he does take more work then sylvan.
-snip stuff-
Viridian Emissary, definitely. Ranger is fixing but not ramp, and Emissary is a better body when you want to attack and block with it - which you usually do, because then you get the land out of it. You don't get as many value creatures lower on the Pod chain while missing White - no Voice is the big one, but missing things like Pontiff and Ranger and Restoration Angel are noticeable too - so you need to provide fuel for Pod to get up into the higher CMCs where you get real business (Thragtusk, Titans). Emissary is a perfect fit, because it works early as an on-curve creature and late as Pod food, and a 2/1 that your opponents are reluctant to see die will always have some effect on the board.
To add in the more expensive stuff, I'd make changes like this:
-2 Elvish Mystic
-3 Strangleroot Geist
-1 Desecration Demon
-1 Thornling
-1 Putrefy
(-1 Thrun, the Last Troll)
+4 Viridian Emissary
+1 Farhaven Elf
+1 Shriekmaw
+1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
+1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
(+1 Grave-Shell Scarab)
The average CMC of your deck goes up, but you get there faster with less fragile cards (mana dorks have a short life expectancy). I think discussions/thought experiments like this are useful even if it's not going to result in a GP-storming deck, because it's both a good reminder of why the established version of the deck is the way it is and it also prevents you from getting too caught up in the idea that the deck in its current incarnation is the only way it can be. A 2-colour deck, for example, misses out on a lot of the specified hate cards, but if you're playing in an area that's experienced a huge influx of new players coming in with Burn decks then maybe something that doesn't take a ton of damage from its manabase and runs Thragtusk isn't so out of the question.
Any suggestions would be welcome. Currently, both combos are mainboard, but I might try to idea of moving one of them to the Sideboard, allowing the deck to switch between modes instead.
Looks solid. You probably don't need Reclamation Sage, Acidic Slime, and Qasali Pridemage - ditch Slime unless you're aiming to kill a lot of Celestial Colonnades with it (it's usually too slow to disrupt Tron). You could probably take out a Finks to put in Orzhov Pontiff, you rarely need four of them.
With the two combos though, the reason most decks pick either one or the other is because there isn't room for both, and if you were to put in, for example, a couple more pieces of spot removal and a Siege Rhino, then you'd run out of space for both also. But changing combos mid-match doesn't really help you without extremely specific knowledge of what hate your opponent has for you (you start Melira, they side in Rest in Peace, you get them with Archangel), and even then there's still a lot of hate pieces that hamper the deck itself instead of the combo (Grafdigger's Cage, Linvala, Mindcensor, etc.) and all spot removal works equally well whether it kills Melira or Spike Feeder. Changing combos doesn't really do anything, not compared to bringing in more of the generic answers that you need (discard, removal, etc.) or to having room for more pinpoint hate cards that skew games all on their own.
With just G/B, using your list as a base, I would want to make the deck a little like Legacy's Nic Fit: go way bigger than anyone else faster than they can handle it. Ramp with Viridian Emissary, maybe a couple of Wood Elves/Farhaven Elf and a Seedguide Ash further up in the curve to support multiple six-drops (Grave Titan, Kokusho, the Evening Star, maybe Primeval Titan for double Treetop Village) to cap the Pod chain off with Sheoldred, Whispering One. Strangleroot Geist and the non-Bird ramp stuff could be trimmed for more land-searching-style ramp, and you could replace some of the big creatures that don't have immediate benefits/are just huge beaters for more value guys - at the very least, you need a Shriekmaw.
Also, Dryad Arbor is horrible. Like, I know you don't have Ranger of Eos to find Viscera Seer, but Dryad Arbor is like the worst Llanowar Elf ever. It's dubious in Eternal formats, has far too many strikes against it in Modern, and you couldn't pay me enough to run it in multiplayer. Varolz should be enough to combo off with, and he's got some utility outside of being a sac outlet.
Finally, there's a neat synergy between Savra and Shambling Shell, especially in FFA and especially when you Pod one into the other. You can get similar results with Grave-Shell Scarab if you'd rather have a kinda-clunky draw engine.
