Nice list BaddB, we can play some modern NBL sometimes on Cockatrice ("Legolax" there)
Against what decks have you tried? Oh, and if you want to have a real game against Combo decks (which doesn't involve in getting "lucky" with discard and early goyf, as they are far more consistent than they were in sanctioned modern), I'd go with Chrome Mox + Chalice of the Void synergy.
Have you considered the Punishing Fire + Grove combo? This helps a lot against the fastest aggro decks, and lets you keep in check Young Pyromancer and Mentor of the Meek (and Elves, Affinity, etc...), while having a good way to win attrition wars (against Control and Midrange decks).
Ive won vs. Infect, UR DelverClamp, UWR Stoneforge Cruise, 12post, and 1-2 other random decks.
Chalice doesn't really work in the deck since you play a lot of 1 drops. There are other SB cards that are capable hate. Also, it's fully reasonable to simply race combo opponents with Dark Depths backed by your own disruption of thoughtseize / inquisition (and occasionally abrupt decay).
I don't play punishing grove since I'm playing junk colors. White is MUCH better as a sideboard color than red is in this format, with access to stony silence, canonist, and a few other strong cards. Also, Dark Depths craps on most decks not playing path to exile or repeal, so beating up on the UR pyromancer decks or Jund style decks is usually as easy as resolving the combo.
I've been playing NBL modern on cockatrice a bit recently. It's been fun, and I enjoy brewing. So far, my most successful deck is actually a Junk depths list. Dark Depths just gives the deck unfair game against a lot of decks, and outside that, you get to play normal BG "goodstuff" cards that work well across the format. Thespian's Stage also makes the combo way more potent and consistent than it used to be. You can tutor for the combo solely via Knight of the Reliquary, you can naturally draw it with Hexmage, or tutor with Sylvan Scrying.
This is a new turn 3-5 combo deck that I created that is another take on the Jeskai Ascendancy combo.
What inspired this deck
As we all know, the old Jeskai Ascendancy combo has almost completely fallen off the map with Treasure Cruise banned out of the format. But Jeskai ascendancy is still a super powerful card with or without Treasure cruise. The problem without cruise is that there isn't enough redundancy to make the deck viable - either that, or the deck runs out of gas when trying to combo off.
When I originally came up with this deck, I wasn't actually trying to re-bust Ascendancy, but was instead brewing around Mesmeric Orb. The deck organically evolved into a combo deck that can win with either Orb, or Ascendancy, and do so relatively quick with either condition.
How the Mesmeric Orb Combo Works
Mesmeric Orb in some ways can be a 1-card combo, at least in some senses. Orb mills both players, but in this instance, it mills yourself. The key, is getting 2 Fatestitchers into the graveyard. Once you do this, you can unearth both, have them take turns untapping each other infinitely. Each untap trigger puts an additional card into your graveyard through Mesmeric orb (and orb also makes it easy to get your stitchers into the graveyard). Once you have your entire library decked, you can pay 4 mana to win off an unburial rites combo (There are a few options, but I prefer a Sun Titan chain.
The Sun Titan chain currently in use uses Rites on Sun Titan, which then reanimates 3 phantasmal images (which also turn into Sun Titans). The final titan recurs Hammer of Purphoros, which gives all 4 titans haste for a lethal strike.
Putting the two together
The brilliant thing with this combo is that both Mesmeric Orb, as well as Jeskai Ascendancy utilize milling and Fatestitchers. This deck will easily win off the standard Jeskai Ascendancy combo ability, but will also win from the Mesmeric Orb part of the combo. Or you can use both together to fuel whatever strategy is best. Surprisingly, the combo rarely fizzles, even without Treasure Cruise. I think some of this is due to the looting aspect of the deck allowing for multiple Faithless lootings to sift through dead draws, but some is also from the fact that you can win through the graveyard.
Other Possibilities and Thoughts
-Another possible route of attack that may make the deck more resilient in face of hate is to go with Vengevines instead of an Unburial Rites win-con, although this would require black to unearth a few gravecrawlers, which may not be ideal.
-Against opponents that would bring in lots of Graveyard Hate or disruption, it may be relevant to use a sideboard strategy that goes more for a non-combo approach. Some ideas would include putting 4x Geist of Saint Traft and 1-2 Thruns in the sideboard along with some removal.
