As Emzed pointed out Gearhulk runs the risk of failing to stabilize when your opponent is running artifact creatures (Hollow One, Affinity), tall / evasive creatures (moderate sized Champion or Mantis Rider in Humans, various flyers in Taxes, most midrange threats), or recursive creatures (Hollow One, Dredge). It's usually too slow to be effective against fast creature-combo decks (GW Elves, Devoted Company, Infect) so it's competing for SB space with Path/Bolt and even Reflector Mage/Fiery Justice there. On the plus side it's decent against Merfolk and Mardu and it can still randomly win games vs most Aggro decks. Gearhulk is a creature so we can find it with Oath/Evo, or if we hardcast it from hand it can't get blocked by Thalia/Freebooter/Negate.
Running Gearhulk in the side still makes sense for certain builds, but I think the current all-in combo build is less interested in a 5 CMC Evo target for fighting fair against aggro decks and is more interested in 3 CMC creatures that stabilize early before being Evolved into Kiki or Felidar to combo out. For this reason I've swapped Gearhulk to another Reflector Mage in my SB.
Yeah, I think our card quality is just slightly higher. One of the biggest improvements is that our combo pieces can work in both fast and grindy matchups, which really helps during a blind game 1. A Company hand with Druid, Vizier, and Ballista is perfect against a linear deck but it’s a bad keep against a grindy one.
Further comparing the Devoted Druid combo to the Copycat combo I've found that the summoning sickness on Druid and the need for a 3rd card (infinite mana outlet) are bigger deals than I originally expected. The summoning sickness means you pretty much *have* to play Druid T2 against fast decks, and if it gets removed that sets you back a couple turns. As for the third combo card, in ~10% of my (Bant) Counters Company games I've had infinite mana but died before finding an outlet. The fact that the Copycat combo requires only two cards that can be played in any order and are ready to go immediately shouldn't be underestimated. As mapccu pointed out, untapping and playing both combo pieces on the same turn for the win can be really powerful.
Counters Company sorta makes up for its lower average card quality by leaning on CoCo, and recycling CoCo with E-Wit. Unfortunately this means the deck has significantly more trouble with Grafdigger's Cage (Humans, Jund, Affinity, Tron, GR Eldrazi) since it shuts down CoCo, Chord, parts of E-Wit, Finks and therefore Finks combo, hitting both their combo plan A and value plan B. This leaves the Abzan player durdling until they top deck the Druid combo or an Abrupt Decay. But even without Cage around CoCo is high variance and losing a game to a total whiff is really disheartening. In terms of troublesome cards Collective Brutality also gives Druid lists more problems since its -2/-2 mode actually kills Druid’s combo pieces and they have more Instants to get hit by the discard mode. While Brutality can still kill our dorks and strip our Evos, it can’t do anything to keep us from curving Saheeli into Felidar.
Eldritch Evolution gives Copycat much faster access to silver bullet creatures relative to Chord and CoCo. Conversely, Abzan makes up for this somewhat by jamming two T3 combos. Copycat also has access to some incredible SB cards like Gaddock Teeg, sweepers, Stony Silence, RIP, and can be built around a Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon mana denial plan if that's effective in the meta. Oath and Evo are also less restrictive on your creature count than CoCo is, so you can board more non-creature spells without diluting your engine quite as much.
When you trade Druid, Witness, and Finks for Cobras, Ralliers, and Voice Evolved into Rallier/P&K/Shalai it means your early beat pressure is generally better, although still a little flimsy. Late game both decks can eventually set up some silly board states with Rallier/Voice loops + Sun Titan or CoCo + Gavony.
The last advantage is that Copycat is still a lesser known deck with wildly varying flex slots, so you can keep your opponents on their toes a bit more.
Company's biggest advantages are the two redundant combos and its ability to play more at instant speed. Having two different combos is a double edged sword -- it's harder to completely hate out the combo plan and increase the odds of going off T3. However, other than Vizier being in both combos the pieces don't interact or synergize with many other pieces of the deck so a starting hand with Druid, Finks, and E-wit is awkward, for instance. Having CoCo, Chord, Recruiter's activated ability, plus other SB instants (and in the Bant version Queller/Clique) to use at instant speed can sometimes make it a little easier to out-tempo blue decks with counterspells, but more importantly not having to worry about Evo getting blown out by a counter is really nice.
