Cards like Blood Moon and Fulminator Mage are widely played. You’d think that they would be pretty good against a deck that is using special lands to get more than the normal amount of mana each turn, but sadly, they just aren’t. They definitely do things and have relevant text, but often they can be too slow. A simple Thought-Knot Seer can just take the card out of your hand, or else you are stuck trying to answer a Reality Smasher at the same time that you are trying to disrupt the opponent.
The Eldrazi situation in Modern has already been addressed by many writers here on StarCityGames.com. While there have been plenty of good points made about how to try to combat the busted Eldrazi engine, I’m not saying that I went out and traded for three more Eye of Ugins to finish my playset after the Pro Tour, but I’m also not saying that I didn’t.
Ever since I moved out to the West Coast, I’ve spent most weekends glued to my computer watching SCGLive coverage and I’ve been loving it. This weekend, though, I plan on getting back into the heat of things and battling in a Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier to try to qualify for the Regional PTQ.
The format of choice is Standard, and I’ve been spending time over the last week trying to learn how to play Four-Color Rally. It has been quite an experience. I decided to start with Jacob Baugh’s winning list from #SCGCOL and then go from there.
Creatures (28)
- 3 Nantuko Husk
- 2 Elvish Visionary
- 2 Grim Haruspex
- 3 Sidisi's Faithful
- 1 Liliana, Heretical Healer
- 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
- 2 Catacomb Sifter
- 4 Zulaport Cutthroat
- 3 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
- 4 Reflector Mage
Lands (24)
Spells (8)
The first thing that I noticed while trying to learn Four-Color Rally was that Magic Online is not the best avenue for learning due to the time factor. Sadly, it is the easiest option that I have right now. Well, maybe it is the best, since I am constantly getting pressured to become quicker and more adept at figuring out lines and making choices so that I don’t time out. Which I have. Like, a lot.
In addition to being forced into efficiency, the hardest (and most time-consuming) thing has been learning how to play and fetch my lands in the first couple of turns properly. Making sure that I have all of the colors available at the crucial points in the game and making sure that they line up with the colors that I need to cast spells has been quite the learning process. The addition of Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim and Reflector Mage has helped.
They’re awesome and play a huge role against a wide range of strategies. They also mean I don’t have to get green mana early due to the reduced numbers of Elvish Visionary and Catacomb Sifter, which made the mana feel a little easier to figure out.
The biggest issue for me was planning with and around Liliana, Heretical Healer. With one in the main and another in the sideboard of Jacob’s list, making sure that I had access to double black while also wanting to have all of my lands enter the battlefield untapped was a bit of a trouble. She is extremely powerful, and I think that it’s worth it to have access to Liliana; it just took some getting used to.
Without a second basic Swamp in the deck (rightfully so), we have to make sure that we have two basics (one being a Swamp) and then a way to fetch for a Sunken Hollow. This doesn’t seem all that challenging, except we also have to make sure that we will have access to green on four for Collected Company and eventually have double white available to actually cast Rally the Ancestors.
This isn’t even taking into account sequencing your creatures correctly; how to effectively use Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy; and knowing when to try to turn the corner and tempo out your opponent. I had a game on stream last weekend where I incorrectly tried to kill my opponent with a Nantuko Husk. I ended up losing the match to time because I used too many resources when I should have just waited a turn.
I wish that I could correlate some of the thinking patterns for playing Four-Color Rally to something like Amulet Bloom, since they are both puzzle like decks that play a weird type of Magic, but I just can’t quite wrap my head around it. One thing that has helped, though, is taking a page from Michael Majors and playing it more as a tempo-style deck, leaning on Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy and Collected Company rather than always trying to just jam some type of combo kill.
The other important thing that I’ve gathered is that it’s usually corrected to bring in at least one of Anafenza, the Foremost and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet in almost every game, as it plays into your post-sideboard plan of just creaturing them out. They are beefy, dodging most of the removal that might be brought in against our smaller creatures, and can completely run away with the game. Anafenza, the Foremost also helps make our 0/4 and 1/1 creatures become actual threats.
