Spoiler Highlight: Amalia Benavides Aguirre on Pioneer

Lost Caverns of Ixalan brings great news to Pioneer: the recently revealed vampire, Amalia Benavides Aguirre is the latest combo piece added to the format!

The format's current Metagame has a dozen viable strategies, but decks based on Collected Company have been declining for a long time, and have made room for other variants of aggressive archetypes, such as Humans and Spirits.

In this article, we evaluate whether Ixalan's new vampire can revitalize the Collected Company variants by inserting a potential combo-kill, with just two creatures.

Amalia has a triggered ability where, each time its controller gains life, she explores (look at the top card of your library, if it's a land, put it into your hand, if it's a nonland card, put a +1/+1 counter on it and put the card into your graveyard, or on the top of your library) and if Amalia's power reaches 20, she destroys all other creatures - that is, she has the free path to deal lethal damage to the opponent.

The Explore mechanic was launched in the first Ixalan set and, at the time, was the basis of one of Standard's main Midrange decks, due to the interaction between Jadelight Ranger and Merfolk Branchwalker with Wildgrowth Walker.

By triggering an life gain instance whenever a creature explores, Wildgrowth Walker creates a loop with Amalia, where its controller can repeat the process several times until the vampire has 20 power and destroys all creatures.

Despite its potential to deal lethal damage in a single turn, with an empty board, this combo has some inherent weaknesses that make its viability in Pioneer quite difficult

The first weakness is that Amalia doesn't have Haste, and her self-protection ability isn't versatile enough to ensure that the opponent won't interact with her. Therefore, this is not a situation where you play Piece A + Piece B and win the game: it takes an entire turn cycle for Amalia to attack and deal lethal damage - and the number of interactions available increases significantly when we need to go through the opponent's turn.

Therefore, the best way to make this interaction work is to look for the ideal way to protect the pieces and/or reduce the timing of the opponent's interactions with, for example, ways to put the combo into play at Instant-Speed.

In this regard, Pioneer is blessed with two of the best spells for putting creatures into play, especially combo pieces. Collected Company, with luck, finds both creatures and starts looping on its own from the first life gain trigger, while Chord of Calling works as an enabler, which allows you to find the combo, or any other creature necessary for the moment.

Another way to instantly win the game with a combo is with cards that benefit from the looping. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose seems like the best payoff on this occasion, as we can find him with Chord of Calling or Collected Company, and until Amalia reaches 20 power, we gain a total of 54 life with Wildgrowth Walker, which represents a potential 54 damage with Vito.

The second problem is that the combo does not trigger by itself - it is necessary to gain life, or have an Explore trigger to start the loop. Considering the above circumstances, the life gain route seems more efficient if we consider that we have Prosperous Innkeeper and Lunarch Veteran as useful enablers.

Finally, the other challenge is finding the appropriate means to protect the combo pieces, especially considering that all creatures, except Amalia, will be destroyed at the end of the loop. Therefore, cards like Skrelv, Defector Mite become less relevant, while Instant-Speed effects, like Heroic Intervention, are more attractive.

However, we are still building a Collected Company deck, and have already opened a concession with Chord of Calling. Having fewer creature spells means more chances for Company to whiff, and we don't want to waste four mana for nothing.

With the above points considered, two decklist versions seem like good starting points for improving the archetype when Lost Caverns of Ixalan launches on November 17th.

Keep in mind, however, that these are just rough drafts.

The first variant is completely combo-oriented, with maximized numbers to amplify the consistency with which we can join Amalia Benavides Aguirre with Wildgrowth Walker and, if possible, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, and protect them with Selfless Savior and Melira, The Living Cure.

Mana dorks speed up our turns and guarantee mana for Collected Company as early as the third turn, while the other creatures, in addition to collaborating with life gain triggers, also function as extra mana for Chord of Calling

In the second version, we gave up on going all-in for the combo and sought a toolbox proposal, with a wider range of interactive and impactful cards, which allow us to play a "fair" game while maintaining the possible combo threat.

The most interesting addition in this variant is Shared Summons. Although it doesn't put the pieces directly into play, M20's spell allows for more interesting combinations of creature cards in our deck to sequence a good play, where not all of them need to be linked to the combo to work.

This version, due to Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, has a higher failure rate with Collected Company. However, the potential to close the game at the end of the turn, in addition to the fact that Skyclave Apparition and Elite Spellbinder are devastating when playing at Instant-Speed, guarantees its place on the list.

While this version seems more capable of playing against the Metagame without completely ignoring it, it is much less focused than the one above and requires further adjustments and testing to work as intended.

Maybe, but I don't have high expectations about its viability.

Since it is a creature-based combo, which requires more pieces to start its loop, in addition to not winning the game when the combo starts, it seems very vulnerable to the most diverse interactions present in the format today. From Fatal Push to Lightning Axe, the number of removals with positive value to deal with Amalia makes it a very risky plan, as all of your creatures will be destroyed in the process.

Furthermore, the combo pieces don't interact well with their surroundings: Amalia isn't a decent threat, Wildgrowth Walker needs a specific shell to be worthwhile, and the complementary pieces are only there because the combo requires a setup.

If we compare it with other combos in the Metagame, we realize that it lacks the most explosive potential, which threatens a victory every turn: Greasefang, Okiba Boss has a core where the individual quality of vehicles like Esika's Chariot compensate for the concessions made for the deck to work. The same goes for Indomitable Creativity lists, which win the game the moment Worldspine Wurm and Xenagos, God of Revels come into play - in both cases, their decks also works great on their own.

This is a key element that Amalia Benavides Aguirre lacks, and that players will need to learn the best way to play around until they find the version that can threaten an instant win while following the natural flow of a Magic game.

That's all for today.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas on how to build a deck around Amalia, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!