When Vizier of Remedies was first printed, Counters Company became the most popular shell for it and Devoted Druid, since it was the most obvious shell. However, it’s clear now that that shell has inherent problems, namely that neither combo piece is particularly effective on its own, so the deck didn’t have a solid backup plan, an issue that is exacerbated by the fact that both combo pieces are creatures and thus the combo is easy to interact with.
Since then, we’ve seen Elves emerge as a better shell for the combo, since it can make good use of Devoted Druid and already has the tools to assemble and leverage the combo without significantly affecting its original gameplan. Today’s deck operates on the same level, using Devoted Druid as a quality mana creature to fuel a devotion-based ramp plan that can consistently compete even when you don’t find Vizier of Remedies.
The major pieces of the shell are Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, Garruk Wildspeaker, and Oath of Nissa. The first three are a very explosive core of acceleration that Devoted Druid does an excellent job of supplementing, while Oath of Nissa provides the deck much-needed consistency and some additional devotion.
The rest of the deck is more customizable, but I believe all the choices here to be informed by the addition of the combo. Primal Command is most notable, since it’s a nice tutor for your combo pieces or your singleton Walking Ballista if you’re already generated a billion mana. Notably, you can still “go off” without Walking Ballista by chaining Eternal Witnesses and targeting many of your opponent’s lands, creating a huge battlefield presence and finishing the chain by finding Primeval Titan to set up Kessig Wolf Run.
Less obvious but still important are the other choices of creatures, most of which provide inherent card advantage. Such card advantage, alongside the addition of Fatal Push, lets the deck play an attrition plan against heavy disruption decks, an important angle because those are the decks against which the combo plan will be least effective.
I’ve been a fan of devotion strategies in Modern for a while now, but they’ve always struggled against non-interactive decks, since they’re not as fast as most combo. Devoted Druid and Vizier of Remedies could go a long way to helping the deck there, much like it did with Elves.
Creatures (21)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 3 Eternal Witness
- 4 Devoted Druid
- 4 Arbor Elf
- 1 Primeval Titan
- 1 Hornet Queen
- 1 Scavenging Ooze
- 1 Courser of Kruphix
- 2 Tireless Tracker
- 1 Walking Ballista
- 1 Vizier of Remedies
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (20)
Spells (15)
