I’ve been playing Abzan Company at pretty much every competitive modern event since Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch. So naturally, I picked it up again for GP Lille. The tournament did not go well for me, and I was out of the tournament before picking up a single win. I kept running into Grafdigger’s Cages and Anger of the Gods, and I should have expected it because everyone knew about Dredge, and Abzan Company is weak to many of the same cards. So while I don’t think this deck is well positioned currently, I think once the graveyard hate dies down it might be a good choice especially as you have a positive matchup vs Dredge itself.

At its core, it is a three piece combo deck using Viscera Seer, and then either Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit or Melira, Sylvok Outcast and either Kitchen Finks (for infinite life) or Murderous Redcap (for infinite damage). The way the combo works is; you can sacrifice one of the persist creatures to your Viscera Seer and it will come back without a -1/- 1 counter if you have Melira, or the bolster trigger from Anafenza will remove the -1/- 1 counter. You will then gain either 2 life or deal 2 damage from the persist creature’s enter the battlefield trigger, depending on which one you used. You can repeat this as many times as required. You also get to scry from the Viscera Seer for each iteration, meaning you can keep scrying until you find your Murderous Redcap to close out the game if you are sacrificing  Kitchen Finks.

You might be thinking “why play a three card combo when you can play Restoration Angel and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.” There are a few reasons why I prefer the Abzan combo:

● Some of your combo pieces happen to be potent hate cards for particular matchups. For example, Kitchen Finks against Burn or Melira against Infect.

● You get to play Collected Company, which allows you to hit two combo pieces off of one card.

● Viscera Seer is very good at assembling the other parts of the combo; if you have two pieces of the combo and need to find the third, you can sacrifice any irrelevant creatures you might have in play to scry for that last combo piece.

The final reason why I prefer this build of the deck is also a bit of a tip on playing the deck. Your combo is relevant at instant speed, allowing you to leave up Chord of Calling for the last piece whilst applying pressure. If they ever stop representing a removal spell, you can combo them. Some of you will remember another deck capable of playing like this, Splinter Twin, and it ended up getting banned .

Here is the list I played at the GP:

Deck Breakdown

9 Mana Creatures – One of the best things you can be doing with this deck is casting a turn-three collected company, and playing so many mana creatures maximises your chances of doing this. Turn 2 Kitchen Finks is also great in lots of matchups. You don’t need to worry about flooding out because Gavony Township turns them all (well except Wall of Roots) into relevant threats in the late game.

2 Melira / 2 Anafenza split – Every build of abzan company should aim to play 4 copies of these creatures, some lists play 3 Anafenza and 1 melira, because Anafenza is much better if you are attacking than Melira. However Anafenza is harder to cast. Other lists play 3 Melira and 1 Anafenza, because Melira is so good against Infect and is easier to cast. Never play 4 and 0 though because they’re both legendary. Another reason for the split is you often want to draw both because that lets you get infinite bolster triggers. The way you do this is by comboing as normal, but because you don’t need the bolster triggers to continue comboing as you have Melira, you can leave them on the stack. You get one bolster trigger per iteration, which gives you infinite.

4 Kitchen Finks / 1 Murderous Redcap split – This split will be the same in every Abzan Company list you look at. It’s because Kitchen Finks is a much, much better card than Murderous Redcap and infinite life is enough to win most games. Though for the games where it isn’t you want access to a Murderous Redcap.

1 Spellskite – A lightning rod, if you’re in no rush to combo then you can get this first to protect your combo from removal. Also very strong in the Infect and Bogles matchups and decent in the Jeskai Nahiri matchup since it’s so good against damage based removal.

4 Eternal Witness – Lots of lists play only 2 or 3 Eternal Witnesses, but I feel this is incorrect. When you are casting Collected Company, Eternal Witness is the number 2 thing you’re looking for, after combo pieces. It makes sense then, to play the maximum amount of copies to increase the chances you can hit them off Collected Companies. It’s also good to get multiple uses out of a Chord, or rebuy a fetchland if you need extra mana.

1 Orzhov Pontiff – This card is great in the small creature matchups, like Infect, Affinity and even the mirror match. Pontiff is better in this deck than in any of the other decks because of the synergy with Viscera Seer. This allows you to give -2/- 2 to your opponent’s team on the turn the Pontiff enters, or access to -1/- 1 at instant speed.

1 Fiend Hunter – A removal spell that you can Chord for. It’s often correct to sacrifice the Fiend Hunter with it’s enters-the- battlefield trigger on the stack to permanently exile the creature as that’s generally more relevant than keeping the 1 / 3 body. That’s not always the case though, use your judgement to decide.

