If you're really against splashing blue for reflector mages/flying humans for evasion, have you considered Abzan Falconer?
Your heavy hitters (Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant, and Knight of the Reliquary) have +1/+1 counters built into them, and Thalia's Lieutenant can give counters to every other creature in the deck, so the Falconer's flying requirement isn't exactly absurdly conditional, and its outlast is fairly priced to the point where it's quite usable.
Eternal Witness1GG
+Re-buying Collected Company can be back-breaking in grindy matchups
+Can target any card in your graveyard
-1/2 body is not very aggressive Play Note: Don't be afraid to grab a fetchland back if you're in need of mana
Minor correction. Eternal Witness is a 2/1, not a 1/2.
She's incredibly solid against decks that rely on free spells, pump spells, cantrips, deck manipulation, counterspells, and expensive haymaker noncreature finishers – which suddenly become a lot clunkier if they cost one more mana – but she becomes unreliable when you're facing decks with more than 4 pieces of spot removal, especially one-mana removal like Bolt or Push.
...and unreliable or mediocre against interactive decks like BGx Midrange, Eldrazi Midrange, Ux Control. I haven't gotten to test her against Burn, my guess is that she'd get a one-time tax on the next burn spell (aimed at her) but I'm not sure whether that slows them down enough to be useful.
I found her to be quite solid against spot removal decks. In a human deck, almost all of your creatures die to most spot removal anyway, and she's practically a lightning rod to them. Then, when she does get hit by something, she's one of the few humans that trades evenly with Bolt and Push (2 mana for 2 mana, 1 card for 1 card) and then that's one push/bolt that wont be aimed at a Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant or Mantis Rider down the road, and path to exile on Thalia is great since it costs them 2 mana (an even trade already) and ramps you.
The only real alternative that does better than her against those decks is Knight of the Holy Nimbus and possibly Auriok Champion.
I've thought about it, but eventually ended up deciding that it wasn't good enough. The problem is that the Rogue Refiner is G/U, Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant are White, and all the other energy producing humans are red or black. Of those, the Siphoner is really the only one that benefits significantly from being fed a supply of energy from other sources.
If I was going to try an energy theme, it would be a high curving deck with Aetherworks Marvel instead of collected company, but there really just aren't enough good human energy sources to fuel it reliably, and in that case you'd probably be better off going with Emrakul or something else, and in a non-energy, collected company deck, I'd probably rather take eternal witness to retrieve Collected Company, or Mantis Rider, or Reflector Mage, or Anafenza the Foremost in the 3 mana creature slot.
One thing that I am wondering about though is a B/W hybrid with Soul Sisters.
Deck List:
1CMC Creatures
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Soul Warden
4x Soul's Attendant
Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant replace Serra Ascendant and Honor of the Pure as major threats, each threatening to grow extremely large if not answered, with Thalia's Lieutenant buffing other creatures that you control.
With Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant, and Ajani's Pridemate all threatening to snowball out of control, and Dark Confidant threatening to give incredible amounts of card advantage, the opponent's spot removal will probably end up quite overtaxed such that they can't answer all 16 of the major issues. Selfless Spirit is there purely for answering sweepers, a good alternative might be Return to the Ranks, which has quite a nice interaction with Thalia's Lieutenant + Humans or Ajani's Pridemate + Soul Sisters due to the simultaneous entry.
Meanwhile, Black/White gives access to both amazing sideboard options, and some versatile main board removal in Anguished Unmaking which can hit the main threats of otherwise problematic decks such as killing an Ugin, Karn, or Nahiri the moment they resolve, along with removing ensnaring bridge, bitterblossom, or just creatures in general.
Without Sera Ascendant, the deck can afford to use its extra life for either card draw on Dark Confidant (which ends up getting you even more life to fuel him since he gives you more monsters), or on Anguished Unmaking, and with nothing in the deck costing more than 2 mana, it can afford to run a low land count. There's something of a nonbo with Lifegain and Gather the Townsfolk's Fateful Hour, but on the other hand, if you do manage to trigger it, being able to heal up from it does somewhat mitigate the usual issue of resolving it, and then just dying since you'll gain 5+ life from it.
