Maybeboard


A new competitive concept using a very Jund style strategy in Abzan colors focused on discard control, grinding out value, attrition, and punishing opponents for lacking resources.

With only a small handful of games testing this idea I actually don't have much data on it's overall performance yet. The games where I've been able to land an early Geth's Grimoire and Words of Waste Combo have felt extremely powerful, however, and that engine completely took over those 2 games.

No combo win conditions of any sort has the potential to be an issue, it's only possible to win with beats (with the minor "counters matter" sub theme game plan) or strangling opponents with The Rack style effects to slowly drain them out. When able to lock opponents out with recursive land destruction thanks to Strip Mine and/or mass discard control to prevent any type of resource accumulation these are both very valid win lines.

Heliod Ballista strikes me as the way to go for a combo win condition with the deck at the present time. Card slot efficient, card types that should be very easy to tutor for with the tutor packages available in Abzan, fairly mana efficient, and both are much more live cards in this style of deck than they would be in other archetypes.

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Some nice progress and improvements with testing cycle 2, performance is getting better. Some notes on what was learned from this cycle follow.

The additional tutor pieces did make finding the appropriate cards in a timely fashion more consistent and helped the deck engage it's game plan more quickly. The land tutors to less of an extent, but the extra creature tutors were instrumental more than once. There's some merit to considering Realms Uncharted as a one stop shop line to find all the utility lands at once in situations where the deck has already landed Excavator or Crucible to make use of the ones that get sent to the grave.

Drana, Liberator of Malakir was an interesting idea, but I didn't feel like it was quite up to the task of competitive level play. The games where it can perform it's function as an outright win condition happen, but it's a slow approach. Gavony Township felt much the same and also decreases deck consistency so these two will be coming out for the time being.

The deck is feeling interactive enough at this point to regularly have answers to problems posed by opposing decks, but interactivity isn't ever going to be the deck's strong suit. There's some merit to considering some protection pieces for future test cycles such as Grand Abolisher or Ranger-Captain of Eos, perhaps even hate pieces like Rule of Law or Deafening Silence.

Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Walking Ballista are moving into the combo win condition role for testing cycle 3 and are very likely to stay. They always seemed like the right fit for a combo win condition in this deck and with a fair number of options already tested it's time for this combo to move into the starting line up.

Comments

Casual

91% Competitive

Revision 3 See all

(4 years ago)

+1 Blooming Marsh maybe
+1 Bountiful Promenade main
-1 Drana, Liberator of Malakir main
-1 Gavony Township main
+1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned main
-1 Reanimate main
+1 Walking Ballista main
Top Ranked
Date added 4 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

12 - 0 Mythic Rares

58 - 0 Rares

14 - 0 Uncommons

13 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.67
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Elephant 3/3 G, Zombie 2/2 B
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