Today I’ll be playing Modern with my latest Return to the Ranks brew, an Abzan deck inspired by Soul Sisters but splashing some cards to make Return to the Ranks better.
Creatures (31)
- 4 Soul Warden
- 4 Soul's Attendant
- 4 Viscera Seer
- 4 Ajani's Pridemate
- 4 Blood Artist
- 4 Cartel Aristocrat
- 3 Voice of Resurgence
- 4 Satyr Wayfinder
Lands (21)
Spells (8)
Sideboard
Round 1
Obviously Burn is a very lucky matchup for me, since I’m a lifegain deck–that said, I don’t have that many different cards that gain life and each of them are pretty fragile, so it’s certainly a matchup I could see losing. In fact, I almost lost the second game, partially because I didn’t consider my opponent’s sideboard properly.
Round 2
I’ve generally been very impressed with Lingering Souls against Affinity, but the rest of my cards were also pretty useful here.
Round 3
That first game did a good job of demonstrating the weakness of not really playing any way to directly interact with my opponent’s cards. I thought Stony Silence was going to win the third game, but my opponent drew a timely Repeal.
Round 4
Well, that last match demonstrated that Voice of Resurgence is great, and not being able to cast spells isn’t. Moving forward, I would definitely play four Voice of Resurgence. I’m not entirely sure what to cut. I think I’m going to start with Lingering Souls, but that’s not ideal. One card that’s particularly interesting is Abzan Ascension since I have a lot of nontoken creatures, and those get the most value out of Abzan Ascension. It might just be that I need as many creatures as possible for the shell to work.