Overall I think the two decks are close in terms of raw power but they each have unique weaknesses and slightly different matchup spreads. Right now for me blue decks are low and Cage is high so I'm here playing Copycat.
Round 1 : Storm 2-1
Round 2 : Counters company 2-0
Round 3 : Storm 0-2 (dead turn 3 both games with a turn 2 Shalai or Eidolon)
Round 4 : No show
Round 5 : Merfolk 2-0
Round 6 : Affinity 2-0
Round 7 : Abzan 2-0 (finalist of this challenge)
Quarter : Human 1-2 (dead turn 4 after casting worship )
I think all my wins were combo, 50% Saheeli - 50 % Kiki-Jiki
Great job and thanks for sharing.
What was your plan for the Counters Company matchup / how did the games go? Mull for a T3 combo on the play or T2 Fiery Justice?
Round 3 vs Storm sounds tilt-inducing :(. How do you feel about the Storm matchup overall?
It looks like you're not planning on boarding much in vs Tron. Were you expecting less Tron for the event, or is the all-in ramp + combo plan enough to reliably get you there against Tron?
Any thoughts on the list overall after playing the event? I'd imagine everyone's curious about your choices compared to stock lists, such as Coiling Oracle vs Voice, running both Lancers and Kiki, and the enchantment-heavy board. Also, how did Shalai do beyond the Storm game?
I'm having a hard time winning against Jund. What's your plan on beating them? Best card mainboard & sideboard. What do you board out and why? Will really appreciate if you give some tips or tricks
Your MB looks really solid against Jund -- pretty much all of your payoff cards are good against BGx from your 3-drops all the way up to Sun Titan.
My best advice vs Jund is to mostly ignore the combo and keep value hands that can survive T1 discard. A good Jund hand will disrupt you with a couple pieces of discard or removal early and then back it up with a T2-T3 Goyf for pressure. These starts are really hard to come back from unless you draw especially well or can recover some of the lost tempo with Rallier (Rallier + Voice wins games) -- don't get too beat up about your list or play choices if you get run over by one of these starts, that's just what a good Jund hand does against most decks. Also, the haste on Saheeli's -2 can also help you win games with a big crack back. Be careful to play around Engineered Explosives and/or Anger of the Gods game 2 if possible.
Quote from Evil69dot »
Does the deck really needs non-creature removal? Path to Exile Fiery Temper,etc., Why do you think so? Are there creatures we're having a hard time with?
1 CMC Spot removal is best vs opposing combo decks like Storm and Devoted Druid lists. However we've seen that you can build your list without 1 CMC spot removal *if* you run enough 1 CMC Dorks, 3-4x Evos, and SB hate creatures, like Eidolon and Phyrexian Revoker (which is probably better against Devoted Druid decks if you're not running spot removal to get you to 4 mana for Linvala). I think you want some kind of answer against any aggressive deck that's also evasive -- Worship covers some of these matchups but not all. What you choose depends on your meta... Path is best for midrange while also hitting combo and aggro (though it accelerates these decks), Justice and Engineered Explosives are best against wide aggro and midrange (though midrange threats can sometimes out-grow Justice), and Abrade is a comfy middle ground vs aggro and combo with some neat extra utility as well. My personal choice right now would be 1x Fiery Justice / 1x Engineered Explosives if possible, but as I said it depends on what you expect to play against.
4c Saheeli also got 7th place in the 4/28 Modern Challenge with a unique build direction featuring Coiling Oracle instead of Voices, doubling up on Kiki and Thalia's Lancers for maximum Saheeli tutoring, and an enchantment-heavy sideboard:
Right, I agree that shaving some dorks, Kiki, 2-3x Felidars, Sun Titan, and going for a more consistent grindy midrange plan is definitely a good way to go in the right meta, and that trying to walk the middle line waters down both strategies too much.
