Against the Odds: Chromantiflayer Worship (Modern)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode ninety-three of Against the Odds. Last week, we had a second-chance poll, with options that came in second or third on previous polls getting another chance at glory. In the end, the five-color enchantment creature Chromanticore #146 came out on top. As such, this week, we're heading to Modern to play a deck that's looking to cast Chromanticore #146, exile Chromanticore #146 from the graveyard, and even bestow Chromanticore #146, backed by a lot of keywords and hexproof creatures, which in turn lets us play Worship #6 to (hopefully) stay alive! What are the odds of winning with Chromantiflayer Worship in Modern? We're about to find out! Before we get to the videos, one last thing: no Against the Odds poll this week. Next week marks the release of Hour of Devastation, so we'll have a special episode! Don't worry, the poll will be back next week with a bunch of Hour of Devastation options!
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Against the Odds: Chromantiflayer Worship (Deck Tech)
Against the Odds: Chromantiflayer Worship (Games)
The Deck
As soon as Chromanticore #146 won the voting, I had a pretty good idea of what direction to go with the deck: the combo of milling a Chromanticore #146 and then exiling it with Soulflayer #138 to build a two-mana Baneslayer Angel #7 saw fringe play in Standard, and the delve mechanic in general is much better in Modern, where it's so much easier to get cards in the graveyard, so instead of trying to figure out what type of deck to build, Chromantiflayer Worship was more about figuring out the best way of supporting the Chromanticore #146 / Soulflayer #138 plan.
Chromanticore #146 / Soulflayer #138 is a weird combo. It doesn't just win the game immediately, but it does build a pretty threatening creature. In theory, if we can dump a bunch of cards into our graveyard on Turn 2 (including a Chromanticore #146), we can delve them away to Soulflayer #138 on Turn 3 and end up with a two-mana flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, lifelink 4/4, which is a pretty impressive threat. The problem is that this monstrosity doesn't really have any protection—even though it has a ton of keywords, it doesn't have hexproof or indestructible—so it can still be killed pretty easily by a Path to Exile #29 or Terminate #134. To really make our Soulflayer #138 lethal, we'd need some sort of protection.
[[Thrun, the Last Troll], Troll Ascetic #50, and Rhonas the Indomitable #719 (along with Sylvan Caryatid #272, which we'll talk about in a minute) are some of the key cards in our deck because they do two important things. First, if we can get one of them in the graveyard to exile to Soulflayer #138 along with a Chromanticore #146, we end up with a Soulflayer #138 that not only has all of Chromanticore #146's abilities but hexproof or indestructible as well. Second, since we are a Chromanticore #146 deck, we aren't just looking to exile the enchantment creature. While it takes a lot of mana, bestowing a Chromanticore #146 onto one of our hexproof or indestructible creatures is very strong, giving us a seven- or eight-power hexproof, evasive creature that also gains us a ton of life whenever it attacks or blocks.
Sylvan Caryatid #272 and Birds of Paradise #439 Borderless are mostly in our deck to help fix our mana and ramp into our Chromanticore #146, but they have the upside of working well with our Soulflayer #138 plan as well. Even if we can't get a Chromanticore #146 in our graveyard, just exiling a Sylvan Caryatid #272 will give us a 4/4 hexproof for two mana, while Birds of Paradise #439 Borderless grants flying as well.
Satyr Wayfinder #81 and Grisly Salvage #164 are our primary ways of filling the graveyard for Soulflayer #138. Satyr Wayfinder #81 also makes sure we hit our land drops, which is pretty important considering we are looking to cast (or bestow) a five-color creature. Grisly Salvage #164, on the other hand, helps us dig for Chromanticore #146s and Soulflayer #138s while also dumping a bunch of cards in the graveyard for our delve plan. Just remember: there are times when we actually want the best creature we hit with Grisly Salvage #164 in our graveyard instead of our hand, so we can delve it away with Soulflayer #138. Finally, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy #60 is just a one-of backup plan, but unlike Satyr Wayfinder #81 and Grisly Salvage #164, which interact with our library, the flip-walker gives us a way to discard a Chromanticore #146 that's stuck in our hand to set up the Soulflayer #138 combo.