Most of the time, I have found myself wanting to cut some Rally the Ancestors while I am sideboarding for a more creature-based plan. That’s great, because it frees up slots for me to bring in things like Duress and Murderous Cut. With Collected Company being such a huge part of our gameplan, bringing in a bunch of non-creature spells while cutting creatures greatly diminishes the spell’s effectiveness.
I am reminded a bit of Domri Rade in the old G/R Monsters decks and how I generally tried to keep my creature count between 21 and 24 when sideboarding, but the big difference is that Domri Rade always just threatened to go ultimate, even if we weren’t hitting creatures on the +1 ability. Granted, though, I have lost some games where my Domri Rade went unopposed and I got to make an emblem, but I still lost anyway after bricking on literally every single +1 ability.
Practice, Practice Practice
That has been my biggest lesson so far with trying to learn the deck. Much like Amulet Bloom, just getting experience with the deck is a huge help as a way to create shortcuts in your thinking patterns based on what pieces of the puzzle you already have available to you. Unlike Amulet Bloom, however, Four-Color Rally isn’t just trying to get to basically the same ending every time. I gotta keep practicing!
Now, I firmly believe that Four-Color Rally is the best deck in Standard. It plays the game on a different axis from everyone else and the format isn’t well-equipped to handle it. This may change if or when Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet becomes a three- or four-of in decks that can support it, but for now, most copies are relegated to the sideboard and can be handled on the back of Reflector Mage.
Having said all that, I can’t shake this notion that Reality Smasher is just Stormbreath Dragon and I need to find the best shell for the card in Standard. The “five mana and haste” correlation is easy to make, but what I really mean is that there wasn’t a time where Stormbreath Dragon was Standard-legal and it wasn’t well-positioned. Reality Smasher just has the same feel.
Once we start to go down the line of trying to cast Reality Smasher, though, just how far down the rabbit hole do we end up going? Thought-Knot Seer is a powerful Magic card, and so is Matter Reshaper. My instinct wants me to pair green ramp with Reality Smasher, but with Hedron Crawler and the other colorless creatures giving us a fine curve, I don’t think that we have to be stuck in that mindset. The biggest factor, though, is that Reality Smasher lines up pretty poorly with Crackling Doom, so maybe it’s not quite time for our monster to shine yet.
Until I can find a great shell for Reality Smasher, I think that the only deck that might get me off Four-Color Rally is the second-place Eldrazi Ramp deck from the MOCS.
Creatures (18)
- 4 Rattleclaw Mystic
- 3 Whisperer of the Wilds
- 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
- 4 World Breaker
- 3 Thought-Knot Seer
- 2 Hedron Crawler
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (24)
Spells (16)
Attacking the mana of Four-Color Rally and Jeskai Black is a real thing with World Breaker and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and with the disruptive additions of Thought-Knot Seer along with the redundancy that Oath of Nissa gives you, I think that we could be looking at another wave of Eldrazi madness here in Standard.
Mike Sigrist played Eldrazi Ramp to a Top 16 finish in the MOCS and talks about it in his fabulous new Premium column this week. The biggest difference being that he played Sylvan Advocate after Ben Rubin advocated for its inclusion. Much like my thoughts on the card, though, he has come to the conclusion that it’s just not where we want to be and he likes the mana creatures.
It seems like just when we start to figure out the format, the Eldrazi Ramp deck strikes again. Standard is pretty cyclical and I expect a surge of Atarka Red style decks to start and even things out, but the one constant is that Rally the Ancestors is busted, and that’s where I’m spending the majority of my time and preparation.
Fortunately for those of you who are in the Midwest and on the East Coast, you can go to #SCGLOU this weekend and battle against the Eldrazi in Modern. Then you can join me and Andy Boswell the following weekend for #SCGPHILLY, where we get to fire up some hot Legacy action!