-The Orb portion of the combo is a bit more difficult to disrupt, but doesn't usually go off as fast since you need 4 mana and 2 stitchers in the yard. With that said, it's easy to mill quickly with this deck via Orb since you get your mana dorks out quick (which results in lots of untap triggers), and you see a lot of cards via cantrips and looting effects.
-One benefit of the Sun Titan variant is that Sun Titan can be hardcast, and will recur Ascendancies and Orbs in longer grindy games.
I actually think this format would be more balanced than people would think.
Control would actually play a role in it, since there would need to be a way to keep combo decks in check.
From there, big mana decks would rise to crush control / midrange.
Midrange would exist in the middle to have a bit of game vs. everything.
Also, Hypergenesis was never the boogeyman people think it was. It isn't that difficult to disrupt since it can't afford to run much protection. Of course, that's what happens when you can combo as consistently as it does, but the same can be said for a variety of other decks on here.
Other thoughts
I think Dark Depths decks would definitely rise in here, as would ux Faerie decks with all the combo.
I also can still see Twin being a player, especially with maindeck chrome mox and perhaps blood moon, it would have game vs a lot of decks (the URx delver decks would have difficulty with 1/4 exarchs).
I would be very surprised if there wasn't a green sun's zenith deck out there (or a few of them).
There are two keys for a synergy to be viable in a format like Modern.
1. If Each piece of the synergy features an individually powerful card, it should be a very competitive synergy regardless since your synergy will never be useless even when you can't assemble the combo, or if the combo is disrupted.
2. If the combo pieces aren't particularly strong on their own, they better be fast, difficult to disrupt, consistent, and provide an enormous advantage for winning the game. There are too many synergies that offer a small advantage, but not nearly enough to offset the inconsistency and dead draws they provide when the combo is disrupted.
I have a few for people here.
Jeskai Ascendancy / Mesmeric Orb Combo.
The idea is you use both ascendancy or orb to mill yourself out and to get the necessary pieces into your graveyard / hand. Once you get 2 Fatestitchers in your graveyard, you can either mill your entire library (via Orb's untap mechanism) into an unburial rites instant-kill, or simply win off buffed Fatestitchers swinging in for a ton of damage.
Both pieces are low mana, and it has a lot of redundancy since you can win off either ascendancy or Orb.
Cunning Sparkmage-based control.
Modern is a format where almost every deck currently wants to win via creatures, even the combo decks (Bloom Titan, Twin, Archangel, Infect) largely win with creatures. In a format like this, the classic Cunning-Sparkmage + Basilisk Collar combo actually can do a lot of damage. Sparkmages can also work with Vault of the Archangel now to pick off tons of creatures.
The only drawback is that they don't represent any particularly strong threat in their own right, and lots of decks can simply bolt the sparkmage. So you ideally need to protect the sparkmage (spellskite?) to be effective here. I would suggest pairing this with a Trinket Mage Strategy for full effectiveness.
Bring to Light-Living End
Bring to Light essentially makes Living Death legal in modern, since you can simply pay 5 mana to cast the similar Living End. Some thought has been given to restore balance with Living Death, but Living End may be even more capable without the restrictions brought on by a deck built around the cascade mechanic.
Enchanted-Evening / Patrician's Scorn
This isn't entirely new, but I haven't seen it on here really. Essentially, you Cast Enchanted Evening, which then allows you to cast patrician's scorn entirely for free. This will destroy all permanents on the battlefield, including lands. How you win afterward is someone else's guess - Restore Balance uses suspend creatures, which could easily work here.
I don't want to discourage brewing, but most of these HAVE been tried, but simply aren't played because they're not strong enough. Oona's blackguard + prowl wasn't good enough to see play in standard, there is no reason it would suddenly be good in a much stronger format with a larger card pool.
Soulfire Grand Master + Time Warp takes 9 mana, requires 2 cards, and loses to a bolt for instance.
Hatching Plans can be decent, but the CA engine of crack the earth + hatching plans isn't as good as it would seem. Consider this - you can pay 3 mana, and draw 3 cards with Painful Truths, which carries very little drawback (3 life loss is easily worked around). By nearly all measurable means, Painful Truths is better, but not as johnny-friendly since it doesn't require a combo or card-interaction to make work.
