This deck is about defense and life gain. I call this strategy Turtling. Most decks in modern are designed to fire off very quickly. What this deck hopes to do is provide enough defense, and enough life gain, to outlast my opponents' initial big swing and come back around gut punch them with a big swing. First, I seek to drop multiple one and two drops
Jaddi Offshoot
(life gain),
Perimeter Captain
(life gain), Overgrown Battlement(mana ramp), Wall of Omens(card draw), and Sylvan Caryatid(mana fixing) which seek to layer big toughness defenders that can block attackers early, or survive burn spells hoping to clear the board. Mana ramping & fixing is supplemented with Axebane Guardian. The quick dropping of defenders is accelerated through the use of Collected Company. Through mana ramp and CoCo typically there can be 5-7 defenders on the board by turn 4. The second phase of this deck employs
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
as its primary life gain mechanism. With the large number of defenders sporting ample toughness, I can sacrifice a creature or four along the way and maintain my defense while my opponent struggles to find ways to do more damage than I can counter via life gain. This is further enhanced via
Tree of Redemption
. Along with Ayli, a playset of Sheltering Word allows me to counter burn & exile spells aimed at my defenders which also gives life total equal to their toughness. This little card can actually completely wreck my opponents' gameplan. Finally, the gut punch takes the form of Assault Formation, which if played when multiple defenders are on the board, coupled with excessive mana, means I can swing immediately with pumped biggies. As a secondary win condition, I've included a single copy of Colossus of Akros which when made monstrous given the ample mana available simply becomes unstoppable. A single copy of Chord of Calling gives me opportunity to fetch the Colossus or an Ayli, should I need to. A trio of Naturalize is included almost exclusively to deal with life gain hate enchantments.
The sideboard contains Choke to deal with Merfolk, etc., Tainted Remedy for Soul Sisters, etc., Leyline of Sanctity for Burn, Stony Silence for Tron & Affinity, Rest in Peace for dredge, etc., and three Dromoka's Command as a good utility piece against various strategies. Lastly, a single copy of Abzan Falconer can be coupled with Gavony Township to drop counters and make all of my defenders fliers in order to deal with Angel decks, etc.
This deck does not pretend to be a tier-1 deck. I play with because I enjoy it immensely. That said, I'm always willing to hear suggestions that help improve the deck while staying in the general strategy. Thanks for taking the time to take a look.
ps: the first update was written at a time before the revamping of the deck to include
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
.