Worship #6 is the last piece of the puzzle. While I didn't start out trying to build a Worship #6 deck, after putting all the other pieces together and realizing how many hexproof creatures we wanted to play for Soulflayer #138 and Chromanticore #146, it became obvious that Chromantiflayer was the perfect home for the enchantment. While the power of Worship #6 depends on the matchup, some decks can't beat a hexproof creature with a Worship #6 on the battlefield, and even if a deck does have outs to the Worship #6 lock, it usually buys us a bunch of turns while our opponent is digging for an answer. Ideally, we can use these turns to beat our opponent down with Soulflayer #138 and Chromanticore #146 to get the win.
Lastly, we have a couple more threats and a single Path to Exile #29 for removal. Tasigur, the Golden Fang #197 and Lingering Souls #30 just give us additional good cards that care about the graveyard, with Tasigur, the Golden Fang #197 giving us a delve payoff when we don't find a Soulflayer #138 and Lingering Souls #30 flashing black to make some chump blockers or flying attackers. As for Path to Exile #29, we didn't have much room for removal, so hopefully Worship #6 will be enough to keep us alive, but it's nice to know we do have one hard removal spell in our deck in case the situation calls for it.
The Matchups
The matchups for Chromantiflayer Worship are really weird because our deck cares about weird things. First, as I mentioned a minute ago, some decks really struggle to beat Worship #6 (often combo decks or creature decks without Collective Brutality #101 or enchantment removal in the main deck), so we occasionally pick up free Worship #6 wins. Second, we don't really care too much about targeted removal because nearly all of our best threats are hexproof, which means we're mostly scared of wraths (which make control decks and some black midrange decks into challenging matchups) and Liliana of the Veil #97 (which can edict away our Soulflayer #138). Finally, graveyard hate can be an issue. While it doesn't directly beat our deck, it does make Soulflayer #138 horrible, which means we lose one of our lines of attack and instead are stuck with just enchanting Trolls with Chromanticore #146 and a Worship #6 backup. While this plan can still win a lot of games, it's a lot slower and less scary than a random Turn 3 Soulflayer #138.
All in all, we want to play control decks the least because they are the most likely to have wraths that undo all of our work, while random creature-based decks are probably our best matchups because they not only struggle with Worship #6 but often can't beat Chromanticore #146 or Soulflayer #138 either. Combo is somewhere in the middle—if we can stick a Worship #6, our odds of winning go away up, especially in game one, but without Worship #6, decks like Ad Nauseam and Storm are usually just a bit too fast for us and don't really care about us gaining some life here and there from Chromanticore #146 and Soulflayer #138.
The Odds
All in all, we only got in four matches, since a couple of them went super long, but we ended up winning three (good for a 75% match win percentage), while playing 10 games and winning six (60% game win percentage)—both figures were solid. Of course, this is complicated by the small sample size, and while the deck seems really good and functional, it's unlikely that it could win 75% of the time over the long run. That said, we didn't really run into a ton of good Worship #6 matches and still managed to get a lot of wins. Soulflayer #138 was awesome, as expected, but more surprising was how many games we won simply by bestowing a Chromanticore #146 onto a random hexproof creature. In some ways, the bestow Chromanticore #146 plan makes our deck feel like big Bogles, but instead of putting a bunch of little enchantments on a creature, we do it all at once with one Chromanticore #146! The deck was a blast to play. All the pieces fit together amazingly well, and it seemed like it really could keep up with many of the best decks in Modern!
Vote for Next Week's Deck
No poll this week. Next week is week one of Hour of Devastation, so we'll be having a special episode! Don't worry, the poll will return next week with a bunch of Hour of Devastation options!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
