I think one of the real advantages it provides is allowing you to filter lands out of your draws for a few turns and try to bury your opponent under a wave of threats that all need answering. Especially if you have witness/snapcaster in the mix, they're going to have to disrupt you somehow or try to take the offensive, the latter being unlikely if they're vulnerable to some kind of creature based hate.
I used it in g/w deck that used Summoning Trap and Descendent's Path to try to put into play a free Emrakul. The eldrazi tokens from ramp cards like Nest Invader share a creature type with Emrakul, so it's pretty easy to get Path to trigger. The little eldrazi guys ramp and chump block for you, or perhaps chump attack to trigger Windbrisk Heights.
Reknit deals with Abrupt Decay and other removal, Congregation can tutor so that either Descendant's Path or Summoning Trap can trigger.
The problem is that there arent enough good Eldrazi guys in green... Growth Spasm kind of sucks. I even considered running the Changeling bears to trigger Path.. lol.
I used it in g/w deck that used Summoning Trap and Descendent's Path to try to put into play a free Emrakul. The eldrazi tokens from ramp cards like Nest Invader share a creature type with Emrakul, so it's pretty easy to get Path to trigger. The little eldrazi guys ramp and chump block for you, or perhaps chump attack to trigger Windbrisk Heights.
Reknit deals with Abrupt Decay and other removal, Congregation can tutor so that either Descendant's Path or Summoning Trap can trigger.
The problem is that there arent enough good Eldrazi guys in green... Growth Spasm kind of sucks. I even considered running the Changeling bears to trigger Path.. lol.
I think I'd rather use aethermages touch to emrakul. You only get one swing so it doesn't end the game, but it probably puts you at about 99.9% chance to win. You'd be in bant and relying on two instants to combo off, so some kind of combo/control deck maybe. You could swing with emrakul on t4 if you managed to open with manadork and both combo pieces, so that puts you on a fairly similar clock to other combo decks, except for the mopping up. Plus you get to play your combo pieces eot, and they don't put vulnerable permanents into play, so you could potentially have a significant advantage vs other combo decks. If you're worried about getting touch countered, forcing you to draw emrakul, you could stack something like vendilion clique/fauna shaman/emrakul and hold off for one turn while you clique them, or if you have an extra combo piece in hand, greenseeker/emrakul/snapcaster. Glittering wish would give you even more ways to find hate and let you tutor for either combo piece. Could work late if you can slow the game down, though I wouldn't want to be going turn 1 stuff, turn 2 wish, turn 3 CAD. Not even Emrakul could save you. The drawback of course is you're then dedicating up to 11 cards to your combo, leaving your protection pretty thin, even though some of the combo pieces are versatile.
For descendant's path I'd be more inclined to go with shaman as the creature type so you get better playables that still run with the theme. Can top out with woodfall primus, but probably just try to bury them with free eternal witnesses recurring CAD letting you tutor forever. Shamans have some decent hatecards, and Kiki-jiki is a shaman too, so there's the possibility of opening up an extra line of attack there (if you have path and any shaman in play, eot CAD kikijiki/exarch/whatever, path kiki in, draw and cast exarch). You might want to start with a thrun or ascetic to try to keep your path turned on. Humans could also work, bob is amazing when you're stacking your deck, in combination with a path you could bury them in live cards by untapping once, or you could CAD for zur which would let you get all the paths, saving on library manipulation if you can protect him. Of course eternal witness is a human too, along with melira and cartel aristocrat.
So you'd either have to spend 2 turns doing a congregation, the aethermage's touch next turn at opponent's EOT, or have 7 mana to do both eot?
Seems like an okay combo, but it lacks redundancy. Are there other potential ways to get Emrakul out in this deck besides just those 2 cards?
The summoning trap deck is playing a midrange plan - it has mana dorks and small creatures that come out early and ramp, and has multiple ways to put into play Eldrazi - descendant's path, summoning trap, windbrisk heights.
Or can just eek out creatures for value and win with attacks.
Dunno. Neither deck really seems like it has potential for tier 1, or even tier 2 ;(
Congregation at Dawn could perhaps work in a bant elf combo deck... one that's already splashing white to get the most potential out of Beck/Call.
TBH the deck would probably end up being 4 colors for access to the other half of Deathrite Shaman and Thoughtseize from the board...
It does lack redundancy, which I tend to prefer. Running the least number of combo pieces and the most combo protection I can, provided I can find the pieces. Unless the combo pieces are useful individually or tutor for each other. I guess that's why I'd prefer touch for emrakul, and try to play with the synergies if I was going for path instead of just winning. No reason you can't do both if you wanted redundancy though.
