holy crap this deck is good. i have gone toe to toe with some of the top 8 rebuilt by my friends decks, and by that i mean they were the exact same decks, and it wins all the games!!! so let me enlighten you.choir practice is a name i gave the deck in a comical sense, like pixy styx. the reason i call it choir practice, or my preferred name, selesnya (said, and i hope you can identify this on a music sheet or something by putting it over a keyboard zdv7), is because it summons usually 2 soldiers or humans or whatnot, and then it plays anthem effects or more guys like brimaz or mentor, then it just starts accumulating troops in the mass by playing planeswalkers and using an anthem or two to kill your opponent. this deck is my cumulation of 2 years work, i would love reccomendations, but only of cards that actually contribute to the choir practice strategy, not cards like path to exile or other control things, just token stuff please! oh and no shock or fetch or any other duel land suggestions, i really care about my life total.
sideboarding: i have not updated this sideboard in forever, or even made it decent, so i'll just name some cards that are more filler and i recommend finding replacements, but if you go close to control or preventing against specific archetypes the deck itself will fall apart. so onto the guide:burn or rdw: gather the townsfolk and path of bravery in for monestary mentor and/or mirran crusader. the mentor itself was not that good to begin with because not very many activations will happen before you either win or very rarely, die. gather can help you out, but not that much. if you are down to 5 or less life, you can get chump blockers for days, but the real shine against burn is path of bravery. this card can turn the game because of life gain, and just make it impossible to actually do anything to your life total, when you'll probably be gaining 4 or more life a turn from this.anything with primordial hydra: selesnya charm and sunblast angel in for monestary mentors. the reason? look up. the deck is very limited in control, but that is a good thing, because it makes room for more bombs. but this can backfire when facing a creature that gives itself trample and doubles it's size every turn. the reason i did not include hero's bane is because unless they give it trample, it can be chumped for all the days. just save your charm in hand unless you can win with it, and just hope to god they never catch you with no plan. just aggro or nothing then. or dromokas command while it's still young.abzan: devout incantation, primeval bounty, sunblast angel and maybe some scions in for (suprise suprise) monestary mentors and maybe a dromoka's command. abzan likes to stall. it's a fact. so use late game spells like the incantation or the bounty whenever you deem best. if they try to attack with lots of stuff, next turn just blow it all away with a sunblast angel. the scion just helps get fliers, even though both elspeths already do that.storm: anything with little with life gain in for sigh monestary mentor. the grapeshot or other win con for storm decks is usually damage based. what better way to thwart their plans to storm out then to make it much harder for them to actually deal enough damage to win. the other route is putting in the most aggressive stuff out for the (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!) not monestary mentors! in fact it would be for anything costing a lot of mana. this deck is a particularly powerful deck against us.scapeshift: easy: just put in anything cheap and life gain for (oh for the love of god) monestary mentor. if you can gain enough life, scapeshift becomes threat level 0. this is because for them to win, they have to be able to burn you out with one card. but if that resolves then fails, the deck becomes entirely pointless and just a weak manaramp deck with nothing to pour into.affinity: sunblast angel, all the scions and anything that can fly. also day of judgement in for whatever provides the least defensive capabilities against the specific build. for instance, odric. while he is good from an attack perspective, his defense is lacking. also, sometimes not the mentor. the mentor has a reasonable defense rating because in an attack from ground troops, you can raise the alarm and get 3 guys instead of 2. helpful for those pesky archbound ravagers. however, when trying to outrun affinity, take out the mentors, and put in wild beastmaster and gather the townsfolk.amulet bloom: lord help you, but just try to outrun like most decks. no sideboards.soul sisters: day of judgement, path of bravery, and devout incantation. you strategy against soul sisters is build up on defense for the entire game, possibly board in a selesnya charm and some scions against fliers and ascendents. once their board is low, attack with vigilant things that are hard to kill, and take forever to beatdown their life total to zero. but that part only comes after defending until they are low on board state and high on life. never let a creature in your army be untapped unless it is clear that there is no use for that creature to stay as a blocker. try occasionally offering a creature for creature trade, because your creatures are worth much less then theirs are. this is a very tough matchup, keep heavy on fliers.