Shriekmaw/Nekrataal/second Redcap is the thing that sticks out to me, though you might be able to cover that spot with Abzan Charm. All the people switching Chords for Abzan Charms almost makes me want to try out Angel Pod. Almost.
The one thing I don't have (besides a Noble Hierarch) is a sideboard, and my meta is full of Affinity, BG Rock, UWR Control, and Delver so what I was thinking is:
Any suggestions? This is a very rough version of the deck and I know I've forgone the Angel/Spike Feeder combo but it was too slow and ineffective against my meta.
You don't need to max out on Affinity hate, unless, I don't know, more than half the people you play against are running Robots. A second Pontiff would be good against a lot of those matches, and maybe a full set of Decays versus Delver and UWR...? Although you still need something to deal with Colonnade, so maybe you want a Path or a Dismember in your spot removal. Fulminator Mage if you can get them.
This is untested theorycrafting, but Necroplasm might be able to do stuff against Delver. It's probably too slow and will eat removal/bounce, but given just one turn it will strip them of most of their board presence in ways that's difficult for Pontiff to manage. If you have discard main so you know what's in their opening hand, might be worth testing.
It was the fuel for one version of Eggs after Faith's Reward, too.
The real question is, what Green deck wants extra lands early but is willing to cash them in later? The G/B/x shell, Pod, and Elves function pretty well on small amounts of land, Scapeshift and other rampy things want as much as possible and win when they get it, and aggro decks aren't going to burn up their mana on ensuring their lands drops when they could be playing cheap threats instead. It's an elegant card, there's just not a deck that wants to do what it wants you to do.
The good thing about planeswalkers in Modern is that you don't really see them all that often, not compared to Standard where they're consistently among the most powerful cards available and not compared to Legacy where you have to contend with Big Jace. There's Liliana of the Veil, of course, but without DRS she's not at full strength, and there's Karn, who's a small part of a whole deck that just tears Pod apart, and... that's really about it. The 4-5 mana planeswalkers make you tap out at the point where you might be run over by Twin, Storm, us, Ascendancy since that's a thing now; there aren't enough fair decks to invest deeply into the type of board control planeswalkers provide. Like, you see random Tezzerets and Koths and Domris and Sorins here and there, but there's not enough incentive to play stuff that's slower than the usual suspects of Modern answers (Bolt, Decay, Path, Dismember) just to kill off 'walkers too. Try and 'Seize them if you know it's something you can't beat.
the countrysideyour enemies?It's all well and good to say "jam trips Firewalker, win forever against Cruise", but as much as the hysteria machine would have you believe otherwise, there are decks that are not Delver and Burn. For the same reason that you don't just keep four Leyline of the Voids in the sideboard of your Legacy deck because today might be the day that Dredge is out in big numbers, the final solution cannot be something that takes up so much space and is dead in every other game. What does Kor Firewalker do against Bogles? Soul Sisters? Green Stompy? UWR Control? Not a lot, but you can bet you'll see those decks out in force to prey on the new all-stars. Eventually, one of two things is going to happen: Cruise gets banned for making Burn and Delver oppressive, or the meta adjusts to keep those decks from being oppressive. Going all-in on one piece of hate might work in the short-term when it looks like nothing but Burn and Delver is putting up results, but it won't hold forever.
Also... diverse hatebears are bad, the first card you typically Chord for is CMC3 Kitchen Finks, and of course a mana dork survives long enough to tap for the second White? What?
By not being Burrenton Forge-Tender...? idk
The question in my eyes about what to do about the two Cruise-fueled decks is not so much what hate to run but how much. Pod already has a lot of maindeckable cards that punish both Burn and Delver to varying degrees (Finks, Pontiff, Spellskite), and there's a lot of hatebears to pick from that can be boarded in in other matches (Eidolon, Forge-Tender, Firewalker, Thalia, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Aegis of the Gods). No one card is going to be the solution, you have to throw a few of them out and hope they slow your opponent down enough for you to get stable again.