Phyrexian Etchings is decent, but is once again, a bit slow in a fast format, and requires playing too many cards for an advantage that isn't necessarily gamebreaking in such a fast format.
Once again, I don't mean to be a buzzkill, these ARE cool decks, and definitely under-explored, but they may not ever be anything more than pet brews.
I don't think you would want the Coralhelm Knight of the Reliquary combo to be entirely all in on the combo. I think ideally, you would build it more similar to something like Melira Coco, or Jeskai Ascendancy Midrange.
That's actually pretty sweet. You'd be taking a lot of fetch land damage though (and shocks too, if you wanna float mana from them) unless you create a rally funky mana base (mono basic Forest/Plains).
Wasteland Strangler is interesting too. A mini [cardFlametongue Kavu[/card] that needs some setting up. Seems like a valid Chord/CoCo target.
You don't have to let the shocklands come in tapped, and the fetches you would probably want to limit to around 6-8, so you wouldnt have to deal all that much damage to yourself. Also, you dont have to go through all your lands, but it would up the damage you can deal.
Retreat to Coralhelm forms a fatal combo with Knight of the Reliquary.
Use knight to sacrifice a land, which then gives you a new land. This triggers the knight to untap. Tap the land for mana, then use knight again. You can go through all the lands in your library amassing upwards of 16-20 mana floating, then use the final land to grab Kessig Wolf Run, and then swing for 35+ damage with trample.
If you want, you can even keep a fetchland up so that you can untap Knight and grab an emergency Sejiri Steppe to protect itself against removal.
People on here saying it's a bad card don't know what they're talking about.
In the right deck, Augur is a better wall of omens that can attack into planeswalkers and ping away at life total. It also blocks and kills Snapcaster Mages and other small creatures surprisingly well.
The main issue is that there aren't enough control decks in modern that play enough instants / sorceries. He works well in a deck like Cruel Control, where he can find additional cantrips, cruel ultimatums, cryptic commands, etc. But you have to be careful about how many creatures you play since reaching a critical count makes him whiff too often. With modern being such a creature-centric format, this alone makes it slightly more difficult to find a deck where augur fits.
At the very worst, Augur will block a creature for a turn and replace itself, which is in itself, a positive trade most of the time. Against combo decks, he helps to dig for hate and answers quicker. Against other control decks, he represents a pesky creature that will ping away at life totals without losing card advantage. Basically, in the right deck, Augur is always a very strong card, but you need a deck that is extremely sorcery / instant heavy for this to work.
TLDR: Augur is a very strong card in niche decks that can support him. The main issue is that there aren't pre-existing decks in the format he slots into, but that doesn't make it a bad card, just makes it a bad fit.
So It's been quite a while since I've posted a new deck. I dont play as much as I used to, but recently when I have been playing, I've had a ton of good luck against competitive decks with a new archetype that is criminally under-explored in modern. That archetype being human tribal.
What makes a good tribal deck
Historically, tribal decks require a few elements in order to be effective. Without these elements, tribal decks generally tend to be average, or slow aggro decks with some synergy, but a ton of weaknesses. See the points below:
Disruption: In eternal formats, aggro decks either need the ability to race combo, or disrupt it enough to win. In legacy, Merfolk and Goblins play more of a disruption plan, whereas Elves tend to race or combo out themselves.
A viable and competitive curve with strong creatures and strong synergy: Simply put, you need the ability to apply pressure as an aggro deck while disrupting an opponent. Also, your creatures need to be good - if they're good independent of synergy, that helps you even more, although you can get by on synergy too if your deck is cohesive enough.
Card advantage: Elves uses glimpse of nature and many other tools to combo out, or out-advantage you. Goblins plays Goblin Ringleader and Goblin Matron to mass card advantage, Merfolk usually just try to out-tempo you, but can also gain some advantage with Silvergill Adept.
Potent Lords / Synergistic Effects: If it werent for the synergy, there wouldnt be any strong reason to play tribal, since you would be better off just playing all-around good creatures.
So where does Tribal Humans Come Into Play?
Human tribal's weakest point is probably a lower level of overall synergy when compared to the aforementioned decks, but it makes up for this with creatures that are stronger individually, and way more disruptive than most of the choices you would play in other tribal decks. In the past, a deck like this would likely have been a bit vulnerable to wrath effects, but newly available cards as well as a shift in the metagame away from wraths has allowed a deck that wants to pump the board full of creatures to become a viable and potent strategy.
