Has anyone tried traditional Abzan Company (ie. no druid/vizier combo - just the Anafenza/Melira combo) in this meta? I decided to try it out since the meta's gotten a lot grindier with the rise of UWx control, and at a recent SCG open it was Jund vs. Burn in the finals. So far it's been amazing in my limited testing - I've won almost all of my matches (outside of ones where I've punted). It doesn't have the nut draws that Counters Company has, but it still T4 combos consistently against limited interaction and can grind vs. midrange and control. Here's the list I've currently on.
Llanowar Elves is, obviously, the 9th dork, and could be something like an Eternal Witness but I've found that the games you start with a dork go so much better than the ones you don't (increases your chances to start with one from 65% to 70%, and having multiple dorks in play is also great vs. decks that aren't heavily interactive). Maindeck Eidolon of Rhetoric has been great in the matchups where it's good, and those matchups (ie. Storm, KCI, the new R/B Vengevine deck that's everywhere) are the kinds of decks that are traditionally very difficult for the deck to handle. Not sure about the 3/2 split between Chord of Calling and Eldritch Evolution, maybe should be 2/3 instead as it allows you to go a little faster (but opens up more 2-for-1's against grindy decks).
You'll notice no Tron hate - it's such a bad matchup I figure I'll just have to go-for broke with the combo and focus my sb on closer matchups.
Right; I'd forgotten about Uncage, as I wanted to try it when it was spoiled. I agree with pokken that this appears to be more of a sideboard card due to it being a CMC 4 or 5 sorcery speed spell that don't affect the board. Sure seems powerful though, especially as a late-game top deck. I think it's more likely to succeed as a consistent value play that sometimes finds a combo due to its cost and slowness, but we'll see!
Playing wolf run helps the uw control matchup a lot; it's way better than gavony in top deck mode due to making every dude an instant threat, and each time they path one of your dudes the ramp makes subsequent activations better. Where wolf run falls flat sometimes is that its mana hungry and slow when your have to deal 10+ dmg - fortunately control decks give you lots of time!
I think this seems worse in theory than it actually is in practice, though Spreading seas hurts more than gq or tec edge because I don't have a way to answer it pre-board. Witness is great for recurring your most relevant card, and chord and coco help find witness or Knight. Running 4x KotR significantly increases the number of times I find one of my 2x wolf run or 1x township, and you can always search out or play a utility land from hand to use immediately for one activation even if they have a live gq or tec edge.
This goes back to the idea that if we're presenting a lot of must-answer threats (druid, duskwatch, Knight, wolf run) that if not addressed care of take over the game, it gives control a tough time because their answers have to line up well with our threats. Adding wolf run to the must answer threat base is great at stretching their answers. Post board they have to decide if they really need to keep seas, which generally isn't great, or go heavier on removal.
It definitely happens, but personally I've not had much of an issue with them keeping me off utility lands permanently. Granted my experience is anecdotal, and I mostly only play on cockatrice and at lgs's where the competition isn't as good as larger tournaments, but for me the matchup has been quite favorable.
Township has priority? Always thought it would be Canopy . . . good to know
Canopy is really painful in multiples, hence sticking at 3. Personally, I wouldn't use more than 3 utility lands (and one plains) in a deck with only 22 lands due to increasing your risk of having to mull due to no green source. Even with 18 green sources, if you want to have 2 or more lands in hand with at
least one of them being green, you're only going to see that 75% of the time on 7 cards.
From personal experience of what works with the deck, I've decided to look for hands that, against an unknown opponent, are solid mana-wise and get out of the gate fast - so my general rule for keeping a 7-card hand is 2+ lands and 1+ dork, otherwise I mulligan it. I've also just started testing 2x Oath of Nissa in the main to improve early mana consistency (with the added benefit of some digging for combo pieces as well).
On 7 cards:
With 22 lands, we should hit 2+ lands 81% of the time. (on 6 it's 72%, not including the scry)
With 10 mana dorks we should 1+ dork 74% of the time. (on 6 it's 68%, not including the scry)
This means that 60% of starting hands should contain 2+ lands and 1+ dorks. (on 6 it's 49%, not including the scry).
So this means that about 80% the time we'll see a 6 or 7 card hand with 2+ lands and 1+ dork (not including the scry), and that number goes up to 89% if we keep any hand with 2+ lands on 6, knowing we still have a scry.
Now, some small percentage of hands that meet this criteria will be unkeepable due to mana source flood, lack of a green source, or be something useless like 3 lands, 2 dorks, 2 viziers, that decreases the keepable percentage by a small amount, which I'm going to guesstimate is maybe 5%?? So mulling to 5, which is still sometimes winnable with this deck, should happen less than 15% of the time (and even less than that if, like me, your willing to keep the occasional risky one-landers because the rest of the hand is perfect).