Returning to Magus of the Moon, let's theorycraft a bit.
On the surface, a T2 Magus of the Moon during G1 vs Tron or Humans seems like a lockout, and I think this is more likely to be true if we play T2 Magus out of hand and get to keep our dork.
But we have 4x copies of Evo and one Magus, so the more likely line is T1 fetch for Forest + Bird -> T2 Evolve Bird into Magus. Best case we get to fetch for Plains T2, but having two fetches or a fetch + Plains is less likely.
In this scenario we've lost out accelerant and we're back to GR (maybe GW) mana and a 2/2 Magus. We can't cast Saheeli until we play another Dork or Oath. If we were relying on that Evo to grab Felidar Guardian it's gone now. We've slowed the opponent down several turns but we may also need to spend several turns getting our combo back on track.
Our fastest routes to victory after a T2 Evo'd Magus:
COMBO
T3 (2nd) Bird, T4 Saheeli, T5 Felidar
T3 Oath, T4 Saheeli, T5 Felidar
T3 ???, T4 Felidar Guardian, T5 Kiki or (2nd) Evo Magus into Kiki
T3 Cobra, T4 Saheeli copy Cobra, play 4th land, (2nd) Evo Cobra copy into Felidar Most of these lines rely on hitting our 4th (or even 5th) land drop on time and/or drawing second copies of Birds and/or Evo, so I expect these to be a few turns slower in practice.
COMBAT
T3 Cobra, T4 Rallier -> -> -> Lethal T6
T3 Rallier, T4 Shalai -> -> -> Lethal T6
Against Humans a start with either T1 Vial or T1 Hierarch (~70% of opening hands) is going to stumble a bit, but I'm not sure that we've slowed them down significantly more than we've slowed ourselves down. With that said in the ~30% of games where they start without Vial or Hierarch an Evo'd Magus might provide a "free" win.
Against Tron a T2 Magus puts them off of Tron, obviously. If we can find the extra combo pieces and hit our land drops we might combo out T4-T6, or beat them down T6-T7. This puts them within reach of O-stone, and possibly Wurmcoil / Karn.
How do those lines look? Are they reliable, fast, and effective enough against what the opposing decks are doing to the point that it validates Magus in the MB? Or am I thinking about Magus incorrectly in this build -- perhaps he's less of a T2 Evo target and more of something you just try to mull into, or an opportunistic mid game Evo target?
I think we’ve seen enough evidence to know that Magus can steal random games and there’s definitely value to that, I’m just trying to mentally balance that against all the other games where we draw him and he either does nothing to the opponent while also failing to synergize with our core (in a build with 4x Felidars and Kiki we want as much ETB synergy as possible) or -- worse -- even makes our deck more awkward by turning off Fetches to hurt Cobra, Rallier, and generally make it harder to power out our top end.
My experience so far with the all-in lists is that it's important to just embrace the explosive boom-bust nature of the build as there are a lot of interwoven synergies that don't get to shine when you cut down on the dorks and the top end. 4x Lotus Cobra + 3x Rallier + 4x Evo make casting an early Kiki a realistic plan. 4x Felidar Guardian + 4x Evo makes evolving into Sun Titan more feasible. Rallier + Kiki + Sun Titan make for some nutty turns that are at least as strong as the infinite combo in that they often effectively win the game that turn but don't leave you as blown out if something gets removed.
I'm a little torn on Magus of the Moon in the side vs main. It's probably the most broadly effective as a T2 "gotcha" game 1. But outside of those moments Magus doesn't seem that well positioned right now... It's a little squishy vs Jund and very ineffective vs Mardu, the two dominant tri-color midrange decks. It doesn't do much to Hollow One and Humans can sometimes ignore it with a Vial and/or Hierarch (although this is much less likely game 1). It doesn't do very much vs Burn and Storm. The only matchups where I really want Magus are Tron, Scapeshift, and maybe Bogles.