While this deck can settle into a mid-range role quite easily, it is a pretty fast aggro deck, especially when starting off with a Champion of the Parish. Turn 4 wins aren't entirely uncommon if faced with little disruption.
Disruption Effects:
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is always a potent combo / control hoser, and sets the tone to out-tempo an opponent. Knight of the Reliquary is not only a potent beatstick, it also helps is a swiss-army knife with the ability to tutor up Tectonic Edge (great vs tron / control), Vault of the Archangel (against aggressive aggro), Bojuka Bog (graveyard hoser) or Gavony Township (all-around usefulness). Auriok Champion is a near impossible to remove creature that can hose both Splinter Twin (if they combo with exarch) as well as Aggro decks (lifegain / blocking).
Additionally, many of the modern combo decks can be hosed simply by having potent removal spells like Path to Exile on hand.
Card Advantage Effects:
Ranger of Eos is the perfect top-end curve card in a deck like this. It refuels your hand with additional champions, kytheons, or other toolbox creatures, and can beat down when needed. You can pretty much compare ranger to the same role of Goblin Ringleader in this deck. Dark Confidant Bob isn't necessary in here, but if you want more card advantage, he's the obvious choice as a strong individual card, as well as human specifically.
Synergy:
Mayor of Avabruck is a pretty under-played card, but people forget that he is a 2 mana lord for a tribe that features a lot of cards that are individually powerful without requiring tribal support. While he won't pump your team if he flips, that just means you are getting a 3/3 that pumps out 3/3 tokens at the end of every turn for only 2 mana. Regardless of the situation, he's a strong part of this deck that supports everything else in here. Champion of the Parish is the obvious powerhouse human 1-drop. Champion supports extremely aggressive starts, and will get out of control very fast if left unchecked by the opponent.
So far, the worst matchup has been affinity, although you can sideboard somewhat heavily against affinity, which makes things a bit easier. Outside affinity, most of the tier-1 matchups are fairly even to positive I've found.
Affinity: Not a great matchup, they're faster and their synergistic effects are usually better. Definitely winnable game 1 if you play your removal right and can kill them quick enough. G2 and G3 you sideboard heavily against them and see where things go.
Grixis Variants: While not all grixis decks are the same, they all seem to have some issues dealing with the tempo of this deck. Not only do they have to match tempo while potentially dealing with cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, they'll later have to answer card advantage generated from cards like Ranger of Eos and company.
Collected Company Variants: Coco games tend to play fairly evenly, with both decks trying to overwhelm the board. The difference is that you use Ranger of Eos for card advantage, and they use Collected company. They can combo out sometimes during long matches, but this deck has a much greater ability to power up large beatsticks, and to break board stalls via Vault of the Archangel.
Splinter Twin Variants: Twin has actually been a pretty easy matchup during most of the games I've played, especially since many versions are playing tempo variants. The fact that twin is now playing a tempo game makes their consistent turn 4 combo much less daunting, and you can often just kill them before they even combo out. If they do try to combo, you have 8-12 answers with 4 paths, 4 auriok champion, and 4 Niveous Wisps (they can buy a turn, which usually allows you to kill them).
Tron Variants: Pyroclasm can be a problem, but most of the time you'll grow your champion out of clasm range before it happens. Outside that, you're only really worrying about the 3-land instant tron draw into a karn. Your removal handles wurmcoil engines easily, and Thalia goes a long way to disrupt most of the spells they play prior to achieving full tron. In a pinch, you can use Knight of the Reliquary to tutor up Tectonic Edges to take them off tron, although this will typically give them a window to drop at least one bomb. It's not a walk in the park, but overall a good matchup that can be won simply by killing them quickly at times.
Jund / Junk Midrange Variants: These matchups have generally been pretty positive. They have strong individual creatures, but their removal does not trade evenly with the card advantage you tend to generate. This causes them a lot of problems, and with smart play, these matchups tend to be a bit in Humans favor from my experience.
I really like this card. It's not the fastest card in the world, but can be a really good grindy card. I also think it has some combo-esque potential in a deck like Landfall-Zoo, where you can play it with scapeshift for aggro-combo applications (or just play it by itself of course.
