I do believe a Coco Human list wants ~ 20 pay-off creatures, considering mana dorks and Champions are bad hits. That's one reason I can't get behind lists with 4 Pilgrims since the card is super bad outside of ramping for Coco. It's a bad Coco hit and is not aggro on its own. 12 creatures that are good mostly when they're played in the 2 first turns and then become mediocre is too awkward imho.
It's worth playing 8 mana dorks (or more) when we have Coco + Chord, not when we run only Coco though. In Humans, If I were to play more than the 4 Nobles, it would be up to 2 slots and they would be Channeler Initiate, because as midgame Coco hits, they can put their counters on a crappy Champ, or weaken a huge Lieut/Champ. Moreover, in the early game, we mostly don't attack with dorks but Channeler naturally become a 3/4 over time, and he fixes our mana, while Pilgrim doesn't even provide green...
Surprised the forum isn't more active considering the attention the deck has been getting via the deck tech and streamed comp leagues. Kind of feels like a hybrid affinity/ death and taxes and is really fun imo.
Some players here aren't into Coco versions, I guess it's because of budget reasons. And players who work on Coco versions don't specifically play the lists that have been popular over the last week or so. The lack of reaction is due to everyone cooking in his own fort, so to speak.
I've been studying the 4-color list. I watched Craig Wescoe's matches against Naya Blitz, UW Control, RG Titanshift, BW Eldrazi & Taxes; Pascal Maynard's matches against Jund Death's Shadow, Eldrazi Tron, Grixis Death's Shadow, Gifts Storm (1 & 2); and lastly I've played a few friendly matches with the list against Grixis Shadow and an Abzan Mentor brew. Obviously I'm no expert but I feel like I'm coming to understand the 4-color list's choices better, and it's better constructed than I gave it credit for.
The Pilgrims do more work than I expected:
Enabling Turn 2 interaction via Sin Collector / Reflector / Big Thalia can give you a foot in the door for match-ups that otherwise outpace and ignore Humans, and this is something that you can't quite recreate with Channeler Initiate (though I don't disagree that she's worth trying)
Being able to cast Champion plus a 2-drop hate piece like lil Thalia / Meddling Mage / RIP / Stony Silence on Turn 2 was also solid.
Hitting 5 mana helps resolve conflicts between lil Thalia and CoCo.
They help to turn on Gavony Township earlier, and between Gavony, Lieutenant, and Mayor it wasn't uncommon to see Pilgrims chipping in for an extra 2+ damage here and there.
They're definitely poor topdecks, that's undeniable. And I completely agree that the high number of poor topdecks gives the deck inconsistent performance in the late game. You can remedy this somewhat by siding some or all of them out in match-ups where you need higher threat density. But the mainboard is built around accelerated 3-drops achieving different angles of interaction combined with early CoCos. I think the core deckbuilding idea here might be "Who cares if you have great topdecks in the late game if you fail to stop and effectively lose against Tier 1 (especially unfair) decks by the mid game?"
In summary I think the Pilgrims are bad cards that help this particular maindeck execute its plan more explosively, or at least fast enough to put up a fight. Pilgrims been a part of nearly every successfully placing Human CoCo list to date according to MTGTop8, so I'm trying to keep an open mind about them. With all of that said, I would be interested in experimenting with Hierarchs, 2-3 Pilgrims, and 1-2 Channelers. EDIT: The difference in tempo gain between a 1 and 2 mana dork is pretty big. I might go for a singleton Channeler, but starting hands with Channeler aren't that amazing and if you cut the Pilgrims to make room for Channelers you're also removing the best target for the -1/-1 counters..
I still think that Sin Collector should be a SB card though.
I can see where you're coming from -- it does seem a little narrow at first. But in practice it worked pretty well for the current meta, and having Collector in the main (and playable as soon as T2) helps against a lot of tough match-ups. At worst you get a 2/1 human and peek at the opponent's hand, which is still fairly valuable and far from a dead card. At best you exile an opponent's wincon or key response and essentially steal the game. The peek effect combines well with Meddling Mage for post-board games. I think you could make a case for swapping the positions of Sin Collector and Mirran Crusader, but I wouldn't want to reduce the number of silver-bullet humans in this particular 75 to add in more generic beaters like KotR.
