Welcome to Abzan Midrange!
Abzan represents a relative of the well known Jund deck, which all together with the Rock complete the GBx trifecta of Modern. GBx essentially is any midrange deck having green and black as their main colour. Whether the deck splashes for a third colour (like red in Jund or white in Abzan) or not (like in The Rock), all those 3 versions are considered to be GBx decks. In this primer, Abzan is presented and described. GBx decks are powerful and streamlined decks, which basically all have one property in common: They can beat any opponent if the deck is well built and well piloted. In other words, if you put in enough effort, the deck becomes a flexible weapon suited for almost any metagame. Let alone this makes the deck a powerful choice to run. The deck is characterized by so-called goodstuff cards, which are basically strong individual cards, not relying on other cards or any synergies. Each card can operate on its own and get you further ahead in the game. One key to the success of this deck is interaction. If you want to interact with your opponent, stop them from executing their gameplan and win the game with some powerful threats, then Abzan is the right choice for you. Since you have to interact with your opponent in every single game, games tend to offer different experiences for the players. Abzan is not a deck which just works with itself and does the same thing every game. Decision making processes and skill are very crucial to be successfull with playing this deck. Abzan has access to powerful sideboard options and Lingering Souls, which is by far the biggest argument to run Abzan over any other GBx deck.
Subsequently, knowledge is key in this deck. It rewards every player who is willing to practise and accommodate more and more knowledge of the modern format and its decks. Ultimately, if you know how to play against a given deck, you will be granted the most win-percentage to win and this couldn't be more true for Abzan. Without further ado, let's Junk 'em out!
Below you can find the link to my discord channel, where everyone is invited to discuss about Abzan. You can also discuss every other deck I made Primers for in there as well.
Modern Abzan Discord: https://discord.gg/guSNj7s
I have converted the Primer over to my website, which you can find here: Greatness At Any Cost.
"Rarely at rest on the Amber Throne, Anafenza always leads the Abzan Houses to battle"
Throughout Magic's history, several decks stand out for having clever or humorous names. Abzans original name is "Junk". The name Junk has become fairly popular in recent years in reference to this particular style of deck. In recent magic history, the name "Junk" was then replaced with "Abzan" after Wizards revealed a more defining name to the wedge color in Khans of Tarkir, similar to shard colors from the Alara block. Since then, the deck has taken the name Abzan, but is still often referred to as Junk.
Decks with the name "Junk" didn't follow a very close trend as some other decks may have over the years, but it was the most popular name of the Green/Black/White wedge up until its recent renaming. A deck like Junk doesn't really have a solid strategy or plan, it's just a pile of good cards usually. Thus the name Junk was really the best way to describe it. It is arguable that Junk does seem to kind of fit the color description as well, but its perfectly okay to call it by its other names.
Junk/Abzan has had many different iterations in the past and continues to be a fairly popular color combination even in recent standard seasons. Past iterations have included Abzan Control from KTK/THS standard, Junk reanimator from RTR/INN standard season, Treefolk builds, to Tooth and Nail builds, all the way back to stax builds. The modern variant is mainly independent of other past abzan decks (excluding its legacy variants which can be very similar), but glimpses of it's standard iterations do appear in it. Modern Junk's greatest element is control, while also having a fair amount of aggro element to it and little to no combo elements. Most builds of the deck have little synergy and do not have a linear game plan.
Underneath you can see popular decklists from Standard Junk and Modern Junk decks. The last one shows a decklist which became popular when Junk was renamed to Abzan and one of its signature creatures Siege Rhino has been printed.
| Junk Reanimator Standard 2013Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Lands [24] 3 Forest 2 Gavony Township 2 Godless Shrine 2 Isolated Chapel 4 Overgrown Tomb 3 Sunpetal Grove 4 Temple Garden 4 Woodland Cemetery Creatures [22] 4 Angel of Serenity 2 Arbor Elf 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim 1 Craterhoof Behemoth 2 Fiend Hunter 2 Lotleth Troll 3 Restoration Angel 4 Thragtusk | Noncreature Spells [14] 4 Grisly Salvage 2 Lingering Souls 3 Mulch 4 Unburial Rites 1 Garruk Relentless | Sideboard [15] 2 Acidic Slime 1 Centaur Healer 4 Deathrite Shaman 1 Garruk Relentless 2 Renounce the Guilds 1 Sever the Bloodline 3 Sin Collector 1 Unflinching Courage |
| Abzan Midrange Standard 2015Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Lands [24] 2 Caves of Koilos 3 Forest 2 Llanowar Wastes 1 Mana Confluence 2 Plains 4 Sandsteppe Citadel 4 Temple of Malady 1 Temple of Silence 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 4 Windswept Heath Creatures [16] 4 Courser of Kruphix 2 Elvish Mystic 4 Siege Rhino 4 Sylvan Caryatid 2 Wingmate Roc | Noncreature Spells [20] 4 Abzan Charm 3 Hero's Downfall 4 Thoughtseize 2 Utter End 2 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes 3 Elspeth, Sun's Champion 2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor | Sideboard [15] 3 Bile Blight 3 Drown in Sorrow 1 Duneblast 1 End Hostilities 1 Liliana Vess 1 Mass Calcify 2 Murderous Cut 2 Nissa, Worldwaker 1 Unravel the Aether |
In Modern, Abzan took a big uptick in popularity when Siege Rhino was printed and it made the deck the choice over Jund at that time. However, Abzan colours were still missing important cards like a fastland and a good removal spell compared to Lightning Bolt. Luckily those were printed in Kaladesh and in Aether Revolt. Those 2 cards made Abzan really compete with Jund and actually pushed it over the top. Underneath are sample decklists from Moderns Abzan decks.
| Modern Abzan, Jesse Hampton, Pro Tour Fate Reforged 2014Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Lands [25] 1 Forest 1 Godless Shrine 2 Marsh Flats 2 Overgrown Tomb 1 Plains 2 Stirring Wildwood 2 Swamp 1 Temple Garden 2 Treetop Village 1 Twilight Mire 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 1 Vault of the Archangel 4 Verdant Catacombs 4 Windswept Heath | Creatures [12] 2 Scavenging Ooze 4 Siege Rhino 4 Tarmogoyf 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang Noncreature Spells [23] 4 Abrupt Decay 1 Dismember 3 Inquisition of Kozilek 4 Lingering Souls 1 Maelstrom Pulse 2 Path to Exile 4 Thoughtseize 4 Liliana of the Veil | Sideboard [15] 3 Aven Mindcensor 1 Batterskull 2 Damnation 1 Feed the Clan 2 Fulminator Mage 1 Path to Exile 1 Scavenging Ooze 1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor 3 Stony Silence |
| Noble Abzan, LSV WCS 2016Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Lands [22] 1 Forest 1 Godless Shrine 3 Marsh Flats 2 Overgrown Tomb 1 Plains 3 Shambling Vent 1 Swamp 1 Temple Garden 2 Twilight Mire 4 Verdant Catacombs 3 Windswept Heath Creatures [14] 1 Anafenza, the Foremost 4 Grim Flayer 3 Noble Hierarch 2 Scavenging Ooze 4 Tarmogoyf | Noncreature Spells [24] 2 Abrupt Decay 1 Collective Brutality 3 Inquisition of Kozilek 4 Lingering Souls 1 Murderous Cut 4 Path to Exile 3 Thoughtseize 4 Liliana of the Veil 2 Mishra's Bauble | Sideboard [15] 1 Collective Brutality 1 Damnation 1 Engineered Explosives 3 Fulminator Mage 2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 1 Maelstrom Pulse 2 Stony Silence 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Zealous Persecution |
| Abzan, Reid Duke, Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan 2018Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Lands [23] 2 Blooming Marsh 2 Forest 1 Godless Shrine 4 Marsh Flats 2 Overgrown Tomb 1 Shambling Vent 2 Swamp 1 Temple Garden 2 Treetop Village 1 Twilight Mire 4 Verdant Catacombs 1 Windswept Heath Creatures [13] 4 Dark Confidant 2 Grim Flayer 2 Scavenging Ooze 4 Tarmogoyf 1 Tireless Tracker | Noncreature Spell [24] 2 Abrupt Decay 4 Fatal Push 4 Inquisition of Kozilek 3 Lingering Souls 2 Maelstrom Pulse 2 Thoughtseize 4 Liliana of the Veil 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 2 Nihil Spellbomb | Sideboard [15] 3 Collective Brutality 2 Damnation 1 Duress 3 Fulminator Mage 1 Grafdigger's Cage 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 1 Nihil Spellbomb 3 Stony Silence |
| Abzan Traverse, Leonardo Giucci, GP São Paulo 2018Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Lands [19] 2 Blooming Marsh 1 Forest 1 Godless Shrine 2 Marsh Flats 2 Overgrown Tomb 1 Swamp 1 Plains 1 Ghost Quarter 1 Temple Garden 1 Treetop Village 4 Verdant Catacombs 2 Windswept Heath Creatures [11] 4 Grim Flayer 1 Scavenging Ooze 4 Tarmogoyf 2 Siege Rhino | Noncreature Spell [30] 2 Abrupt Decay 1 Collective Brutality 3 Fatal Push 2 Path to Exile 1 Grisly Salvage 3 Inquisition of Kozilek 4 Lingering Souls 3 Thoughtseize 3 Traverse the Ulvenwald 3 Liliana of the Veil 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 4 Mishra's Bauble | Sideboard [15] 1 Bojuka Bog 2 Damnation 1 Eidolon of Rhetoric 2 Fulminator Mage 1 Gaddock Teeg 1 Kataki, War's Wage 1 Maelstrom Pulse 1 Reclamation Sage 1 Shriekmaw 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Thrun, the Last Troll 1 Nihil Spellbomb |
"The mere approach of an Abzan war beast is enough to send enemies fleeing in panic"
One of the most important aspects of playing Abzan successfully, is to be able to pilot the deck according to the player's expected meta. Sometimes this means you have to change some cards in the deck, even if it might be odd. Don't be afraid to test "odd" things out by yourself. Abzan is generally no deck, which has the perfect 75 cards at all times. However, there are certain guidelines for deck construction, which, over the past, have shown to be pretty helpful when it comes to deck construction. If you start from scratch with a Abzan deck and haven't played it before, its recommended to stick to those guidelines at first and adjust accordingly afterwards. In the sections below, you will find suggestions for how many copies of a given card you want to run. However, this changes from build to build. Mostly this is relevant whether you are playing a Traverse build or a standard build. So I will differentiate between those 2. If no denotation is present, the given suggestion range is valid for both builds.
The Landbase is the fundamental part of every deck, and for Abzan this is no exception. Having a well tuned and working Landbase is the first key to success, and often times one of the most important ones when it comes down to deck piloting. We have high requirements for coloured mana in order to cast our spells, and therefore its extremeley important to have the correct landbase for the deck. The distribution of fetchlands is already of high importance. Why? Because by running an optimal configuration allows you to perfectly fetch for the basic lands we have in our deck (out of the 3 fetchlands stated below, each can get each shock dual anyway). Generally, considering colour requirements: black > green > white. The standard amount of lands for Abzan is 23-24 lands for the standard build. In the past, 24 lands was pretty much the standard amount for lands to run in Abzan. However, recently, more and more lists tend to run only 23 lands. The Noble Hierarch build did only run 22 lands, which was popular in 2016-2017. And lastly, there is a Traverse build which runs only 19-20 lands. Before I start going into detail, one highly important thing to mention will be added. When building a manabase, the most important aspect of it is consistancy. You want to be able to cast that Liliana on turn 3, cast a discard spell on turn 1 and so on. As a general guideline (taken from Frank Karsten's Article: "How many lands do you need to consistantly cast your spells?") we need:
- 18 black sources to cast Liliana PWs on turn 3
- 14 black sources to cast discard on turn 1
- 12 white sources to cast Lingering Souls on turn 3
Please always consider this numbers when building a manabase for Abzan. The one compromise you can do is going down to 18 black sources, which is sometimes edgy, but sufficient. Note that Fetchlands count as all colours and multiple Field of Ruins count as about one of each colour of your basic lands you have. Among the lands, which are absolutely required to run this deck, are the following (considering a standard 24 land landbase or a traverse 19-20 land landbase):
Verdant Catacombs (4 copies)
This is Abzans fetchland of choice. Fetches the 2 most important basic lands and grants us access to our main dual land for mana fixing purposes. It also helps to pump up our Goyfs too. It can't fetch basic Plains, which is actually quite uncommon to run nowadays. Absolutely play 4 copies of this land, there is no exception to this rule.