A hypothetical scapeshift with this card in play could give all creatures you control +8+8 until end of turn (shift into 4 flagstones of trokair), or simply provide you 8 kor creatures + landfall triggers.
I don't imagine this card will see much play, but it definitely has some potential to be considered.
Modern isn't really a format that cares about grindy 2 for 1's and card advantage that much. In some matchups that may matter, but I would say at least 50 percent of the format couldn't give a crap about the virtual card advantage that may be provided here. Walker just seems really slow to me to be worthwhile, similar to how pack rat was amazing last standard, but sees very little play in modern.
Ive won vs. Infect, UR DelverClamp, UWR Stoneforge Cruise, 12post, and 1-2 other random decks.
Chalice doesn't really work in the deck since you play a lot of 1 drops. There are other SB cards that are capable hate. Also, it's fully reasonable to simply race combo opponents with Dark Depths backed by your own disruption of thoughtseize / inquisition (and occasionally abrupt decay).
I don't play punishing grove since I'm playing junk colors. White is MUCH better as a sideboard color than red is in this format, with access to stony silence, canonist, and a few other strong cards. Also, Dark Depths craps on most decks not playing path to exile or repeal, so beating up on the UR pyromancer decks or Jund style decks is usually as easy as resolving the combo.
4x Thoughtseize
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Abrupt Decay
2x Sylvan Scrying
1x Path to Exile
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Dark Confidant
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Knight of the Reliquary
2x Scavenging Ooze
4x Vampire Hexmage
3x Dark Depths
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Thespian's Stage
17 Other Lands
2x Stony Silence
2x Kataki, War's Wage
2x Duress
3x Relic of Progenitus
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
2x Path to Exile
3x Liliana of the Veil
This is a new turn 3-5 combo deck that I created that is another take on the Jeskai Ascendancy combo.
What inspired this deck
As we all know, the old Jeskai Ascendancy combo has almost completely fallen off the map with Treasure Cruise banned out of the format. But Jeskai ascendancy is still a super powerful card with or without Treasure cruise. The problem without cruise is that there isn't enough redundancy to make the deck viable - either that, or the deck runs out of gas when trying to combo off.
When I originally came up with this deck, I wasn't actually trying to re-bust Ascendancy, but was instead brewing around Mesmeric Orb. The deck organically evolved into a combo deck that can win with either Orb, or Ascendancy, and do so relatively quick with either condition.
How the Mesmeric Orb Combo Works
Mesmeric Orb in some ways can be a 1-card combo, at least in some senses. Orb mills both players, but in this instance, it mills yourself. The key, is getting 2 Fatestitchers into the graveyard. Once you do this, you can unearth both, have them take turns untapping each other infinitely. Each untap trigger puts an additional card into your graveyard through Mesmeric orb (and orb also makes it easy to get your stitchers into the graveyard). Once you have your entire library decked, you can pay 4 mana to win off an unburial rites combo (There are a few options, but I prefer a Sun Titan chain.
The Sun Titan chain currently in use uses Rites on Sun Titan, which then reanimates 3 phantasmal images (which also turn into Sun Titans). The final titan recurs Hammer of Purphoros, which gives all 4 titans haste for a lethal strike.
Putting the two together
The brilliant thing with this combo is that both Mesmeric Orb, as well as Jeskai Ascendancy utilize milling and Fatestitchers. This deck will easily win off the standard Jeskai Ascendancy combo ability, but will also win from the Mesmeric Orb part of the combo. Or you can use both together to fuel whatever strategy is best. Surprisingly, the combo rarely fizzles, even without Treasure Cruise. I think some of this is due to the looting aspect of the deck allowing for multiple Faithless lootings to sift through dead draws, but some is also from the fact that you can win through the graveyard.
Other Possibilities and Thoughts
-Another possible route of attack that may make the deck more resilient in face of hate is to go with Vengevines instead of an Unburial Rites win-con, although this would require black to unearth a few gravecrawlers, which may not be ideal.
-Against opponents that would bring in lots of Graveyard Hate or disruption, it may be relevant to use a sideboard strategy that goes more for a non-combo approach. Some ideas would include putting 4x Geist of Saint Traft and 1-2 Thruns in the sideboard along with some removal.