If I can get my copy of Shalai in on time I'll take this list on Friday:
Given two SB slots for non-creature sweepers I think the correct answer might be 1 Justice + 1 Explosives to make it harder for Humans to tie you up with Meddling Mage.
Qasali Ambusher is still intriguing. I think I'd like Ambusher more in aggro matchups if I could Evo it into a timely Gearhulk, which Gobern's list is missing... but maybe just having free Evo fodder for Felidar / Kiki is enough. Hard to say.
@Emzed: I would feel naked without some kind of disenchant effect in the 75.
GW Vizier with Knights, Trackers, and Land Destruction looks ideally positioned against midrange and Tron, as you say.
However, it looks to me like it would lose some significant points to unfair linear decks since it lacks Black's secondary combo + hand disruption and Blue's counterspells + disruptive flash flyers. I think I'd prefer to have a Black or Blue splash if I were facing the GP Hartford meta, for instance, but if the meta swings back to stabilize on Jund + Tron then GW makes sense. What do you think?
I like having a non Guardian target at 4cmc, but Rallier often feels like a better Evo target when sacrificing a Voice for value and tempo. Perhaps there's a more useful silver bullet that can fit into that slot?
That sounds like a great spot for Shalai, Voice of Plenty once DOM releases
Shalai brings something to the table for almost every matchup:
linear combo decks -- you have hexproof
linear aggro decks -- 3/4 white flying body is good against Humans, Affinity, Taxes
grindy midrange -- fly over goyf, protection yourself from mid-game discard, protect combo pieces from spot removal, use her pump to win board stalls
control -- fly over snapcasters, even if she's the only threat to stick her pump makes her a fast clock
tron -- hexproof stops (or at least delays) Karn / Ballista / Ulamog cast-trigger / dismember / TKS / Warping Wail
That seems like a lock for the main deck to me... I'm having trouble imagining a meta where she would be bad.
I agree, xaerus18 -- with the combination of Shalai and the return of Jund now could be a fun time to revisit Naya Kiki.
Because Shalai is also a sink for infinite mana I think it could be good to work in the Devoted Druid combo. With this setup we can use infinite mana to pump our whole team to "arbitrarily large" sizes via Shalai, go through the Chord-Witness-Resto-Kiki chain in one turn, or buff up a trampler with Kessig. This could give the deck more velocity vs unfair linear decks and Tron, although it does displace a lot of the utility creatures to the board. Perhaps that's an ok tradeoff?
Looks like a nice main-deckable replacement for New Sigarda that you can Evolve into straight from your 2-drops. The hexproof fills the same role of protecting you from Burn, Discard, and Storm while also protecting Saheeli and the rest of your creatures. It does die to Push, though. It's also a mana sink to help against flooding or even act an outlet for the Druid combo. And a 3/4 flyer for 4! Really awesome card for the deck!
@Siefer — have you considered Mirror Entity as your infinite mana outlet? It can be tutored with Evo like Rhonas but has a bit more utility without needing Ferocious online.
Running Gearhulk in the side still makes sense for certain builds, but I think the current all-in combo build is less interested in a 5 CMC Evo target for fighting fair against aggro decks and is more interested in 3 CMC creatures that stabilize early before being Evolved into Kiki or Felidar to combo out. For this reason I've swapped Gearhulk to another Reflector Mage in my SB.
Further comparing the Devoted Druid combo to the Copycat combo I've found that the summoning sickness on Druid and the need for a 3rd card (infinite mana outlet) are bigger deals than I originally expected. The summoning sickness means you pretty much *have* to play Druid T2 against fast decks, and if it gets removed that sets you back a couple turns. As for the third combo card, in ~10% of my (Bant) Counters Company games I've had infinite mana but died before finding an outlet. The fact that the Copycat combo requires only two cards that can be played in any order and are ready to go immediately shouldn't be underestimated. As mapccu pointed out, untapping and playing both combo pieces on the same turn for the win can be really powerful.