Some other unrelated notes:
Reflector Mage did a lot of work. The synergy between Reflector Mage; Thalia, Heretic Cather; and Meddling Mage was powerful and neat to watch.
The manabase is still a problem. It really needs another 2+ black sources, and everyone that's played the list commented on this as well. I'll play around with this. A few people have cut Staticaster / Red and I think this is probably the correct choice.
Mayor is.. OK here. Probably the least impressive card in the list but occasionally clutch. In this list Mayor helps Pilgrims chip in for extra damage, and buffing Mirran Crusader presents a fast clock. The fact that he doesn't help the team against Anger of the Gods is slightly offset by Sin Collector in the main. However, he is soft against ping effects, which are somewhat common at the moment between Walking Ballista, Electrolyze, Liliana, The Last Hope and so forth. One idea I was toying with was going back to trying Jace, Vryn's Prodigy in the Mayor slots. Jace has been largely ignored since last fall. Adding him over Mayor might hurt our clock a little bit, but filtering our bad topdecks and recasting game-changing Paths and CoCos might offer a strong enough upside to offset that. Another option is to cut the Mayors to bring 2x Crusader into the main and free up another 2 sideboard slots.
Overall it's too early for me to hazard any guess on whether the 4-color list is the de facto optimal build for our current meta, but it does do several things that I like. Namely, its higher density of interactive or taxing cards gives it some interesting lines of play against decks that Humans just couldn't handle well before, and I find these lines of play to be not only potentially more powerful, but also more fun than digging in on the straight beatdown plan.
Well, I decided to do what a lot of people seem to be hesitant to do just to see what happened - I cut both of the legendary Thalia's from my 75; removed some weak creatures for what are just stronger cards in the format right now, in my opinion; decided to run a fairly minimal amount of creatures for a CoCo list; added more interaction. Results so far? Higher winning percentage. I'll go over my decisions for certain cards after the list. I still haven't found a consistent way to beat Tron variants without bending over backwards, but I'm fine having a bad matchup or two across a format as diverse as modern. I'd rather shut the door on decks we can actually beat consistently. My current Abzan list:
I can definitely get behind your reasoning here, and I'm eager to hear about your results. The only thing I'll note is that I've never been happy with Bob in Human CoCo lists. I agree that in a vacuum he's much stronger than the rest of our turn 2 plays, but between Collected Company & Eternal Witness IMO you have access to all of the (instantaneous, painless) card advantage you need for the majority of your matchups. CoCo is the best card in the deck, so getting one back from the graveyard guaranteed via Witness is a lot better than drawing a random card off the top. In most metas in fact I think you'd be OK with just 2 Witnesses MB and 1-2 Witnesses SB, cutting Bob and filling in the extra 5 MB slots with humans that are interactive or speed up your clock in some way. Maybe Channeler Initiate as discussed above, or some combination of Thalias. Tireless Tracker has also been really popular as a beater / card engine. I could be way off, though, and Bob might over-perform for you.
I've been thinking about Gavony Township vs Vault of the Archangel, too. If there were enough black sources in the 4-color list I'd love to run Vault, as deathtouch is great with the first strike on Crusader and both Thalias. If you ever switch back to more Thalias in your Abzan list I think Vault might become more attractive there.
Even with the recent success of the 4.5 c list Humans are at ~1.7% of the metagame, which is solidly "Tier 3" range. However, I suspect that there's some bandwagoning to this as different pros give it a try. I'm not sure how many will stick with the deck, though, and I'd be a little surprised to see these results continue to grow. We'll see! You could maybe make a case for it to be moved over to "Developing Competitive", I guess. /shrug
I've been meaning to watch Wescoes gameplay videos of the 4.5 c list. The only thing I don't understand is why anyone is running Izzet Staticaster with 6 red sources -- it is a high-payoff card in certain matchups, banking off of 6 mana sources or a lucky CoCo seems too unreliable to build around. That, along with a few other choices, make me question whether this list is actually optimized or if people are just copy-pasta-ing it verbatim because it's placed in a couple events.