On 7, the odds of seeing a Druid in our starting hand is 40%, which means that 32% of hands will have 1+ druid and 2+ lands (these are the hands I almost always snap keep vs. an unknown deck). If you were to *really* aggressively mulligan any hand that doesn't have this configuration, you're still likely to be okay.
On 6, this is 35% to see a druid, and 25% to have a hand with 1+ druid and 2+ lands (and again, 49% to have a dork + 2 lands, not including the scry).
This means that with *really* aggressive mulling, we're about 49% to have a 6 or 7 with druid + 2 lands if we use this strategy, so 45%+ that's good enough to keep (not including scry on 6) where we'll be can cast t2 druid just based on what we have in our starting hand.
What all these numbers say to me is show the numerical evidence for aggressively mulliganing your draws, particular as potential t3 kill draws appear to be about two or three times as common as the times we end up mulling to 5 and have to keep whatever we get. After all, this is also *not* including draws that have lands, dorks and chords/cocos to hit druid for a t4 kill.
Went 3-1 last night at LGS with Naya. Beat jeskai copy cat 2-0, d&t 2-0 and burn 2-0, and lost to burn in round two 2-1. Mirror entity and kor firewalker were the MVPs as I had very few combo kills. The good news was that I was still winning despite mostly poor draws and a lot of mulligans due to mana screw. The caveat to that is that my d&t and copy cat opponents both made punts in g2 that, while they may have lost anyway, handed me the game, and my Rd 4 burn opponent flooded both games.
Ultimately, despite a decent record, last night was not a good showcase for how the deck plays - other than showing it's very good when piloted decently at the LGS level. I definitely can see how pros can be down on the druid/vizier combo for it's inconsistencies, despite the through-the-roof power level, when they're facing down opponents who aren't going to punt games away when faced with novel situations and board states.
Another local guy who plays a similar list to mine plays 4x oath of Nissa in his build, and while I'm not about to do that, I'm considering playing 2x, swapping out the md crusader (still very hit or miss) and commune with nature (which actually has been pretty good as a one-of), to improve the decks consistency in hitting dorks and land drops early.
Re: non graveyard-based value options at CMC 2 or 3 -- thanks for the suggestions, but yeah, not many good options - courser, for instance, is basically in the same boat as tracker in that it's very hit or miss due to not often generating any instant value, and yeah, elvish visionary is just not good. I guess I'm looking at another finks or a voice - though if I guess if I cut the mb crusader I could put that in trackers place instead. I may try leap, but am somewhat reluctant to take the plunge given I'm already playing 4 non creature spells in the board.
Currently I'm running a 2nd scooze in the sb, and that has been solid but not spectacular. Any ideas about other graveyard hate cards that are coco hits in Naya (other than loaming shaman)?
Playing wolf run helps the uw control matchup a lot; it's way better than gavony in top deck mode due to making every dude an instant threat, and each time they path one of your dudes the ramp makes subsequent activations better. Where wolf run falls flat sometimes is that its mana hungry and slow when your have to deal 10+ dmg - fortunately control decks give you lots of time!
My current approach to DS is to try to lower the curve some and add more value - I side out chords for paths and viziers for value creatures (ie Fink's).
Speaking of that though, does anyone have a suggestion about 2 or 3 drops in Naya that add value that aren't graveyard-based? I'm looking to supplement witness and sb Fink's and replace tireless tracker (which is very hit and miss). Ideally this creature would have 3+ toughness to avoid flaying tendrils.
This is gonna sound condescending probably but you should get canopies to play this deck.
Main downside to entity is no trample but it's got a ton of upside
Well there's no doubt that canopy is a great card here, however I just can't bring myself to drop the same kind of money on 2-3 of them that I would a goyf or lilli when I already don't own playsets of those. It's a card that's only played in a few decks (this, hatebears/d&t, boggles), and I'm sure it'll get reprinted (soonish?) and lose a ton of value instantly. And I've done well without them... But it does force me to play the deck a little differently than others who have canopies.
A few things I've learned about the deck include:
- you need to focus on mana advantage (it's how we get ahead as well as gain value from our numerous mana sinks), meaning I mull 7 card hands against an unknown opponent unless I have at least 2 lands and a dork
- similarly, outside of dork-heavy hands, I need to hit my first 3 land-drops and preferably first 4, which means witness to re-buy a fetch is a good play
- you stand a chance in games you flood out in, and virtually no chance when you get mana screwed - this appears to be true of virtually every matchup
- we're faster than basically every deck in the meta, so just keep throwing dorks and combo pieces out there and threaten combo, make your opponent answer them rather than advancing their own gamelan (rather than look for slow coco hands or trying to be the midrange/control deck in the matchups)
You know, I'd temporarily forgotten about mirror entity when I switched to abzan then back to Naya; I think entity is better than Rhonas - it's cheaper to activate meaningfully and does more damage in the mid-to-late game when you don't have the combo. The only real downside I see to it is costing white, which sometimes will suck if you have no open white mana when you hit combo, and the fact that it dies to bolt (but generally speaking, the creature Rhonas is pumping does too).