It doesn't have to be two turns dedicated to the combo btw, due to the instant speed, which is why I mentioned it may be best played in a control shell. You play your normal game until they fail to play something you have to tap out to react to, then you EOT CAD, so you haven't actually missed a turn. The next turn is dedicated to getting emrakul on the board, that's true, but most combo decks do need to dedicate a turn to their combo. The difference is that the method you use to cheat your guy into play doesn't give him haste, so he doesn't swing till the turn after you 'go off', but he's flashed in eot and he's emrakul, so he's kind of resilient. Look at it like this: the turn before he swings is the only turn you're actually dedicating to getting him on the board, much like most creatures. Your tutor is an instant, so you just use it much like you would a card draw spell, eot, got the mana, might as well. Unless you need to dig (or in this case, emrakul) it doesn't influence your play dramatically.
If you were going black you could run the dredge plan instead, although graveyard hate is ridiculous atm. If you have a way to mill 3, CAD seems like a pretty good graveyard tutor. Although, depending which way you went, you may not need thoughtseize.
Just realised with shaman you don't even need descendants' path, provided you can stick a leaf-crowned elder. T1 Deathrite > T2 Congregation > T3 Elder > free tutorable shamans and treefolk forever, assuming you have witnesses in the deck. You could stack elder/kiki/exarch for the potential turn 4 win. All you need is a manadork and congregation. If you don't get the dork it's still a onecard combo with a turn 5 kill. Of course it's never that easy, but it's there.
Actually I think I like this. You can run a TON of must answer creatures with the shaman type. That means you can straight up overload their removal by drawing one every turn if they're going to keep you off your combo, or just blank it with thrun. If you think they can't stop you, go for the turn 4 kill instead. You could use ridiculous things like muldaya channelers and wolf skull shaman, or just stick to shaman that are still good on their own like doran. Of course you don't have to fill the deck with shaman, it just seems like it would be fun if you were running leaf-crowned elders. Plus you could use cavern of souls
Don't forget to run 4 mutavaults in a deck with Descendant's Path. It has every creature type so if you activate it in response to the trigger you get a 1 mana way to flip every creature in your deck onto the field that is immune to sorcery speed kill.
I've run Congregation and I've found the 3 mana cost makes it too slow, especially since you often only want one specific creature, and the number of fetchlands good decks run screw it up. I'd love to see Eladamri's Call back in print.
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Things WotC cares about:
-making certain Standard cards can be played in Modern, therefore increasing their value and increasing WotC's profit margin
Things WotC does not care about:
-keeping the ban list as short as possible
-taking chances with an entire format for the benefit of a single card
-catering to play styles that newer players generally don't like and will lose them more players than it will gain
-keeping the meta balanced between archetypes/colors/whatever
-keeping cards on the secondary market cheap (available yes, but not cheap)
-keeping the meta diverse (as long as a single deck doesn't threaten the popularity of the format)
I tried to get this card to work with Skill Borrower for the longest time, but I could never find any competitive combos with it. You can cast CoD on turn 2 with a dork and then resolve Borrower as early as turn 3, after which point she will get the activated abilities before the opponent has a chance to kill her. So then what do you do? Griselbrand wasn't a terrible combo, but drawing 7 or 14 cards on turn 3-4 at the cost of 7 or 14 life wasn't really taking me anywhere special.
I thought that there might be something cool you could do with Leashling, but couldn't find a decent synergy. You can put the card on top of your library as a cost, so Borrower would get its abilities before it bounced to your hand. Just couldn't match it with anything else so the combo never got off the ground.
I thought you could dork+congregate+any 1 mana scry, draw 1, or mill 1 for a turn 3 kill by stacking borrower/kiki/mogg fanatic, but borrower doesn't have haste. You could try lightning greaves? You don't need to stick a dork for a turn 4 kill with that setup. They could never reasonably tap out again once you have greaves (or some other way to give your guys haste) on the table, because congregation + scry would just randomly kill them if they can't deal with skill borrower at instant speed. You're not vulnerable to incidental torpor orbs out of their board either. It's kind of a 2.5 card combo. You need greaves and congregation and any scry/draw/mill effect, but you can run a bunch of those since they help you find the other pieces. Just keep in mind that you have to cast skill borrower and scry in the same turn.
I'd probably go all in with pact of negation, dispel, gods willing from theros, etc.