The 8x dorks are a lot and I experienced diminishing returns beyond 6x. They have been useful to hit 5 mana for CoCo while Thalia GoT is on the board, and easing that tension between Thalia and CoCo is more valuable than you'd think (as an aside I have remained in the Pro-Thalia camp for the last several months, and have become an even bigger fan as Storm has become more popular). They also enable more frequent play of T2 Thalia, Heretic Cathar and T2 Sin Collector, both of which are significantly better T2 than they are T3, and landing these cards on T2 might have a lot to do with why this particular variant has been successful. It's also interesting that the most successful list so far eschews flyers / ignores the evasion issue and focuses on hatebears and interaction. It's possible that we have been trying to solve the wrong problem, or not playing to the archetype's strengths well enough... or, again, we may just be looking at bandwagoning of an unoptomized list. I will try to get some games in with it and report back.
I only like including Avacyn's Pilgrim when running GW(u) since there's space in the manabase for Gavony Township and Horizon Canopy to ease the risk of over-ramping. I would cut the Pilgrims and a 3-drop to fill in your Brawlers and Thalia GoTs for this list.
Beyond Thalia and Stony Silence (really the best cards in this matchup) I can recommend Spreading Seas, Thoughtseize, Ceremonial Rejection, or Negate. Renegade Rallier with Ghost Quarter is also solid. I personally don't like Path against Gx Tron since it misses Karn / Ugin / O-Stone but it's not the worst card to have in that matchup. Definitely good against E-Tron.
headminerve: Could you talk more about Echoing Truth in this current iteration? I appreciate its offensive & defensive versatility, as well as the occasional 2+ target upside. It's well suited for a local meta with a high amount of tokens, ensnaring bridge, phyrexian unlife, worship, but for the global meta I can't help but think there might be more direct/efficient or synergistic options in our colors.
In terms of interaction in an aggro deck we want to be able to simultaneously advance our board while also interacting as soon as possible. 1 mana interaction like Vapor Snag or Path to Exile can mean interacting a turn earlier while still putting down threats. Alternatively, we could abandon that last smidgeon of interaction to focus on our clock: with how attractive Double Strike is with Celebrant I could see either Temur Battle Rage or Boros Charm creating more early combo kill opportunities while also addressing other weaknesses in the deck (Evasion / Sweepers, respectively). Perhaps Blessed Alliance's untap mode would be uniquely useful with your 8x Exert threats, while also being a good maindeck answer to Burn, DSJ, Eldrazi, etc.
Since many of these are cards we'd toyed with for previous builds you've probably already considered them here, and perhaps even tested a few. Any thoughts?
@EpicEmpiricism: As others have pointed out you have some intriguing synergy there. Some notes:
I like that Aether Vial lets you more reliably cast cards flipped off Abbot, but without Vial in play he seems poorly supported -- not many Prowess triggers and a curve that's a little too high for casting his flips. I agree with Dennis that you either need to trim the curve, support his Prowess plan better (and consider Monastery Swiftspear if so), or reconsider this slot.
20 lands seemed a little light to cast Pia & Kiran (even including Inspector Clues and Abbot flips), again I had trouble casting this without Vial.
As Dennis noted in his build I think 4x Shrapnel Blast is too much -- I experienced several games with more Shrapnel Blasts in hand than artifacts that I could sacrifice. Smuggler's Copter was a good suggestion for making some of your synergy plays come up more reliably, looting away dead Vials / Blasts etc.
I wasn't blown away Bloodlust Inciter. Lightning Mauler might give your curve better value with Vial while being a slightly more capable threat on its own.
Overall the deck seems a little inconsistent and slow at the moment, but I like the concept. There are some strong lines of play when everything lines up.
@Dennis: As I mentioned above I agree with some of your points. I think your proposed build has diluted the Human synergy a bit too much to be useful, though -- the fact that you don't want to run Thalia's Lieutenant is probably a telling sign. Either go all-in on Metalcraft theme and take more cues from Standard Vehicles or refocus on Champ/Lt IMO.
