Decks with Heliod, Sun-Crowned combo in Modern

The Theros Beyond Death spoilers are nowhere near the end, but we have already seen some rare and mythical cards from the upcoming January 24 release. This week it became obvious the community buzz about the White God Heliod, Sun-Crowned, the new card can create a combo that only needs 2 cards: itself and Walking Ballista.

Did you notice the combo? Heliod, Sun-Crowned manages to give lifelink to Walking Ballista for 2 mana, so for each counter you remove from the ballista to deal 1 direct damage to your opponent, you also gain 1 life. Heliod, Sun-Crowned's ability also allows you to put 1 +1/+1 counter on a creature each time you gain life, so for each damage the ballista pings, you can put an additional counter +1/+1 on it, that can be removed to deal more damage, becoming an infinite combo that allows you to gain infinite life and deal infinite damage to target opponent. Interesting no?

Before in an article, I explained the difference between 2-cards combos to 3-cards. On decks with 2-card combos, we have a nearly 50% chance of finding the combo in up to 7 draws, while on 3-card combos, the probability drops to 10%. Of course, redundancy in the combo allows you to change these odds, so we'll present Modern decks here with the combo of the moment trying to produce a lot of redundancy!

MONO-WHITE SOUL SISTER

It's been over 6 months since a soul sister deck has appeared on the metagame! But recently, last month, we saw a deck with Martyr of Sands doing 5-0 at MTGO . The deck is simple and straightforward, intended to get over 30 life to activate Serra Ascendant ability and create a significant clock in the opponent. As Heliod trigger ability works for each life gain, I changed Martyr of Sands for the soul sisters: Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant who can become a Ajani's Pridemate with Heliod, Sun-Crowned in the battlefield.

The deck tutors the combo with Ranger-Captain of Eos that can get Walking Ballista when it enters the battlefield. The deck have a midrange stance, but with a 2-card combo that can win the game at any time and with cards that have extreme synergy with each other on the deck.

SELESNYA DEVOTED HELIOD

The other option we see with Heliod is to insert it into a familiar and already strong deck in Modern format: Devoted Druid! We made some changes to this 5-0 list here.

The old deck already had a combo: Walking Ballista + Devoted Druid + Vizier of Remedies; so Ballista was already naturally entering the deck. The combo has the advantage of being protected by Giver of Runes and having many tutors: Finale of Devastation, Eladamri's Call, Ranger-Captain of Eos and Once Upon a Time.

Have we missed any decks on which Heliod, Sun-Crowned can shine? Comment and let's add here in the article!