I've run Congregation and I've found the 3 mana cost makes it too slow, especially since you often only want one specific creature, and the number of fetchlands good decks run screw it up. I'd love to see Eladamri's Call back in print.
Yeah I don't think it's at its best when it's just a worldly tutor. When you can start interacting with the top of your library it gets a lot better I think, and the fact that it lets you tutor for cards that do just that seems good.
So if you have nothing else, you can congregate for Leaf-Crowned Elder/Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Deceiver Exarch. You're vulnerable to Path to Exile, Dismember, Supreme Verdict and the like for a turn, as well as counterspells, since you're tapping 4 for elder. Even if you wait till they're tapped out, you're still going to have to cast kikijiki for free and exarch for 3 the following turn. Path wouldn't be the end of the world since you get to shuffle away kikijiki and try again later with another congregate, Snapcaster Mage, or Eternal Witness. If they are running red you can stack the exarch first. That way your kikijiki isn't going to get bolted before you can make a million guys. Gives them an extra turn to find answers though, and opens you up to Abrupt Decay or whatever on the exarch. You're also weak to most of the regular Splinter Twin hate of course.
If you have Mindshrieker on the board, you can congregate for X/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn/X. You can be chumped by flyers, and you're vulnerable to most instant speed removal, but you will have some mana up for counterspells, and you have the option to wait until they tap out before congregating so you can just untap, draw whatever you tutored for (Spellstutter Sprite?), tap 2, swing for 16 in the air. I don't know how often people would tap out vs an active mindshrieker though, that seems like begging for trouble. I can only see it happening if they think they can win by doing so.
If you have Lightning Greaves on the board and a scry/draw/mill effect (e.g Vendilion Clique), you can congregate for Skill Borrower/Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Mogg Fanatic. You're vulnerable to instant speed removal for a turn (although again, you can wait till they tap out with this one), and kind of weak to counterspells. This one requires a heavy commitment to the combo, since you're going to need a critical mass of scry effects along with greaves and congregation.
All of those are always weak to instant speed mill/fateseal and effects that force you to shuffle or draw (especially Extirpate, which straight hoses you, although there are flexible ways to board against it in bant if you think they have it to bring in). Discard effects are irritating but probably not the end of the world since you can run snapcasters and/or witnesses. Aven Mindcensor in response to congregation is much the same, although it does require that you deal with the bird before you can attempt to go off again. Countermagic is more problematic against a few of them since getting certain stuff countered will force you to draw combo pieces you can't cast unless you have an uncracked fetch or something, and that stuff is often quite expensive so you're probably not winning any counterwars no matter how many cards you're holding.
Despite the ease of disrupting it and the fact that without a manadork it's a turn 5 kill at best, the first is still my preferred one so far, since it's a one card combo, you can run 7 of that card with Glittering Wish, and it can take as few as 7 cardslots in your deck if you're not running the wish. That means you can run a lot of ways to interact with them and keep them off their plan before you go off, plus a strong alternative plan. Trolls would seem like one option there since a couple of them interact well with the elder, they're good against the stuff the combo is weak to, and you can't draw the wrong half of your deck too often when one half tutors for the other. You could run one or two of the other options here as alternatives but it may not be the best backup plan when it still leans hard on resolving a certain card.
Anything else it could be used with? Reaching 5 mana to Summoning Trap Emrakul in before you get overrun seems possible with a few manadorks and/or a strong control package I suppose? (Simian Spirit Guide/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn/X). Also, you could potentially trap (although a full turn after congregating) with just 4 mana on the table (Mul Daya Channelers/Dryad Arbor/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn). Your channelers will be 5/5, so there aren't too many commonly played answers around, but there are obviously a few. The most common would be pte, and once again it doesn't totally hose you since it gives you the shuffle option and ramps you into enough mana that you can endstep snapcaster the congregation for spirit guide/emrakul/x, then cast the trap. Seems ok.
Dunno if it's better to necro or start a new thread...
Congregate + CoCo is a nice way to get your vizier+druid on the board.
It's better to start a new thread at this point. The discussions in this thread are outdated so it's better to refresh them too. If you want to, and think there is enough content to talk about Congregation at Dawn (which I think is too slow even now btw) then start a new thread.
Some obvious ways to make use of it:
Two card combos:
Æthermage's Touch
Dredge
Descendants' Path
By itself:
Hatebears
Creature combos
Eternal Witness
I think one of the real advantages it provides is allowing you to filter lands out of your draws for a few turns and try to bury your opponent under a wave of threats that all need answering. Especially if you have witness/snapcaster in the mix, they're going to have to disrupt you somehow or try to take the offensive, the latter being unlikely if they're vulnerable to some kind of creature based hate.