I don't own any horizon canopies and have found renegade rallier too mediocre without them to run - part of the reason I play Knight of the reliquary instead. Game 1 I use knights of the reliquary as a sort of Swiss army creature - they're combo piece tutors (for red Manas or wolf run), a pseudo dork, and lightning rods for removal, with backup function that the can lay the beats if necessary.
I wouldn't say the druid combo is strictly better - it's not instant speed and vizier is a less useful card by itself than anafeza or even viscera seer (which I think is actually underrated for its scry ability in value creature decks). It's definitely less susceptible to hate though. I think there's probably metas, ones loaded with bolts and light on graveyard hate (ie pre-splinter-twin ban meta), where the traditional combo is better. That being said, since dredge showed up, the traditional combos been a bad place to be and I'd currently take druid/vizier as the better combo.
Went 2-2 with my Naya list last night, losing a close one 1-2 to Grixis Death's shadow, then beating the pseudo-mirror, then losing to Esper Mill (!?!?!) because both games I led off Birds into Knight of the Reliquary and he drew and cast one of 3 Crypt Incursions (gaining about 30 life) just before I could swing for lethal (I delt him about 40 dmg each game), and then beat Boggles very easily (first time playing the matchup, seems incredibly one-sided for us).
Oddly enough, I find decks that cast path against me to be favorable matchups - probably because path ramps, and the deck runs tons of ways to utilize extra mana. The times I find I struggle are when I can't get ahead on mana and my opponent lands big threats early and starts beating down -- ie. Death's shadow decks when their gameplan goes the way they want -- kill all dorks, discard/counter cocos, play out 2+ fatties. Overall, like Pokken, seems to me that I'm about 50% or around there vs. those decks (DSJ, BGx), however the loses themselves can feel really bad because they're so lopsided in appearance -
ie. when they have 2 fatties and all you have are a couple grizzly bears who have to chump at some point. To be fair, though, a lot of my wins vs. other decks are pretty lopsided... probably just means the druid/vizier combo leads to a lot of lopsided-looking games.
I can totaly agree on the arguments about the mindset you both have. Regarding results is Abzan the way to go. It has taking some places in top 8 and is mostly played.
Next to that, it is always good to think about the fundamentations of the deck. My 5 cents are that it is a combo deck with midrange beatdown possibility. Jack of all indeed, but not a master of one.
I agree with pokken on card choices, six one mana dorks and four druid's acopanied with four finks/knight.
I am going to test the value company build from Todd. Azusa, Excavator and Ghost Quarter in a deck with Knight seems bonkers.
Certainly true that Abzan Combo Company has more results than Naya (or Bant) versions, but I've also not really seen anyone else playing Naya other than Pokken and another guy in my area who's doing really well with it. I'm okay with that; I'm doing pretty well with it and happy to be flying below the radar. The list I played last week is below.
Still on the fence about the Crusader in the main - when it's good it's amazing, and having a silver bullet against GBx and Death's Shadow is great, and I've won several games on one Crusader alone. But it's not great against anything else. I may move that to the sb, have 2 sb Crusaders, and drop a Tracker instead. Maybe put a 3rd Heirarch in? Dunno.
Adding path to exile and cutting mana dorks is literally the opposite of what this deck is all about, which is gaining a mana advantage and using it to cast big spells that find combo pieces (or if failing to combo, out-value the opponent by dumping all the mana into various mana sinks).
The approach of cutting dorks to add paths reduces our mana advantage in two ways - firstly by casting rampant growth for our opponent and second by not having t1 dork. This deck wants to cast a mana dork t1 every game because T3 coco or t3 chord for druid untap and win is how you win most games...
Please as I said feel free to do whatever you guys want, but I want to reiterate that the reason these decks (and kiki chord!) always fall off the map is this exact problem. People start thinking they can break all the rules of deck construction and massively warp their decks to specific metas--and maybe you will achieve some limited success doing that but you're not going to build a good deck, you're going to build a pile that can beat your shop.
The one request I would make of all you abzan midrangers is play 4 townships for a while before you start thinking you need to pre-sideboard midrange cards. 2 townships is IMHO why so many decks are having so much trouble playing midrange games.