I think a second Pontiff is the best way to attack Delver, at least for Melira with the sac outlets and the potential to Plague Wind their whole board by haunting an X/1 with the Pontiff's ETB trigger on the stack. Even without that bit of trickery, it still undoes everything Young Pyromancer is involved in. Eidolon of Rhetoric also seems strong here, by taking away their ability to make a prowess guy huge and forcing them to slow down; a 1/4 for 3 is also not an irrelevant defensive creature. Combined with the already-in-place discard, Decays, and lifegain, that should be enough to at least level out the matchup.
Burn looks a bit more awkward. Eidolon doesn't hamper them as much, since they'll just toss sorceries at you on their turn and instants on yours; that's vaguely helpful if you're in a position to gain some life during their turn, but in most circumstances you'll be in critical condition already. Kor Firewalker knocks a point of damage off every burn spell and doesn't die unless it blocks and you're Skullcracked, but WW means you're most likely going to have to hurt yourself if you want to cast it from your hand. Burrenton Forge-Tender, Thalia, and Aegis of the Gods all do the same thing, more or less: soak up one burn spell that would have otherwise hit you. Spirit of the Labyrinth is something I'm considering, because of its ability to blank Treasure Cruise at the time when Burn needs it most to reload; if you can bunker up with a Wall of Roots and/or Kitchen Finks and get them to run low on cards, then taking away their Draw 3 gives you a real chance to get back in the game, plus they'll have burnt up their graveyard for zero benefit and you get a body out of it. I also need to fiddle with my mainboard, which means no more being greedy with reaching into a fourth colour; more basics, Siege Rhino, either Ooze or Eidolon in the main.
So, in conclusion, here's the stuff I'm aiming for:
3 Kitchen Finks, 1 Siege Rhino, 1 Restoration Angel - gain life.
2 Orzhov Pontiff (1 MB, 1 SB) - sweep pests.
1 Scavenging Ooze - eat graveyards.
1 Spellskite - eat Bolts.
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric - general-purpose stop-sign.
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth - counters Cruise.
3 Inquisition of Kozilek - painless discard.
and maybe 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender, for when people remember that Volcanic Fallout destroys Delver.
Think that's enough?
You're a sick man, by the way, and I hope you enjoy inflicting headaches on other people who want to learn weird rules interactions.
The poster child for this is Cryptic Command, where it matters which order the modes are printed on the card. The Faeries players with their textless Commands and foil Japanese Cliques must have been real fun on judges.
No, but Dryad Militant is a good fit, it's easy to cast and it hurts spell-based decks way more than our creature-based one, and anything that disrupts Bolt-Snap-Bolt is worth considering. You can Chord for Militant with their spell on the stack and have it go to the bin on resolution, right? So that's a thing. I like Fume Spitter too, but getting B early is much harder than (G/W).
Bloodsoaked Champion is okay, but I think Ranger of Eos already covers getting enough disposable 1-drops. Not being able to block is kinda awkward, sitting in the graveyard and inviting removal is kinda awkward... I could imagine Reassembling Skeleton being a lot better for the deck and that card's not very good.
With full disclosure that I'm very big on Tidehollow Sculler over the standard Sin Collector/Entomber Exarch 1-2 punch, I think that Sculler might work better against the influx of Burn and Cruise-fueled Delver tempo. Scullers are straight up better against Burn because they are down a card whether it lives or dies, they're cheaper, and you can take their Eidolon if that's the right thing to do at the time. Cost is also a factor against Delver, and since Ancestral Recruise laughs at any notions of grinding out card advantage (like Podding Collector into Exarch) it's perhaps more valuable to have more targeted take-anything discard. With your list specifically, you could switch discard guys, go down a Wall of Roots because your curve is lower, and put in another Decay/a Spellskite/something else good.
