Sunday, March 1, 2015

Modern Decks - Soul Sisters - Part 4 - Evolution

Hi Everyone!

I found that my Soul Sisters deck was fun to play but had the fundamental problem of all "fair" decks in Modern. It lost to combo and many control decks, especially ones with cards like electrolyze (but it dominates vs other creature decks). After trying many different variations of the deck I found that I always needed one more turn to win vs a lot of the unfair decks or they wrath me on the last turn I have before I kill my opponent.

The deck functions in a way that there are really only 8 threats, Ajani's Pridemate and Serra Ascendant. Everything else in the deck just enables those 8 threats to be dangerous threats. The exception to this statement is Honor of the Pure. It was the card that was to make my giant army of 1/1s into a slightly bigger army that is more useful than a board of 1/1s.

My approach to the evolution of my Soul Sisters build was to put in cards that had to be "I win now cards" because Honor of the Pure just wasn't cutting it. It made my creatures less laughable, but attacking with a 2/2 after a wrath effect isn't going to strike fear into a control players heart.

I put in two cards that are specifically for those matches where I have 5 1/1 creatures and my opponent is at more than 5 life. It happened all the time, they were at a point where if I could get in one more attack I'd win the game.

The first card I put in is from Kamigawa block. It's called Charge Across the Araba. It allowed me to turn my creatures into larger creatures for one turn. This was great as when I drew it and played it, I almost always won the game. It's worth noting that i don't need to return the plains until the spell is resolving. It was great but it was an all-in answer. If it didn't work I was back to square 1 with land and trying to catch up is rough. I needed something else.

I came across Archangel of Thune (most famously from Pod decks that use it with a Spike Feeder to gain an arbitrarily large amount of life).

When I finally read the card I realized, this is PERFECT! I had only ever thought of it as a combo piece and never thought it could be cast (to be honest I didn't realize it only cost 5 mana, I assumed it cost 6 or 7). If I play archangel and it resolves and it's ability resolves after a few soul sisters are in play, the game is over. I most often end up playing it with Windbrisk Heights and using it for the kill on a specific attack, or to ambush blockers. There's not a lot better than having 3 1/1 Soul Sisters attacking and cast an archangel off Heights at instant speed for the win when they don't block.

Here's my final decklist how it sits today. The Charges are way less good than archangel, especially that the deck has Cavern of Souls and Windbrisk Heights now.I have considered cutting the Charges but I think only having 4 "I win now" cards isn't enough against a lot of the unfair decks in the format. I also added the maximum number of Paths to the deck because there are too many creatures that can muck up the ground early on if we don't have something really powerful. Also, with Electrolyze, players will nearly always burn two soul sisters so I added brave the elements. It can cost them the draw from electrolyze and they kill zero creatures instead of two. It takes a great trade for them, essentially a 3 for 1, and turns it into a 1 for 1, and we're happy about that.

4 Serra Ascendant
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Ajani's Pridemate
4 Path to Exile
4 Soul Warden
4 Soul's Attendant
4 Archangel of Thune
3 Spectral Procession
2 Brave the Elements
2 Auriok Champion
2 Charge Across the Araba
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Windbrisk Heights
19 Plains

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