Counters Company sorta makes up for its lower average card quality by leaning on CoCo, and recycling CoCo with E-Wit. Unfortunately this means the deck has significantly more trouble with Grafdigger's Cage (Humans, Jund, Affinity, Tron, GR Eldrazi) since it shuts down CoCo, Chord, parts of E-Wit, Finks and therefore Finks combo, hitting both their combo plan A and value plan B. This leaves the Abzan player durdling until they top deck the Druid combo or an Abrupt Decay. But even without Cage around CoCo is high variance and losing a game to a total whiff is really disheartening. In terms of troublesome cards Collective Brutality also gives Druid lists more problems since its -2/-2 mode actually kills Druid’s combo pieces and they have more Instants to get hit by the discard mode. While Brutality can still kill our dorks and strip our Evos, it can’t do anything to keep us from curving Saheeli into Felidar.
Eldritch Evolution gives Copycat much faster access to silver bullet creatures relative to Chord and CoCo. Conversely, Abzan makes up for this somewhat by jamming two T3 combos. Copycat also has access to some incredible SB cards like Gaddock Teeg, sweepers, Stony Silence, RIP, and can be built around a Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon mana denial plan if that's effective in the meta. Oath and Evo are also less restrictive on your creature count than CoCo is, so you can board more non-creature spells without diluting your engine quite as much.
When you trade Druid, Witness, and Finks for Cobras, Ralliers, and Voice Evolved into Rallier/P&K/Shalai it means your early beat pressure is generally better, although still a little flimsy. Late game both decks can eventually set up some silly board states with Rallier/Voice loops + Sun Titan or CoCo + Gavony.
The last advantage is that Copycat is still a lesser known deck with wildly varying flex slots, so you can keep your opponents on their toes a bit more.
Company's biggest advantages are the two redundant combos and its ability to play more at instant speed. Having two different combos is a double edged sword -- it's harder to completely hate out the combo plan and increase the odds of going off T3. However, other than Vizier being in both combos the pieces don't interact or synergize with many other pieces of the deck so a starting hand with Druid, Finks, and E-wit is awkward, for instance. Having CoCo, Chord, Recruiter's activated ability, plus other SB instants (and in the Bant version Queller/Clique) to use at instant speed can sometimes make it a little easier to out-tempo blue decks with counterspells, but more importantly not having to worry about Evo getting blown out by a counter is really nice.
Overall I think the two decks are close in terms of raw power but they each have unique weaknesses and slightly different matchup spreads. Right now for me blue decks are low and Cage is high so I'm here playing Copycat.
What was your plan for the Counters Company matchup / how did the games go? Mull for a T3 combo on the play or T2 Fiery Justice?
Round 3 vs Storm sounds tilt-inducing :(. How do you feel about the Storm matchup overall?
It looks like you're not planning on boarding much in vs Tron. Were you expecting less Tron for the event, or is the all-in ramp + combo plan enough to reliably get you there against Tron?
Any thoughts on the list overall after playing the event? I'd imagine everyone's curious about your choices compared to stock lists, such as Coiling Oracle vs Voice, running both Lancers and Kiki, and the enchantment-heavy board. Also, how did Shalai do beyond the Storm game?
Cheers!
My best advice vs Jund is to mostly ignore the combo and keep value hands that can survive T1 discard. A good Jund hand will disrupt you with a couple pieces of discard or removal early and then back it up with a T2-T3 Goyf for pressure. These starts are really hard to come back from unless you draw especially well or can recover some of the lost tempo with Rallier (Rallier + Voice wins games) -- don't get too beat up about your list or play choices if you get run over by one of these starts, that's just what a good Jund hand does against most decks. Also, the haste on Saheeli's -2 can also help you win games with a big crack back. Be careful to play around Engineered Explosives and/or Anger of the Gods game 2 if possible.