Pokken, personally I agree with you, but there's a lot of people who only play at their LGS and are okay with meta-gaming their own shop. However there's also times where alternate builds work better in broader meta-game - Brian Demars, for instance, had some success using a 2-path mb build with the old style lists (though he didn't cut dorks); I saw a recent successful abzan druid list that had only 3 druid and 3 vizier. Experimenting and testing are important, though I agree that to successfully do this you need to know *what* actually makes the deck work (ie my experience is you need a dork but it doesn't necessarily need to be turn 1, it can be turn 2 if druid).
Also, the current abzan version traded flex slots (usually cards good in midrangey matchups) and a land for druid and vizier, so that compounds the decrease in townships for hurting the midrangey plan. This is part of why I like running just the one combo - it frees up flex slots to allow more of a midrangey plan.
I'll post my current Naya list sometime later when I'm home.
My observations so far have been that the initial lists using druid/vizier started from an all-in kind of build (not provably the best starting point, but it's what worked on that day, that week. It could easily have gone another way) and since then, adopters of the deck have taken a similar route because they are going with the herd (we know this to be a common phenomenon, as most people copying lists won't be in the business of high-level deck construction for protour teams, but instead just hoping to ride the wave of something successful, perhaps with a few superficial tweaks for their local metagame).
I don't think this is necessarily the right move on the part of CoCo players, considering the metagame in its current state. CoCo Vizier lists are falling in metagame share and getting pounced on by decks with more interaction and a stronger midgame-grind, with the spot removal to disrupt the combo. Death's Shadow lists are at the forefront of this, and the proliferation of those decks in the current meta necessitates a different approach from narrowly going all-in on a two-mana 2/1 or whatever, with zero ways to disrupt an opponent. I'm sure you would agree with this in principle.
This deck has a combo plan and a grindy attrition plan, but it's not always clear which plan is the A and which is the B. It's often the case that CoCo is forced down a value-based beatdown route in games when the combo can't be assembled, and in these scenarios, having (for example) 3 maindeck Path to Exiles is invaluable. Not to mention it deals with Eldrazi/Death's Shadow/Tasigur with equal prejudice.
Discard in this deck wouldn't fulfil the same useful purpose as it does in shadow decks. We can't do the one-two punch of discard into a four or three-turn clock like they can. For us it would be more like "mildly disrupt your opening hand, then spend the next three turns playing birds, a kitchen finks and swing for three, hoping to get some value off a CoCo"
I agree that discard has its place in sideboards and in Modern, but take a look at the decks which use it the most effectively. Abzan, Death's Shadow, Affinity, 8-Rack. Those are the flagship decks in Modern which use Thoughtseize the most effectively, either out of the board or strongly in the maindeck. Each of these decks either uses discard as a way to stall an opponent before presenting an extremely fast clock (aka affinity with seize coming out of the sideboard, and Shadow decks as their main strategy) or uses discard as a way to trade resources 1-for-1 before overwhelming them with persistent effects such as manlands to win the ensuing topdeck battle (abzan/8-rack). CoCo doesn't really fit into this continuum very well. As a midrange resource-trading deck it would struggle due to running low-quality topdecks such as Birds of Paradise and Vizier of Remedies, and can't really afford to run manlands. As a beatdown deck it's not packing the right sort of creatures to present a suitable clock that can leverage the effects of a single well-timed discard spell. What we are left with is that CoCo is a kind of hybrid - bad at midrange, medium/fragile as a combo deck, but has some nice tools to carry it through in many situations. The overall effect is strong, but each facet of the deck is individually weaker than more focused examples that exist in Modern. "jack of all trades, master of none" springs to mind.
My point is that this doesn't lend itself to being able to capitalise on discard spells... at all... The deck concentrates its game mainly on the battlefield, so effects that can trade for resources on the battlefield, especially ones our opponents have already spent mana on, are preferable. Anything that can give us the edge in a given combat step by allowing decent blocks or a well-timed attack. It needs to be unconditional, powerful and cheap, while affecting the boardstate and putting an opponent behind in the resources they've spent. It also needs to be able to disrupt the many creature-based or creature-reliant combos that exist in modern. This option is basically Path to Exile, as other options don't exist in modern.
apologies for the long post, but this kind of thing is subtle, deep and important if we want decks to improve and adapt for an ever-changing format. It's also important to understand your own deck - how it plays, what works, what doesn't. Discard isn't really what this deck wants, because it doesn't really have the tools or synergy to back it up in the way that other decks can. Spells that affect the boardstate are what we want and Path is currently the only decent option, thus why I have been running 3. It's also why I suggested members of this thread test the idea for themselves. I wasn't suggesting that this was an optimal new direction, just something that's worked for me, has a good rationale behind it and is worth taking a look. Nobody ever played removal in abzan company decks? not one ever? dude... come on.
let's have some open discussion please. I hate to see a deck as fun and interesting as this one losing meta-share so rapidly, and I feel like taking some of the more successful iterations of the past as a source of inspiration can't hurt.
this deck is more about presenting a strong question than trying to answer everything.
