



I took my take on Abzan Company to a top 8 finish at SCG DFW. I felt like I had a pretty good idea on the metagame coming into the weekend and I was pretty spot on with my assessments. I expected there to be a lot of Jund, Tron, and hyper aggressive strategies (Zoo, Burn, Infect). Abzan Coco is generally favored against most aggressive decks so it was a good choice in that regard but not so much when paired against the other two animals. So I knew I would have to shape my deck in a way that would help me with those matchups and not hurt me in others.

Main Deck

I started with cutting Murderous Redcap because infinite life was good enough against most of the field. The only matchup I really wanted Murderous Redcap for was the mirror and I felt like the deck had died down in popularity with Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet running around so I started there.

I added a few bullets against Tron - Fulminator Mage and Aven Mindcensor. The matchup plays out differently than most other matchups because you just want to end the game as fast as possible and your infinite life combo doesn't beat them. But Coco doesn't have a aggressive curve so you are forced to chip away at the life and hope to keep them off Urza’s lands for as long as possible. In the sideboard I decided on going all in on the Fulminator plan and boarded 3 more. There was one problem in doing this: the mana. When you play 4 of something, you really want to cast it on turn 2 and double black is a hefty price. So, I decided I would need to change the mana from the stock lists to support them. I wanted more black sources but I didn’t want to make any of my other colors worse in the process. I ended up cutting 1 Gavony Township and 1 Horizon Canopy for 1 Godless Shrine and 1 Marsh Flats. That put me up to 14 black sources and 1 additional white which I felt was good enough. This helped against another poor matchup, Scapeshift, so I felt it was worth the changes and devoting all of the slots.



Jund just has too much spot removal and graveyard interaction for you to ever combo with Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Murderous Redcap. So, I had to think of something different. I went with the Spike Feeder / Archangel of Thune Combo. You just remove a counter from Feeder to gain 2 life and it triggers Archangel's "put a counter on everything", so you end up with infinite life with all of your Spike Feeders with infinite power. It doesn’t use the graveyard, so it dodges most of the problems Melira has. Also just having Archangel without the Feeder is a nightmare for Jund; It lives through all the burn spells, makes all of your mediocre creatures into sizable threats, and still makes massive unblockable life swings. Sideboard wise, Pharika, God of Affliction was my biggest bullet in this matchup. The ability to make deathtouch creatures to stall Tarmogoyf and stop the massive impact of a late scavenging ooze is huge. They also can't deal with a indestructible threat when it gets active and just turns into a virtual The Abyss late.

This was the list I ended up submitting.

Now let's talk about some more of the singletons I decided on running: Fiend Hunter, Scavenging Ooze, Spellskite, and Wall of Roots. You really need at least 1 answer to creatures in your main or you are just asking to be punished. I settled on Fiend Hunter, which has become a staple in the Archetype as of late. Scavenging Ooze is pretty obvious about what it's for - it helps against all kinds of graveyard strategies like Dredge, Flashback, Living End, and the mirror. It also gains you life against decks like burn and zoo. I would never not play one in the main. Moving on, Spellskite is just kind of a catch-all for everything; always play one and never really board it out just because of the power to Chord of Calling for it in a pinch. It serves other roles against Death's Shadow Zoo and against Infect by protecting you from massive pump spell, but it is mostly to protect your stuff from removal.

The last one was a tough one; I ended on Wall of Roots because it is just another mana guy that is actually good against aggressive decks; what could be so hard about that? I debated on the 4th Noble Hierarch, Orzhov Pontiff, Murderous Redcap, or just some other singleton. At the end of the day, I just liked having it for Chord of Calling and couldn’t see myself not playing one.

Sideboard

The sideboard of a Chord of Calling deck is always a tough cookie to crack - let's break it down.

I had 10 creatures that could be hit by Collected Company and 5 removal spells. The removal Suite I chose was 3 Path to Exile 1 Abrupt Decay and 1 Maelstrom Pulse.

Maelstrom Pulse was mostly a concession that i needed a way to kill Planeswalkers like Nahiri, the Harbinger and still kill other all the other permanents that Decay could. Path was to fight other creature based combo decks that would be racing my combo.



Onto the creature's 1 Pharika, God of Affliction, 1 Sin Collector, 2 Tidehollow Sculler, 1 Qasali Pridemage, 3 Fulminator Mage, 1 Orzhov Pontiff, and 1 Kataki, War's Wage. Pharika shines against any deck that has a ton of removal and against creature based graveyard strategies.

Sin Collector is for spell based combo decks like Scapeshift and Ad Nauseam. Tidehollow Sculler does mostly the same thing as Collector, but you can take cards like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet. It also combines well with Viscera Seer to remove their thing forever and sometimes just getting a peek is all you need to win a game. Qasali Pridemage primarily kills cards like Ensnaring Bridge; you really need it because of the absence of Redcap - you have to win through the combat step.

I talked about Fulminator Mage earlier, but it is also good against control strategies and decks with greedy mana like Jeskai Nahiri and Grixis. Orzhov Pontiff is for decks with lots of low toughness creatures Affinity, Infect, and Elves. Kataki, War's Wage is just the best bullet against Affinity and Lantern.



That pretty much sums up all of my thoughts on the deck. I would definitely run it back again with minimal changes to the 75. Finally, I still don’t think you need to run Redcap anymore. If the meta shifts again, that may change, but as of now I say keep them at home and bring your angels to the table.



In Action







