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By: BlastodermMan, Carl E Wilt
May 21 2015 12:00pm
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We all have favorites. Things or people that we prefer above others, sometimes for really no apparent reason. I was born and raised in Northeast Ohio, and it was ingrained in me to follow and love the teams from Cleveland. Through the years, I've had numerous "favorite players" for each team. While I rarely have a favorite right now, and tend to look at these teams more objectively than I used to even a mere 10 years ago, there are still lingering sentiments to the past and those players that helped reinforce my love for these teams.

With the Browns, my first favorite was a linebacker name Robert L. Jackson. He was a '77 first round pick, and I was a huge fan. Funny thing about fandom...it does not require that the player be great or legendary. They just become your guy. After his playing days ended, my allegiance fell to Bob Golic, a nose tackle.

As a Cavs fan, I'm sure everybody assumes LeBron is my guy. Funny enough, he's not. My favorites through the years have ranged from Bingo Smith to World B. Free, to Mark Price. But, as I alluded to earlier, I rarely chose favorites now, and usually look at the team as a whole and how it works and plays together. But I would be lying if I didn't say that Tristan Thompson has grown on me. He's a fierce defender and simply savage on the glass. He's a modern day Dennis Rodman without being a complete head case.

When it came to the Indians, Paul Dade was the first guy. Why? He was the first guy I was aware of at the time that wore "00" as his uniform number. And he was bad. I remember how mad I was when the Tribe traded him away for some guy named Mike Hargrove. Dade was out of the MLB by the next year, while The Grover was batting .300 for the next 6-7 for my hometown team. But, even though it wasn't his fault, I still never warmed up to him, statistics be damned. Hargrove would also go on to manage the Indians through their most successful stint since the mid 1940's to mid-1950's. One of the players he managed during that period is none other than my all-time favorite baseball player: Jim Thome.

Thome could hit, and he just crushed the ball. He's the all-time home run leader for the team, having hammered 337 of his career 612 dingers for the good guys. Sure he struck out a lot over his 22 year career, to the tune of just over 2,500 times. But, he kept on hacking away. And he was good enough overall that teams were willing...hell, ecstatic in some cases...to tolerate him striking out four times for every monster shot he blasted into the stands.

What does all this have to do with Magic? Simple. A lot of us have favorite cards and favorite strategies.  Some spend the entirety of our Magic playing days swinging for the fences and trying to make those cards and strategies work, regardless of the number of strikeouts we end up with. Where does that leave me? Standing right here in the batter's box staring down more Modern decks featuring the hotness of Collected Company.

As I went on about last week, Modern and Collected Company seem like a match made in heaven...they just go together, much like chocolate and peanut butter, or peanut butter and jelly...or, well, let's just say anything and peanut butter, since that George Washington Carver commodity seems to pair with just about everything in an awesome fashion.

As I look over decks, I keep seeing a lot of the same decks I wrote about last week. There is one, though, that I found which was different that those.

 

Naya Zoo is a deck that's been around for quite a while. When Wild Nacatl was given a reprieve and removed from the ban list, some form of this deck has pretty much always existed. It's always been considered a notch below Tier 1 in Modern, and despite recent results, I'm not sure that Collected Company moves it up a level. This addition to the deck means something has to be removed, be it more removal or added creature pump. It is not infrequent to lose the flexibility of something like Atarka's Command to make room, and that may or may not be worth it.

Between last week, and this list, I've not seen much in the way of other successful Collected Company decks in the format. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. In my pursuit of more and more Company decks, I started thinking. How many AEther Vial decks are out there running around? For anyone who has played a deck with the Vial in it, we all know the joy of top decking one on turn 10 when almost any other real spell could have changed the outcome of the game. Would it really be that unreasonable to give up a little early game advancement for more late game action?

I know Fish is probably the most common Vial deck, and I wouldn't advocate messing around with a very solid deck, and making the mana base worse, just for the sake of jamming in Company. But, what about those other off-the-beaten-path Vial decks? Or the random Lead the Stampede deck? For example, look at this deck from a Modern PTQ Top 8 from a year ago:

 

Perhaps this deck would need a tweak to the land count to support being able to reliably cast Company, but I can envision several cases where the 4-drop instant would be superior to the Vial. There does come a point in time where you run out of resources in hand, or just need to rebuild after a board sweeper. In both of those cases, neither of which are infrequent in Modern, I would much rather get the 2-for-1, and play with a little more resilience. Even if Slivers is not the best place to jam in the Company, a quick web search will reveal tons of decks built around Vial, or, as mentioned earlier, Lead the Stampede, where there very well may be a case for the swap.

Lastly, so as not to be that guy who ignores requests and input from others, I have tossed together a beginners Hasted Company deck.


 

 

I'm not saying this deck is competitive, and I've only have the opportunity to play it once online, what with being out of town for work this week. But it was tons of fun in the match I did get in. As can be easily figured out from the list, my goal here is to basically play a game of solitaire. I playing guys and crashing in for damage. Some of the dudes stick around beyond the first turn, but many of them are just one-shots. I resisted the urge to 8-Ball it, and instead opted for a "mere" three-each of Ball Lightning and Groundbreaker. I am intrigued by the possibility of using Company to flip up double 6/1 guys. Obviously, this deck plays a little differently that other versions, as you will almost always want to cash in the Company pre-combat, since all your guys get there right away. That also means that there is little reason to hold up mana for your opponent's turn, so you are free to just drop guys and swing. Obviously, this is a pretty rough draft, and perhaps the "All Guys, No Interaction" plan is somewhat foolhardy. I can see where something like this may do well in an 8-man, or even a daily where it only needs to do well for three or four rounds and a lot of decks can simply run hot on any given day, but I envision this doing poorly in larger, paper events like an SCG Open or Premier IQ.

I'm not sure when my current obsession with Collected Company will wane. Right now, it's just been so much fun playing, searching, and brewing, that this could go on for a while. Fear not, loyal readers. I do promise to write about other things going forward, though I will reserve the right to revisit this should I ever, you know, actually break it.

Some of us just have to always swing for the fences.

Peace,
Carl Wilt