Reknit deals with Abrupt Decay and other removal, Congregation can tutor so that either Descendant's Path or Summoning Trap can trigger.
The problem is that there arent enough good Eldrazi guys in green... Growth Spasm kind of sucks. I even considered running the Changeling bears to trigger Path.. lol.
I think I'd rather use aethermages touch to emrakul. You only get one swing so it doesn't end the game, but it probably puts you at about 99.9% chance to win. You'd be in bant and relying on two instants to combo off, so some kind of combo/control deck maybe. You could swing with emrakul on t4 if you managed to open with manadork and both combo pieces, so that puts you on a fairly similar clock to other combo decks, except for the mopping up. Plus you get to play your combo pieces eot, and they don't put vulnerable permanents into play, so you could potentially have a significant advantage vs other combo decks. If you're worried about getting touch countered, forcing you to draw emrakul, you could stack something like vendilion clique/fauna shaman/emrakul and hold off for one turn while you clique them, or if you have an extra combo piece in hand, greenseeker/emrakul/snapcaster. Glittering wish would give you even more ways to find hate and let you tutor for either combo piece. Could work late if you can slow the game down, though I wouldn't want to be going turn 1 stuff, turn 2 wish, turn 3 CAD. Not even Emrakul could save you. The drawback of course is you're then dedicating up to 11 cards to your combo, leaving your protection pretty thin, even though some of the combo pieces are versatile.
For descendant's path I'd be more inclined to go with shaman as the creature type so you get better playables that still run with the theme. Can top out with woodfall primus, but probably just try to bury them with free eternal witnesses recurring CAD letting you tutor forever. Shamans have some decent hatecards, and Kiki-jiki is a shaman too, so there's the possibility of opening up an extra line of attack there (if you have path and any shaman in play, eot CAD kikijiki/exarch/whatever, path kiki in, draw and cast exarch). You might want to start with a thrun or ascetic to try to keep your path turned on. Humans could also work, bob is amazing when you're stacking your deck, in combination with a path you could bury them in live cards by untapping once, or you could CAD for zur which would let you get all the paths, saving on library manipulation if you can protect him. Of course eternal witness is a human too, along with melira and cartel aristocrat.
There's also Domri Rade I guess.
Seems like an okay combo, but it lacks redundancy. Are there other potential ways to get Emrakul out in this deck besides just those 2 cards?
The summoning trap deck is playing a midrange plan - it has mana dorks and small creatures that come out early and ramp, and has multiple ways to put into play Eldrazi - descendant's path, summoning trap, windbrisk heights.
Or can just eek out creatures for value and win with attacks.
Dunno. Neither deck really seems like it has potential for tier 1, or even tier 2 ;(
Congregation at Dawn could perhaps work in a bant elf combo deck... one that's already splashing white to get the most potential out of Beck/Call.
TBH the deck would probably end up being 4 colors for access to the other half of Deathrite Shaman and Thoughtseize from the board...
It doesn't have to be two turns dedicated to the combo btw, due to the instant speed, which is why I mentioned it may be best played in a control shell. You play your normal game until they fail to play something you have to tap out to react to, then you EOT CAD, so you haven't actually missed a turn. The next turn is dedicated to getting emrakul on the board, that's true, but most combo decks do need to dedicate a turn to their combo. The difference is that the method you use to cheat your guy into play doesn't give him haste, so he doesn't swing till the turn after you 'go off', but he's flashed in eot and he's emrakul, so he's kind of resilient. Look at it like this: the turn before he swings is the only turn you're actually dedicating to getting him on the board, much like most creatures. Your tutor is an instant, so you just use it much like you would a card draw spell, eot, got the mana, might as well. Unless you need to dig (or in this case, emrakul) it doesn't influence your play dramatically.
If you were going black you could run the dredge plan instead, although graveyard hate is ridiculous atm. If you have a way to mill 3, CAD seems like a pretty good graveyard tutor. Although, depending which way you went, you may not need thoughtseize.
Actually I think I like this. You can run a TON of must answer creatures with the shaman type. That means you can straight up overload their removal by drawing one every turn if they're going to keep you off your combo, or just blank it with thrun. If you think they can't stop you, go for the turn 4 kill instead. You could use ridiculous things like muldaya channelers and wolf skull shaman, or just stick to shaman that are still good on their own like doran. Of course you don't have to fill the deck with shaman, it just seems like it would be fun if you were running leaf-crowned elders. Plus you could use cavern of souls
You know why?