On paper it seems like it has some potential to work, but I suspect that in practice it wont. I'll give it a try this Friday regardless.
I'm not convinced with Xathrid Necromancer at the moment. It's great in theory, but with Anger of the Gods generally being favoured as a sweeper, it does lose quite a bit of its resiliency over a meta of Wraths and Pyroclasms.
On the topic of Human Lords being extremely powerful, what about pushing that angle and going full on low cost humans.
16 human synergy creatures, all at CMC 2 or less.
Running all 8 1 mana mana dorks, along with a low curve we could probably afford to cut lands to an extremely low number.
Thraben Inspector would be another cheap human that could get buffed into being a threat, then in the late game once we run out of cards we could use the clue for a little more steam if that ever comes around. A 1 of Oviya Pashiri has a similar draw to it.
Burning-Tree Emissary puts creatures onto the board quickly, it hits 2 of our lords, as well as Duskwatch Recruiter which is another strong card in the long game.
Then with everything at 2CMC or lower, Return to the Ranks seems like it could be a good for rebuilding after a sweeper, and path to exile is of course the best spot removal in the game.
For a deck of:
1 mana creatures (13)
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Avacyn's Pilgrim
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Thraben Inspector
1x Oviya Pashiri
2 mana creatures (20)
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
4x Mayor of Avabruck
4x Hamlet Captain
4x Burning Tree Emmisary
4x Duskwatch Recruiter
Non-Creature Spells (8):
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
Lands (21):
4x Windswept Heath
4x Flooded Strand
4x Cavern of Souls
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Breeding Pool
3x Plains
3x Forest
1x Island
Side Deck:
2x Fragmentise
2x Riders of Gavony
2x Meddling Mage
2x Celestial Purge
2x Lantern Scout
2x Mayor of Avabruck
1x Spellskite
1x Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1x Dromoka's Command
2-0 against Bant Eldrazi.
I won the dice roll and went first game 1. We both had amazing openings.
Turn 2 Thought Knot Seer was scary, but after turn 1 champion of the parish, having to choose between collected company, reflector mage, and Thalia's lieutenant was not a nice decision. He made me discard reflector mage, Thalia's lieutenant buffed Champion of the parish, I allowed him to attack, a few times, but collected company into double Thalia's lieutenants followed by a champion of the parish into another reflector mage and skyship plunderer created a wall wide enough that even drowners of hope weren't enough to get through, and spread out enough that even engineered explosives wouldn't cripple it. Eldrazi displacer was extremely awkward for him.
Game 2 was much less of a crushing victory. I didn't draw Riders of Gavony or Collected Company. However, I didn't lose right away either. Buffed Skyship Plunderer was scary enough to draw removal, and Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant grew out of control. Three drowners of hope made closing it out without dying myself a bit tricky, but I got there.
0-2 against Through the Breach Combo
My opponent got his combo on turn 3 in both games. I had never seen anything like it, so I didn't realise that I needed to hold up mana for Path to Exile on the Primordial.
Game 2 I drew my meddling mage, but named the titan instead of through the breach. This was just classic inexperience (I only started playing modern last week). I do feel that I might be better sideboarding repel the abominable or more lantern scouts against this matchup though. Even with that horrible mistake, I still managed to get him down to 7 life. Drawing into either lantern scout or not throwing due to misunderstanding Through the Breach would have won me it.
1-0 against Soul Sisters
I should have been playing against burn, but she dropped. After 15 minutes, one of the other players talked to the judge about his missing opponent, and was told that his opponent dropped as well, so we just played each other for fun while we waited for the placings.
Turn 1: Soul Warden
Turn 1: Pass
Turn 2: Pass
Turn 2: Champion of the Parish, Noble Hierarch
Turn 3: Spectral Procession
Turn 3: Mantis Rider, attack, triple blocked by spirit tokens for mutual destruction
Turn 4: Serra Ascendant, Path to Exile Champion of the Parish
Turn 4: Collected Company: Mantis Rider and Eternal Witness (The dream!), return collected company to hand
Turn 5: Path to Exile Mantis Rider
Turn 5: Collected Company: Double Thalia's Lieutenants, Collected Company: Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant
To be brief, he didn't draw any of his ways to turn lifegain into something that effects the board state other than eventually activating his Serra Ascendant. He lost the board hard, made the mistake of attacking with his Serra Ascendant leaving him completely open to taking 20 damage on the next turn, bringing her crashing down to earth again, and even if he had saved her to block, I had reflector mage in hand.