1 Scavenging Ooze – Very good against Dredge and the Mirror, I also just wanted access to some kind of graveyard hate in the maindeck so I’m not cold to anything. It also has applications against Snapcaster Mage, and sometimes you have just the one Chord and no combo pieces and Scavenging Ooze is a great card to Chord for in those situations.

1 Qasali Pridemage – Rounding out the Chord package is Naturalize on a creature, aka Qasali Pridemage. Pridemage isn’t too shabby when attacking either, which makes him acceptable in the main deck.

3 Gavony Township – This might be the best card in the deck if not for Collected Company existing. It lets you turn all of your random mana dorks and Eternal Witnesses into relevant threats in the late game, and resets all of your persist creatures that have -1/- 1 counters on. And it doesn’t even take up a spell slot.

0 Horizon Canopy – I prefer Razorverge Thicket since I almost always have a use for the mana so don’t want to sacrifice the Canopy, and at that point there’s no point in taking damage when I don’t have to.

Sideboard Cards

3 Path to Exile – Comes in against any deck which has creatures you care about. For example, Jund has Scavenging Ooze and Kalitas which you have to answer, so you board in Path.

1 Kataki, War’s Wage – Affinity/Lantern Control. Not sure it’s actually needed since I think Affinity is already a good matchup, but hard to pass up playing Kataki in the sideboard if you’re playing Chord of Calling.

1 Yixlid Jailer – Rest in Peace that you can Chord of Calling for. Except you can still use your Eternal Witnesses while it’s in play. It might look odd playing this kind of card in a deck that uses it’s graveyard as much as Abzan Company does, but you can always sacrifice it when you are ready to combo. Specifically for Dredge and the Mirror.

2 Worship – I included this card because of the Bant Eldrazi and Dredge matchups, where it buys you loads of time to combo through their own disruption. It’s also incredible vs Burn because they probably didn’t board in Destructive Revelry against you, and against Elves and Merfolk. I wouldn’t bring it in against Affinity because they can still kill you with an Inkmoth Nexus, and you already have so many good cards against Affinity.

1 Eidolon of Rhetoric – Storm and Ad Nauseam. It’s also okay against Jeskai as it turns off Snapcaster Mage and they can’t double Bolt it.

1 Reclamation Sage – Bring in whenever your opponent has shown you, or you expect them to have, relevant artifacts and enchantments. For example Affinity, any Blood Moon deck, Ad Nauseam, Bant Eldrazi {Grafdigger’s Cage} and Merfolk.

1 Burrenton Forge Tender – Entirely for Anger of the Gods. It is not good vs Ad Nauseam, even though it might seem so, as they still draw their deck so unless they boarded out Slaughter Pact (and why would they against a creature deck) they’ll be able to kill it, then kill you. They can also still Laboratory Maniac you. It’s also not good against Valakut decks, because Valakut is not red.

1 Linvala Keeper of Silence – Other chord decks, affinity. It’s like a slightly worse stony silence with a relevant body against affinity, and shuts down all of the chord decks mana acceleration and their combo / Ezuri, Renegade Leader.

3 Stony Silence – Affinity, Lantern Control, Tron. This is a card that should probably be getting the axe, as Affinity is already a good matchup, Tron is incredibly tough either way and Lantern isn’t popular at the moment.

1 Tidehollow Sculler – A Thoughtseize you can Chord for. The trick I mentioned above with Fiend Hunter is also good here. You want this vs other combo decks and tron.

1 Reveillark – For the grindy matchups such as Jund and Grixis, it’s very hard for them to overcome Reveillark getting back Eternal Witness + something, which then gets back the Reveillark… You hardly ever have to pay the evoke cost in this deck as you play Viscera Seer so can sacrifice it at will.

Matchup Guide

I’m not going to go through the details of every matchup as this article is getting long already, but I will just say who I feel is favoured in matches against the top 12 decks of the Magic Online metagame (the list is in order of popularity).

Jund: G1 Slightly Unfavoured, G2+3 Favoured, unless they have Anger of the Gods

Bant Eldrazi: G1 Favoured, G2+3 Slightly Unfavoured

Affinity: G1 Favoured, G2+3 Heavily Favoured

Zooicide: G1 Even, G2+3 Slightly Favoured

Merfolk: G1 Favoured, G2+3 Even to Slightly Unfavoured

Infect: Even (Chord for Melira asap)

Burn: Heavily Favoured

Nahiri Jeskai: Slightly Favoured

Abzan: Slightly Favoured

RG Breach: Unfavoured

RG Tron: Heavily Unfavoured

If you have any questions or card suggestions, let me know in the comments section.