Blightsteel Colossus.
If you're swinging once, why not make the most of it?
-making certain Standard cards can be played in Modern, therefore increasing their value and increasing WotC's profit margin
Things WotC does not care about:
-keeping the ban list as short as possible
-taking chances with an entire format for the benefit of a single card
-catering to play styles that newer players generally don't like and will lose them more players than it will gain
-keeping the meta balanced between archetypes/colors/whatever
-keeping cards on the secondary market cheap (available yes, but not cheap)
-keeping the meta diverse (as long as a single deck doesn't threaten the popularity of the format)
I thought that there might be something cool you could do with Leashling, but couldn't find a decent synergy. You can put the card on top of your library as a cost, so Borrower would get its abilities before it bounced to your hand. Just couldn't match it with anything else so the combo never got off the ground.
I'd probably go all in with pact of negation, dispel, gods willing from theros, etc.
Yeah I don't think it's at its best when it's just a worldly tutor. When you can start interacting with the top of your library it gets a lot better I think, and the fact that it lets you tutor for cards that do just that seems good.
Further, you could congregate at dawn on turn 2 (noble heirarch ramp) and put a simian spirit guide on top to cast out a turn three Aethermage's Touch even without another land available.
If you have Aethermage's Touch, you can congregate for Simian Spirit Guide/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn/X. You're vulnerable to dying during the turn you're putting Emrakul into play (although probably not through combat), and counterspells.
If you have Mindshrieker on the board, you can congregate for X/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn/X. You can be chumped by flyers, and you're vulnerable to most instant speed removal, but you will have some mana up for counterspells, and you have the option to wait until they tap out before congregating so you can just untap, draw whatever you tutored for (Spellstutter Sprite?), tap 2, swing for 16 in the air. I don't know how often people would tap out vs an active mindshrieker though, that seems like begging for trouble. I can only see it happening if they think they can win by doing so.
If you have Lightning Greaves on the board and a scry/draw/mill effect (e.g Vendilion Clique), you can congregate for Skill Borrower/Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Mogg Fanatic. You're vulnerable to instant speed removal for a turn (although again, you can wait till they tap out with this one), and kind of weak to counterspells. This one requires a heavy commitment to the combo, since you're going to need a critical mass of scry effects along with greaves and congregation.
If you have Lightning Greaves on the board and Aethermage's Touch, you can congregate for Simian Spirit Guide/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn/X, untap, draw, touch, and swing with Emrakul. You're mainly vulnerable to getting touch countered with this one.
All of those are always weak to instant speed mill/fateseal and effects that force you to shuffle or draw (especially Extirpate, which straight hoses you, although there are flexible ways to board against it in bant if you think they have it to bring in). Discard effects are irritating but probably not the end of the world since you can run snapcasters and/or witnesses. Aven Mindcensor in response to congregation is much the same, although it does require that you deal with the bird before you can attempt to go off again. Countermagic is more problematic against a few of them since getting certain stuff countered will force you to draw combo pieces you can't cast unless you have an uncracked fetch or something, and that stuff is often quite expensive so you're probably not winning any counterwars no matter how many cards you're holding.
Despite the ease of disrupting it and the fact that without a manadork it's a turn 5 kill at best, the first is still my preferred one so far, since it's a one card combo, you can run 7 of that card with Glittering Wish, and it can take as few as 7 cardslots in your deck if you're not running the wish. That means you can run a lot of ways to interact with them and keep them off their plan before you go off, plus a strong alternative plan. Trolls would seem like one option there since a couple of them interact well with the elder, they're good against the stuff the combo is weak to, and you can't draw the wrong half of your deck too often when one half tutors for the other. You could run one or two of the other options here as alternatives but it may not be the best backup plan when it still leans hard on resolving a certain card.
Anything else it could be used with? Reaching 5 mana to Summoning Trap Emrakul in before you get overrun seems possible with a few manadorks and/or a strong control package I suppose? (Simian Spirit Guide/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn/X). Also, you could potentially trap (although a full turn after congregating) with just 4 mana on the table (Mul Daya Channelers/Dryad Arbor/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn). Your channelers will be 5/5, so there aren't too many commonly played answers around, but there are obviously a few. The most common would be pte, and once again it doesn't totally hose you since it gives you the shuffle option and ramps you into enough mana that you can endstep snapcaster the congregation for spirit guide/emrakul/x, then cast the trap. Seems ok.
Congregate + CoCo is a nice way to get your vizier+druid on the board.
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