I'm trying to assess if there's a way to run some number of Simian Spirit Guides in the main to help accommodate 2-3x Gideon of the Trials and Blood Moon somewhere in the 75. Turn 2 Gideon or Blood Moon would round out a lot of bad matchups and make the deck significantly more competitive (while also triggering Prowess as a bonus :P).
Additionally I would shave -1 Gather the Townsfolk, -1 Brave the Elements to fill out the set of Path to Exile in the main. Path is almost always a great card.
@Dennis, unfair strategies typically do some combination of the following:
produce more mana than you should have on turn X
cheat out cards without paying their costs
abruptly "soft" win (inf life / mana) or "hard" win (inf attackers / drain) with a combo rather than incremental combat damage
use lockout pieces like Chalice or Blood Moon to keep opponent from casting spells
may be difficult to interact with using creature-base spot removal
Soul Sisters is a pretty fair deck. It relies on incremental creature-based synergy that's effective against Burn and some slower untiered aggro decks, but a lot of decks will ignore the lifegain -- if they even let you establish the synergy in the first place, as spot removal and discard are everywhere right now. Even when it does come together it's still slower than any other tiered linear list so you don't have much hope of racing... The best (and perhaps most truly "unfair") part of the deck is Magus in the side. It's too bad that Path is a nonbo with Magus / Blood Moon (Chained to the Rocks? Blessed Alliance?). Lastly, Lone Rider hasn't been consistent enough in my testing and I suspect you'll end up cutting it. You might try +2x Kari Zev and +2x Lands so you can actually cast Purporos.
I agree headminerve in that if you want an unfair angle you're better served by testing the Vizier combo. Norin Sister lists haven't done very well this year so I don't see much promise there as an optimal build path
@headminerve: can you tell me more about Prepare / Fight? It seems OK against Burn, it creates some situational combat tricks against smaller creatures, but overall pretty inefficient as removal and I'm not sure I like it more than D Command. Also the Taxes thread has not been very impressed with Harsh Mentor, but perhaps you've had more success with it?
Ok, sorry for pressing you too early, I'll wait for testing. Obviously I want you to be successful with the list, I'm just preparing you for all of the questions you'll get when you post to the Abzan Company thread Things to keep in mind while you play.
Right, I don't dispute that this improves many aspects of Humans, I'm looking at this strictly relative to dedicated Vizier Company combo.
I understand your point about Inkmoth in Infect -- even though Inkmoth itself can "shine" more in Infect with a higher density of pumps and other Infect creatures, it's still very powerful in Affinity because it shores up two problematic answers to all-in aggro, infinite life and sweepers, at the extremely low inclusion cost of a colorless land slot in a predominantly colorless deck. Overall (AFAIK) the reason Affinity is not a worse version of Infect is because it's almost as fast yet perhaps more consistent with many redundant pieces, and can tolerate some spot removal before falling apart to get under decks that might be able to interact with Infect better.
When I do play Champ into Druid, it's like a chess game. I have two pieces on the board that I can support, which makes my Coco choices even more interesting because I might play around my opponent's options.
So in this scenario we are playing a slower combo plan by choosing T1 Champion instead of T1 Birds of Paradise and a slower beatdown plan by choosing T2 Druid over T2 Brawler etc. The answers to Vizier Combo are spot removal, sweepers, targeted discard / extraction effects, and simply presenting a faster clock (combo or beatdown). Most of these answers rough up the Champion beat-down plan as well. The major advantages I can see are that you aren't hit as hard by Grafdigger's Cage or extraction effects (although Vizier decks can run a second combo to dodge extraction somewhat). Champion can definitely draw removal, as you pointed out, but Vizier decks can also run Renegade Rallier on top of Eternal Witness to recur dead / discarded combo pieces or simply Chord for a new piece. The number of problems Champion cleanly answers vs its inclusion cost doesn't seem to be in the same league as Inkmoth in Affinity.
Can you give me some examples of options in specific matchups that you are able to play around by having both Champion and Druid out? Or times that a beat down plan is better than a combo plan? Is this flexibility better than Chording for hate in similar scenarios?
