Brewt Force: Ayli Control

Brewt Force! Geddit??

Amazing puns aside, hello and welcome to Brewt Force, where I'll be taking some more obscure ideas from our Magic card pools and expanding upon them to come up with new and interesting decks.

This week: Ayli Control, the competitive lifegain deck for Standard!

Wait, what?

A competitive lifegain deck in standard? Give me a minute; allow me to explain. I promise I'm not crazy.

I, like many others, loved the idea of a lifelink-style deck back when I first started playing Magic. And, like many others, I was soon conditioned out of the notion - lifegain-based strategies tend to lack a real game-plan, as they don't deal with the increasing number of threats presented by the opponent. They don't do anything to actually get the opponent dead, or get their creatures off the table. It's a stall tactic, and one that inevitably runs out of steam sooner than the player would like.

There have been somewhat-competitive lifegain decks in Modern, such as Soul Sisters - a deck that congratulates players for having large amounts of life thanks to cards like Serra Ascendant. So, why hasn't there been such a deck in standard? The answer: before now, there hasn't been much - if any - payoff for gaining lots of life, outside of merely padding yourself against creature beatdown or the Atarka Red matchup.

I've been testing the following deck to reasonable success and I'm happy to say that, finally, it may be time to start brewing with lifegain in a competitive light once again.

So, let's jump right into it!

What is Ayli Control?

Ayli Control is a deck I've designed that leverages high-density lifegain with board control and efficient Abzan beaters. It's a more controlling take on the traditional Junk list that has been present throughout Khans standard. Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is the core of our deck, and the namesake of our strategy.

Ayli gives us early protection against creatures thanks to her Deathtouch ability, meaning she trades with almost anything. She also has a nice X/3 toughness, which can protect her against a fair chunk of the format's removal, and many cheap threats. But what she really does is gain us a lot of life, and, once we hit 30, we can start erasing the opponent's board and begin to take over. She is an essential piece of hardware and she is super easy to get online. This deck is trying to do two things throughout the game:

1. Put our life total out of reach. This is an effective strategy against many of the more popular decks in the format right now: it gives us lots of breathing room vs Rally triggers, means we can't get one-shotted by the rampaging R/B Dragons deck haymaker (read: Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury), and it is hilariously good against Atarka Red, which is surging in popularity thanks to Reckless Bushwhacker and friends taking advantage of the slower decks in the format.

2. Set up our board. The deck wins via a combination of a repeatable Vindicate effect and a mass of tokens, which can often simply alpha strike a win out of nowhere. Wall of Resurgence often buys us so much time in the early game, even against the biggest, baddest beaters of the format, such as Reality Smasher and Rhino, that we can set up our army without fear of getting run over by larger threats.

We can also sneak out wins with the very cute but still very effective Felidar Sovereign, though this isn't preferred - it's mainly a way to break through stalled board states and occasionally nab a game once an opponent's kill spells have been exhausted.

So, in a nutshell: Ayli Control is an Abzan variant that tries to lock up the early game and then eventually overwhelm the opponent with a mass of value-generating creatures, repeatable kill spells, and an unreachable lifetotal.

Why play Ayli Control?

More specifically, your question might be, "Why not just play Abzan midrange?"

1. Ayli Control has better game vs Aggro. Game 1 is a lot easier for us with 3 mainboard Feed the Clan and our ridiculous amount of lifegain. Atarka's Command is a beating, but that card is good no matter what, and we still pack a higher density of life gaining solutions.

2. Ayli Control has better longevity. It is quite easy to "soft lock" the opponent out of the game with Alyi + Gideon's constant stream of tokens to sacrifice. Our walls block almost all of the threats that Abzan Aggro can deploy, with natural immunity to Abzan Charm to boot.

On top of these two big reasons, we can simply just play an Abzan Midrange game as the situation calls for it, as we still run many of the major Abzan threats that our midrange cousins employ: we are a synergistic deck that doesn't sacrifice power for our combo, and that's what keeps us competitive.

The Deck.

Here is the list I have been testing and tuning. The most recent iteration is as follows.

Creatures
4 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
4 Wall of Resurgence
4 Siege Rhino
4 Hangarback Walker
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Lantern Scout
1 Felidar Sovereign

Spells
3 Abzan Charm
3 Feed the Clan
3 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Secure the Wastes
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor

Lands
1 Blighted Steppe
3 Canopy Vista
4 Flooded Strand
1 Forest
2 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
2 Sandsteppe Citadel
4 Shambling Vent
2 Sunken Hollow
2 Swamp
4 Windswept Heath

Sideboard
3 Orator of Ojutai
1 Infinite Obliteration
2 Silkwrap
1 Negate
3 Surge of Righteousness
2 Languish
1 Exert Influence
2 Den Protector

Let's go through some of the card choices.

Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim.The staple of our deck. Legendary, but we want to see her always, and early, so we run 4. Don't underestimate how powerful her second ability can be: exiling nonland permanents, often generating value at the same time (sacrificing a Hangarback or a free token via Gideon) and not using a card is what puts this deck over the top in the late game. You'll often get to the point where you can activate her twice in a turn.