I think you both make some good points (though I pulled out only one of Poken's comments) and, in a way, are hitting on what I think this archetype is struggling with: an identity crisis. Chord and Coco afford such variety of cards and threats that the same list can be played very differently from one player to the next and from one game to the next - and virtually everyone is playing a different 75! While things like Death's Shadow tend toward uniformity in build, Company/Coco players are way more disorganized/free spirited/unpredictable due to the sheer volume of options the deck affords. For me, I constantly tweak my 75, and not playing the same 75 as the other guy; it's one of the things I love about the archetype. But this also leads to difficulties in being able to track "what works best" in any given metagame. As was said, the deck doesn't have a strong, resilient combo plan, nor a good midrange beatdown plan but functions somewhere in the middle as kinda bad at both, but capable of either when you need to adapt. I think the deck's strength is being able to role shift according to matchup and in-game board states, and it rewards players who can recognize what role they need to adopt at any given time. (Jeff Hoglund wrote a good article about role shifting in relation to his pet Kiki-Chord deck, a somewhat similar deck, on the Meadery a while back I believe.)
Personally, I've noticed that the games I play a mana dork on T1/T2 are the games that I tend to win - regardless of whether that dork lives or not. If it lives, I gain great mana advantage due to being able to play big cards faster, like Chord or Coco, or dump mana into things like recruiter. If the dork dies, well my opponent just used mana (often at mana parity or worse) and a card to slow the game down while not developing their board, which gives me more time to naturally get to those things I want to do. Pose questions early, make them answer them or run away with the game. I've learned to mull any 7 G1 against an unknown opponent that doesn't have a dork, just for that reason.
Conversely, if I'm making a land-drop per turn to try to get to Coco on T4, while not doing anything threatening and giving my opponent the early turns to develop their own board, I'm usually going to lose because our "threats" are just generally less good than theirs unless we have lots of mana open for Gavony or Wolf Run or out-valuing them with Witnesses and Recruiters, both of which are still mana intensive.
As far as identity goes, how you play the deck should, I think, affect what's in your build. If your plan A is combo, with occasional beats, then you probably don't want much interaction, you want speed and consistency (and as much resiliency as you can) in assembling the combo. If plan A is beatdown while still threating the combo but only occasionally comboing, then interaction is way more important. Essentially, I think whether you want paths or not in the mb should be determined by what you think your role is G1. Personally, my Plan A G1 is to combo - even though I'm playing a Naya build because it midranges better than the Abzan one - because I've seen that proactivity is rewarding by forcing your opponent to have the answers. Post-board my approach is totally matchup-dependent, and any grindy match sees me bring in 3-4 removal spells.
One of the real weaknesses of the deck is our creature-based interaction. All our of options suck! It makes it hard to interact without using non-creature spells. I'm back on mb Fiend Hunter because Flickerwisp is just bad against decks like Storm and Affinty and Elves, decks that race us where 1 removal spell can make all the difference. If there's ever a good interactive creature printed at cmc 3, the deck could really stand to gain a lot. (Reflector Mage might be good enough for this meta, but I haven't tested it much.)
My last 3 events I've gone to I've gone 4-0-1, 1-3, and 4-0 - the deck also has a lot of variance, but that's Coco I think. And it does make life more interesting.
I'm not totally convinced with flickerwisp as a silver bullet and wondering if there are better options... thoughts?
Also, with running KotR should I run a single ghost quarter to help with the Tron match ups?
If anyone has any suggestions let me know.
The removal/interaction slot in these decks is just filled with not great options - Fiend Hunter is great vs other creature decks that are not very interactive (storm, affinity, the mirror) but bad vs non creature decks and interactive decks. I think reflector mage is probably a direct upgrade in most situations but requires blue. Wisp is better vs interactive decks but definitely worse vs the decks fiend Hunter is good against. Other more fringe options like devout lightcaster, intrepid hero and the like are too situational Imo. I'm currently on wisp because I hate fiend Hunter but don't actually think wisp is great here. :-(
I'm curious - you're splashing black for sb options and pulse - is it worth it? And do you feel that's better than reflector mage + spell queller (mb/sb)?