Marsh Flats (Standard: 4 copies / Traverse: 2 copies)
One half of our main secondary fetchlands for the deck. Almost as good as Catacombs as it can fetch all of our Shock lands as well as our basic swamps, it can't fetch up our basic forests though. Still this is the second best fetchland available to us, since requirements for black are generally higher than those of green. Play the full 4 copies, since we do run Push and need more black than ever.
Windswept Heath (Standard: 0-1 copy / Traverse: 2 copies)
This is the "worst" fetchland available to us, but sometimes we still need to get extra fetchlands able to fetch for a basic forest. It is most common to run 1 copy, but since most builds are running 23 lands now, you can get away without it and just play the 8 black fetchlands. Sometimes a second copy is run over the fourth Marsh Flats, but I would advise against that.
Blooming Marsh (2-4 copies)
Since Blooming Marsh has been printed, it saw more and more play in Abzan manabases. This was one needed card to help having a more stable manabase, just like Jund has with Blackcleave Cliffs. Since the most important colours are black and green, and we don't want to cast Path to Exile in the early turns, Blooming Marsh is the perfect fastland for us to have. It was a nice addition to the deck. The optimal number to run is 2-3 copies.
Shambling Vent (Standard: 1-3 copies / Traverse: 0 copies)
This is one of Abzans main manland of choice in current builds (formerly the main manland was Stirring Wildwood, but since Shambling Vent was printed, it pretty much replaced it partly, since black mana is more important for the deck). Vent provides Abzan a uncounterable threat for when the game goes long (which is usually our main game plan). While Vent costs quite a bit to activate, it gives back precious lifepoints every time it attacks and therefore can take the game in your favor against aggressive strategies and burn if left unanswered. Right now its recommended to run 1-3 copies, with 1-2 copies being the most common choice.
Stirring Wildwood (0-1 copies)
This was formerly Abzans main manland of choice. Since Vent was printed, usually this manland is run less often now, but usually is seen as a 1-of at least. Although only producing the least important colours, Wildwood provides Abzan a threat which is a decent attacker and can hold off flying threats from the opponent, which can sometimes be useful. However, typically the lifegain and black producing properties is more important that Vent is run more often. In builds where you play minimal white cards, Wildwoods is often not included.
Treetop Village (0-2 copies)
Rated in raw powerlevel this is probably the best manland available to the GBx strategies. It is a powerful threat, uncounterable, cheap to activate and tramples over chump blockers. In the past, this manland helped greatly to clock the opponents fast to not give them a chance to claw back into the game. However, one big problem with this land is the mana. It only produces green mana, which is often very tough for a three coloured deck. In the past no copies of that card was run for that reason. Just lately though, builds became popular which do skim on white cards to not be that susceptible to the mana restrictions from Treetop Village. If you decide to run such a build, a few copies of that manland really help to finish your opponents fast.
Overgrown Tomb (2 copies)
One of our three main Shock lands for the deck, Tomb really helps at reaching those / costs in the deck and offers us easy access to our main plays like Turn 1 discard followed by turn two Tarmogoyf, etc. Since these two colours are needed the most, we want to generally run 2 copies of that land.
Godless Shrine (1 copy)
Another of the shock lands for the deck, Shrine allows us easier access to our / manacosts and is useful for getting us our turn 1 discard or a later cast Path or Lingering Souls. It is the best land if to support Lingering Souls as well as serving to get for Liliana of the Veil.
Temple Garden (1 copy)
The final shock land for the deck, Garden gives us better access to our / costs. It helps paying very little life if you fetch this land tapped and fetch or play a basic swamp. That way you can cast all our 1 and 2 cost spells in the deck, therefore, even if it doesn't produce our main colour, is still very important against aggressive strategies which attack your lifetotal fast.
Swamp (Standard: 2 copies / Traverse: 1-2 copies)
Our main basic land, can be fetched with any fetchland commonly run in Abzan except Windswept Heath. Helps us not lose outright to Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon type effects and gives us lands to search up if one or two of our creatures get Path to Exiled or if a land of ours gets Ghost Quarterd. Run at least 2 basic swamps!
Forest (1 copy)
Our other must include basic land, can be fetched by Catacombs/Heath and is useful for all the same reasons running basic swamps are. It is usually not recommended fetching for this land early in the game, but you really need it against Blood Moon/Ghost Quarter effects.
Plains (0-1 copy)
A basic plains is usually run to help playing around Blood Moon, since typically we are quite susceptible to that card. In builds, where white cards are run in less amounts, often there is no plains included in the manabase.
This leaves us with about 23 lands, which are generally considered to be pretty standard right now. However, you can make a decision between some number of flexible lands to run in your deck as well:
- Twilight Mire
: Abzan requires some heavy requirements from its manabase, twilight helps hit those , and costs. But it taps for colorless when not combined with another green or black producing land, so keep this in mind! It can happen to get screw because of this sometimes. - Ghost Quarter
: Ghost Quarter does see some play occasionly in Abzan, as this land can have applications for one of our worst matchups, Tron, as well as applications for the midrange mirror (killing opposing manlands). However, if you decide to run it, run maximum 1 copy, as it only produces colourless mana, which is generally very bad for us. Typically Rock builds run that land (which is the main reason to play a Rock build, but more on that in the apropriate section) and also the Traverse build runs 1 copy. - Field of Ruin : Field of Ruin is a powerful addition to the deck, but it functions best when run in multiples alongside multiple basics. Therefore it only sees play in popular Rock builds nowadays.
- Another Fastland : Due to Concealed Courtyard being printed, you can certainly play this card to help casting white costing spells, you can even play a 3/1 split between Marsh and Courtyard if you wish so. However most builds do not run this card.
Our creaturebase represent our powerful, valuable threats able to take over the game on their own and grind out the opponent. Abzan utilizes the best/most efficient creatures available in the modern format to trump the opponent. Ideally, it is considered best to run about 13 creatures in a Abzan deck, however, sometimes this number varies from 11 to 14.
Tarmogoyf (4 copies)
This is arguably the best creature in modern historically. With only 2 mana, you can get up to an 8/9 creature, which will be able to finish the game fast. It is absolutely crucial to run 4 copies in a competitive Abzan deck, without any exceptions.
Dark Confidant (0 or 3/4 copies)
Dark Confidant, or “Bob” (The name Bob for Dark Confidant originally came from the name of its designer, Bob Maher), is the best source of card advantage available to us. With the decline of Aggro and Tempo decks from the format Bob has more than earned his spot in the core section back. Having a strong source of card advantage that can attack for 2 dmg or block if you're under pressure is phenomenal in the deck. Dark Confidant is almost always a "kill" or "die" card for your opponent as, unless they take him out straight away, you will bury your opponent is card advantage. In todays a standard list you will see 4 copies of Bob. In the past, Bob was not really run in Abzan, as it is more a Jund card, but recently it did take over in Abzan builds and became the number one CA engine of choice. That being said, if you run him, run 3-4 copies, or just run no copy at all.
Scavenging Ooze (Standard: 2-3 copies / Traverse: 1 copy)
Scooze covers many bases in Abzan, primarily Ooze acts as main deck graveyard hate against grave-centric decks and an answer to opposing Tarmogoyfs and Snapcaster Mages. While performing graveyard disruption on creatures, Ooze acts as both a tool for gaining life while becoming bigger and becoming a massive threat to our opponent, especially in the mid to late game if not dealt with early enough. Ooze is sometimes great, but can sometimes be mediocre overall. For this reason we do not run that many copies, the exact number depends simply on the metagame. For details please read the sideboard guide!
Grim Flayer (Standard: 2-3 copies / Traverse: 4 copies)
Grim Flayer instantly became a staple in Abzan builds since its great interaction with Lingering Souls. In the past, Grim Flayer was compared to Dark Confidant, and it has been said that the latter was more of a Jund thing, wheras Grim Flayer was more an Abzan thing. However, recently Abzan builds began to run both cards in different mixtures. Generally Dark Confidant sees a little bit more play. Usually Dark Confidant and Grim Flayer make up about 6-7 creature slots in the deck. Sometimes you see a 3/3 split, but most common is a 4/2 split in favor of Bob. This card helps to pressure the opponent fast and also filter through the top of our library to basically never have bad drawsteps again. It is a must have card in Abzan decks.
Tireless Tracker (0-2 copies)
Tireless Tracker is a grind machine on its own and can grow into a gigantic threat. Its basically all we ever want from a creature. However, it is quite slow and very vulnerable in the first turns. Usually it is correct to play Tracker as a virtual 4-drop, ensuring a Clue Token with the landdrop on turn 4. If you play a fetchland on that turn, you can potentially ensure 2 Clues right away, which is amazing. However do not fetch preemptively, since opponents can cast a removal spell in response to the fetch trigger and then you wont get a clue from the land hitting the battlefield off of the fetchland. Most lists nowadays run 1-2 copies in the deck.
Siege Rhino (0-2 copies)
While Siege Rhino helped to push Abzan above other midrange decks in the format, the card has fallen out of favour a little bit. In the "centralized list", generally made popular by the MTGO grinder "Butakov", 2 copies are still run. More and more lists tend to cut down on white cards to have a more focused gameplan which doesnt involve Rhino. Sometimes the card is great, but sometimes the card is just too slow. If you want to run the card, I would generally not succeed 2 copies.
Besides these core creature suite Abzan has, many other options are possible, which are the following:
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet : Kalitas shines in creature heavy metas. He has a very relevant replacement effect of exiling any of our opponents' non-token creatures we kill while also providing us with a 2/2 Zombie token at the same time. Additionally, Kalitas is an non-boltable creature that provides us with a main deck lifegain. Kalitas also has the ability to grow huge throughout the span of a game by paying and sacrificing a Zombie to place two +1/+1 counters him making the 2/2 Zombie tokens he provides great chump blockers and great sacrificial attackers if blocked to play havoc with an opponents' combat math and allow Kalitas to gain back chunks of life lost throughout the game in a single swing or block. All in all, Kalitas has provided Abzan with a new tool to fight creature decks. Generally, Kalitas is not really run in Abzan, since it has negative synergy with Path to Exile.
- Tasigur, the golden Fang : Tasigur is essentially what the love child of Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant would look like (Ironically, who both essentially don't have great synergy with him, at least while he's not in play anyway). While at first Tasigur seems fairly underwhelming, he has the potential to really swing games in your favor. Due to Delve, he basically reads, exile 0-5 jank cards from your GY and pay the difference plus B to cast him. Once in play he he reads put the top 2 cards of your library into your graveyard and your opponent chooses the worst non-land card in your graveyard for you to get back, you return that card to your hand. The thing is, his Delve ability allows you to exile all the jank cards in your graveyard so you tend to force your opponents to, at least, give you back a mediocre card, either way Tas is pure card advantage and a 4/5 beatstick. With Fatal Push being very predominant in the meta, this card is very likely to stick.
- Kitchen Finks
: Finks was a core staple in the deck until DRS was printed and when he was banned Scavenging Ooze was a huge hindrance to him but with the rise of Aggro decks Finks has risen in power again. Finks is almost always huge value play; when he enters play you gain 2 life, he has a relevant 3/2 body and has Persist so when he dies he come right back again to gain you another 2 life and a 2/1 body. Since it mana requirements are tough and card slots are tight, Finks is usually not run in Abzan though. - Anafenza, the Foremost : Anafenza is a great metagame call for a GY based meta. It can be run in the Standard as well as Traverse build most likely as a one of.