Wall of Resurgence. A fat 0/6 blocker that puts itself in front of nearly every relevant ground-based threat in the game. Early on, we like to avoid making our lands killable, so I would advise against just slamming down counters on your only B source every time you play your wall; however, late game, getting some counters on our Shambling Vent and turning it into a 5/6 Lifelinking beatstick is no joke. WoR is also one of our primary targets for Ayli's sacrifice effect: block an attacker, sacrifice EoT and gain 6 life is the fastest way to accelerate into Ayli's second ability outside of a supercharged Feed the Clan.

Siege Rhino. I don't really have to explain why Rhino is here, do I? He applies pressure, he's another source of lifegain, and he turns on our ferocious Feed the Clan, which is one of our most important spells.

Hangarback Walker. Second best target for Ayli's sacrifice effect. Gain some life, make a bunch of flying blockers!

Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Taz gives us another way to get Feed the Clan online, survives post-board languish, roadblocks a bunch of ground threats in the format, comes down for B, and draws us cards: he's the definition of a resilient control threat.

Lantern Scout. Establish a board and then slam down a Scout for a temporary Sorin effect - this little guy can either be fantastic or a waste of a turn, so make sure you're working around him and you plan to get a big turn out of his ability. Leagues better if you can pair him Gideon, as the Allies Gideon provides offer a constant Lifelink buff to your team.

Felidar Sovereign. Too cute? Maybe. But if you're stalled out and the game goes long, offering your opponents an "Answer this or die" situation isn't out of the question. He also has a nice body and works towards his own win condition, which is gravy. It's not a big ask to get to 40 life with this deck, so the Cat Beast is staying for now, even if he's just a one-of.

Abzan Charm.Super versatile and powerful kill spell/draw spell/pump spell, rolled into one cheap package.

Feed the Clan. One of the more surprising inclusions in any maindeck; in this shell, it's right at home. Turning on Ferocious isn't too difficult, as we have Rhino, Anafenza, and mid-combat Gideon to do the trick (Sorin + Lantern Scount also gets us there). Necessary card to push us over Ayli's threshold so we can start exiling things and then it's lights out for our opponent.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Big Giddy himself. Gideon wins game, plain and simple. In this shell, he gives us the added bonus of offering us free Ayli fodder. Not much else to be said here.

Secure the Wastes. a.k.a. Instant-Speed Elspeth. We can often finish the game with a big X of 6-7 and then swing in with a Gideon Emblem or Sorin +1 in play to go wide. Fantastic insurance against boardwipes. Provides lots of food for Ayli.

Sorin, Solemn Visitor. If Ayli is the engine of this deck, Sorin is the fuel. His team-wide Lifelink boost often gains us absurd amounts of life and he can often sit behind a couple of [card=Wall of Resurgence]Walls[/card] and win the game with an Emblem much easier than in other decks, where he might be a little more vulnerable.

Matchups

It is my genuine opinion that Ayli Control has great game against most of the field. Through several rounds of testing, tuning the deck, and making subtle changes to the core of our list, here is what I've found:

vs. Atarka Red: Favoured
Scoring game 1 vs Red is a huge boon, and we have a much easier game 1 than most vs. Standard's premier aggro deck, for obvious reasons: our absurd amount of Lifegain puts us way out of reach and Abzan Charm gets rid of massive 10/10 Double Striking Swiftspears, and whatever else they can throw at you. If we start off too slow we can get unlucky, but for the most part, stealing game 1 is huge for us.

vs. Abzan Aggro/Midrange: 50/50
Abzan Aggro can curve out beautifully and sometimes, they just have all the kill spells. If they kill our walls and get through with a Rhino or Gideon, it can be hard to recover, but generally speaking we should be able to stabilise if we can land a Sorin early and start outclassing their threats.

vs. R/B Dragons: Slightly Unfavoured
With such a massive amount of flyers, R/B Dragons can often come out of the gates too fast for us to put ourselves out of reach of the dreaded Kolaghan Dash Attack. Thunderbreak is a beating, and even Flamewake Phoenix and get in 2 two many points of damage and put us within lethal of the alpha strike. Game 2 get a whole lot better for us, when we bring in Surge of Righteousness, Orators, and Den Protector to recur our efficient removal and lifegain.

vs. Eldrazi Ramp: Slightly Favoured
Though I didn't believe it myself at first, beating ramp simply comes down to playing Abzan midrange like Abzan midrange does. Present a fast clock and apply pressure, and you should be okay. Game 2 gets a lot easier as we can streamline our process, dropping Walls for Negate and Infinite Obliteration.

vs. Rally: Favoured
Rally takes a while to get going, and playing a larger mass of tokens means we have natural resilience against Reflector Mage and targeted removal. We can often get ourselves up and beyond 30 life well before they're ready to combo off, even with Zulaport chipping in each turn for a few points.

***

Ayli Control is a new and interesting take on Abzan and I encourage you to give it a try. It is easy to dismiss a lifegain strategy as a cute janky deck without much competitive appeal. Combine that strategy, however, with a payoff card like Ayli, and you end up with a control list that has some serious game against the big boys of standard. Sleeve it up and give it a go, and may the brews be with you!

As always, I'd love to hear your constructive feedback and suggestions as I continue tuning the deck.

Thanks!