-The Orb portion of the combo is a bit more difficult to disrupt, but doesn't usually go off as fast since you need 4 mana and 2 stitchers in the yard. With that said, it's easy to mill quickly with this deck via Orb since you get your mana dorks out quick (which results in lots of untap triggers), and you see a lot of cards via cantrips and looting effects.
-One benefit of the Sun Titan variant is that Sun Titan can be hardcast, and will recur Ascendancies and Orbs in longer grindy games.
Initial Decklist
4x Mesmeric Orb
4x Jeskai Ascendancy
Mana Dorks
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Fatestitcher
Cantrips / Dig
4x Faithless Looting
4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Cerulean Wisps
4x Manamorphose
Finishers / Rites Package
1x Unburial Rites
1x Sun Titan
3x Phantasmal Image
1x Hammer of Purphoros
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Wooded Foothills
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Steam Vents
1x Forest
1x Island
3x Breeding Pool
2x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
3x Dispel
4x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
2x Ancient Grudge
1x Ray of Revelation
2x Nature's Claim
Control would actually play a role in it, since there would need to be a way to keep combo decks in check.
From there, big mana decks would rise to crush control / midrange.
Midrange would exist in the middle to have a bit of game vs. everything.
Also, Hypergenesis was never the boogeyman people think it was. It isn't that difficult to disrupt since it can't afford to run much protection. Of course, that's what happens when you can combo as consistently as it does, but the same can be said for a variety of other decks on here.
Other thoughts
I think Dark Depths decks would definitely rise in here, as would ux Faerie decks with all the combo.
I also can still see Twin being a player, especially with maindeck chrome mox and perhaps blood moon, it would have game vs a lot of decks (the URx delver decks would have difficulty with 1/4 exarchs).
I would be very surprised if there wasn't a green sun's zenith deck out there (or a few of them).
1. If Each piece of the synergy features an individually powerful card, it should be a very competitive synergy regardless since your synergy will never be useless even when you can't assemble the combo, or if the combo is disrupted.
2. If the combo pieces aren't particularly strong on their own, they better be fast, difficult to disrupt, consistent, and provide an enormous advantage for winning the game. There are too many synergies that offer a small advantage, but not nearly enough to offset the inconsistency and dead draws they provide when the combo is disrupted.
I have a few for people here.
Jeskai Ascendancy / Mesmeric Orb Combo.
The idea is you use both ascendancy or orb to mill yourself out and to get the necessary pieces into your graveyard / hand. Once you get 2 Fatestitchers in your graveyard, you can either mill your entire library (via Orb's untap mechanism) into an unburial rites instant-kill, or simply win off buffed Fatestitchers swinging in for a ton of damage.
Both pieces are low mana, and it has a lot of redundancy since you can win off either ascendancy or Orb.
Cunning Sparkmage-based control.
Modern is a format where almost every deck currently wants to win via creatures, even the combo decks (Bloom Titan, Twin, Archangel, Infect) largely win with creatures. In a format like this, the classic Cunning-Sparkmage + Basilisk Collar combo actually can do a lot of damage. Sparkmages can also work with Vault of the Archangel now to pick off tons of creatures.
The only drawback is that they don't represent any particularly strong threat in their own right, and lots of decks can simply bolt the sparkmage. So you ideally need to protect the sparkmage (spellskite?) to be effective here. I would suggest pairing this with a Trinket Mage Strategy for full effectiveness.
Bring to Light-Living End
Bring to Light essentially makes Living Death legal in modern, since you can simply pay 5 mana to cast the similar Living End. Some thought has been given to restore balance with Living Death, but Living End may be even more capable without the restrictions brought on by a deck built around the cascade mechanic.
Enchanted-Evening / Patrician's Scorn
This isn't entirely new, but I haven't seen it on here really. Essentially, you Cast Enchanted Evening, which then allows you to cast patrician's scorn entirely for free. This will destroy all permanents on the battlefield, including lands. How you win afterward is someone else's guess - Restore Balance uses suspend creatures, which could easily work here.
I don't want to discourage brewing, but most of these HAVE been tried, but simply aren't played because they're not strong enough. Oona's blackguard + prowl wasn't good enough to see play in standard, there is no reason it would suddenly be good in a much stronger format with a larger card pool.
Soulfire Grand Master + Time Warp takes 9 mana, requires 2 cards, and loses to a bolt for instance.