After we finished that game, due to starting late to give our opponents plenty of time to show up, placings were made, we got our prizes, and the night ended.
I no longer fear the Eldrazi enough that I feel the need to side deck Riders of Gavony.
I played horribly against the combo deck simply due to inexperience with the archetype, but the first step might be to sideboard some Repel the Abominables, or go back to side decking Mana Leak.
Unsurprisingly, strong creature presence beats Soul Sisters if they don't get an early pridemate while I have no Path to Exile or Reflector Mage.
I can't say either way whether or not Avacyn's Pilgrim was helpful. I never actually drew into it or pulled it with Collected Company.
So, I know that last week, the people at my LGS (Which is quite small) were playing:
Abzan Midrange
Selesnya Tron
Gruul Tron
Grixis Delver
Bant Eldrazi
Green Elves
Ink Humans
Unknown
This week, would it be a reasonable call to cut the Skyship Plunderers for main deck meddling mages (Calling Ugin/Karn against Tron, Ezuri against Elves, Engineered Explosives against Eldrazi, or Fatal Push against Abzan), or some other human (More Mayors of Avabruck?) since there's no infect or affinity that I'll need early aerial blockers against?
Additionally, what do I do against elves? I didn't play them last week, but from what someone who did play against them said, they went wide very quickly and created tokens to block them forever. Relying on just Mantis Riders and possibly the skyship plunderers for evasion seems risky.
People have been telling me that Bant Eldrazi is one of, if not the best decks of the current format. What are peoples' thoughts in siding in Riders of Gavony for them and the occasional Merfolk/Elves/Spirits/Allies player?
Out of curiousity, how much mana is it normal for the Abzan deck tend to end up reaching in each matchup? I'm curious on whether or not an Angel of Glory's Rise might be worthwhile in that list as a 1 of. Resurrecting your entire grave seems like a powerful effect in a grindy deck, especially with Xathrid Necromancers making the field even more durable, though obviously it's not something that you want to draw early.
I actually feel that going 5 colours to run Anafenza or other 3CMC humans might not be a bad idea.
I wasn't having too much trouble getting all four colours online with a mana base of:
3 Plains
3 Forests
1 Island
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Breeding Pool
4 Flooded Strand
4 Windswept Heath
4 Cavern of Souls
Despite only running 1 red land in the deck, the fact that my 1 red shock land was the same colour as both my fetch lands, that cavern of souls was a 5 colour land, and the fact that I was limiting my reliance on red to my 3CMC plays allowed me to cast my mantis riders whenever I needed them for the most part.
By simply adding a godless shrine, you could get to:
17/22 lands fetching or producing white
16/22 lands fetching or producing green
14/22 lands fetching or producing blue
13/22 lands fetching or producing red
13/22 lands fetching or producing black
Which isn't horribly inconsistent given that you'd need to draw her, and then also fail to have your black mana in three land drops, whereas the benefit of having her quite nice, and she's a great hit off collected company regardless of whether you have black mana. Additionally, given that I wasn't having issues casting mantis riders despite blue being harder to come by than green in this deck (I couldn't rely on Cavern of Souls to cast collected company or Path to Exile, so I skewed towards green/white), Anafenza should actually be easier to cast than the mantis riders were with this mana base.
My main issue with it though is that as a 3CMC card she's in a very competitive spot, fighting with the sheer speed and evasion of a 3/3 vigilance, haste, flying creature in Mantis Rider, the tempo swings of Reflector Mage, and the grindiness of Eternal Witness, and the sweeper resistance of Xathrid Necromancer.