Viridian Emissary, definitely. Ranger is fixing but not ramp, and Emissary is a better body when you want to attack and block with it - which you usually do, because then you get the land out of it. You don't get as many value creatures lower on the Pod chain while missing White - no Voice is the big one, but missing things like Pontiff and Ranger and Restoration Angel are noticeable too - so you need to provide fuel for Pod to get up into the higher CMCs where you get real business (Thragtusk, Titans). Emissary is a perfect fit, because it works early as an on-curve creature and late as Pod food, and a 2/1 that your opponents are reluctant to see die will always have some effect on the board.
To add in the more expensive stuff, I'd make changes like this:
-2 Elvish Mystic
-3 Strangleroot Geist
-1 Desecration Demon
-1 Thornling
-1 Putrefy
(-1 Thrun, the Last Troll)
+4 Viridian Emissary
+1 Farhaven Elf
+1 Shriekmaw
+1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
+1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
(+1 Grave-Shell Scarab)
The average CMC of your deck goes up, but you get there faster with less fragile cards (mana dorks have a short life expectancy). I think discussions/thought experiments like this are useful even if it's not going to result in a GP-storming deck, because it's both a good reminder of why the established version of the deck is the way it is and it also prevents you from getting too caught up in the idea that the deck in its current incarnation is the only way it can be. A 2-colour deck, for example, misses out on a lot of the specified hate cards, but if you're playing in an area that's experienced a huge influx of new players coming in with Burn decks then maybe something that doesn't take a ton of damage from its manabase and runs Thragtusk isn't so out of the question.
Looks solid. You probably don't need Reclamation Sage, Acidic Slime, and Qasali Pridemage - ditch Slime unless you're aiming to kill a lot of Celestial Colonnades with it (it's usually too slow to disrupt Tron). You could probably take out a Finks to put in Orzhov Pontiff, you rarely need four of them.
With the two combos though, the reason most decks pick either one or the other is because there isn't room for both, and if you were to put in, for example, a couple more pieces of spot removal and a Siege Rhino, then you'd run out of space for both also. But changing combos mid-match doesn't really help you without extremely specific knowledge of what hate your opponent has for you (you start Melira, they side in Rest in Peace, you get them with Archangel), and even then there's still a lot of hate pieces that hamper the deck itself instead of the combo (Grafdigger's Cage, Linvala, Mindcensor, etc.) and all spot removal works equally well whether it kills Melira or Spike Feeder. Changing combos doesn't really do anything, not compared to bringing in more of the generic answers that you need (discard, removal, etc.) or to having room for more pinpoint hate cards that skew games all on their own.
Also, Dryad Arbor is horrible. Like, I know you don't have Ranger of Eos to find Viscera Seer, but Dryad Arbor is like the worst Llanowar Elf ever. It's dubious in Eternal formats, has far too many strikes against it in Modern, and you couldn't pay me enough to run it in multiplayer. Varolz should be enough to combo off with, and he's got some utility outside of being a sac outlet.
Finally, there's a neat synergy between Savra and Shambling Shell, especially in FFA and especially when you Pod one into the other. You can get similar results with Grave-Shell Scarab if you'd rather have a kinda-clunky draw engine.
Shriekmaw/Nekrataal/second Redcap is the thing that sticks out to me, though you might be able to cover that spot with Abzan Charm. All the people switching Chords for Abzan Charms almost makes me want to try out Angel Pod. Almost.
You don't need to max out on Affinity hate, unless, I don't know, more than half the people you play against are running Robots. A second Pontiff would be good against a lot of those matches, and maybe a full set of Decays versus Delver and UWR...? Although you still need something to deal with Colonnade, so maybe you want a Path or a Dismember in your spot removal. Fulminator Mage if you can get them.
The real question is, what Green deck wants extra lands early but is willing to cash them in later? The G/B/x shell, Pod, and Elves function pretty well on small amounts of land, Scapeshift and other rampy things want as much as possible and win when they get it, and aggro decks aren't going to burn up their mana on ensuring their lands drops when they could be playing cheap threats instead. It's an elegant card, there's just not a deck that wants to do what it wants you to do.