Hatching Plans can be decent, but the CA engine of crack the earth + hatching plans isn't as good as it would seem. Consider this - you can pay 3 mana, and draw 3 cards with Painful Truths, which carries very little drawback (3 life loss is easily worked around). By nearly all measurable means, Painful Truths is better, but not as johnny-friendly since it doesn't require a combo or card-interaction to make work.
Phyrexian Etchings is decent, but is once again, a bit slow in a fast format, and requires playing too many cards for an advantage that isn't necessarily gamebreaking in such a fast format.
Once again, I don't mean to be a buzzkill, these ARE cool decks, and definitely under-explored, but they may not ever be anything more than pet brews.
You don't have to let the shocklands come in tapped, and the fetches you would probably want to limit to around 6-8, so you wouldnt have to deal all that much damage to yourself. Also, you dont have to go through all your lands, but it would up the damage you can deal.
Use knight to sacrifice a land, which then gives you a new land. This triggers the knight to untap. Tap the land for mana, then use knight again. You can go through all the lands in your library amassing upwards of 16-20 mana floating, then use the final land to grab Kessig Wolf Run, and then swing for 35+ damage with trample.
If you want, you can even keep a fetchland up so that you can untap Knight and grab an emergency Sejiri Steppe to protect itself against removal.
In the right deck, Augur is a better wall of omens that can attack into planeswalkers and ping away at life total. It also blocks and kills Snapcaster Mages and other small creatures surprisingly well.
The main issue is that there aren't enough control decks in modern that play enough instants / sorceries. He works well in a deck like Cruel Control, where he can find additional cantrips, cruel ultimatums, cryptic commands, etc. But you have to be careful about how many creatures you play since reaching a critical count makes him whiff too often. With modern being such a creature-centric format, this alone makes it slightly more difficult to find a deck where augur fits.
At the very worst, Augur will block a creature for a turn and replace itself, which is in itself, a positive trade most of the time. Against combo decks, he helps to dig for hate and answers quicker. Against other control decks, he represents a pesky creature that will ping away at life totals without losing card advantage. Basically, in the right deck, Augur is always a very strong card, but you need a deck that is extremely sorcery / instant heavy for this to work.
TLDR: Augur is a very strong card in niche decks that can support him. The main issue is that there aren't pre-existing decks in the format he slots into, but that doesn't make it a bad card, just makes it a bad fit.
So It's been quite a while since I've posted a new deck. I dont play as much as I used to, but recently when I have been playing, I've had a ton of good luck against competitive decks with a new archetype that is criminally under-explored in modern. That archetype being human tribal.
What makes a good tribal deck
Historically, tribal decks require a few elements in order to be effective. Without these elements, tribal decks generally tend to be average, or slow aggro decks with some synergy, but a ton of weaknesses. See the points below:
So where does Tribal Humans Come Into Play?
Human tribal's weakest point is probably a lower level of overall synergy when compared to the aforementioned decks, but it makes up for this with creatures that are stronger individually, and way more disruptive than most of the choices you would play in other tribal decks. In the past, a deck like this would likely have been a bit vulnerable to wrath effects, but newly available cards as well as a shift in the metagame away from wraths has allowed a deck that wants to pump the board full of creatures to become a viable and potent strategy.
While this deck can settle into a mid-range role quite easily, it is a pretty fast aggro deck, especially when starting off with a Champion of the Parish. Turn 4 wins aren't entirely uncommon if faced with little disruption.
Disruption Effects:
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is always a potent combo / control hoser, and sets the tone to out-tempo an opponent.
Knight of the Reliquary is not only a potent beatstick, it also helps is a swiss-army knife with the ability to tutor up Tectonic Edge (great vs tron / control), Vault of the Archangel (against aggressive aggro), Bojuka Bog (graveyard hoser) or Gavony Township (all-around usefulness).
Auriok Champion is a near impossible to remove creature that can hose both Splinter Twin (if they combo with exarch) as well as Aggro decks (lifegain / blocking).
Additionally, many of the modern combo decks can be hosed simply by having potent removal spells like Path to Exile on hand.
Card Advantage Effects:
Ranger of Eos is the perfect top-end curve card in a deck like this. It refuels your hand with additional champions, kytheons, or other toolbox creatures, and can beat down when needed. You can pretty much compare ranger to the same role of Goblin Ringleader in this deck.