In order to support our creatures and disrupt our opponents, Abzan utilizes one of the best and most efficient removals and disruption spells available. These spells are crucial to the deck and therefore, for some spells, there is no flexibility possible as their powerlevel will always be great in the modern format.
Fatal Push (3-4 copies)
Strong, cheap, flexible and efficient. Right now, Fatal Push is one of the best removal spells in modern, if not the best. With only 1 mana, it can kill the biggest threats in the modern format, it is needed to play this card in the deck. The complete modern format has been restructured singlehandedly due to this card. Its cheap, its efficient, and hits a vast majority of creatures in the modern format. Remember that Revolt can be triggered with Fetchlands and Clues, for which reason we always want at least 8 fetchlands in our manabase.
Path to Exile (0-1 copies)
In general, Path is probably the best removal spell in modern when looking at its raw powerlevel. it gets around indestructible, persist, unearth and all dying effects and doesnt care about manacost or power/toughness, all for one mana. Singlehandedly due to this reason, Path is needed to run in certain metas. Before Fatal Push was printed, this was the removal spell of choice for the Abzan deck. However, since the printing of Push, Path sees less play now. And the reason is that Path has a big disadvantage of ramping your opponent. In terms of CA and attrition factors, this does not go well along our main strategy: Cutting opponents down on resources. This is sometimes taken very seriously that no copy of Path is run in the maindeck. One of the most prominent players who does this is Reid Duke. That being said, its not wrong to run Path or not to run it. You have to decide for yourself if you want to run it or not. Generally, I would not run more than 2 copies. Typically 0-2 copies are very common.
Inquisition of Kozilek (2-4 copies)
A very solid, but conditional, 1cmc discard spell. IoK allows you to take any nonland card with a cmc of 3 or less. Although there is no additional life cost to playing IoK like there is with Thoughtseize, there are a few match-ups that it’s bad against. Generally, 6 discard spells are playing in the MB of Abzan. Among this 6 discard both IoK and TS should be played, most of the time either in a 4/2 split of IoK/TS or a 3/3 of both.
Thoughtseize (2-4 copies)
The most powerful 1cmc discard spell in the game. Allows you to take any nonland card in their hand and gives you information on their game plan. It can be suicidal though, costing an additional 2 life to cast. Generally, 6 discard spells are playing in the MB of Abzan. Among this 6 discard both IoK and TS should be played, most of the time either in a 4/2 split of IoK/TS or a 3/3 of both.
Traverse the Ulvenwald (Standard: 0 copies / Traverse: 3 copies)
In theory the powerlevel of Traverse is very high. When active, it adds a good amount of flexibility to your deck. However, delirium is a very unreliable mechanic (it depends on the deck and on the matchup, sideboarding etc.) for which reason you cannot just jam the card in the deck and play it. You have to support it to a certain extent. This is the reason there is a Abzan Traverse build. It operates like a normal Abzan deck but adds the elements of having certain silverbullets (creature based) in the deck which can be tutored by traverse. However, this version does not want to go all-in into the strategy also, for which reason we play 3 copies only.
Mishra's Bauble (Standard: 0 copies / Traverse: 4 copies)
Bauble is one of the most common enablers or supporters for a delirium or traverse based strategy. Therefore it is needed if you want to play the Abzan Traverse build. Bauble is an artifact, making it easier to reach delirium and make traverse an active card. As the card cantrips, it is not that bad of a card to run in a value oriented deck. You can neatly combine Bauble's information to help with discard decisions, or combined with fetchlands, to shuffle unwanted cards away.
Assassin's Trophy (3-4 copies)
With Guilds of Ravnica hitting the modern format, GBx decks got a huge tool for keeping up with the powerlevel of other decks in the format. Assassin's Trophy provides us a highly flexible tool which really improves game 1 against a bunch of matchups. You can destroy an opposing Urza land from Tron, you can more easily fight PWs from Control decks or answer any hard to answer permanents in the maindeck now. The downside is almost the same as Path, the only difference is that the land comes into play untapped. This tool should absolutely be in the main of every Abzan deck now, at least as a 3 of, if not a 4 of.
Collective Brutality (0-1 copies)
While sometimes very clunky, CB is a very flexible card and has great synergy with Lingering Souls. Usually, if you play the card maindeck, you dont want more than 1 copy, as its raw powerlevel is not that high compared to other cards. If you want flexibility though, you can consider the card. Most commonly this card is run the SB though.
Abrupt Decay (0-1 copies)
One of the strongest removal cards ever printed in MTG. It’s amazingly flexible and hits nearly all problematic permanents in the format. Furthermore, it’s uncounterable, and an instant - unfortunately, it doesn't hit manlands or cards with cmc of 4 or greater. Trophy makes this card fall out of favor a little bit. Its an option to keep in mind.
Lingering Souls (3-4 copies)
Lingering Souls is the single one card that pushes Abzan over Jund. This card is just pure CA and an incredibly grindy card, which almost always will trade at least 2-for-1. Therefore this card really shine in midrange and attrition mirrors, against aggressive strategies and against Control. If you face a lot of those decks in your meta, play the full playset and be happy. If you have a decent amount of Combo and Big Mana decks in your meta, you might want to consider going down to 3 copies, as Souls is unexciting in those matchups.
Maelstrom Pulse (0-1 copies)
The strengths of Pulse are in its ability to deal with problematic permanents and their multiples. Its weakness is that it’s a Sorcery and can’t hit Manlands. With Trophy being introduced to modern, Pulse falls a little out of favor. It is fine as a 1 of though. Its a good option to keep in mind.
Liliana of the Veil (3-4 copies)
The second best planeswalker ever printed (But the best in modern). Lillys’ -2 is strong against Aggro and Midrange, her +1 is solid against Control and Combo, her -6 is amazing against any deck, and you get all this for 3cmc. LotV is just a hugely flexible planeswalker that gives most decks nightmares when she lands. She’s almost always a 2(+) for 1 and is one of the only ways we have of taking out Hexproof, Regenerating or Protection from our removal creatures. Run at least 3 copies, but most common is 4 copies.
Liliana, the Last Hope (1 copy)
Being both a form of Liliana and with the same cmc as Liliana of the Veil has led to LtLH being unfavorably compared to LotV. While not being as strong as LotV in the deck, Last Hopes' +1 (giving a creature -2/-1 until our next turn) has the ability to kill some key creatures in the format and shrink other larger, more problematic, threats until our next turn, which is nothing to be taken lightly - although notably a dead ability against a few decks in Modern. Last Hopes' -2 (Put the top two cards of your library into your graveyard, then you may return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand) has synergy with our Goyfs, Scoozes, Souls and Flayers as well as giving us the ability to return a creature to our hand can really overwhelm an opponent over the course of a game. People testing Last Hope having said that they've managed to return and play trump creatures like: Bob, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Goyf and Kalitas multiple times in a game which is incredibly back breaking for an opponent to have to deal with. Liliana, the Last Hopes' -7 (You get an emblem with "At the beginning of your end step, put X 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is two plus the number of Zombies you control".) mounts up quickly over a few turns to churn out an army of 2/2 Zombies which will make quick work of an opponent from that point on. All in all, Last Hope offers us a cheap tool that can swing games against many decks in our favor if left on the battlefield for a few turns or longer.
A few conditional and flex spot type of spells are also available to us:
- Dismember : Dismember is essentially a card you might want to conside if you decide not to run Path to exile in your deck. Dismember helps killing problematic threats like delve creatures that Push otherwise wont hit.
- Murderous Cut : Essentially serves the same purpose as Dismember. While its upside is that you can cast it for 1 mana most of the time, it has anti synergy with Bob and is pretty much dead in the early turns.
- Go for the Throat : This card also serves as extra hard removal to compensate a lack of Path. This card's downside is that it is terrible against Affinity, which is still a popular deck. Choose this card if your meta doesnt contain Affinity in it.
- Traverse the Ulvenwald : Popularily seen in Traverse builds of Abzan, this card is the engine card. Its flexible and powerful, but can be awkward if you don't have delirium.
- Mishra's Bauble : Bauble sees play in Abzan Traverse builds, in order to enable delirium more consistantly. Its a nice cantripping card, which can be used to gain a little edge here in there (e.g. when combining the effect with a fetchland, you effectively creating a scry.
- Grisly Salvage : This card sees sometimes play as a one of in traverse builds of Abzan. Its a great delirium enable and its also not a bad topdeck, as you can dig for creatures later on if you topdeck it.
In order to have a starting point for building an Abzan deck, here is a basic decklist template anyone can use to get a feeling which cards are generally played and more importantly, how often. This list is not meant to be perfect, nor is it meant to be the "best" solution for any meta, but, according to the latest results, the safest lists for an unknown meta.
Note: Feel free to ask for any feedback on your own decklist in this threat. However, pls, always state the reasoning and the purpose of a specific decklist, otherwise we won't be able to help accordingly. The reason behind this is, that specific metas sometimes require odd card choices. However, every meta is different. Therefore it is important for us to know in which meta a certain deck will be played in order to help the most effective way possible.
Here are some general rules of thumb when it comes to building the deck, which you should more or less stick to. Don't consider them to be strict like anything, you can break the rules to a certain extend, but especially for new players the rules are highly recommended to stick to.
- The Landbase consists of 23-24 lands. Among them, 8-9 cards make up fetchlands, 3-4 cards make up fastlands, 4 make up shocklands, 3-4 are basics and 3 are manlands. However, if you are playing a Traverse Abzan build, typically 19 lands are run (example build is shown in the following).
- The creaturebase is 12-14 creatures, whereas 13 is the most common number. 4 cards make up Tarmogoyf always. There are 1-3 Scavenging Oozes and 2-3 Grim Flayers. The rest is flexible.
- How many Spells you want to run depends on your landbase and creaturebase together. So consider this formula: 60 - (Creatures + Lands) = Noncreature Spells. Among them there are 6-7 discard spells (7 if you run one Collective Brutality main), 9-13 one mana spells (including the discard, and depending on if you run Path to Exile or not) and about 9-11 three mana spells. The rest is usually 2 mana spells.
Basically 2 different decklists are common right now. First we have the Abzan Traverse build, which was made popular by Leonardo Giucci at GP Sao Paulo (note that the Sideboard Template is in the respective sideboard section of the primer) and the other is a list cutting down on white cards which was made popular by Reid Duke. All in all, here are the standard decklists which you can start to play with:
| Template Abzan Traverse BuildMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |
|---|---|
|
Lands [19] 4 Verdant Catacombs 2 Marsh Flats 2 Windswept Heath 2 Blooming Marsh 2 Overgrown Tomb 1 Godless Shrine 1 Temple Garden 2 Swamp 1 Forest 1 Plains 1 Treetop Village 1 Shambling Vent | Creatures [11] 4 Tarmogoyf 4 Grim Flayer 1 Scavenging Ooze 1 Walking Ballista 1 Siege Rhino Non-creature Spells [30] 3 Fatal Push 2 Path to Exile 3 Inquisition of Kozilek 3 Thoughtseize 3 Traverse the Ulvenwald 3 Assassin's Trophy 1 Collective Brutality 3 Liliana of the Veil 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 1 Maelstrom Pulse 4 Mishra's Bauble 3 Lingering Souls |
In this decklist, some things are more flexible than fixed (well, basically many things are flexible, except for 4 Tarmogoyf) so I'll go over those a little bit more to prevent confusion:
- Creature-Suite: Basically this stated creature suite is the most common one to build. However, you can mix things up if you like. You can add some Dark Confidants in there, add or cut Scavenging Oozes and also change the number of Rhino and or Tracker. The only fixed point is 4 Tarmogoyf + 4 Grim Flayer always.