I'm really tempted by the Devoted Vizier combo in a Human shell.
I'm torn. I also noticed that many of the vizier combo components were humans, and I do see a lot of benefits here: an unfair early combo angle and Platinum Gideon that's honestly stronger than any fair strat humans were trying before as you mentioned @headminerve, and a little help from Rhondas to push damage through with Champions & blockers as you mentioned @Canuckistan1. BTW I agree with Pokken so far about the 4 witnesses as a "soft" combo.
While it's possibly better than any preceding Human lists it seems like it's also potentially a worse version of a Vizier Company deck. Instead of Chords to more reliably assemble the combo on T3 and/or tutor Silver Bullets to smash certain match-ups we have Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant. Overall it just seems less consistent. Recruiter, Witness, and Vizier aren't the greatest beaters, even when supported by Thalia's Lieutenant and Mayor of Avabruck. There are still some hands where you get your classic Champion + Champion + Lieutenant early beatdown going, but there are also hands where you play Champion, but then it feels "correct" to play Druid T2 to maximize your chance for an early combo since that's still the best thing the deck is doing, and in doing so you handicap your chance at early beats. I think that decision speaks to the deck as a whole: why not support the most powerful strategy first? What match-ups do you think are improved relative to Vizier Company by focusing on Human synergy?
Nissa looks like an interesting card for any sort of Bant-colored creature-based ramp strategy. T1 Dork -> T2 Nissa means she's just sitting there with 3 loyalty and nothing to protect her, though. Her value floor becomes "Pay 3, Scry 2 and gain 3 life" -- I don't know if she's worth rushing out for that and I'm trying to imagine what matchups that would work out in.
Wow, I just noticed that you're not running Thalia's Lieutenant! What optimizations lead you there?
I've been studying the 4-color list. I watched Craig Wescoe's matches against Naya Blitz, UW Control, RG Titanshift, BW Eldrazi & Taxes; Pascal Maynard's matches against Jund Death's Shadow, Eldrazi Tron, Grixis Death's Shadow, Gifts Storm (1 & 2); and lastly I've played a few friendly matches with the list against Grixis Shadow and an Abzan Mentor brew. Obviously I'm no expert but I feel like I'm coming to understand the 4-color list's choices better, and it's better constructed than I gave it credit for.
The Pilgrims do more work than I expected:
In summary I think the Pilgrims are bad cards that help this particular maindeck execute its plan more explosively, or at least fast enough to put up a fight. Pilgrims been a part of nearly every successfully placing Human CoCo list to date according to MTGTop8, so I'm trying to keep an open mind about them. With all of that said, I would be interested in experimenting with Hierarchs, 2-3 Pilgrims, and 1-2 Channelers. EDIT: The difference in tempo gain between a 1 and 2 mana dork is pretty big. I might go for a singleton Channeler, but starting hands with Channeler aren't that amazing and if you cut the Pilgrims to make room for Channelers you're also removing the best target for the -1/-1 counters.. I can see where you're coming from -- it does seem a little narrow at first. But in practice it worked pretty well for the current meta, and having Collector in the main (and playable as soon as T2) helps against a lot of tough match-ups. At worst you get a 2/1 human and peek at the opponent's hand, which is still fairly valuable and far from a dead card. At best you exile an opponent's wincon or key response and essentially steal the game. The peek effect combines well with Meddling Mage for post-board games. I think you could make a case for swapping the positions of Sin Collector and Mirran Crusader, but I wouldn't want to reduce the number of silver-bullet humans in this particular 75 to add in more generic beaters like KotR.
Some other unrelated notes:
Reflector Mage did a lot of work. The synergy between Reflector Mage; Thalia, Heretic Cather; and Meddling Mage was powerful and neat to watch.
The manabase is still a problem. It really needs another 2+ black sources, and everyone that's played the list commented on this as well. I'll play around with this. A few people have cut Staticaster / Red and I think this is probably the correct choice.