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Eternal Witness
2 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Murderous Redcap
3 Militia Bugler
2 Spellskite
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Collected Company
3 Chord of Calling
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
1 Marsh Flats
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
3 Temple Garden
1 Godless Shrine
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Razorverge Thicket
2 Eldritch Evolution
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Selfless Spirit
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Orzhov Pontiff
3 Path to Exile
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Maelstrom Pulse
Llanowar Elves is, obviously, the 9th dork, and could be something like an Eternal Witness but I've found that the games you start with a dork go so much better than the ones you don't (increases your chances to start with one from 65% to 70%, and having multiple dorks in play is also great vs. decks that aren't heavily interactive). Maindeck Eidolon of Rhetoric has been great in the matchups where it's good, and those matchups (ie. Storm, KCI, the new R/B Vengevine deck that's everywhere) are the kinds of decks that are traditionally very difficult for the deck to handle. Not sure about the 3/2 split between Chord of Calling and Eldritch Evolution, maybe should be 2/3 instead as it allows you to go a little faster (but opens up more 2-for-1's against grindy decks).
You'll notice no Tron hate - it's such a bad matchup I figure I'll just have to go-for broke with the combo and focus my sb on closer matchups.
I think this seems worse in theory than it actually is in practice, though Spreading seas hurts more than gq or tec edge because I don't have a way to answer it pre-board. Witness is great for recurring your most relevant card, and chord and coco help find witness or Knight. Running 4x KotR significantly increases the number of times I find one of my 2x wolf run or 1x township, and you can always search out or play a utility land from hand to use immediately for one activation even if they have a live gq or tec edge.
This goes back to the idea that if we're presenting a lot of must-answer threats (druid, duskwatch, Knight, wolf run) that if not addressed care of take over the game, it gives control a tough time because their answers have to line up well with our threats. Adding wolf run to the must answer threat base is great at stretching their answers. Post board they have to decide if they really need to keep seas, which generally isn't great, or go heavier on removal.
It definitely happens, but personally I've not had much of an issue with them keeping me off utility lands permanently. Granted my experience is anecdotal, and I mostly only play on cockatrice and at lgs's where the competition isn't as good as larger tournaments, but for me the matchup has been quite favorable.
Canopy is really painful in multiples, hence sticking at 3. Personally, I wouldn't use more than 3 utility lands (and one plains) in a deck with only 22 lands due to increasing your risk of having to mull due to no green source. Even with 18 green sources, if you want to have 2 or more lands in hand with at
least one of them being green, you're only going to see that 75% of the time on 7 cards.
Out of curiosity, I ran some numbers using a hypergeometric calculator - http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx
On 7 cards:
With 22 lands, we should hit 2+ lands 81% of the time. (on 6 it's 72%, not including the scry)
With 10 mana dorks we should 1+ dork 74% of the time. (on 6 it's 68%, not including the scry)
This means that 60% of starting hands should contain 2+ lands and 1+ dorks. (on 6 it's 49%, not including the scry).
So this means that about 80% the time we'll see a 6 or 7 card hand with 2+ lands and 1+ dork (not including the scry), and that number goes up to 89% if we keep any hand with 2+ lands on 6, knowing we still have a scry.
Now, some small percentage of hands that meet this criteria will be unkeepable due to mana source flood, lack of a green source, or be something useless like 3 lands, 2 dorks, 2 viziers, that decreases the keepable percentage by a small amount, which I'm going to guesstimate is maybe 5%?? So mulling to 5, which is still sometimes winnable with this deck, should happen less than 15% of the time (and even less than that if, like me, your willing to keep the occasional risky one-landers because the rest of the hand is perfect).
On 7, the odds of seeing a Druid in our starting hand is 40%, which means that 32% of hands will have 1+ druid and 2+ lands (these are the hands I almost always snap keep vs. an unknown deck). If you were to *really* aggressively mulligan any hand that doesn't have this configuration, you're still likely to be okay.
On 6, this is 35% to see a druid, and 25% to have a hand with 1+ druid and 2+ lands (and again, 49% to have a dork + 2 lands, not including the scry).
This means that with *really* aggressive mulling, we're about 49% to have a 6 or 7 with druid + 2 lands if we use this strategy, so 45%+ that's good enough to keep (not including scry on 6) where we'll be can cast t2 druid just based on what we have in our starting hand.
What all these numbers say to me is show the numerical evidence for aggressively mulliganing your draws, particular as potential t3 kill draws appear to be about two or three times as common as the times we end up mulling to 5 and have to keep whatever we get. After all, this is also *not* including draws that have lands, dorks and chords/cocos to hit druid for a t4 kill.
Ultimately, despite a decent record, last night was not a good showcase for how the deck plays - other than showing it's very good when piloted decently at the LGS level. I definitely can see how pros can be down on the druid/vizier combo for it's inconsistencies, despite the through-the-roof power level, when they're facing down opponents who aren't going to punt games away when faced with novel situations and board states.