- Discard: For this category not many decisions are needed to make. Usually we either play a 4/2 split of Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize, favouring IOK here. Alternatively, you can go for a 3/3 split on both cards. There has been lists running a 4/2 split favouring Thoughtseize, which can also be useful if you feel that IOK doesn't find many targets in a given meta, but right now, I would recommend going for the 3/3 or 4/2 (favouring IOK) split.
- Liliana PWs: For this category, usually you have to decide whether to run a 3/1 split of Liliana of the Veil and Liliana, the Last Hope (favouring LotV) or going for the full 4 LotV. Due to the new PW rule, where we can have both Lilianas on the battlefield now, it is seen that a 4/1 split is run, because multiple Lilis arent that bad anymore. However, do not go below 4 Liliana PWs at any time.
- Collective Brutality: For this spot you have many options theoretically. You can either add another creature if you so wish, play more copies of a spell already in the deck, or round up your spell suite with common flexible tools such as the stated Collective Brutality. This card does see the most play in this spot recently, as its a overall great card. Another option is to run Nihil Spellbomb in this slot. Spellbomb really helps to achieve delirium to support Grim Flayer and is a decent tool to have in order to stop GY based strategies. At worst it just cantrips, so its never really a bad card to have.Lastly, you can decide to play 5 planeswalkes.
- Fatal Push and Path to Exile: The most common splits of this card is 3/3 or a 4/2 split in favour of Push. Depending on your meta and your playstyle, you can change that number around. I would only really consider those two splits. Also keep in mind the possible drawback Path has. For more details on that, pls look in the individual card explanation section.
- Lingering Souls: In the past, 4 copies was always the go-to approach. Recently, and also for the future, degenerate decks can become popular where Souls is unexciting against. Big Mana and Combo decks come to mind here. Depending on the presence of these types of decks in your meta, you can decide between 3 copies or 4 copies Lingering Souls in your deck. Always play at least 3 copies though.
The next template is a version which cuts down on white cards to have a less painful manabase:
| Template Reid Duke approachMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |
|---|---|
|
Lands [24] 4 Verdant Catacombs 4 Marsh Flats 1 Windswept Heath 3 Blooming Marsh 2 Overgrown Tomb 1 Godless Shrine 1 Temple Garden 2 Swamp 1 Forest 1 Plains 1 Twilight Mire 1 Treetop Village 2 Shambling Vent | Creatures [13] 4 Tarmogoyf 3 Dark Confidant 2 Scavenging Ooze 1 Anafenza, the Foremost 3 Tireless Tracker Noncreature Spells [23] 4 Fatal Push 2 Path to Exile 4 Inquisition of Kozilek 2 Thoughtseize 3 Assassin's Trophy 1 Collective Brutality 3 Liliana of the Veil 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 3 Lingering Souls |
Also in this decklist, some things are more flexible than fixed so I'll go over those a little bit more to prevent confusion:
- Manlands: Usually a 2/1 split in favor of Shambling Vent is the most common, but here Vent is only a singleton, while Treetop is run as a two of. This is only possible by cutting Path to Exile from the list. Due to that, white mana is less needed and more restrictive mana sources like Treetop can safely be run, giving you a powerful beater to quickly kill opponents. I would not recommend running any Stirring Wildwoods in such a list ever.
- Creature-Suite: In this creature suite, 4 Bobs and 4 Goyfs are fixed. For the rest you can change numbers a bit. I would probably stick to at least 2 Oozes though. Tracker and Flayer are somewhat optional.
- Discard: For this category not many decisions are needed to make. Usually we either play a 4/2 split of Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize, favouring IOK here. Alternatively, you can go for a 3/3 split on both cards. There has been lists running a 4/2 split favouring Thoughtseize, which can also be useful if you feel that IOK doesn't find many targets in a given meta, but right now, I would recommend going for the 3/3 or 4/2 (favouring IOK) split.
- Liliana PWs: For this category, usually you have to decide whether to run a 3/2 split of Liliana of the Veil and Liliana, the Last Hope (favouring LotV) or going for the full 4 LotV. Due to the new PW rule, where we can have both Lilianas on the battlefield now, it is seen that a 4/1 split is run, because multiple Lilis arent that bad anymore. However, do not go below 5 Liliana PWs at any time in this approach.
- Nihil Spellbomb: This card is run to support Grim Flayer. It doubles up as maindeck GY hate for certain strategies. You dont have to run 2 copies, if you want, you can also play extra removal in the form of Path (requries adjusting the manabase) or Dismember / Murderous Cut.
- Fatal Push vs Path to Exile: In this particular build no paths are run. However, if you change the manabase a little bit, you can add 1-2 copies of Path if you like that extra chance for difficult to answer threats like Wurmcoil Engine. One easy way to do so is changing the split of Treetop and Shambling into around as well as cutting a basic Forest for a Concealed Courtyard. Then I would cut 1 Spellbomb and 1 Maelstrom Pulse for 2 Paths for example.
- Lingering Souls: In the past, 4 copies was always the go-to approach. Recently, and also for the future, degenerate decks can become popular where Souls is unexciting against. Big Mana and Combo decks come to mind here. Depending on the presence of these types of decks in your meta, you can decide between 3 copies or 4 copies Lingering Souls in your deck. Always play at least 3 copies though.
"The murdered inhabitants of Hollowhenge impart to the living the terror they felt in death."
In Abzan, when it comes to sideboarding, experience and knowledge are really key to it. There are many thing to consider, and in some cases, opinions differ on a specific sideboard decision. Because of this, I want to extract the most important aspects of sideboarding and write them down into an detailed guide here, which will hopefully help every new person and experienced player as well.
To get an idea of what to cut in which matchup, it’s important to recognize an opposing deck for what it is. For this purpose, I am going to categorize different deck types and will be dividing our deck into different categories of tools available for us, and then explain, what is good and what is bad.
The following kinds of decks are out there:
- Swarm aggro decks based on creatures (Zoo, Goblins, Humans)
- Aggro decks based on mostly non creature spells (Infect, Death’s Shadow, Burn, Grixis Shadow)
- Synergistic aggro decks (Affinity, Elves, Merfolk, BR Hollow One)
- Midrange decks based on goodstuff cards (Jund, Junk, Mardu Pyromancer)
- Midrange decks including swingy/payoff cards (Abzan Company, Counters Company, GW Company)
- Big Mana decks (Tron, RG Breach, RG Titanshift, Amulet Titan, Eldrazi Tron)
- Combo decks based on spells mostly (Ad Nauseam, Storm)
- Combo decks based on the GY (Goryo’s Vengeance, Living End)
- Control decks with an heavy endgame (Grixis Control, Jeskai Control, UW Control)
Of course, each deck functions somewhat differently and attacks the opponent on a different axis, so it is hard to throw them all into one box and then play the same way against them every time, this just does not work. Always, always knowledge is key in order to beat a deck. We just have to know what our opposing deck wants to do, in order to stop it. In addition, we have to know what the SB plan of our opposing decks will be. Only by knowing this, we can squeeze the most win percentage out of being up against a given deck.
Our deck has certain tools to interact with the opponent, which are the following:
- Targeted discard (IOK, TS, CB)
- Non targeted discard (Liliana of the Veil)
- Single target removal (Push, Path, CB…)
- Edict effects (Liliana of the Veil)
- Mass removal (Flaying Tendrils, Damnation, potentially Maelstrom Pulse)
- Burn (CB)
- Grindy cards (Lingering Souls, LotV, LtlH, Ooze)
- Threats (Tarmogoyf, Ooze, Grim Flayer, manlands)
- CA engine (Bob)
- Graveyard Hate (Ooze, Nihil Spellbomb, Surgical Extraction)
- Land Destruction (Fulminator Mage)
Our deck can attack the opponent on a lot of different axis, which gives us game against potentially every opponent. There is no single card which completely shuts down our strategy, which is the reason why Abzan overall performs great.
Let’s see what (in general) is useful against which kind of deck:
This chart should generally show, which tools are good against which kind of strategy. Here is a little bit of explanation for each matchup:
- For swarm aggro, discard is generally not the best thing we have, as these decks empty the hands rather quickly and doesn’t help with dealing with the threats the opponents have on board. Single target removal is okay, but not the greatest thing, we generally are seeking for big impactful mass removal cards like Damnation or Engineered Explosives. Of course, threats are very impactful in this matchup. Cards like Tarmogoyf hold off opposing creatures, as they tend to be bigger than the creatures of the swarm aggro player.
- Spell based aggro decks as Infect and Death’s Shadow often only have few creatures, but more non-creature spells to support them. For this reason, targeted discard is great against them, as well as single target removal. Sweeper are less good here, but still reasonable, when the sweeper is not too over costed. A good example would be: Playing Engineered Explosives against Burn is ok, but Damnation is too clunky and therefore not wanted. This decks are rather fast, and can also be seen as combo decks in some way, so finding answers for their threats is crucial.
- Synergistic aggro decks shine when they can combine a lot of cards which all support each other, among these decks like Affinity or Elves are the best examples. Targeted Discard is not completely bad against them, as there are a few key cards, which you may be able to snatch off their hand. For example: If you can, you want to discard Collected Company from the Elves player’s hand. You also do want to snatch Cranial Plating or Etched Champion from the Affinity player’s hand. However, it does not mean we should increase the amount of discard by sideboarding, since those can still wreck you if you topdeck them later on.
- In Midrange mirrors value, attrition and great topdecking are the most important aspects. For this reason we certainly want to cut all cards which could be potential bad topdecks later in the game. Some people say that discard can be kept in in these mirrors, which might be also an alternative way to sideboard in these matchups. However, the way I see it, is that, even if discard sounds great theoretically (like to discard the opponents removal so that your Tarmogoyf lives), I think more often than not discard is going to wreck you. The simple reason of this is, that discard is only good in the early game. You want to discard their most potent card against your hand right at the beginning of the game. Nevertheless, the start of the game is only a small part of the whole game. Midrange decks tend to be slower decks, which play longer games generally and in those matchups, ultimately, it comes down to which player topdecks best at the end of the game. For this reason, threats and grindy cards are of most value in these matchups.
- Midrange swingy decks tend to similarly work like good stuff midrange decks, but they do play payoff cards like Collected Company. The most present example these days would be Abzan Company. This decks uses mana dorks to quickly ramp into bigger threats, which are sticky most of the time, to outclass the opponent. Collected Company is a great card in this deck, especially combined with the manadorks. For this reason discard is good against these decks. However, only targeted discard! Non targeted discard can seriously wreck you due to shenanigans like Loxodon Smiter.
- Big Mana decks are generally very difficult for us to deal with. The best strategy we have is put up a fast clock so that our opponent can’t get to a point where the decks just steamrolls. In the early game these kind of decks are weak, so we have to use this fact as an advantage. Nevertheless, our deck is usually not fast enough to close out the games very fast, although cards like Stony Silence and Treetop Village certainly help in this matchup. Targeted discard is great here, as well as burn and putting up a big threat.
- Combo spell based decks are decks like Ad Nauseam for example. The best thing we have against them is disruption combined with a fast clock. These decks can go off quite fast, but our job is to prevent or hinder the deck to combo off that fast. Each combo deck works differently, so figuring out how to disrupt the opponent is key here.
- Combo GY based decks are basically like spell based combo decks, but using the GY for their advantage. Obviously attacking their graveyard is important here, and for this reason, non-targeted discard is awful in this matchup. Targeted discard on the other hand, is much better.
- Control decks are generally decks, which are weak in the early game, but the longer the game goes, the easier it is for them to take over the game. As we are generally not that fast at closing out games, control decks can often times take the upper hand against us. The absolutely best thing we can do against them is trying to stick a Dark Confidant or Liliana of the Veil and start to dilute their resources. Targeted discard is phenomenal here, as hand information is incredibly useful here.
