Collected Company is a powerful Magic card. I’m not exactly sure what the
impetus for today’s Company deck was, but the end result is…interesting.
I’ve written about the potential of Steel Leaf Champion in Modern, and
while this deck only plays one copy of the card, Leatherback Baloth plays a
similar role. It’s big enough to survive Lightning Bolt and rumbles in
combat with most creatures now that Tarmogoyf is on a significant
downswing.
Rather than be as aggressive as I was with Steel Leaf Champion, this deck
supplements it with the more robust Wall of Roots as a secondary mana
creature to Birds of Paradise and Chord of Calling to access a huge
toolbox.
There are anti-control creatures in the hard to kill Dungrove Elder and
Rhonas the Indomitable as well as card advantage engines in Tireless
Tracker and Yisan, the Wanderer Bard. There’s the obvious Reclamation Sage
and some graveyard hate from Loaming Shaman. Ulvenwald Tracker can dominate
creature matchups, and Runic Armasaur is going to draw a surprising number
of cards in a format with fetchlands.
I’m generally not a fan of going overboard with toolboxes for your tutors,
but most of the cards here are powerful enough on their own. Rhonas the
Indomitable can dominate a game, and several other of the singletons are
fine cards to draw naturally, so that mitigates the added variance of
having so many different cards in the deck.
The other strange aspect of the deck is the maindeck copies of Relic of
Progenitus. They don’t play well within the archetype naturally, so it’s
clearly a metagame call. In that light, it makes a lot more sense because
R/B Vengevine is one of the hottest new decks in the metagame, and Hollow
One and Ironworks are still among the most popular decks in big
tournaments. It can also help stop Snapcaster Mage from flashing back Path
to Exile, which is a key play when your deck doesn’t present too many
targets for red removal.
If your metagame isn’t as graveyard-heavy you can feel free to turn those
slots into something more appropriate, likely some maindeck removal or even
a card like Vines of Vastwood to protect your important singletons.
It’s certainly not a traditional Collected Company build, but it’s hard to
go wrong you pair the card with mana creatures, efficient three-drops, and
creatures that gain card advantage, and that’s what’s going on here. Other
colors be damned.
Creatures (27)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 3 Wall of Roots
- 1 Loaming Shaman
- 1 Epochrasite
- 3 Kitchen Finks
- 4 Leatherback Baloth
- 1 Dungrove Elder
- 1 Ulvenwald Tracker
- 1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
- 1 Reclamation Sage
- 1 Tireless Tracker
- 1 Duskwatch Recruiter
- 1 Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter
- 1 Rhonas the Indomitable
- 1 Steel Leaf Champion
- 1 Runic Armasaur
Lands (21)
- 21 Forest
Spells (12)