Another local guy who plays a similar list to mine plays 4x oath of Nissa in his build, and while I'm not about to do that, I'm considering playing 2x, swapping out the md crusader (still very hit or miss) and commune with nature (which actually has been pretty good as a one-of), to improve the decks consistency in hitting dorks and land drops early.
Re: non graveyard-based value options at CMC 2 or 3 -- thanks for the suggestions, but yeah, not many good options - courser, for instance, is basically in the same boat as tracker in that it's very hit or miss due to not often generating any instant value, and yeah, elvish visionary is just not good. I guess I'm looking at another finks or a voice - though if I guess if I cut the mb crusader I could put that in trackers place instead. I may try leap, but am somewhat reluctant to take the plunge given I'm already playing 4 non creature spells in the board.
Currently I'm running a 2nd scooze in the sb, and that has been solid but not spectacular. Any ideas about other graveyard hate cards that are coco hits in Naya (other than loaming shaman)?
My current approach to DS is to try to lower the curve some and add more value - I side out chords for paths and viziers for value creatures (ie Fink's).
Speaking of that though, does anyone have a suggestion about 2 or 3 drops in Naya that add value that aren't graveyard-based? I'm looking to supplement witness and sb Fink's and replace tireless tracker (which is very hit and miss). Ideally this creature would have 3+ toughness to avoid flaying tendrils.
Well there's no doubt that canopy is a great card here, however I just can't bring myself to drop the same kind of money on 2-3 of them that I would a goyf or lilli when I already don't own playsets of those. It's a card that's only played in a few decks (this, hatebears/d&t, boggles), and I'm sure it'll get reprinted (soonish?) and lose a ton of value instantly. And I've done well without them... But it does force me to play the deck a little differently than others who have canopies.
A few things I've learned about the deck include:
- you need to focus on mana advantage (it's how we get ahead as well as gain value from our numerous mana sinks), meaning I mull 7 card hands against an unknown opponent unless I have at least 2 lands and a dork
- similarly, outside of dork-heavy hands, I need to hit my first 3 land-drops and preferably first 4, which means witness to re-buy a fetch is a good play
- you stand a chance in games you flood out in, and virtually no chance when you get mana screwed - this appears to be true of virtually every matchup
- we're faster than basically every deck in the meta, so just keep throwing dorks and combo pieces out there and threaten combo, make your opponent answer them rather than advancing their own gamelan (rather than look for slow coco hands or trying to be the midrange/control deck in the matchups)
I don't own any horizon canopies and have found renegade rallier too mediocre without them to run - part of the reason I play Knight of the reliquary instead. Game 1 I use knights of the reliquary as a sort of Swiss army creature - they're combo piece tutors (for red Manas or wolf run), a pseudo dork, and lightning rods for removal, with backup function that the can lay the beats if necessary.
Oddly enough, I find decks that cast path against me to be favorable matchups - probably because path ramps, and the deck runs tons of ways to utilize extra mana. The times I find I struggle are when I can't get ahead on mana and my opponent lands big threats early and starts beating down -- ie. Death's shadow decks when their gameplan goes the way they want -- kill all dorks, discard/counter cocos, play out 2+ fatties. Overall, like Pokken, seems to me that I'm about 50% or around there vs. those decks (DSJ, BGx), however the loses themselves can feel really bad because they're so lopsided in appearance -
ie. when they have 2 fatties and all you have are a couple grizzly bears who have to chump at some point. To be fair, though, a lot of my wins vs. other decks are pretty lopsided... probably just means the druid/vizier combo leads to a lot of lopsided-looking games.
Certainly true that Abzan Combo Company has more results than Naya (or Bant) versions, but I've also not really seen anyone else playing Naya other than Pokken and another guy in my area who's doing really well with it. I'm okay with that; I'm doing pretty well with it and happy to be flying below the radar. The list I played last week is below.
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Noble Hierarch
4 Devoted Druid
4 Vizier of Remedies
2 Duskwatch Recruiter
4 Eternal Witness
4 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Walking Ballista
4 Chord of Calling
4 Collected Company
Lands
3 Forest
2 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Plains
2 Stomping Ground
3 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Gavony Township
Sorcery
1 Commune with Nature
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Kataki, War's Wage
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Lone Missionary
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Kor Firewalker
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Lightning Bolt
3 Path to Exile
Still on the fence about the Crusader in the main - when it's good it's amazing, and having a silver bullet against GBx and Death's Shadow is great, and I've won several games on one Crusader alone. But it's not great against anything else. I may move that to the sb, have 2 sb Crusaders, and drop a Tracker instead. Maybe put a 3rd Heirarch in? Dunno.