I might sound crazy, but even disregarding mana issues, I'm not sure that a 3 mana 4/4 human with built in graveyard hate. that also buffs all your creatures when she attacks is good enough for a human deck. Sure, she's bolt resistant, but with so many other boltable cards in the deck, it's not as though your opponents are going to have trouble finding other good targets for them.
Thalia didn't end up causing me any issues with delaying Collected Company. I didn't happen to draw her against Eldrazi, she delayed Tron's ability to search and get to their combo far more than she delayed me, and Grixis removed her as soon as they could.
Turn 3 Older Thalia was mainly useful because my opponent had managed to get all three Urza lands in his opening hand. By keeping the power plant tapped, she bought me another turn by preventing a a turn 3 Karn or Wurmcoil as the other two only gave 5 mana, then she buys the non-fliers a turn of attacks by tapping down the Wurmcoil if they happened to have it.
Additionally, in a world where everything goes right, a turn 2 older Thalia seems like it could be crippling since it not only cuts their ability to cycle, but it also makes them more predictable, as she prevents them from playing a mana granting artifact and activating it in the same turn, when all their removal is prohibitively expensive without the Urza lands, or requires coloured mana.
I ran into some curve issues in game 3 against Grixis where I had to delay Collected Company due to a lack of mana, but Reflector Mage on his delves slowed him down enough for me to recover and win the race. I did miss a third land drop, but other than that game, they generally coincided with a noble hierarch sticking. to the board, and hard casting Mantis Rider and Reflector Mage was generally a good enough play that I never felt too bad about it. I was originally running 22 lands + 4 Hierarchs, but I decided that I'd test out the 2 renegade ralliers, and see if I could use them as the 3->4 drop, since 2 mana generators tend to be worth around 1 land.
However, since both times I drew them, they ended up dead, I'll probably cut them both and go back up to 22 lands + 4 noble hierarchs, which would also bring my 3 mana count down to 11, and the effective land count up to 24. I'd probably replace the empty slot with another young Thalia.
I really don't want to cut Mantis Rider due to how amazing it proved once the game turned into a race, or Reflector Mage due to how powerful of a tempo swing it is, so that would only leave Thalia and the 2 Sky Knights. With the skyship plunderers, it might be okay to cut Thalia and a Sky Knight to bring the count down to 9, and replace them with a fourth Skyship Plunderer, and possibly another turn 1 play.
Pottentially Experiment One or Servant of the Scale could work in that spot since they'll have built in +1/+1 counters that the Skyship Plunderers can copy in the event that I don't draw a Champion of the Parish or Thalia's Lieutenant. Experiment One has the ability to grow quite a bit as things are played, and will probably be a 2/2 on turn 2, and Servant of the Scale will get to distribute his counters when he dies, which could potentially be relevant against a Pyroclasm, Yahenni's Expertise if that ends up being good enough to run, or if you just need something sacrificial to use as a blocker. Kytheon is kind of interesting as well.
Your heavy hitters (Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant, and Knight of the Reliquary) have +1/+1 counters built into them, and Thalia's Lieutenant can give counters to every other creature in the deck, so the Falconer's flying requirement isn't exactly absurdly conditional, and its outlast is fairly priced to the point where it's quite usable.
Minor correction. Eternal Witness is a 2/1, not a 1/2.
I found her to be quite solid against spot removal decks. In a human deck, almost all of your creatures die to most spot removal anyway, and she's practically a lightning rod to them. Then, when she does get hit by something, she's one of the few humans that trades evenly with Bolt and Push (2 mana for 2 mana, 1 card for 1 card) and then that's one push/bolt that wont be aimed at a Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant or Mantis Rider down the road, and path to exile on Thalia is great since it costs them 2 mana (an even trade already) and ramps you.
The only real alternative that does better than her against those decks is Knight of the Holy Nimbus and possibly Auriok Champion.
If I was going to try an energy theme, it would be a high curving deck with Aetherworks Marvel instead of collected company, but there really just aren't enough good human energy sources to fuel it reliably, and in that case you'd probably be better off going with Emrakul or something else, and in a non-energy, collected company deck, I'd probably rather take eternal witness to retrieve Collected Company, or Mantis Rider, or Reflector Mage, or Anafenza the Foremost in the 3 mana creature slot.