Mayor is.. OK here. Probably the least impressive card in the list but occasionally clutch. In this list Mayor helps Pilgrims chip in for extra damage, and buffing Mirran Crusader presents a fast clock. The fact that he doesn't help the team against Anger of the Gods is slightly offset by Sin Collector in the main. However, he is soft against ping effects, which are somewhat common at the moment between Walking Ballista, Electrolyze, Liliana, The Last Hope and so forth. One idea I was toying with was going back to trying Jace, Vryn's Prodigy in the Mayor slots. Jace has been largely ignored since last fall. Adding him over Mayor might hurt our clock a little bit, but filtering our bad topdecks and recasting game-changing Paths and CoCos might offer a strong enough upside to offset that. Another option is to cut the Mayors to bring 2x Crusader into the main and free up another 2 sideboard slots.
Overall it's too early for me to hazard any guess on whether the 4-color list is the de facto optimal build for our current meta, but it does do several things that I like. Namely, its higher density of interactive or taxing cards gives it some interesting lines of play against decks that Humans just couldn't handle well before, and I find these lines of play to be not only potentially more powerful, but also more fun than digging in on the straight beatdown plan.
Here's the list I experiment with:
4x Cavern of Souls
1x Forest
2x Gavony Township
1x Gemstone Mine
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Horizon Canopy
3x Mana Confluence
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Plains
1x Razorverge Thicket
1x Temple Garden
4x Windswept Heath
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Noble Hierarch
3x Avacyn's Pilgrim
1x Channeler Initiate
2x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
4x Reflector Mage
3x Sin Collector
Instant (8)
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
2x Meddling Mage
3x Rest in Peace
2x Stony Silence
2x Kambal, Consul of Allocation
3x Mirran Crusader
2x Orzhov Pontiff
1x Reclamation Sage
-------------------------------------------------------
I can definitely get behind your reasoning here, and I'm eager to hear about your results. The only thing I'll note is that I've never been happy with Bob in Human CoCo lists. I agree that in a vacuum he's much stronger than the rest of our turn 2 plays, but between Collected Company & Eternal Witness IMO you have access to all of the (instantaneous, painless) card advantage you need for the majority of your matchups. CoCo is the best card in the deck, so getting one back from the graveyard guaranteed via Witness is a lot better than drawing a random card off the top. In most metas in fact I think you'd be OK with just 2 Witnesses MB and 1-2 Witnesses SB, cutting Bob and filling in the extra 5 MB slots with humans that are interactive or speed up your clock in some way. Maybe Channeler Initiate as discussed above, or some combination of Thalias. Tireless Tracker has also been really popular as a beater / card engine. I could be way off, though, and Bob might over-perform for you.
I've been thinking about Gavony Township vs Vault of the Archangel, too. If there were enough black sources in the 4-color list I'd love to run Vault, as deathtouch is great with the first strike on Crusader and both Thalias. If you ever switch back to more Thalias in your Abzan list I think Vault might become more attractive there.
I've been meaning to watch Wescoes gameplay videos of the 4.5 c list. The only thing I don't understand is why anyone is running Izzet Staticaster with 6 red sources -- it is a high-payoff card in certain matchups, banking off of 6 mana sources or a lucky CoCo seems too unreliable to build around. That, along with a few other choices, make me question whether this list is actually optimized or if people are just copy-pasta-ing it verbatim because it's placed in a couple events.
The 8x dorks are a lot and I experienced diminishing returns beyond 6x. They have been useful to hit 5 mana for CoCo while Thalia GoT is on the board, and easing that tension between Thalia and CoCo is more valuable than you'd think (as an aside I have remained in the Pro-Thalia camp for the last several months, and have become an even bigger fan as Storm has become more popular). They also enable more frequent play of T2 Thalia, Heretic Cathar and T2 Sin Collector, both of which are significantly better T2 than they are T3, and landing these cards on T2 might have a lot to do with why this particular variant has been successful. It's also interesting that the most successful list so far eschews flyers / ignores the evasion issue and focuses on hatebears and interaction. It's possible that we have been trying to solve the wrong problem, or not playing to the archetype's strengths well enough... or, again, we may just be looking at bandwagoning of an unoptomized list. I will try to get some games in with it and report back.