As a general advice for side boarding, always go for the question: “What can I cut from my main deck?” first rather than “What cards can I bring in?”. This applies to every matchup. For this reason, this guide is more focused on the cards to cut, whether on the cards to bring in, because generally, this is easier to determine.
With that general knowledge we got now from the last section of the primer, we should be able to create our own guide to sideboarding. I believe one key to success in sideboarding is the right approach to it. I think for proper sideboarding, it is not adviseable to simply learn cuts and bring ins for each matchup and call it a day. I guarantee that you will more often than not face an unexpected matchup which you don't prepared for preemptively. In such a case, correct sideboarding warrants great success. I want you to look at a card and know what it fundamentally does for us and against which type of deck we want that. If you learn to think that way, you can figure out each matchup by yourself. I can show you how I do it and what has brought me best success in my experience playing the deck. I’ll always go with the approach of creating a gauntlet with the most popular sideboard cards. It is the same gaunlet you will find in the Sideboard Guide section of the primer by the way. In the last section, explaining general guidelines for sideboarding, you saw a more general and theoretical approach of evaluating different areas of attack for all matchups. This theory is taken up as a next step here, to create this gauntlet and divide it into its own sections of use. In the following box you will see the sideboard gauntlet.
Now, this is simply an accomodation of most often used sideboard cards. Its a pile of cards. Not very helpful as of now. However, as a next step, we are gonna divide this pile of cards into 5 fundamental sections of areas of attack. By doing so, we can already distinguish all cards from another and also see which cards are doing similar things. These are the fundamental areas of attack:
- Graveyard Hate: This category explains itself. All cards that interact with the GY fall into this one.
- Destruction: Cards for the pure sake of destroying (or dealing with certain types of cards) specific problematic permanents/cards, which goes beyond simple creature removal.
- Lifegain: Obviously all cards that gain certain amounts of life.
- Discard: Cards that discard cards from opponents hands.
- Grind: A special category, since it defines the philosophy of our deck. Every card you would want in attrition based games, fall into that category, including removal.
If we take those categories, we will be able to put every common sideboard card in one, or even more of those sections:
Fulminator Mage
Kataki, War's Wage
Flaying Tendrils
Zealous Persecution
Shriekmaw
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Stony Silence
Damnation
Golgari Charm
Night of Souls' Betrayal
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Reclamation Sage
Eidolon of Rhetoric
Gaddock Teeg
Damping Sphere
Knight of Autumn
Now that we divided all cards among the sections we created, we have to see what types of decks there are, to see what tools available to us are effective against a given deck. The simplest way to divide decktypes is according to the following way:
- Aggro: The most fundamental way to play magic, the only purpose of playing that sort of deck is getting the opponent dead fast. Games involving an aggro deck tend to focus on the early game and is characterized by efficiency and tempo. Synergies are very important here to create an early big advantage from which the opposing deck should not recover or hold up to.
- Midrange: When talking about midrange, terms like value, attrition or good topdecks come to mind. Midrange decks don't seek to kill the opponent fast naturally, it wants to go over the top of other decks and outvalue or outgrind them. This type of deck focuses on mid game primarily, its where the deck shines the most.
- Control: Control decks have only one purpose in mind: Controlling everything the opposing player might want to do and prevent that. Control decks are reactive by nature and run very few actual winconditions. Control decks shine in the mid to late game, and have a weakness for the early game. Its goal is to go from the early into mid and late game quite fast.
- Combo: Combo is a weird type of deck. In a certain way, combo decks are like aggro decks, in which they want to kill the opponent fast, through a certain combination of cards though, rather than simply attacking with creatures. Its primary focus is the early to mid game, focusing on card synergy.
- Big Mana: Big Mana is one type of deck that assembles huge amounts of mana by assembling certain types of lands or a big amount of lands fast. Those decks then try to win through powerful overcosted spells which are hard to deal with. This kind of deck focuses on the mid and late game and also on synergy.
Now that we defined the basic types of decks, we will divide our sideboard gauntlet among the different types of decks:
And there you have it. We completely divided our gauntlet in different areas of attack as well as uses for each type of deck. This should help you to identify your best sideboard for your own metagame. For determining the own metagame, I suggest reading Reid Duke's article: The Metagame. Last but not least, here is a recommended sideboard for the overall meta, kept up to date:
| Template Reid Duke ApproachMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |
|---|---|
| Sideboard [15] 2 Damnation 3 Stony Silence 2 Collective Brutality 2 Fulminator Mage 1 Damping Sphere 1 Nihil Spellbomb 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 1 Duress | |
| Template Abzan TraverseMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |
|---|---|
| Sideboard [15] 1 Bojuka Bog 2 Collective Brutality 2 Stony Silence 2 Fulminator Mage 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Gaddock Teeg 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 2 Damnation 1 Thrun, the Last Troll 1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation | |
To conclude, these are the general guidelines for sideboarding in a given game. However, in specific cases, specific strategies are needed. For this reason, I want to go over all matchups present in this meta right now and go into a little bit more detail. In order to do so, I want to introduce you to my concept of Priority Lists. Since GBx decks are fairly different from meta to meta, I design a gauntlet of most popular cards run in common decks. From that cards I create a list (the priority list) which contains cards I would cut in which matchup (and how often) and also in which order. The same goes for bringing in cards. If you dont have a certain card from that list in your 75, then simply skip it. Information on the matchup itself will be in the information text attached to the list. Next you can find the Gauntlet:
Board Out
- Thoughtseize
- Liliana of the Veil
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Tireless Tracker
- Scavenging Ooze (1)
Board In
- Stony Silence
- Kataki, War's Wage
- Knight of Autumn
- Reclamation Sage
- Flaying Tendrils
- Damnation
- Engineered Explosives
- Zealous Persecution
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Golgari Charm
- Collective Brutality
- Fulminator Mage
Affinity is a synergistic aggro deck, which empties the hand blisteringly fast. Often times this deck drops their hand on turn 2 or 3 going into the top deck mode. For this reason, discard is usually not the best against them. In addition, this deck has several creatures, which are not real threats on its own (well except for Cranial Plating, this card turns every creature into a threat), but all work together to a difficult board of synergy, which we will have to deal with. Edict effects are the worst kind of removal we have against them, usually removing a lone Memnite won’t do much. Subsequently, Liliana of the Veil is one of the worst card against them we have. Mass removal and multiple single target removal is what we are looking for.
This deck runs no cards which have higher CMC than 3. For this reason, Inquisition of Kozilek is strictly better than Thoughtseize. Since we generally don’t want discard, we will cut all Thoughtseizes from our deck after game 1. I personally find IOKs sometimes very useful, as the affinity player tends to drop all his small cheap cards in the first turn, and will hold the payoff cards in the hand for another turn. Even if we are on the draw, snapping this payoff card is great. Still, I wouldn’t bring in more discard because of this. This is just a reason why some numbers of IOK are fine to keep in the MB. Next, cutting some Liliana of the Veil is the priority. In addition, to note, Ooze might seem like a bad card in that MU, since this deck does not use the GY. However, I really do not recommend cutting Ooze in that matchup. Why? Simply because the GY is not the important factor, but the life gain and the body of Ooze. Affinity plays many creatures, which tend to fill up the graveyard, so Ooze will often times grow to a giant ass threat. As affinity is an artifact based synergy deck, obviously, we will bring all artifact hate in this MU. Next, Sweepers are what is needed. Three main choices do we have: Flaying Tendrils, Damnation and Engineered Explosives.
Your main gameplan is to be on defense the whole time until you can stabilize and control the board safely. Do not make heedless attacks if you could potentially get blown out by a topdecked Cranial Plating. Play it safe and remove every problematic card on sight (Overseer, Ravager, Champion, Plating) if possible. As for Ravager, it really is not worth it to let it live and target your removal spells on other creatures. If the opponent plays a turn 2 Ravager, and you have a Push in hand immediatly point it onto Ravager, unless there is something more problematic on the field. Dont let your opponent work with Ravager, it can get ugly quite fast.
Board Out
- Dark Confidant
- Thoughtseize
- Liliana, the Last Hope
Board In
- Collective Brutality
- Kambal, Consul of Allocation
- Kitchen Finks
- Duress
- Knight of Autumn
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Engineered Explosives
- Fulminator Mage
Burn generally is a spell based aggro deck. It still runs a fair amount of creatures nonetheless. Against this deck, you want to take as little dmg as possible, so be careful with fetching and thoughtseizing the opponent. Discard is great in this matchup, especially IOK which can strip of a burn card from the opponents hand without taking dmg.
One of the most common misconceptions involveds around Thoughtseize vs. Burn. Its incredibly bad to leave TS in. But why is that? I often hear people arguing that TS is not as bad against Burn, because you can potentially snatch a Boros Charm or Atarkas Command, effectively gaining 2 life, right? Well, its not that simple.
I look at Burn as being a combo deck, which just has to resolve 6-7 spells in order to win the game. Generally, each spell will do 3 or sometimes 4 dmg to the opponent, so for 20 life --> 7 spells with 3 dmg per spell or 6 spells with two spells dealing 4 dmg are needed. Burn is a very consistant deck. It will more often than not draw the needed spells and just win. Now, when you are playing TS and taking Boros Charm out of the opponent’s hand, you annul the effect of Boros Charm which would have otherwise dealt 4 dmg to your face. But what you also did through this, is effective casting a free Shock on yourself. Combines this with a simple fetch you potentially did prior to this (even if you only fetched for 1) you effectively cast a free Lightning Bolt on yourself. So what did TS actually do for you? Nothing. You took Boros Charm, but bolted you alongside. You gave the opponent 1 of the 7 spells needed to kill you. (And to note, even if you don’t fetch for 1, you effectively cast a combo spell piece on yourself by casting TS, going down to 18 life and the burn player now just needs 6 instead of 7 3-dmg spells) So to conclude, if you TS the Burn player, you take away one spell they have but they simply have to draw one less spell alongside, which is just doing nothing.
Board Out
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Thoughtseize
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana of the Veil (2 against Abzan)
- Blooming Marsh (1 on the draw)
Board In
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Fulminator Mage
- Kitchen Finks
- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Damnation
- Engineered Explosives
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Nihil Spellbomb
Playing against midrange decks ultimately comes down to who topdecks better, if you want to win or not. Therefore, what has worked for me in the past is that cutting all cards, which are potential bad top deck give you the best win % against Junk/Jund.
In general the rule is: Threat > Removal. Bring in all threats you have and afterwards extra removal. Of course, knowledge of the deck is also important to win the MU. For example, I rate Scavenging Ooze higher than Tarmogoyf in this MU, because Ooze can generally grow to a much bigger threat over time (grinding) and can strip away opposing Lingering Souls copies from the opposing Junk player for example. Speaking of Lingering Souls, it is basically correct to cut some LoTV if you expect Souls from the opponent. Besides this, CA in form of Dark Confidant is also highly important, try to bait removal spells by playing other stuff first and playing Bob afterwards, you really want Bob to live in these matchups. Of course, also, playing Tarmogoyf only when he is bolt proof against Jund is self-explanatory.
Board Out
- Fatal Push
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Lingering Souls
- Scavenging Ooze
- Collective Brutality
Board In
- Damping Sphere
- Fulminator Mage
- Surgical Extraction
- Knight of Autumn
- Stony Silence
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Tron is our second worst matchup we can face (the worst being Valakut decks). Reid Duke is on the opinion that a good GBx pilot can win nearly half the matches against Tron. What is important in this MU? Generally, the best sequence we have against them is: Turn 1 discard Turn 2 goyf and then potential turn 3 Fulminaotr + Surgical and finish them off before they get to cast one of their threats. For this reason, slow and grindy cards are bad in this MU, they won’t grant the value they have. I would generaly advise to go for their threats with your discard spells rather than trying to choke them on their ability to find tron lands. (Unless they keep a hand without tron lands and just a Stirrings/Map or whatever).
