MTG Salvation

Quote from Ramosgay »

Hi everyone.
I used to play allies back in the day, and I was curious whether the unban of Bloodbraid elf has awaken some ideas. She was played along all our allies in extended and was pretty good in the deck. I know that times have changed, but there was something else that drew my interest about the topic, and that was the deck posted by Corbin Hosler in the Team Modern Super League:Deck Voting : https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/team-modern-super-league-deck-voting
It is currently first in the strawpollm although not by much.
What are your thoughts on the elf? Vote the poll if you want to see the deck in action!

I understand why Bloodbraid Elf decks would want to avoid Aether Vial and Noble Hierarch (bad targets), but I don't think trying to play 4cmc creature in a 22 lands deck on top of CoCo is really brilliant. What do you get for 4 mana? A completely random Ally, and a 3/2 Haste that is not an Ally. Is that enough? Considering the deck has to sacrifice Aether Vial to achieve that? Relying too much on sorcery speed makes Allies prone to sweepers. And that statement is even more true when you're effectively overextending your board with the Elf. If I were ever to play it, it would be with 4 Druids to support the mana cost. Even then, colors would be a problem (because Druid add X of one color). The proposed list doesn't play Jwari Shapeshifter to reduce the color needs, but less Cavern of Souls in a deck already more prone to Control is a bad combination.

So... Really? Lose Vial (instant speed Allies and accelerator), Shapeshifter (Battlesingers 5-8 and Blademasters 5-8) and Cavern for a 3/2 non-Ally and a random Ally for a steep mana cost and sorcery speed? No. Not in the proposed form. But maybe brewed in another fashion...

I've done some maths with Noble Hierarch. It's a tricky card to add, because :
A) it's not an Ally and will decrease the odds of reliable CoCo.
B) it's an accelerator, and increases the odds of having enough mana to cast CoCo on 3 lands.
C) it acts as Vial 5+, and increases the odds of keeping a one-lander (less mulligans).

In the end, the best numbers are :
2 Noble Hierarch
19 Lands (remove 1 Encampment)
28 Allies (Envoy, Freeblade, Druid, Blademaster, Battlesinger, Shapeshifter and Evangel)
3 flex spots for other Allies
8 instant speed package (Vial and CoCo)

With this configuration (compared to 20 lands and 4 flex spots for Allies, no Hierarch), the odds of casting CoCo on turn 3 are increased from 33% to 42% (+27% chance). CoCo is a little bit less reliable if you want to hit 2 Allies (fizzle 8%, instead of 6.5% ; so +23% fizzle), but will hit 2 creatures more often (Hierarch is a creature). But because Hierarch acts a little bit like Vials 5-6 for acceleration purpose (explosion is our main win condition), and because it helps against Ensnaring Bridge and Blood Moon, I believe it is a good trade off.

I hope to test this out tomorrow... Edit : forget that about tomorrow's testing. It's Valentine's Day!

Thanks for your input. They finally didn't play the deck because they got to win faster than they expected, I recommend you to watch the streaming, simply because it is a fun format indeed. I tested the list a couple of times and found 7 4-drops too many, maybe we can do with 6 or 5, IDK... About bloodbraid, while the majority of time company was better, I was not sad to see her either, provided I had the mana to cast her.

After testing their list, I decided to try something different, and after reading some of this forum's thoughts on halimar excavatorthought that it would be coold to mantain the aggresive/explosive line as a main plan, but dedicate sideboard slots for halimar + rally the ancestorsinteraction for matchups in which they just kill all of our creatures.
After some matches against combo/uninteractive decks, I got to play against a mardu pyromancer deck (loaded on removal), and this happened in Game 3:


Game 1 won just by attacking. Game 2 got to halimar them up to 7 cards left in their library because I didn't draw neither company nor rally.

An Ally deck recently got to Top 8 in Modern. Check it out...

Seems to me that Rally the Ancestors would have been a better card than Return to the Ranks. Maybe something to explore? I would try to avoid black in that brew, and focus on Bant. There are certainly green cards that can help fill the graveyard to help the combo.