In terms of interaction in an aggro deck we want to be able to simultaneously advance our board while also interacting as soon as possible. 1 mana interaction like Vapor Snag or Path to Exile can mean interacting a turn earlier while still putting down threats. Alternatively, we could abandon that last smidgeon of interaction to focus on our clock: with how attractive Double Strike is with Celebrant I could see either Temur Battle Rage or Boros Charm creating more early combo kill opportunities while also addressing other weaknesses in the deck (Evasion / Sweepers, respectively). Perhaps Blessed Alliance's untap mode would be uniquely useful with your 8x Exert threats, while also being a good maindeck answer to Burn, DSJ, Eldrazi, etc.
Since many of these are cards we'd toyed with for previous builds you've probably already considered them here, and perhaps even tested a few. Any thoughts?
Here's where I'm at right now:
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Monastery Swiftspear
3x Thraben Inspector
2x Inventor's Apprentice
4x Abbot of Keral Keep
4x Metallic Mimic
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Path to Exile
2x Shrapnel Blast
Artifact (7)
4x Mishra's Bauble
3x Smuggler's Copter
Land (19)
4x Arid Mesa
4x Darksteel Citadel
4x Inspiring Vantage
2x Mountain
2x Plains
3x Sacred Foundry
I agree headminerve in that if you want an unfair angle you're better served by testing the Vizier combo. Norin Sister lists haven't done very well this year so I don't see much promise there as an optimal build path
@headminerve: can you tell me more about Prepare / Fight? It seems OK against Burn, it creates some situational combat tricks against smaller creatures, but overall pretty inefficient as removal and I'm not sure I like it more than D Command. Also the Taxes thread has not been very impressed with Harsh Mentor, but perhaps you've had more success with it?
I understand your point about Inkmoth in Infect -- even though Inkmoth itself can "shine" more in Infect with a higher density of pumps and other Infect creatures, it's still very powerful in Affinity because it shores up two problematic answers to all-in aggro, infinite life and sweepers, at the extremely low inclusion cost of a colorless land slot in a predominantly colorless deck. Overall (AFAIK) the reason Affinity is not a worse version of Infect is because it's almost as fast yet perhaps more consistent with many redundant pieces, and can tolerate some spot removal before falling apart to get under decks that might be able to interact with Infect better. So in this scenario we are playing a slower combo plan by choosing T1 Champion instead of T1 Birds of Paradise and a slower beatdown plan by choosing T2 Druid over T2 Brawler etc. The answers to Vizier Combo are spot removal, sweepers, targeted discard / extraction effects, and simply presenting a faster clock (combo or beatdown). Most of these answers rough up the Champion beat-down plan as well. The major advantages I can see are that you aren't hit as hard by Grafdigger's Cage or extraction effects (although Vizier decks can run a second combo to dodge extraction somewhat). Champion can definitely draw removal, as you pointed out, but Vizier decks can also run Renegade Rallier on top of Eternal Witness to recur dead / discarded combo pieces or simply Chord for a new piece. The number of problems Champion cleanly answers vs its inclusion cost doesn't seem to be in the same league as Inkmoth in Affinity.
Can you give me some examples of options in specific matchups that you are able to play around by having both Champion and Druid out? Or times that a beat down plan is better than a combo plan? Is this flexibility better than Chording for hate in similar scenarios?
While it's possibly better than any preceding Human lists it seems like it's also potentially a worse version of a Vizier Company deck. Instead of Chords to more reliably assemble the combo on T3 and/or tutor Silver Bullets to smash certain match-ups we have Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant. Overall it just seems less consistent. Recruiter, Witness, and Vizier aren't the greatest beaters, even when supported by Thalia's Lieutenant and Mayor of Avabruck. There are still some hands where you get your classic Champion + Champion + Lieutenant early beatdown going, but there are also hands where you play Champion, but then it feels "correct" to play Druid T2 to maximize your chance for an early combo since that's still the best thing the deck is doing, and in doing so you handicap your chance at early beats. I think that decision speaks to the deck as a whole: why not support the most powerful strategy first? What match-ups do you think are improved relative to Vizier Company by focusing on Human synergy?