Board Out
- Thoughtseize
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Collective Brutality
Board In
- Fulminator Mage
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Engineered Explosives
- Damnation
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kitchen Finks
Death’s Shadow aggro similarily works like spells based decks such as Burn and Infect. They can win out of nowhere with a giant Death’s Shadow with a Temur Battle Rage attached to it. Lately, Death’s Shadow decks kinda turned into a more grindy strategy, using a few of Jund’s best cards like LoTV or KCommand to have the ability to grind out the opponent. With the inclusion of Traverse the Ulvenwald and its piloting to be a easy to reach delirium deck its amazingly consistant. Discard is usually not very good here as the game is directed by attrition. You can treat the matchup just like a mirror matchup. Out of all option out there, Fulminator Mage, Nihil Spellbomb and Sweeper provide ok options to bring in. Death’s Shadow will dmg themselves quite a bit to grow Death’s Shadow, and thus fetching for many shocklands. Fulminator can potentially screw them quite hard. Please do only bring in Nihil Spellbomb as GY hate for the matchup, if you have it. All other cards (Surgical, Leyline) will be horrendus topdecks later in the game. Spellbomb only replaces itself, therefore you can run it.
Removal is king in that matchup, and cards that trade 2-for-1 most likely (Lingering Souls, Liliana, the Last Hope) are great. Be careful with your lifetotal, chip in for dmg when you safely can but be aware of Temur Battle Rage at all times. After sideboarding they will board it out, so here you can focus more on grindy cards.
Board Out
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Collective Brutality
- Lingering Souls
- Liliana, the Last Hope
Board In
- Damnation
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Fulminator Mage
- Surgical Extraction
- Kitchen Finks
- Knight of Autumn
Eldrazi Tron is a deck that combines the unfair elements of the tron lands with the big creatures of Eldrazi. This deck is a bit vulnerable to LD, but its not a blowout due to stuff like Mind Stone and them playing some number of Wastes Fulminator Mage is not automatically game over. Generally I would try to lower cards which are potential bad topdecks, so cutting some discard is good, however, leaving in TS to snap gaint ass threats like Ulamog is surely worth it. You want to draw your threats quickly to finish the opponent off. The key to this match are your hard removals (Path, Pulse...) combined with a 5/6 Tarmogoyf to hold off threats.The best card to bring in is Damnation. Fulminator might shut them off of Tron, if you get to hit a land and extract it with Surgical Extraction. On its own, Fulminator is not that impressive though. I personally value Damnation higher than any LD here because of these reasons. If you got those in, you can also bring in stuff like Finks and extra removal. Try not to play the long game against this MU. Generally, you want to close games as fast as you can, with Fulminator only buying you time.
Board Out
- Fatal Push
- Lingering Souls
- Liliana, the Last Hope
Board In
- Fulminator Mage
- Surgical Extraction
- Collective Brutality
- Kitchen Finks
- Maelstrom Pulse
RG Valakut is the worst matchup for GBx decks. Generally, it doesn’t depend on the version, all are really bad, however its good to note that RG Titanshift is more consistant that Breach, but Breach can potentially be faster than Titanshift. Of course, like against every Big Mana deck, LD is important here. Fulminator is the best option. Bring in all copies you have. After this, bring in Kitchen Finks, which not only provide a relevant body to race the opponent, but also gains life which can potentially help getting out of the 18 life threshold for a 7 land shapeshift (also relevant against Breach) Bring in Duresses as well as Collective Brutalities. As an quick note on Abrupt Decay, it might be correct to leave those in to have an answer for Chalice of the Void, which is a card that Valakut decks sometimes run in their SB. If you expect this, maybe leave in Decay.
One note concerning Fulminator and Scapeshift: If the opponent plays Scapeshift and wants to sacrifice 7 lands, obviously destroy a land in response, so they can only sac 6 lands. If they scapeshift for 8 lands however, you can't deny the valakut triggers, as 7 lands will also be enough, however, you can reduce the dmg from 36 to 6, if you destroy one mountain in response to the valakut triggers (6 mountains and 2 Valakuts usually, which would normally grant 6 x 6 = 36 dmg). The other 5 mountains won't "see" the other 5 mountains required to deal damage, so those will fizzle. Only the land which was destroyed sees 5 other mountains in order to be triggered, which is just 6 dmg, 3 dmg from each valakut. Generally, if the Valakut player knows this as well, they will scapeshift for 7 mountains and only 1 Valakut generally. In that case its better to destroy one land pre-scapeshift, in order reduce dmg from 36 to 18. So its up to you to decide whether to take the risk of letting it resolve and potentially get rewarded or get screwed. If you would die to 18 dmg nonetheless, then its of course safe to just hope they mess up. You would die anyways otherwise.
Board Out
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Liliana of the Veil (2)
- Lingering Souls
Board In
- Damnation
- Flaying Tendrils
- Engineered Explosives
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kitchen Finks
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Fulminator Mage
Abzan Company is generally a midrange deck, which does contain some combo and go-wide elements in it. It is known for playing sticky creatures and big payoff spells like Collected Company or Chord of Calling to find those threats and junk up the battlefield. In order to do this fast, it plays manadorks along those bigger creatures. As for us, we can't compete with this race of creature build up onto the battlefield, since we don't run these payoff cards. For us it is important to snap those payoff cards before they get to resolve, which means: targeted discard. However, I would still treat this matchup like an attrition matchup, this means that cutting of some discard good. Since the deck is creature based, obviously, sweepers are phenominal here.
Liliana the Last Hope is usually very good in this matchup, because it can kill manadorks, shrink their threats while ticking up an heading towards a win condition on her own. Among the best cards available for us is definitely Damnation and Flaying Tendrils. It will deal with the majority of their threats without them coming back, which is really good value. Note though, that some lists play Sigarda, Host of Herons which could potentially shut down Liliana of the Veil, and you can only remove her with Damnation. Speaking of which, LotV can sometimes be very bad, as you can't plus her safely and also her edict effect can be mediocre if you face Voice of Resurgence or pesky manadorks. With the inclusion of Vizier of Remedies the deck became more combo centered, which can sometimes just get you. Remember that you should always kill Devoted Druid first before you kill Vizier, since Druid as a topdeck wont be able to get the combo online right away due to summoning sickness.
Board Out
- Fatal Push
- Abrupt Decay
- Path to Exile
Board In
- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Fulminator Mage
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kitchen Finks
- Nihil Spellbomb
Jeskai Control has a really respectful and powerful endgame when unchecked. Jeskai mostly utilizes powerful Planeswalker and its signature manland Celestial Colonnade to finish off. Jeskai is a pain in the ass to deal with. Generally, if you want to increase your win percentage points against this MU, it not only comes down to sideboard correctly, it also depends on the piloting of the deck. Certain cards like additional copies of Maelstrom Pulse really help with dealing with those pesky planeswalkers. However, the biggest problem seems to be Snapcaster Mage and Cryptic Command, hands down. Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil and single target discard are your greatest friends, alongside hard to deal with threats. You need them to use their resources to deal with your stuff, and eventually being left with a Dark Confidant, Tarmogoyf or Liliana of the Veil will grant you the win. In theory. Practically, this can be though to do. I think its generally a good idea to not seek long games, try not to outgrind them, as you will just loose. I think deploying a quick threat after counters/removal are taken out of their hands with discard, will grant more win percentage than going for a longer game. You want to put them on the backfoot as soon and as often as you can. The help of Lingering Souls really goes a long way in that matchup. You can avoid getting timewalked less often by cards like Remand/Cryptic Command by running less clunky spells. Lastly, Liliana, the Last Hope is a real great card, as recursion of creatures is relevant and her being a planeswalker is a hard to deal with threat which can win a game on her own. She is just a must answer card, because the control player is usually not fast enough to win beforehand. We also bring in Fulminator Mage and Finks, which are potential 2 for 1s and which will help diluting the Jeskai players answers so that eventually one threat of ours can stick. The biggest threat in the late topdeck war is their manland, and Fulminator is great here at dealing with it cleanly.
Board Out
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Lingering Souls
- Abrupt Decay
- Path to Exile
- Dismember
Board In
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Surgical Extraction
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Golgari Charm
Storm is a deck which has seen play in the past. Before the Gitaxian Probe ban, obviously this card was included in the deck and often builds using Pyromancer Ascension have been played. After the bans, a new version came up, including cards like the newly print Baral, Chief of Compliance and Gifts Ungiven. Pyromancer Ascension seemed to be disappeared as of now, the builds tend to focus more on Past in Flames now. So this means, our best cards against them are discard, GY hate and a quick threat. We also have a huge amount of single target removal to get rid of any Goblin Electromancer of Baral right away. Due to this, Storm usually is a good matchup. Removal is great, discard is great and a quick threat is great.
The reason to bring in Sweepers like EE, is because their biggest threat against us is an early Empty the Warrens. A huge amount of small creatures is hard for us to answer. Before that, however, extra discard and GY hate comes in, those are the main priorities. Don't sideboard too much here if you don't have anything to bring in. Usually siding 3-4 cards should be sufficient. We leave Maelstrom Pulse in also for the Tokens. Side out a couple of clunky removal like Decay, since experiences Storm players will side out all Electromancers and maybe Barals against you, to blank your removal. However, sometimes they could try to play mindgames and side them in and out, hoping you sided out removal. Be a little causios about this.
Board Out
- Fatal Push
- Abrupt Decay
- Lingering Souls
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Liliana of the Veil
Board In
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Surgical Extraction
- Collective Brutality
- Damnation
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Fulminator Mage
Living End is generally a very tough matchup for us. Removal from us will certainly be blanked at some point due to creatures returning to the battlefield through Living End. Since removal is a big proportion of our deck, many cards just won't do enough generally. Obviously grinding and going for a longer game is not the best idea here. The best thing we can do preboard is using targeted discard to snap all their cascaders which could potentially buy us enough time to finish them off quickly with an early Tarmogoyf. Scavenging Ooze is an allstar in this matchup. Living End does not play much removal, which makes it so that Ooze often sticks for a while. If you combine this with discard for cascaders, then Ooze can potentially take over the game if you build up enough mana to exile every creature they cycle away. For graveyard hate, everything is good except Grafdigger's Cage. This does absolutely nothing against Living End, keep that in mind. I think generally Leyline of the Void and Nihil Spellbomb are more or less on the same powerlevel and if I expect much Living End decks going around, I would consider running either or both of these cards in the sideboard. Surgical Extraction is a card I really like against Living End, as you can extract Living Ends from the yard. But I would not use this as primary GY hate for that matchup as it can be weak and sometimes does only extract one creature when there is a Living End on the stack. Also be aware of Faerie Macabre. That card can screw extractions up. The reason why I would bring in Fulminator is because you can also make use of Living End potentially, by getting as many creatures into the GY as possible. Try to really hard mulligan for some kind of interaction with their GY.
