Brewer's Corner: Modern--Collected Company
Brewer’s Corner: Modern
Welcome to the Brewer’s Corner. A series where we cover various cards and their typical uses but also look for other ways we might be able to use them effectively or in some cases abuse them to our advantage. We’ll typically be discussing cards for modern and EDH as those are the formats that I’m most familiar with but I will occasionally mix it up with a different format. We’re looking at cards that can be impactful in a variety of ways, both in the long term and short term of a game. If you’re casting a spell of any kind you want it to do something at some point during the game. Just about every card that’s played in every format does something with at least one other card in the deck. Whether it’s help you cast spells, it’s a creature that has some sort of relevant ability, or it’s a non-creature spell that does something to further your game plan and hinder theirs. The game of Magic is about tempo. Whether you’re playing an aggressive strategy that looks to play a bunch of cheap spells to win the game, you’re playing a control strategy that looks to keep your opponents things off the board, buying you time to find your win condition, or you’re somewhere in the middle, there’s always tempo involved.
Today we’re going to look at what I feel is one of the more versatile instants in the modern format as well as one of my favorite cards in recent times, Collected Company. Collected Company is an instant for 3G that reads “Look at the top 6 cards of your library. Put up to 2 creature cards with converted mana cost 3 or less from among them on to the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. It’s primarily played in two decks in modern, Elves and GW Hatebears which is making a comeback having made a top 8 appearance recently for the first time in a long while. I’ll be explaining these uses as well as some more unconventional uses for the card as well.
Elves is one of the most popular tribes in the format, they’re primarily green, and typically have a low converted mana cost. Elves also have creatures commonly known as mana dorks that tap for mana allowing you to play higher cmc spells earlier than normal. All of these factors play well into the aggressive strategy typically associated with the elf decks in all formats. In modern however they enjoy playing a low curve and going wide with sheer numbers until they can find a big bomb to finish off their opponent. Collected company helps in doing that by being able to be cast on turn 2 or 3 despite being 4 cmc and allowing for even more creatures to come into play early on.
In hatebear strategies players typically want to play low cost creatures that have an immediate impact on the game. It can grab things like Reclamation Sage to destroy a pesky artifact or enchantment that’s holding you back, Gaddock Teeg to prevent your opponent from casting things like Cryptic Command, or even an Aven Mindcensor to effectively shut off your opponents fetch lands.
Now to talk about other great uses I’ve managed to find for the card. Adding blockers, adding lords to change combat math after blockers are declared and before damage is dealt, and just out pacing your opponent when they’ve left themselves open after their attacks.
Adding blockers: It’s an instant. So long as they don’t have any effects that state otherwise you can cast it during combat to add blockers to the board. This also fits well with my next point of adding lords. Lords typically provide a power and/or toughness buff which can potentially throw off their combat math. I’ll cover that more in that section though. For now however it can add blockers potentially saving bigger or more impactful creatures on your side of the board. If Player A has two creatures in play, one of them being Aven Mindcensor and the other being Gaddock Teeg, and Player B is attacking, if damage would destroy the two creatures Player A has in play they can cast a Collected Company and try to find something with a relevant “enter the battlefield” effect or just something to block with, saving their two impactful creatures and destroying a creature or two that aren’t as impactful to the state of the game either at that time or at all.
Adding lords: In tribal strategies we typically play lords that give power and/or toughness buffs and sometimes other abilities as well. Death Baron granting both a power and toughness buff to skeletons and zombies as well as the additional ability of deathtouch. Lord of Atlantis is another popular one granting merfolk +1/+1 and islandwalk. These are just a couple examples in the format, there’s plenty more where that came from. I play merfolk in modern typically when I’m not playing some weird jank deck and Collected Company has saved me and my creatures a few times during games. In my merfolk list I play four copies each of three different lords, none of which are legendary. It’s common for me to cast Collected Company in response to blockers and grabbing at least one lord, sometimes two. This is huge on an attack where you’re swinging in with a couple of 2/2’s or 3/3’s. Getting that extra buff plus keeping creatures untapped for blocks on the back end is really nice. It works especially well when they have an Island in play, whether it’s their own naturally or you’ve made one of their lands one with Spreading Seas, as a creature with islandwalk is unblockable as long as the defending player controls an Island. If I’m attacking with a Lord of Atlantis, a Silvergill Adept, and a Cursecatcher, they all have islandwalk already but the added buff of one or two lords being put into play off a resolved Collected Company may take a turn off of the game as a whole. I personally have used this to my advantage and hit two lords turning an attack for 11 into an attack for 17. This also covers the card being used as a combat trick as it’s adding a buff to your creatures that are on the board.