One thing that I am wondering about though is a B/W hybrid with Soul Sisters.
Deck List:
1CMC Creatures
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Soul Warden
4x Soul's Attendant
2CMC Creatures
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
4x Ajani's Pridemate
4x Dark Confidant
3x Auriok Champion
3x Selfless Spirit
Non-Creature Spells:
3x Path to Exile
3x Anguished Unmaking
4x Gather the Townsfolk
Land:
4x Marsh Flats
4x Godless Shrine
4x Windbrisk Heights
4x Plains
4x Swamp
Theory:
With Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant, and Ajani's Pridemate all threatening to snowball out of control, and Dark Confidant threatening to give incredible amounts of card advantage, the opponent's spot removal will probably end up quite overtaxed such that they can't answer all 16 of the major issues. Selfless Spirit is there purely for answering sweepers, a good alternative might be Return to the Ranks, which has quite a nice interaction with Thalia's Lieutenant + Humans or Ajani's Pridemate + Soul Sisters due to the simultaneous entry.
Meanwhile, Black/White gives access to both amazing sideboard options, and some versatile main board removal in Anguished Unmaking which can hit the main threats of otherwise problematic decks such as killing an Ugin, Karn, or Nahiri the moment they resolve, along with removing ensnaring bridge, bitterblossom, or just creatures in general.
Without Sera Ascendant, the deck can afford to use its extra life for either card draw on Dark Confidant (which ends up getting you even more life to fuel him since he gives you more monsters), or on Anguished Unmaking, and with nothing in the deck costing more than 2 mana, it can afford to run a low land count. There's something of a nonbo with Lifegain and Gather the Townsfolk's Fateful Hour, but on the other hand, if you do manage to trigger it, being able to heal up from it does somewhat mitigate the usual issue of resolving it, and then just dying since you'll gain 5+ life from it.
On paper it seems like it has some potential to work, but I suspect that in practice it wont. I'll give it a try this Friday regardless.
That... is a lot of shuffling.
16 human synergy creatures, all at CMC 2 or less.
Running all 8 1 mana mana dorks, along with a low curve we could probably afford to cut lands to an extremely low number.
Thraben Inspector would be another cheap human that could get buffed into being a threat, then in the late game once we run out of cards we could use the clue for a little more steam if that ever comes around. A 1 of Oviya Pashiri has a similar draw to it.
Burning-Tree Emissary puts creatures onto the board quickly, it hits 2 of our lords, as well as Duskwatch Recruiter which is another strong card in the long game.
Then with everything at 2CMC or lower, Return to the Ranks seems like it could be a good for rebuilding after a sweeper, and path to exile is of course the best spot removal in the game.
For a deck of:
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Avacyn's Pilgrim
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Thraben Inspector
1x Oviya Pashiri
2 mana creatures (20)
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
4x Mayor of Avabruck
4x Hamlet Captain
4x Burning Tree Emmisary
4x Duskwatch Recruiter
Non-Creature Spells:
4x Path to Exile
4x Return to the Ranks
Lands (18)
4x Windswept Heath
1x Temple Garden
4x Razorverge Thicket
4x Cavern of Souls
1x Plains
2x Forest
2x Gavony Township
Possibly putting Lantern Scouts in in order to win races against other aggressive decks.
Creatures (31):
1CMC (10)
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Champion of the Parish
2x Avacyn's Pilgrim
2CMC (10)
4x Skyship Plunderer
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
2x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3CMC (11)
4x Reflector Mage
4x Mantis Rider
2x Eternal Witness
1x Fiend Hunter
Non-Creature Spells (8):
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
Lands (21):
4x Windswept Heath
4x Flooded Strand
4x Cavern of Souls
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Breeding Pool
3x Plains
3x Forest
1x Island
Side Deck:
2x Fragmentise
2x Riders of Gavony
2x Meddling Mage
2x Celestial Purge
2x Lantern Scout
2x Mayor of Avabruck
1x Spellskite
1x Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1x Dromoka's Command
2-0 against Bant Eldrazi.