Pokken, personally I agree with you, but there's a lot of people who only play at their LGS and are okay with meta-gaming their own shop. However there's also times where alternate builds work better in broader meta-game - Brian Demars, for instance, had some success using a 2-path mb build with the old style lists (though he didn't cut dorks); I saw a recent successful abzan druid list that had only 3 druid and 3 vizier. Experimenting and testing are important, though I agree that to successfully do this you need to know *what* actually makes the deck work (ie my experience is you need a dork but it doesn't necessarily need to be turn 1, it can be turn 2 if druid).
Also, the current abzan version traded flex slots (usually cards good in midrangey matchups) and a land for druid and vizier, so that compounds the decrease in townships for hurting the midrangey plan. This is part of why I like running just the one combo - it frees up flex slots to allow more of a midrangey plan.
I'll post my current Naya list sometime later when I'm home.
I think you both make some good points (though I pulled out only one of Poken's comments) and, in a way, are hitting on what I think this archetype is struggling with: an identity crisis. Chord and Coco afford such variety of cards and threats that the same list can be played very differently from one player to the next and from one game to the next - and virtually everyone is playing a different 75! While things like Death's Shadow tend toward uniformity in build, Company/Coco players are way more disorganized/free spirited/unpredictable due to the sheer volume of options the deck affords. For me, I constantly tweak my 75, and not playing the same 75 as the other guy; it's one of the things I love about the archetype. But this also leads to difficulties in being able to track "what works best" in any given metagame. As was said, the deck doesn't have a strong, resilient combo plan, nor a good midrange beatdown plan but functions somewhere in the middle as kinda bad at both, but capable of either when you need to adapt. I think the deck's strength is being able to role shift according to matchup and in-game board states, and it rewards players who can recognize what role they need to adopt at any given time. (Jeff Hoglund wrote a good article about role shifting in relation to his pet Kiki-Chord deck, a somewhat similar deck, on the Meadery a while back I believe.)
Personally, I've noticed that the games I play a mana dork on T1/T2 are the games that I tend to win - regardless of whether that dork lives or not. If it lives, I gain great mana advantage due to being able to play big cards faster, like Chord or Coco, or dump mana into things like recruiter. If the dork dies, well my opponent just used mana (often at mana parity or worse) and a card to slow the game down while not developing their board, which gives me more time to naturally get to those things I want to do. Pose questions early, make them answer them or run away with the game. I've learned to mull any 7 G1 against an unknown opponent that doesn't have a dork, just for that reason.
Conversely, if I'm making a land-drop per turn to try to get to Coco on T4, while not doing anything threatening and giving my opponent the early turns to develop their own board, I'm usually going to lose because our "threats" are just generally less good than theirs unless we have lots of mana open for Gavony or Wolf Run or out-valuing them with Witnesses and Recruiters, both of which are still mana intensive.
As far as identity goes, how you play the deck should, I think, affect what's in your build. If your plan A is combo, with occasional beats, then you probably don't want much interaction, you want speed and consistency (and as much resiliency as you can) in assembling the combo. If plan A is beatdown while still threating the combo but only occasionally comboing, then interaction is way more important. Essentially, I think whether you want paths or not in the mb should be determined by what you think your role is G1. Personally, my Plan A G1 is to combo - even though I'm playing a Naya build because it midranges better than the Abzan one - because I've seen that proactivity is rewarding by forcing your opponent to have the answers. Post-board my approach is totally matchup-dependent, and any grindy match sees me bring in 3-4 removal spells.
One of the real weaknesses of the deck is our creature-based interaction. All our of options suck! It makes it hard to interact without using non-creature spells. I'm back on mb Fiend Hunter because Flickerwisp is just bad against decks like Storm and Affinty and Elves, decks that race us where 1 removal spell can make all the difference. If there's ever a good interactive creature printed at cmc 3, the deck could really stand to gain a lot. (Reflector Mage might be good enough for this meta, but I haven't tested it much.)
My last 3 events I've gone to I've gone 4-0-1, 1-3, and 4-0 - the deck also has a lot of variance, but that's Coco I think. And it does make life more interesting.
The removal/interaction slot in these decks is just filled with not great options - Fiend Hunter is great vs other creature decks that are not very interactive (storm, affinity, the mirror) but bad vs non creature decks and interactive decks. I think reflector mage is probably a direct upgrade in most situations but requires blue. Wisp is better vs interactive decks but definitely worse vs the decks fiend Hunter is good against. Other more fringe options like devout lightcaster, intrepid hero and the like are too situational Imo. I'm currently on wisp because I hate fiend Hunter but don't actually think wisp is great here. :-(
I'm curious - you're splashing black for sb options and pulse - is it worth it? And do you feel that's better than reflector mage + spell queller (mb/sb)?