Exploring the Pioneer jungle - Abzan Rallystocrats - Full and Budget

What's up, players? How are you?

We will once more explore the uncharted jungle that is the Pioneer format, so put on your Indiana Jones fedora and let's go, this time, to the graveyard!

In today's article I bring you a very versatile deck, using the graveyard and synergy of creature abilities. It's the Abzan Rallystocrats.

DECK GOAL

Abzan Rallystocrats is a deck with several ways to win. You can combo or focus on assaulting your opponent with your creatures, using sacrifice to both fill the battlefield with zombie tokens and power some creatures so to close out the game! In a last stand scenario, you can bring back your graveyard creatures to start it all over again.

DECK BUILDING

This deck is built entirely around the instant Rally the Ancestors, in which with only 4 lands we can almost bring all of our graveyard creatures into play. With 5 lands, all graveyard creatures return to the game to finish our combo.

It also has many creatures with a high level of synergy. Let's talk about them and what their function is.

Cartel Aristocrat is our main sacrifice card, as we can play it for only 2 mana cost, while Nantuko Husk cost 3. These creatures are important for the deck, as they have a "free" sacrifice effect, and in our combo we need to sacrifice various creatures to bring the opponent's life to 0.

We sacrifice our creatures to deal damage and gain life with Zulaport Cutthroat and Cruel Celebrant. We'll use 4 copies of Zulaport Cutthroat as it goes well withXathrid Necromancer, increasing the number of zombie tokens we produce.

Another card that deals damage to opponents is Corpse Knight. Each opponent loses 1 life whenever another creature enters the battlefield under our control, so when we bring back creatures from our graveyard with Rally the Ancestors, it will deal a lot of damage.

There are 3 cards in our deck that increase the power of Rally the Ancestors by filling the graveyard with creatures:

Stitcher's Supplier puts 3 cards from the top of the deck into the graveyard when it enters the battlefield or dies, costing only 1 mana. Satyr Wayfinder cost 2 mana, and when it enters the battlefield, we look at the top 4 cards of the deck, we then may pick a land to put it in our hand and the rest goes into the graveyard. Nyx Weaver has reach, cost 3 mana and at each upkeep step we put the top 2 cards of our deck into the graveyard. However, its main ability is that if Rally the Ancestors ends up into the graveyard, we can bring it back by paying 3 mana and exiling Nyx Weaver. As many of our creatures put the top library cards into the graveyard, the chance of doing it so with Rally the Ancestors is big.

We also need to draw a lot - so we can guarantee Rally the Ancestors is in our hand for the combo - and some cards help us with that. Elvish Visionary makes us draw a card when entering the battlefield and Grim Haruspex uses creature sacrifice on our behalf: whenever a nontoken creature we control dies, we draw a card. Grim Haruspex is great on this list because it is a Human, so it synergizes well with Xathrid Necromancer.

Collected Company increases the number of combo pieces in the game, either to deal damage, have free sacrifices, or to draw cards.

With the ban of Veil of Summer, the deck ended up having more difficulty against Control decks, but we have Silence to protect our combo (or at least, try to).

Closing out our list, Catacomb Sifter allows us to scry 1 every time another creature we control dies, helping us dig the deck for Rally the Ancestors.

With that, we have the following deck:

CARD SUBSTITUTION

To make this deck cheaper, we have to start with the mana base. We reduced the number of Shock lands and put in Isolated Chapel and Fortified Village as to build a better mana curve.

We put in Dusk Legion Zealot to have more draws and we swap Collected Company for Return to the Ranks, helping us bringing back some of our graveyard creatures.

Here's the budget version of the deck:

CONCLUSION

This deck has a lot of synergy, we can get the graveyard creatures back into the game to start our strategy all over again, we can even create an army of zombies! It also has answers to main difficulties on the sideboard. This deck is a lot of fun and I think you will enjoy it.

That's all for today, I hope you enjoyed the article and that you understood the deck. Please leave your feedback for improvement.

See you guys later!