I won the dice roll and went first game 1. We both had amazing openings.
Turn 2 Thought Knot Seer was scary, but after turn 1 champion of the parish, having to choose between collected company, reflector mage, and Thalia's lieutenant was not a nice decision. He made me discard reflector mage, Thalia's lieutenant buffed Champion of the parish, I allowed him to attack, a few times, but collected company into double Thalia's lieutenants followed by a champion of the parish into another reflector mage and skyship plunderer created a wall wide enough that even drowners of hope weren't enough to get through, and spread out enough that even engineered explosives wouldn't cripple it. Eldrazi displacer was extremely awkward for him.
Game 2 was much less of a crushing victory. I didn't draw Riders of Gavony or Collected Company. However, I didn't lose right away either. Buffed Skyship Plunderer was scary enough to draw removal, and Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant grew out of control. Three drowners of hope made closing it out without dying myself a bit tricky, but I got there.
0-2 against Through the Breach Combo
My opponent got his combo on turn 3 in both games. I had never seen anything like it, so I didn't realise that I needed to hold up mana for Path to Exile on the Primordial.
Game 2 I drew my meddling mage, but named the titan instead of through the breach. This was just classic inexperience (I only started playing modern last week). I do feel that I might be better sideboarding repel the abominable or more lantern scouts against this matchup though. Even with that horrible mistake, I still managed to get him down to 7 life. Drawing into either lantern scout or not throwing due to misunderstanding Through the Breach would have won me it.
1-0 against Soul Sisters
Turn 1: Pass
Turn 2: Pass
Turn 2: Champion of the Parish, Noble Hierarch
Turn 3: Spectral Procession
Turn 3: Mantis Rider, attack, triple blocked by spirit tokens for mutual destruction
Turn 4: Serra Ascendant, Path to Exile Champion of the Parish
Turn 4: Collected Company: Mantis Rider and Eternal Witness (The dream!), return collected company to hand
Turn 5: Path to Exile Mantis Rider
Turn 5: Collected Company: Double Thalia's Lieutenants, Collected Company: Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant
To be brief, he didn't draw any of his ways to turn lifegain into something that effects the board state other than eventually activating his Serra Ascendant. He lost the board hard, made the mistake of attacking with his Serra Ascendant leaving him completely open to taking 20 damage on the next turn, bringing her crashing down to earth again, and even if he had saved her to block, I had reflector mage in hand.
After we finished that game, due to starting late to give our opponents plenty of time to show up, placings were made, we got our prizes, and the night ended.
I no longer fear the Eldrazi enough that I feel the need to side deck Riders of Gavony.
I played horribly against the combo deck simply due to inexperience with the archetype, but the first step might be to sideboard some Repel the Abominables, or go back to side decking Mana Leak.
Unsurprisingly, strong creature presence beats Soul Sisters if they don't get an early pridemate while I have no Path to Exile or Reflector Mage.
I can't say either way whether or not Avacyn's Pilgrim was helpful. I never actually drew into it or pulled it with Collected Company.
Abzan Midrange
Selesnya Tron
Gruul Tron
Grixis Delver
Bant Eldrazi
Green Elves
Ink Humans
Unknown
This week, would it be a reasonable call to cut the Skyship Plunderers for main deck meddling mages (Calling Ugin/Karn against Tron, Ezuri against Elves, Engineered Explosives against Eldrazi, or Fatal Push against Abzan), or some other human (More Mayors of Avabruck?) since there's no infect or affinity that I'll need early aerial blockers against?
Additionally, what do I do against elves? I didn't play them last week, but from what someone who did play against them said, they went wide very quickly and created tokens to block them forever. Relying on just Mantis Riders and possibly the skyship plunderers for evasion seems risky.
I wasn't having too much trouble getting all four colours online with a mana base of:
3 Plains
3 Forests
1 Island
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Breeding Pool
4 Flooded Strand
4 Windswept Heath
4 Cavern of Souls
Despite only running 1 red land in the deck, the fact that my 1 red shock land was the same colour as both my fetch lands, that cavern of souls was a 5 colour land, and the fact that I was limiting my reliance on red to my 3CMC plays allowed me to cast my mantis riders whenever I needed them for the most part.