I haven’t had a chance to brew a zombie deck with Collected Company yet but it looks like it would be best if played on defense if you know you have a Death Baron in the top few cards. You bluff not having a play and just pass the turn and wait for them to attack you. You then cast CoCo in response to attacks and put said Death Baron into play giving all of your zombies and skeletons deathtouch to kill off all of their creatures. It also gives your creatures a power and toughness buff helping them to potentially survive for the back end when the turn comes back to you. Zombies, luckily are pretty resilient and can be recurred from the graveyard pretty easily. Black also does this well in general if your creatures don’t.
Another neat trick that can be done to protect your creatures is grab a Spellskite. Spellskite is an artifact creature that costs 2 to play, has power and toughness of 0/4, and an activated ability that costs a phyrexian blue, meaning you can either pay a blue or 2 life to activate it to change the target of a spell or ability to Spellskite. I’ll use the hatebears deck as an example for this one. Your opponent has a Mountain and a fetch land in play. You have an Aven Mindcensor in play and they’re having trouble getting another land so they can get going with whatever their strategy is. They try to cast a Lightning Bolt or Shock or something similar targeting your creature. You can cast CoCo and grab a Spellskite, put it in play and redirect their spell, saving your creature and keeping them off their mana they need for another turn.
There’s tons of good targets for Collected Company. They may not always be super competitive ways to play the spell but they’re all effective in their own right and will net you some fun games at your local store during FNM at the very least. Happy brewing, and see you next time on the brewer’s corner where I will be covering another card with uses that you may not have thought about.
Welcome to the Brewer’s Corner. A series where we cover various cards and their typical uses but also look for other ways we might be able to use them effectively or in some cases abuse them to our advantage. We’ll typically be discussing cards for modern and EDH as those are the formats that I’m most familiar with but I will occasionally mix it up with a different format. We’re looking at cards that can be impactful in a variety of ways, both in the long term and short term of a game. If you’re casting a spell of any kind you want it to do something at some point during the game. Just about every card that’s played in every format does something with at least one other card in the deck. Whether it’s help you cast spells, it’s a creature that has some sort of relevant ability, or it’s a non-creature spell that does something to further your game plan and hinder theirs. The game of Magic is about tempo. Whether you’re playing an aggressive strategy that looks to play a bunch of cheap spells to win the game, you’re playing a control strategy that looks to keep your opponents things off the board, buying you time to find your win condition, or you’re somewhere in the middle, there’s always tempo involved.
Today we’re going to look at what I feel is one of the more versatile instants in the modern format as well as one of my favorite cards in recent times, Collected Company. Collected Company is an instant for 3G that reads “Look at the top 6 cards of your library. Put up to 2 creature cards with converted mana cost 3 or less from among them on to the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. It’s primarily played in two decks in modern, Elves and GW Hatebears which is making a comeback having made a top 8 appearance recently for the first time in a long while. I’ll be explaining these uses as well as some more unconventional uses for the card as well.
Elves is one of the most popular tribes in the format, they’re primarily green, and typically have a low converted mana cost. Elves also have creatures commonly known as mana dorks that tap for mana allowing you to play higher cmc spells earlier than normal. All of these factors play well into the aggressive strategy typically associated with the elf decks in all formats. In modern however they enjoy playing a low curve and going wide with sheer numbers until they can find a big bomb to finish off their opponent. Collected company helps in doing that by being able to be cast on turn 2 or 3 despite being 4 cmc and allowing for even more creatures to come into play early on.
