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Much Abrew: GW Rallier Emeria (Modern)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Techs, it was an interesting, new Aether Revolt-influenced take on one of my favorite archetypes that came out on top, so this week, we are heading to Modern to test out GW Rallier Emeria. We've played Mono-White Emeria on Budget Magic and Blue-White Emeria before on Much Abrewand both decks were pretty solid, providing ample road blocks in the early turns to stay alive and boasting a great late game thanks to Emeria, the Sky Ruin. Today's deck look similar but drops the consistency of blue for green to gain access to some ramp in Sakura-Tribe Elder and some grindy value in Renegade Rallier and even Eternal Witness. Can the new hotness give the old guard a run for its money? We're about to find out!

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GW Rallier Emeria: Instant Deck Tech

GW Rallier Emeria vs. Infect (Match 1)

GW Rallier Emeria vs. Abzan Company (Match 2)

GW Rallier Emeria vs. Elves (Match 3)

GW Rallier Emeria vs. Naya Humans (Match 4)

GW Rallier Emeria vs. Naya Zoo (Match 5)

GW Rallier Emeria (Wrap-Up)

Discussion

  • First off, we finished our matches with a 2-3 record, which isn't Mono-Blue Mill or Vintage Kobolds bad but isn't very good either.
  • More troubling, the deck just didn't feel good. Some decks look horrible on paper but actually end up playing pretty well. GW Rallier Emeria is the opposite—it looked sweet on paper but felt really clunky once we started our matches.
  • It's hard to point to one specific thing as the cause of the clunkiness. I think the biggest problem is that the deck sometimes felt like it was fighting itself. Sakura-Tribe Elder is great when we are comboing off with Renegade Rallier but much less exciting when we have Flickerwisp instead of Renegade Rallier. On the other hand, we sometimes get the Wall of Omens hand, which is great with Flickerwisp but leaves us casting Renegade Rallier as a vanilla 3/2.
  • Speaking of Renegade Rallier, the namesake card was super high variance and arguably win-more in this deck. We had a couple of times where it was amazing and generated a ton of value, but it was usually in games we were winning anyway. More often, we had it rotting in our hand, either lacking a way to trigger rally or lacking a target in our graveyard. While I think Renegade Rallier will end up being a great card in Modern, I'm not sure that Emeria is the right build to harness its power. 
  • A friendly reminder: don't play 61 cards, even if you're not playing Identity Thief
  • The other problem with the deck is the numbers were weird. Rather than being four-ofs, many of our best cards were three-ofs, presumably to make room for some random one-ofs. As a result, we occasionally wouldn't find cards that we really needed (for example, Lone Missionary against aggressive decks) in a timely manner. As such, if you decide to play this build, the first thing I'd do would be to cut the one-ofs like Selfless Spirit, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Eternal Witness and use these slots for the fourth Lone Missionary, Flickerwisp, and Sakura-Tribe Elder
  • Banishing Light is pretty slow for Modern. I can see an argument for it as a misers one-of, but three copies is simply too many for the main deck. 
  • So, should you play GW Rallier Emeria? This is a hard one to answer. With the updates we talked about, the deck might be passable and maybe even playable, but I can't imagine it being as good as UW Emeria. In Emeria, Renegade Rallier specifically is just so much less consistent than Court Hussar and I spent most of our matches wishing I were playing UW rather than GW. While the green cards are good in a vacuum, in the context of what UW Emeria is trying to accomplish (staying alive long enough to take over the game with Emeria, the Sky Ruin), they are significantly worse than the blue cards. So, give it a try if you want to experience a different build of Emeria, but do so at your own risk.
  • Since we've been talking about UW Emeria, here's the list!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos! 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.



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