By simply adding a godless shrine, you could get to:
17/22 lands fetching or producing white
16/22 lands fetching or producing green
14/22 lands fetching or producing blue
13/22 lands fetching or producing red
13/22 lands fetching or producing black
Which isn't horribly inconsistent given that you'd need to draw her, and then also fail to have your black mana in three land drops, whereas the benefit of having her quite nice, and she's a great hit off collected company regardless of whether you have black mana. Additionally, given that I wasn't having issues casting mantis riders despite blue being harder to come by than green in this deck (I couldn't rely on Cavern of Souls to cast collected company or Path to Exile, so I skewed towards green/white), Anafenza should actually be easier to cast than the mantis riders were with this mana base.
My main issue with it though is that as a 3CMC card she's in a very competitive spot, fighting with the sheer speed and evasion of a 3/3 vigilance, haste, flying creature in Mantis Rider, the tempo swings of Reflector Mage, and the grindiness of Eternal Witness, and the sweeper resistance of Xathrid Necromancer.
I might sound crazy, but even disregarding mana issues, I'm not sure that a 3 mana 4/4 human with built in graveyard hate. that also buffs all your creatures when she attacks is good enough for a human deck. Sure, she's bolt resistant, but with so many other boltable cards in the deck, it's not as though your opponents are going to have trouble finding other good targets for them.
Thalia didn't end up causing me any issues with delaying Collected Company. I didn't happen to draw her against Eldrazi, she delayed Tron's ability to search and get to their combo far more than she delayed me, and Grixis removed her as soon as they could.
Turn 3 Older Thalia was mainly useful because my opponent had managed to get all three Urza lands in his opening hand. By keeping the power plant tapped, she bought me another turn by preventing a a turn 3 Karn or Wurmcoil as the other two only gave 5 mana, then she buys the non-fliers a turn of attacks by tapping down the Wurmcoil if they happened to have it.
Additionally, in a world where everything goes right, a turn 2 older Thalia seems like it could be crippling since it not only cuts their ability to cycle, but it also makes them more predictable, as she prevents them from playing a mana granting artifact and activating it in the same turn, when all their removal is prohibitively expensive without the Urza lands, or requires coloured mana.
I ran into some curve issues in game 3 against Grixis where I had to delay Collected Company due to a lack of mana, but Reflector Mage on his delves slowed him down enough for me to recover and win the race. I did miss a third land drop, but other than that game, they generally coincided with a noble hierarch sticking. to the board, and hard casting Mantis Rider and Reflector Mage was generally a good enough play that I never felt too bad about it. I was originally running 22 lands + 4 Hierarchs, but I decided that I'd test out the 2 renegade ralliers, and see if I could use them as the 3->4 drop, since 2 mana generators tend to be worth around 1 land.
However, since both times I drew them, they ended up dead, I'll probably cut them both and go back up to 22 lands + 4 noble hierarchs, which would also bring my 3 mana count down to 11, and the effective land count up to 24. I'd probably replace the empty slot with another young Thalia.
I really don't want to cut Mantis Rider due to how amazing it proved once the game turned into a race, or Reflector Mage due to how powerful of a tempo swing it is, so that would only leave Thalia and the 2 Sky Knights. With the skyship plunderers, it might be okay to cut Thalia and a Sky Knight to bring the count down to 9, and replace them with a fourth Skyship Plunderer, and possibly another turn 1 play.
Pottentially Experiment One or Servant of the Scale could work in that spot since they'll have built in +1/+1 counters that the Skyship Plunderers can copy in the event that I don't draw a Champion of the Parish or Thalia's Lieutenant. Experiment One has the ability to grow quite a bit as things are played, and will probably be a 2/2 on turn 2, and Servant of the Scale will get to distribute his counters when he dies, which could potentially be relevant against a Pyroclasm, Yahenni's Expertise if that ends up being good enough to run, or if you just need something sacrificial to use as a blocker. Kytheon is kind of interesting as well.