Board Out
- Liliana of the Veil
- Dismember
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Abrupt Decay
Board In
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Surgical Extraction
- Flaying Tendrils
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana, the Last Hope
Dredge is a deck which operates on the graveyard and can be very explosive in a way, that you likely face a 10-15 power creature army as early as turn 2 or onward if things go well for them. Killing their creatures one by one is one thing, but does not solve the problem at all. Bloodghasts and Prized Amalgams tend to return back to the battlefield rather easily, which requires other measurements to beat them. Obviously, our single target removal are quite bad here. They can still win you games for sure, but it just doesn't feel good pushing a Bloodghast. The graveyard is what's the scary part. Therefore any form of Graveyard hate is great here (Leyline of the Void > Nihil Spellbomb > Grafdigger's Cage > Scavenging Ooze > Surgical Extraction). Luckily we do have mainboard GY hate for the matchup: Scvenging Ooze/Nihil Spellbomb. The problem with Ooze is, its very slow, and you can't exile all cards from the gy since we never got enough green mana to compensate for their dredging. The goal here is to exile the right cards. When you do see only one dredger in the graveyard you want to exile the dredger, since you will prevent dredging most likely for the next draw step. If you see too many dredgers, this does not make much sense though. If, however, you see only a few creatures they can reanimate you want to exile the threats. Also, if they trigger a bloodghast or amalgam or narcomoeba, you want to exile it. If they don't have bloodghasts in the gy, but they dredged a narcomoeba and some amalgams, you want to exile the narcomoeba with its trigger on the stack in order to prevent amalgams hitting the battlefield. Next to gy hate, targeted discard in early turns is decent against them. If you can snap Cathartic Reunions, Faceless Lootings or Insulent Neonates, then you will slow the opponent down significantly. The last thing to keep in mind is their damage source in the form of Conflagrate. They will utilize Life from the Loam in order to gather a bunch of cards to discard to build up a huge conflagrate. A thing to note is that the spell is sorcery speed, which makes it so that the dredge player will have restricted possibilities to use it. But its still a threat which can potentially kill you out of nowhere, so always track life totals.
It is fine to bring in Damnation and Liliana the Last Hope since both can help reducing the clock of the dredged creatures and buy potential turns in order to set up a wall of blockers or simply win by yourself. Flaying Tendrils is of course the premium card to have for this matchup, and will always be welcomed. The matchup on its own is rather difficult and unfavoured, since half of your deck can get blanket or significantly leveraged in its powerlevel since they creatures of the dredge player will return again and again. That combined with its explosiveness often just means we have to operate with clunky hands and try to squeeze out wins.
Board Out
- Inquisition of Kozilek (2, on the draw)
- Thoughtseize (max 2, on the draw)
- Collective Brutality
- Abrupt Decay
- Fatal Push (max 2)
Board In
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kitchen Finks
- Damnation
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Engineered Explosives
- Fulminator Mage
Grixis Death Shadow is one of the most popular versions of DS decks out there and its been quite successful recently. Playing this deck will require for you to decide, how to handle the matchup. You can either handle it as a tempo matchup and focus on finishing the game fast, or treat the deck like a grindy attrition based match, where you want to grind max. In my experience, changing the strategies depending on being on the play or draw grants the best results. Depenging on the skills of each player, this matchup is more or less favourable. If you are a skilled pilot, this matchup is usually favoured due to Lingering Souls. Grixis Shadow's strenghts ultimately are delve creatures and/or Snapcaster Mage. With your discard, in doubt, you want to target those cards. Do not burn your Paths/Pulses on low impact snappies on the field, safe them for Tasigur or Gurmag Angler. LoTV is one of the best cards we have against them, for which reason you should watch out for Stubborn
Bringing in Gy hate is a good idea for that matchup. Generally, Leyline is the best hate we have in terms of effectiveness when you manage to have it on the bf as early as the start of the game. However, there is more to it. Leylines are completely devastating topdecks. Keep that in mind if you want to board them in. I personally like Nihil Spellbomb more as my gy hate for that matchup, as it is not a bad topdeck. I am personally willing to sacrifice the possibility of having Leyline on the board at the start by reducing the number of bad topdecks later in the game. Next to this, removal and grindy cards are a good choice. Lastly, I think its not the worst to bring in Surgical, but I do think its not correct. The biggest argument for it is that the deck is very threatlight, and with Surgical you can extract those threats. But you can't guarantee hitting something relevant. Usually its a weak gy hate and a bad topdeck as well. I would keep my fingers from boarding it in.
Board Out
- Fatal Push
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Abrupt Decay
- Path to Exile
Board In
- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Fulminator Mage
- Knight of Autumn
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Maelstrom Pulse
UW Control can be of the tougher matchups for us, depending on the skilllevel of both players. Reid Duke called that matchup a highly favourable one though. The deck has multiple sweepers to wipe away our threats, counters to counter our threats and Spreading Seas to deny us our mana. The best thing we can do against the deck is attack their hand early and deploy a fast clock in the following turn. A more resiliant plan is to resolve a Liliana of the Veil and start stripping resources out of the UW Control player's hand. Tireless Tracker is also really good vs Control, as it likely trades 2-for-1 at least. Try to really trade resources in your favor. The single card that makes the matchup favourable is Lingering Souls. It likely trades 2-for-1 as well and can go all the way sometimes.
Bringing in GY hate is not the best idea for that matchup. This deck often runs some copies of Rest in Piece by themselves and only a few Snapcaster. It shows that they don't rely on the graveyard like Grixis variants do. Bring in Fulminator for their Colonnades, Thrun for obvious reasons, LtLH as threat and recursion, as well as Finks for a sticky threat, and Pulse for their PWs and Detention Spheres. I would not board out all Paths, as you can hit Gideon Jura with that card and also at least kill Snapcaster and Colonnade.
Board Out
- Thoughtseize
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Lingering Souls
Board In
- Damnation
- Engineered Explosives
- Flaying Tendrils
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Collective Brutality
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Knight of Autumn
Humans is a deck that recently popped up due to probably its autowin against Storm. Its deck only consisting of creatures and Vials to bring them in fast. This deck similarily operates like a Death and Taxes deck, but focusing on the Human archetype here. Generally, it can be very annoying if you get overrun by massive creatures fast. The strategy to follow here is that you need to be conservative with your lifetotals at all times, be on defense and chip in for dmg only when you can safely do so. As for sideboarding, bring in every card you have access to that can kill a creature.
Board Out
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Thoughtseize
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana of the Veil (2)
Board In
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Kitchen Finks
- Damnation
- Flaying Tendrils
- Engineered Explosives
- Maelstrom Pulse
Mardu Pyromancer is an attrition based deck, which can go-wide fast and create a good amount of CA thanks to cards like Bedlam Reveler and/or the synergy between Faithless Looting and Lingering Souls. The deck generally contains a lot of X/1 type of creatures, which means its very susceptible to small sweepers. Flaying Tendrils, Golgari Charm and EE come to mind. Since the deck uses Bedlam Reveler and has a good amoung to flashback cards in it, its highly susceptible to GY hate. So we want Nihil Spellbombs for sure. If we get to exile the GY and strand them with uncastable Revelers in their hand, we are usually in a good shape. Note that they do not run many hard removals, the have Terminate and Dreadbore only usually. Be aware of Blood Moon, it can catch you offguard sometimes. So grab your basics when you can.
Board Out
- Fatal Push
- Thoughtseize
- Dismember
- Maelstrom Pulse
Board In
- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Surgical Extraction
- Kitchen Finks
UR Breach is essentially a Control deck which has a surprize finisher in the form or Through the Breach + Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Basically it is easy to disrupt, since it is a 2 card combo. We have plenty of discard to stop them long enough, that our Tarmogoyfs can ride to victory. They typically dont have ways to kill a goyf, other than countering and bouncing it. I believe this matchup is favourable, the 2 things you have to keep in mind is Blood Moon and the combo. If you manouver through the games carefully you should be fine most of the time. Sometimes the combo can get ya, but thats variance and just the game. I think its more scary than it actually is.
Board Out
- Thoughtseize
- Abrupt Decay
- Liliana of the Veil
- Dark Confidant (1)
Board In
- Knight of Autumn
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Damnation
- Duress
BR Hollow One is a bad matchup for us in general. Their Burning Inquiry can screw our hand pretty badly possibly. On the other hand, since all discard is happening randomly, they can also just loose to their own deck, if they discard their key cards like delve threats and Hollow Ones. GY hate is good here, as well as targeted discard for their enablers, which are the mentioned Burning Inquiry as well as Goblin Lore. Sometimes you will face 2 Hollow Ones before you even put your first land into play, thats just the deck, we cant do much about it. Having extra hard removal in the form of Path or Murderous Cut can help here, but its still bad. We are just soo slow and our interaction does not particularly line up very well with their deck. This sideboard strategy showed here is from Reid Duke. In this plan cutting all LoTV is the strategy. I think the stronger plays this deck can make is early Hollow Ones and early delve threats, I am less worried about the small threats where LoTV is bad against, since we have got plenty of targeted removal for them. I feel like LoTV seems good to have here to stop those stronger plays from them. But thats left for further investigation at this point.
Board Out
- Fatal Push
- Path to Exile
- Dismember
Board In
- Stony Silence
- Knight of Autumn
- Collective Brutatily
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Engineered Explosives
- Surgical Extraction
- Nihil Spellbomb
Lantern Control is in general not a bad matchup. Reid Duke calls this a close, but favourable matchup. We have a silverbullet card in the form of Stony Silence, and our big threats and many permanent removals make the matchup very winnable. Often we only need one removal for an Ensnaring Bridge and then we can attack for lethal with out powerful threats. Things can get dicy when you get locked down early or if the opponent has Whir of Invention as backup. Usually our discard prevent this, but Leyline of Sanctity can sometimes stop this. This matchup is better with Jund, but with Abzan still winnable at least.
"During the collision of the shards, entire ways of life disappeared without a trace."
In this last section of the primer, I want to point out some aspects about technical play of certain cards, how to handle them and also covering some tips and tricks here. In Abzan, sequencing is one of the most important aspects when it comes to playing the deck well. Really don't mess up stuff just because you did them in the wrong order. The following tips should help you avoid this, as I am confidant that these mistakes happened already before (myself included).
- Discard vs. Push?: The question is, if the opponent has played a turn 1 creature, should we use our turn 1 to push it or to play a discard spell? In most cases, always go for the push first. Turn 1 creatures in modern are often mana dorks or aggressive creatures which either help the opponent to quickly ramp into much more threating stuff or to beat you down quickly. We should stop both those things by pushing the creature right away.
- Scavenging Ooze: When do you play ooze and when you activate its ability? If you expect a Lightning Bolt from you opponent to kill your ooze, then wait to play it until turn 4, where you should be able to safe the ooze in case he gets bolted right away by using the other two lands (have to be green) in order to pump ooze out of bolt range (but check creature count in graveyards first!). If you expect a bolt, and you correctly played ooze on turn 4, holding up 2 mana, don't fall into the trap and activate oozes ability at the end of the opponents turn. In response to the first activation ooze is again succeptible to bolt, keep that in mind! And also, please, if you have enough mana, its of course correct to activate oozes ability at the end of the opponents turn to use up the left untapped lands and to exile something, but always, always, activate the ability once and wait for the confirmation of the opponent that it resolves. After that you can still activate it a second time. If you activate the ooze all at once with all lands you have, it can still get bolted if all those abilities are on the stack.
- Tarmogoyf: When should you play Tarmogoyf? Tarmogoyf should always be played when he is bolt proof (against decks where you expect bolt). Note that this is done the easiest way by turn 1 fetch + discard (putting 2 types into the GY) followed up by a turn 2 goyf. Your 2/3 goyf, if he gets bolted right away, will, due to state based effects, be a 3/4 upon the bolt's resolution, which doesn't kill the goyf! Also, if you want to attack with your goyf on a given turn, and have a Liliana of the Veil on the board which you also want to activate on that turn, activeate her first, which might make the goyf bigger through her discard.
- Tarmogoyf vs. Dark Confidant: Sometimes the question comes up, what should I play fist on turn 2, Goyf or Bob? Well, generally speaking, it depends on the matchup of course. If you expect much removal from a given deck, then play the creature first which you value the least. If you don't expect much removal and need e.g. a fast clock (e.g. against Tron) then play Goyf first. As we disrupt our opponent's gameplans, you generally wanna play Bob first to start your CA engine. However, if Bob is valued greatly in a given matchup, then play less important stuff first so that you eventually can stick a bob. In matchups where its about tempo, speed and efficiency, play the creature what you need in a given scenario.
- Lingering Souls: If you fear that Lingering Souls will be exiled with an opposing Spellbomb or hidden Surgical if you play it turn 3, wait until you have 5 mana if you can. That way you can cast and flashback Souls without the opponent ever getting priority and exile it in between.