In hatebear strategies players typically want to play low cost creatures that have an immediate impact on the game. It can grab things like Reclamation Sage to destroy a pesky artifact or enchantment that’s holding you back, Gaddock Teeg to prevent your opponent from casting things like Cryptic Command, or even an Aven Mindcensor to effectively shut off your opponents fetch lands.
Now to talk about other great uses I’ve managed to find for the card. Adding blockers, adding lords to change combat math after blockers are declared and before damage is dealt, and just out pacing your opponent when they’ve left themselves open after their attacks.
Adding blockers: It’s an instant. So long as they don’t have any effects that state otherwise you can cast it during combat to add blockers to the board. This also fits well with my next point of adding lords. Lords typically provide a power and/or toughness buff which can potentially throw off their combat math. I’ll cover that more in that section though. For now however it can add blockers potentially saving bigger or more impactful creatures on your side of the board. If Player A has two creatures in play, one of them being Aven Mindcensor and the other being Gaddock Teeg, and Player B is attacking, if damage would destroy the two creatures Player A has in play they can cast a Collected Company and try to find something with a relevant “enter the battlefield” effect or just something to block with, saving their two impactful creatures and destroying a creature or two that aren’t as impactful to the state of the game either at that time or at all.
Adding lords: In tribal strategies we typically play lords that give power and/or toughness buffs and sometimes other abilities as well. Death Baron granting both a power and toughness buff to skeletons and zombies as well as the additional ability of deathtouch. Lord of Atlantis is another popular one granting merfolk +1/+1 and islandwalk. These are just a couple examples in the format, there’s plenty more where that came from. I play merfolk in modern typically when I’m not playing some weird jank deck and Collected Company has saved me and my creatures a few times during games. In my merfolk list I play four copies each of three different lords, none of which are legendary. It’s common for me to cast Collected Company in response to blockers and grabbing at least one lord, sometimes two. This is huge on an attack where you’re swinging in with a couple of 2/2’s or 3/3’s. Getting that extra buff plus keeping creatures untapped for blocks on the back end is really nice. It works especially well when they have an Island in play, whether it’s their own naturally or you’ve made one of their lands one with Spreading Seas, as a creature with islandwalk is unblockable as long as the defending player controls an Island. If I’m attacking with a Lord of Atlantis, a Silvergill Adept, and a Cursecatcher, they all have islandwalk already but the added buff of one or two lords being put into play off a resolved Collected Company may take a turn off of the game as a whole. I personally have used this to my advantage and hit two lords turning an attack for 11 into an attack for 17. This also covers the card being used as a combat trick as it’s adding a buff to your creatures that are on the board.
I haven’t had a chance to brew a zombie deck with Collected Company yet but it looks like it would be best if played on defense if you know you have a Death Baron in the top few cards. You bluff not having a play and just pass the turn and wait for them to attack you. You then cast CoCo in response to attacks and put said Death Baron into play giving all of your zombies and skeletons deathtouch to kill off all of their creatures. It also gives your creatures a power and toughness buff helping them to potentially survive for the back end when the turn comes back to you. Zombies, luckily are pretty resilient and can be recurred from the graveyard pretty easily. Black also does this well in general if your creatures don’t.
Another neat trick that can be done to protect your creatures is grab a Spellskite. Spellskite is an artifact creature that costs 2 to play, has power and toughness of 0/4, and an activated ability that costs a phyrexian blue, meaning you can either pay a blue or 2 life to activate it to change the target of a spell or ability to Spellskite. I’ll use the hatebears deck as an example for this one. Your opponent has a Mountain and a fetch land in play. You have an Aven Mindcensor in play and they’re having trouble getting another land so they can get going with whatever their strategy is. They try to cast a Lightning Bolt or Shock or something similar targeting your creature. You can cast CoCo and grab a Spellskite, put it in play and redirect their spell, saving your creature and keeping them off their mana they need for another turn.
There’s tons of good targets for Collected Company. They may not always be super competitive ways to play the spell but they’re all effective in their own right and will net you some fun games at your local store during FNM at the very least. Happy brewing, and see you next time on the brewer’s corner where I will be covering another card with uses that you may not have thought about.
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