1 CMC Spot removal is best vs opposing combo decks like Storm and Devoted Druid lists. However we've seen that you can build your list without 1 CMC spot removal *if* you run enough 1 CMC Dorks, 3-4x Evos, and SB hate creatures, like Eidolon and Phyrexian Revoker (which is probably better against Devoted Druid decks if you're not running spot removal to get you to 4 mana for Linvala). I think you want some kind of answer against any aggressive deck that's also evasive -- Worship covers some of these matchups but not all. What you choose depends on your meta... Path is best for midrange while also hitting combo and aggro (though it accelerates these decks), Justice and Engineered Explosives are best against wide aggro and midrange (though midrange threats can sometimes out-grow Justice), and Abrade is a comfy middle ground vs aggro and combo with some neat extra utility as well. My personal choice right now would be 1x Fiery Justice / 1x Engineered Explosives if possible, but as I said it depends on what you expect to play against.
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Lotus Cobra
3 Coiling Oracle
4 Renegade Rallier
1 Eternal Witness
1 Reflector Mage
4 Felidar Guardian
1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Thalia's Lancers
1 Acidic Slime
1 Sun Titan
Spells (12)
4 Oath of Nissa
4 Eldritch Evolution
4 Saheeli Rai
4 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
2 Forest
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Horizon Canopy
2 Rest in Peace
3 Fiery Justice
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Worship
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
Returning to Magus of the Moon, let's theorycraft a bit.
On the surface, a T2 Magus of the Moon during G1 vs Tron or Humans seems like a lockout, and I think this is more likely to be true if we play T2 Magus out of hand and get to keep our dork.
But we have 4x copies of Evo and one Magus, so the more likely line is T1 fetch for Forest + Bird -> T2 Evolve Bird into Magus. Best case we get to fetch for Plains T2, but having two fetches or a fetch + Plains is less likely.
In this scenario we've lost out accelerant and we're back to GR (maybe GW) mana and a 2/2 Magus. We can't cast Saheeli until we play another Dork or Oath. If we were relying on that Evo to grab Felidar Guardian it's gone now. We've slowed the opponent down several turns but we may also need to spend several turns getting our combo back on track.
Our fastest routes to victory after a T2 Evo'd Magus:
COMBO
T3 (2nd) Bird, T4 Saheeli, T5 Felidar
T3 Oath, T4 Saheeli, T5 Felidar
T3 ???, T4 Felidar Guardian, T5 Kiki or (2nd) Evo Magus into Kiki
T3 Cobra, T4 Saheeli copy Cobra, play 4th land, (2nd) Evo Cobra copy into Felidar
Most of these lines rely on hitting our 4th (or even 5th) land drop on time and/or drawing second copies of Birds and/or Evo, so I expect these to be a few turns slower in practice.
COMBAT
T3 Cobra, T4 Rallier -> -> -> Lethal T6
T3 Rallier, T4 Shalai -> -> -> Lethal T6
Against Humans a start with either T1 Vial or T1 Hierarch (~70% of opening hands) is going to stumble a bit, but I'm not sure that we've slowed them down significantly more than we've slowed ourselves down. With that said in the ~30% of games where they start without Vial or Hierarch an Evo'd Magus might provide a "free" win.
Against Tron a T2 Magus puts them off of Tron, obviously. If we can find the extra combo pieces and hit our land drops we might combo out T4-T6, or beat them down T6-T7. This puts them within reach of O-stone, and possibly Wurmcoil / Karn.
How do those lines look? Are they reliable, fast, and effective enough against what the opposing decks are doing to the point that it validates Magus in the MB? Or am I thinking about Magus incorrectly in this build -- perhaps he's less of a T2 Evo target and more of something you just try to mull into, or an opportunistic mid game Evo target?
I think we’ve seen enough evidence to know that Magus can steal random games and there’s definitely value to that, I’m just trying to mentally balance that against all the other games where we draw him and he either does nothing to the opponent while also failing to synergize with our core (in a build with 4x Felidars and Kiki we want as much ETB synergy as possible) or -- worse -- even makes our deck more awkward by turning off Fetches to hurt Cobra, Rallier, and generally make it harder to power out our top end.
Thoughts?