- Liliana of the Veil: You really don't need to activate Liliana's abilities every turn. Its totally fine to just let Liliana stay if you need all the cards in your hand.
- What to take with discard on turn 1?: This is question, which is very hard to answer. If you play Abzan for a long time, you will get a feeling for what to take in given matchup. In short, it depends on the cards you have in your hand (e.g. if I have removal for a creature in my opponents hand, its not necessarily needed to discard the creature), on the cards which are on the battlefield (is my opponent manascrewed? Do I need to take an expensive card out of my opponent's hand? Or does my opponent have a powerful spell which interacts with a permanent on the field which could harm me (Like Become Immense + an Infect creature)) as well as the strategy of the opponent's deck (taking key cards for a certain combo etc.). Its hard to find the correct decision, but practise and experience do help a lot for this! As a general order of priority, I would suggest the following:
- Take the card you can't deal with
- Take the card that's next on the opponents manacurve
- Take removal that kills Dark Confidant
- Fetchlands: Generally, Verdant Catacombs is our best fetchland since it can get both our basic lands. If it comes down to getting any shockland in our deck, its doesn't matter which fetchland to use. So, if your intentions are to get a shockland anyway, then always use other fetchlands first for that. Think about the colour requirements we have in our deck. We want to have double black on turn 3 for Liliana basically. Don't mess this up by fetching for the wrong lands in the first few turns and then you are stranded with a couple of tapped black mana sources (like a Blooming Marsh) which prevent you from casting a potentially needed LotV. I would recommend that you start thinking through your fetching sequencing during looking at the opening hand. Does my hand get all colours I need in time? Does it produce a mana every turn? Do lands enter the BF tapped at some point? When is the best option to play my tapped lands (e.g. Shambling Vent)? If you only have 2 fetchlands, consider the basic Swamp plus Temple garden combo, which lets you cast every 1 and 2 mana spell in the deck.
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet + Flaying Tendrils: I think that some people might not know the interaction of Kalitas and Flaying Tendrils. If you have Kalitas on board and play Tendrils, with the intention of exiling the opponents board and getting a bunch of tokens, then I have to let you down here. If two replacement effects occur at the same time, the owner of the cards which the effects both have an effect on gets to choose which effect will take place! So, simply said, your opponent owns the creatures and therefore the opponent decides which exiling effect will take place. Obviously they will choose the one from Tendrils to prevent you getting a bunch of tokens from Kalitas.
- Discard or Manland first?: If you are up against an unknown opponent, always go for turn 1 discard if you can. It doesn't matter all that much if your next land drop is just a tapped manland, but discard is such an important tool to us to win the game against many decks, so don't just let the opponent do what they want to do and start interacting as early as possible.
- Maelstrom Pulse: Little interaction here, but Maelstrom Pulse kills both Wurmcoil Engine Tokens at once.
- Fatal Push: You are able to target any creature with Fatal Push, not only possible ones due to the current revolt status. So Fatal Push can target a Tasigur for example. But due to its if clause, the creature just won't be destroyed. Most of the time this is not of technical interest, but sometimes you might need to get an instant into the graveyard to maybe make your goyf bigger than opposing tasigurs. So Fatal Push checks the CMC only upon resolution.
- "Thoughtseize You" by Reid Duke. A great article evolving around what to take with discard, which is one of the key disciplines when playing Abzan. Every Abzan player should have read this article.
- "Who's the Beatdown" by Michael Flores. This is the article which is considered to be the fundamental article of magic. Maybe its the best article in the whole history of competitive Magic. Its about your role in the current status of the game. Knowing when you need to attack and when you need to defend, is crucial when playing Abzan, yet any deck even. There are also follow up articles, "Eight Core Principles of Who's the Beatdown" also by Michael Flores, as well as "Who's the Beatdown II" by Zvi Mowshowitz. Both these articles are also great reads and I can only recommend reading them.
- "Technical Play" by Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa. Its a really great article about the term Technical Play itself and what it encompasses.
- "The False Tempo Archetype" by Gerry Thompson. This is a great article about the tempo archetype and how it is easy to misunderstand them and therefore play badly against them.
- "Level One: The Full Course" by Reid Duke. Its pretty basic stuff linked here, but its still worth mentioned and to have a look at. I specifically want to point out "The Metagame", which is a great article describing how to identify, handle and fight a certain metagame in magic. Specifically for Abzan, this is very important to understand.
- "How many coloured manasources do you need to consistantly cast your spells?" by Frank Karsten: A great article I personally refer to many times. When building a manabase, this is fundamentally important, but is often overlooked by many people. Manabases tend to get greedier and greedier over time, which might lead to frustration due to easily avoidable losses caused by a bad manabase. Don't be that guy, always put enough coloured sources in your deck! An update to the original article was also made: "How many mana sources do you need to consistantly cast your spells - a guilds of ravnica update" by Frank Karsten. This is the new version of the mana source article and should be referred to when talking about mana bases.
- "How many lands do you need to consistantly hit your landrops?" by Frank Karsten: A great article as well, just like the one above. It is fundamental to deckbuilding and always a gold piece of information I refer to when talking about manabases.
- "Tempo and Card Advantage" by Eric: When playing Abzan, we are often dealing with the term "Card Advantage". But what does it actually mean and how can you abuse it? Read this article for more information about it. Further there is an article by Michael Flores which explaines Virtual Card Advantage and when it is mistaken as Card Advantage: "The End of Virtual Card Advantage" by Michael Flores.
- "Playing to win versus playing not to loose" by PVDR: This article is closely related to "Who's the Beatdown", and explains, what you should do, in order to win a difficult match in time. Some matches will end in extra turns, and often times you have the option to play for the win or play not to loose. Great read there.
- "Tight Plays" by Jeremy Neeman: A great article explaining the term "Tight Play" what is often referred to by us. Another great article is about taking risks at the right time: "Risky Move" by Jeremy Neeman. Both articles are also very useful and important when playing Abzan.
- "6 Tips to Play Faster" by PVDR, a great article which helps to avoid get timed often. Sometimes we tend to go into extra turns, for which reason this is useful information.
- "Thoughtseizes and Fatal Pushes, Part I" by Reid Duke, is a series of articles that evaluate how to best utilize Thoughtseize and Fatal Push in the current state of modern (As of end 2017) this is generally a great way to enhance ones piloting ability and interesting read.
- "Understanding Standings, Part I: Tournament Structure (The Basics)" by Reid Duke, is a series of articles that explains how a typical tournament is executed. It is imperative to know how standings, pairings etc. work, to know best how you can advance and finish with a better record.
- "3 Tips to Mulligan Smarter" by PVDDR, is a great article about mulligan decisions. He explains in a sufficient way, why mulliganing is never only a matter of which 7 seven or lower cards you have in your hand, but also a huge matter in other contexts as well.
- "Sideboarding traps: Boarding in narrow cards too often" by LSV, is directed to all people feeling the need to always bring in Surgical against basically any deck. This is a standard article every GBx player should have in mind.
- "What did happen and what could happen" by Reid Duke, is a mind opening article for every long time Junder. Maybe at some point you startet autopiloting the deck and didn't give decicions enough time to reconsider? Give this article a read.
- "How many copies of any given card should you put in your deck" by Frank Karsten, is a follow up article to the "how many" series Frank made and talks about how many copies of a given card you need to have in order to draw one or multiples by a given turn. Very important resource when it comes to deckbuilding!
- "Creating a Fearless Magical Inventory" by Sam Stoddard, is a really great article showing the trap an experienced player can fall into. Ego can be a very bad thing, and really hurt your gameplan. I really recommend giving this article a read.
- "Coping With Loosing" is a podcast with sports psychologist Will Jonathan, Lance Austin and BBD. Its a great article to understand everything about loosing and its state in the game.
- The articles of Will Jonathan are a great source of understanding everything about the personal mental game within magic. They explain how you should deal with things such as bad luck, loosing, ego and sportsmanship. Great resource which is certainly helpful beyond magic as well.
- "How many games do you need for statistical significance" by Frank Karsten, is another article in the "How many" series. It greatly shows that results should always been taken with a grain of salt, and when talking about matchup win%, one should really have a feeling what 5 % up or down means. You may be surprized.
- "Getting a read isn't enough" by Reid Duke. This article greatly illustrates a good pathway how to deal with mental game information you might have gathered over the course of a game. Very valuable information and a must read. Also have a look at the follow up article: "How to smell blood and level up your game".
- "Building A Consistant Manabase" by me, FlyingDelver. This article uses the numbers of Frank Karsten and explains how to build a consistant and proper manabase for a GBx deck. Also visit the other articles from MTGRock.com for more awesome stuff.
At this point, I want to hugely thank our predecessor and former preserver of our Abzan guide Mastodon. Mastodon provided amazing work on the guide, and I am honored to take over the primer. With great motivation I want to continue Mastodon's great work and want give big credit for what Mastodon did! Thank you! Lastly, the link to the old Abzan Primer can be found here: Mastodon's Abzan Primer
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that card is more for bant spirit or knightfall in modern i think..
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Creature [30]
4x Cursecatcher
3x Harbinger of the Tides
3x Kumena's Speaker
4x Lord of Atlantis
4x Master of the Pearl Trident
2x Merfolk Branchwalker
3x Merfolk Mistbinder
3x Merrow Reejerey
4x Silvergill Adept
4x Aether Vial
Enchantment [4]
4x Spreading Seas
Instant [3]
3x Vapor Snag
Land [19]
4x Island
4x Botanical Sanctum
2x Breeding Pool
4x Cavern of Souls
4x Mutavault
1x Unclaimed Territory
2x Ceremonious Rejection
1x Dispel
2x Hurkyl’s Recall
3x Natural State
2x Negate
3x Spell Pierce
2x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
How about this? Would this be better?
Drop 2 branchwalker. I did find branchwalker slows down the deck compared to when I’m playing mono blue. So this should be as fast as when it’s mono blue or even faster since we now have even more lord?
I like having around 14 lords, since the new lord doesn’t give islandwalk, I dropped 1 of it.
7 one drop is good with reej.
I don’t find the deck need relic in the side, it now needs more enchantment destroying now since we go into 2 color, people is going to bring in blood moon and destroy our vial. 3 Pierce and 1 dispel cause of storm?
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I’m thinking of having both dark confidant and flayer though.. 3 of each or 3 dark confidant and 4 flayer.. flayer can set up your next draw from dark confidant and dump out lingering souls..
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I DO KNOW that's very poor use of Vendilion Clique, but the question is do you want to win? Or do you want to stick to not poorly using it and not create the chance of winning?
The board in cards to beat it was referring to decks like dredge, not jund.
How are we positive against jund other than AV?
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White:
eldrazi displacer
Blue:
Training grounds
Incubator Drone
Eldrazi Skyspawner
Black:
Blood Artist
Zulaport Cutthroat
Eldrazi displacer with training ground + Incubator Drone or Eldrazi Skyspawner + Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat = infinite life and damage.
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It depends on the playstyle you are looking for. Without goyf you are going for value and try to reduce opponent life as much as possible and eventually combo win, with goyf you can play more aggressive and only try to win with the combo if you are able to, otherwise just aggro with goyf for the win.
So basically:
If you are focusing on combo, goyf is not needed. Voice, Spellskite and even Meddling Mage is much better since they protect your combo.
If you don't want to focus on the combo to win and would like it to be your backup plan instead, then i would recommend you getting goyf. A one time purchase and it can be used in all sort of deck since it only require one green in the event you are not going to use it in Knightfall. Even GRIXIS can play goyf too with a simple addition or changes of one shockland.
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4 Idyllic Tutor
4 Ruin Ghost
4 Tunneling Geopede
3 Chord of Calling
Would running this sideboard and turning the deck into a totally different deck works?