Can You Dig It?

By Carlos Gutierrez, August 4, 2017

{W}{G} midrange has always been an interesting proposition in Modern. Knight of the Reliquary is a very powerful Magic card, but it’s a little slow for the format. The deck has all manner of exciting value creatures, but could struggle to find the right ones at the right time. Then Collected Company happened. Suddenly, not only do {W}{G} decks have a card advantage engine that helps fight against counterspells and sweepers, but you also have a means of card selection, helping to ensure that you find key combinations of cards. So why would you choose to play {W}{G} midrange over something like Hate Bears or the Devoted Druid combo? One new card from Hour of Devastation is a pretty big incentive:

Ramunap Excavator
The key reason to play this deck is so that you can Ghost Quarter Death’s Shadow opponents out of the game. That style of deck frequently only plays one basic land, which means your Ghost Quarters quickly become Strip Mines. With Knight of the Reliquary and Courser of Kruphix to help you find all the Ghost Quarters, there are quite a few opponents you can lock out of the game.

This deck also plays an exciting lands matter subtheme. With Knight of the Reliquary fueling landfall triggers and finding utility lands, there’s a huge incentive for an interesting package of land synergies. That’s especially true when Azusa, Lost But Seeking, Ramunap Excavator, and Tireless Tracker can all be hit by Collected Company.

Ramunap Excavator in particular is exciting because it lets you rebuy key lands like Horizon Canopy and Ghost Quarter, while Azusa, Lost But Seeking lets you do it multiple times in a turn. If you’ve got Tireless Tracker or Courser of Kruphix in the mix, you can start generating substantial card advantage or selection.

One of the most interesting thing about this deck is the amount of flexibility you have in building it. Collected Company means you can find any number of value creatures depending on what you expect to play against. Everything from Aven Mindcensor to Qasali Pridemage is completely reasonable. When you can consistently Collected Company into cards that are above the curve for their cost and synergize well with one another, you’re in a pretty great spot.

If you’re looking for a midrange deck capable of keeping up with the attrition decks in the format, this is a great place to start. You may struggle some against fast starts from Death’s Shadow, but the density of high impact creatures means you’ll be in reasonable shape against most any other fair deck, and Collected Company means you have a lot of opportunities to find one-ofs or two-ofs that swing the unfair matchups. All in all, this is a flexible deck that has game against most of the format, but will turn you into a huge favorite if you can accurately predict what your metagame will look like.

Commander 2017 is now available for Preorder!

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