I'm a little torn on Magus of the Moon in the side vs main. It's probably the most broadly effective as a T2 "gotcha" game 1. But outside of those moments Magus doesn't seem that well positioned right now... It's a little squishy vs Jund and very ineffective vs Mardu, the two dominant tri-color midrange decks. It doesn't do much to Hollow One and Humans can sometimes ignore it with a Vial and/or Hierarch (although this is much less likely game 1). It doesn't do very much vs Burn and Storm. The only matchups where I really want Magus are Tron, Scapeshift, and maybe Bogles.
If I can get my copy of Shalai in on time I'll take this list on Friday:
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Noble Hierarch
4x Lotus Cobra
4x Voice of Resurgence
3x Renegade Rallier
2x Reflector Mage
4x Felidar Guardian
1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1x Sun Titan
Spells (12)
4x Oath of Nissa
4x Eldritch Evolution
4x Saheeli Rai
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
2x Stomping Ground
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Breeding Pool
1x Temple Garden
2x Horizon Canopy
2x Forest
2x Plains
2x Stony Silence
2x Fiery Justice
1x Worship
2x Gaddock Teeg
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Selfless Spirit
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Magus of the Moon
1x Acidic Slime
1x Cataclysmic Gearhulk
1x Thragtusk
Qasali Ambusher is still intriguing. I think I'd like Ambusher more in aggro matchups if I could Evo it into a timely Gearhulk, which Gobern's list is missing... but maybe just having free Evo fodder for Felidar / Kiki is enough. Hard to say.
@Emzed: I would feel naked without some kind of disenchant effect in the 75.
However, it looks to me like it would lose some significant points to unfair linear decks since it lacks Black's secondary combo + hand disruption and Blue's counterspells + disruptive flash flyers. I think I'd prefer to have a Black or Blue splash if I were facing the GP Hartford meta, for instance, but if the meta swings back to stabilize on Jund + Tron then GW makes sense. What do you think?
linear combo decks -- you have hexproof
linear aggro decks -- 3/4 white flying body is good against Humans, Affinity, Taxes
grindy midrange -- fly over goyf, protection yourself from mid-game discard, protect combo pieces from spot removal, use her pump to win board stalls
control -- fly over snapcasters, even if she's the only threat to stick her pump makes her a fast clock
tron -- hexproof stops (or at least delays) Karn / Ballista / Ulamog cast-trigger / dismember / TKS / Warping Wail
That seems like a lock for the main deck to me... I'm having trouble imagining a meta where she would be bad.
Because Shalai is also a sink for infinite mana I think it could be good to work in the Devoted Druid combo. With this setup we can use infinite mana to pump our whole team to "arbitrarily large" sizes via Shalai, go through the Chord-Witness-Resto-Kiki chain in one turn, or buff up a trampler with Kessig. This could give the deck more velocity vs unfair linear decks and Tron, although it does displace a lot of the utility creatures to the board. Perhaps that's an ok tradeoff?
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Noble Hierarch
4x Devoted Druid
2x Vizier of Remedies
4x Voice of Resurgence
2x Eternal Witness
1x Renegade Rallier
1x Magus of the Moon
1x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3x Restoration Angel
1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Instant (7)
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Chord of Calling
3x Eldritch Evolution
2x Fiery Justice
Land (22)
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Stomping Ground
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Temple Garden
3x Forest
2x Plains
1x Mountain
2x Horizon Canopy
1x Fire-Lit Thicket
1x Kessig Wolf Run
2x Stony Silence
2x Fiery Justice
1x Worship
1x Lone Missionary
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Selfless Spirit
1x Aven Mindcensor
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Kitchen Finks
1x Magus of the Moon
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Reveillark
1x Thragtusk
(The meta I'm building for is 1/4 Bx Midrange, 1/4 Vial aggro, 1/4 Tron, and 1/4 misc linear aggro)
Looks like a nice main-deckable replacement for New Sigarda that you can Evolve into straight from your 2-drops. The hexproof fills the same role of protecting you from Burn, Discard, and Storm while also protecting Saheeli and the rest of your creatures. It does die to Push, though. It's also a mana sink to help against flooding or even act an outlet for the Druid combo. And a 3/4 flyer for 4! Really awesome card for the deck!