Let us journey back to a simpler time, where Men were Men, Women were Women, and Birthing Pod was a combo deck. As time went by, Pod lost its roots and turned its back on the full combo in favor of value. No more Melira or Viscera Seer could be found in the 75 but a singleton Archangel of Thune and singleton Spike Feeder took their place. Fast forward to today and we see how the mighty have fallen. Birthing Pod found itself caught under the Almighty Banhammer of WotC and has been banished from Modern. Without missing a beat, the Pod decks just cut Pod and moved on as “Junk/Abzan Midrange”. Without Birthing Pod, what is a good hard working Abzan combo player to do?

Fear not weary traveler, I have a deck for you.

Three’s Company Combo

4x Æther Vial

4x Viscera Seer

4x Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit

4x Melira, Sylvok Outcast

3x Cartel Aristocrat

3x Murderous Redcap

3x Kitchen Finks

4x Collected Company

3x Chord of Calling

4x Glittering Wish

4x Windswept Heath

4x Temple Garden

3x Verdant Catacombs

3x Overgrown Tomb

3x Marsh Flats

2x Godless Shrine

2x Plains

1x Forest

2x Swamp

When Dragons of Tarkir was spoiled, I was immediately drawn to two cards; Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Collected Company. I thought, has WotC brought us the pieces to bring Abzan combo back to its roots? I believe so. Anafenza could work as a persist combo enabler (in the same vein as Melira) and Collected Company could fill the role of Birthing Pod.

Okay now to the deck.

The combo that we play is made up of three pieces.

A sacrifice outlet: Viscera Seer and Cartel Aristocrat A combo enabler: Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Melira, Sylvok Outcast Our win condition: Kitchen Finks for infinite life and Murderous Redcap for infinite damage should do nicely

To find the combo we are playing Collected Company, Chord of Calling, and Glittering Wish. Collected Company has 18 targets. I am rolling the dice on 18 targets over the “optimal” 22 so that we are able to add a Glittering Wish package. Where we would have had 4 of Cartel Aristocrat and 4 of Kitchen Finks to increase our chances on Collected Company, we moved one of each into the sideboard so that we can Wish for them. Glittering Wish is a very powerful option to have at our disposable. Being able to customize our sideboard with 3 combo pieces and 12 silver bullets is awesome. Æther Vial is the best turn 1 we can have. Uncounterable, free, flash, combo creatures is just about the best sentence to utter.

The sideboard is wide open in terms of options. Here are my suggestions. The middle and right columns represent potential Glittering Wish targets. The left column represents flex cards that can be worked into either the deck or sideboard as the meta demands.

(April fools on the Vindicate)

Thanks to Matthew Lillie for the help on the brew.

-Alex Kuzniewicz

Contact: Akuzniewicz@gmail.com