Dark Confidant Bob isn't necessary in here, but if you want more card advantage, he's the obvious choice as a strong individual card, as well as human specifically.
Synergy:
Mayor of Avabruck is a pretty under-played card, but people forget that he is a 2 mana lord for a tribe that features a lot of cards that are individually powerful without requiring tribal support. While he won't pump your team if he flips, that just means you are getting a 3/3 that pumps out 3/3 tokens at the end of every turn for only 2 mana. Regardless of the situation, he's a strong part of this deck that supports everything else in here.
Champion of the Parish is the obvious powerhouse human 1-drop. Champion supports extremely aggressive starts, and will get out of control very fast if left unchecked by the opponent.
GW Decklist
1-drops
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
2-drops
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Auriok Champion
4 Mayor of Avabruck
3-Drops
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4-Drops
4 Ranger of Eos
Non-Creatures
4 Path to Exile
4 Niveous Wisps
Lands
1 Gavony Township
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
4 Temple Garden
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Windbrisk Heights
1 Mutavault
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Godless Shrine
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Nevermore
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Soul Warden
3 Stony Silence
2 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Nature's Claim
Black Splash
1-drops
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
2-drops
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Auriok Champion
4 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Dark Confidant
3-Drops
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4-Drops
3 Ranger of Eos
Non-Creatures
4 Path to Exile
2 Niveous Wisps
1 Gavony Township
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
4 Temple Garden
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Godless Shrine
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Nevermore
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Soul Warden
3 Stony Silence
2 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Nature's Claim
How does it Matchup against the field / metagame?
So far, the worst matchup has been affinity, although you can sideboard somewhat heavily against affinity, which makes things a bit easier. Outside affinity, most of the tier-1 matchups are fairly even to positive I've found.
Affinity: Not a great matchup, they're faster and their synergistic effects are usually better. Definitely winnable game 1 if you play your removal right and can kill them quick enough. G2 and G3 you sideboard heavily against them and see where things go.
Grixis Variants: While not all grixis decks are the same, they all seem to have some issues dealing with the tempo of this deck. Not only do they have to match tempo while potentially dealing with cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, they'll later have to answer card advantage generated from cards like Ranger of Eos and company.
Collected Company Variants: Coco games tend to play fairly evenly, with both decks trying to overwhelm the board. The difference is that you use Ranger of Eos for card advantage, and they use Collected company. They can combo out sometimes during long matches, but this deck has a much greater ability to power up large beatsticks, and to break board stalls via Vault of the Archangel.
Splinter Twin Variants: Twin has actually been a pretty easy matchup during most of the games I've played, especially since many versions are playing tempo variants. The fact that twin is now playing a tempo game makes their consistent turn 4 combo much less daunting, and you can often just kill them before they even combo out. If they do try to combo, you have 8-12 answers with 4 paths, 4 auriok champion, and 4 Niveous Wisps (they can buy a turn, which usually allows you to kill them).
Tron Variants: Pyroclasm can be a problem, but most of the time you'll grow your champion out of clasm range before it happens. Outside that, you're only really worrying about the 3-land instant tron draw into a karn. Your removal handles wurmcoil engines easily, and Thalia goes a long way to disrupt most of the spells they play prior to achieving full tron. In a pinch, you can use Knight of the Reliquary to tutor up Tectonic Edges to take them off tron, although this will typically give them a window to drop at least one bomb. It's not a walk in the park, but overall a good matchup that can be won simply by killing them quickly at times.
Jund / Junk Midrange Variants: These matchups have generally been pretty positive. They have strong individual creatures, but their removal does not trade evenly with the card advantage you tend to generate. This causes them a lot of problems, and with smart play, these matchups tend to be a bit in Humans favor from my experience.
I really like this card. It's not the fastest card in the world, but can be a really good grindy card. I also think it has some combo-esque potential in a deck like Landfall-Zoo, where you can play it with scapeshift for aggro-combo applications (or just play it by itself of course.
A hypothetical scapeshift with this card in play could give all creatures you control +8+8 until end of turn (shift into 4 flagstones of trokair), or simply provide you 8 kor creatures + landfall triggers.
I don't imagine this card will see much play, but it definitely has some potential to be considered.