Saheeli Value Combo

Saheeli Combo has started to gain some traction in Modern. The most notable finish I'm aware of at this time is Anthony Lee's 28th place finish at GP Brisbane. Lee was playing a Jeskai version of the deck. The version I've been brewing with is a 4-color build.

4-Color Saheeli
CREATURES
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Eternal Witness
3 Felidar Guardian
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Renegade Rallier
1 Reveillark
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Selfless Spirit
1 Sun Titan
2 Voice of Resurgence
2 Wall of Omens
SPELLS
2 Eldritch Evolution
1 Nahiri, the Harbinger
4 Oath of Nissa
3 Path to Exile
4 Saheeli Rai
1 Seal of Fire
LAND
1 Arid Mesa
1 Breeding Pool
1 Flooded Strand
3 Forest
1 Gavony Township
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills

The Combos
Saheeli Rai + Felidar Guardian = infinite, hasty cats. This is the Standard combo.
Saheeli Rai x2 + Sun Titan = infinite, hasty titans. Use Saheeli to copy Titan, use Titan's ability to return a second Saheeli from your graveyard to play (placing the used Saheeli into the yard), rinse and repeat. As an added, generally unneeded bonus, when you attack with all those Titans, you'll get to return most of your graveyard to the battlefield.

The real strength of the deck is that the combos are contained within a pretty solid midrange shell. Most of the cards pull their individual weight, but there is an immense amount of synergy webbing throughout the deck. Some examples/hightlights:

Voice of Resurgence is a solid value card. It plays well with Eldritch Evolution, allowing you to find a Felidar Guardian, can be recurred with both Renegade Rallier and Sun Titan, and it is especially powerful in that the nature of the Saheeli combo forces your opponent to play on your turn, which means you'll likely get some elemental tokens or be winning the game outright when you go for the combo. The elemental having P/T equal to the number of creatures you control allows the Saheeli combo to still generate offensive value even in the face of something like Ghostly Prison.

Selfless Spirit can protect your Felidar Guardian from removal when you go for the combo, but can also allow you to attack with an indestructible Sun Titan (and company) each turn.

Phantasmal Image lets you copy things for value. The fact that it dies easily can be a boon for enabling revolt. Copying Kitchen Finks is an old trick, where you can gain some life, then let the Image (as a Finks) die and persist, only to copy a different creature.

Reveillark is a crazy source of value. Copying it with Saheeli is a great play, but the most powerful line involves returning Felidar Guarding + something of value, using the Guardian to flicker the 'Lark, and return 2 more creatures.

Seal of Fire is a reasonable removal spell, but it's also a proactive way to enable revolt and can be recurred with Rallier/Titan to stack damage on a single, larger target or take out multiple small creatures.

As for a sideboard, it keeps changing, but these are some of the cards I've been trying thus far. The choices are largely influenced by the ability for cards to be recurred with Rallier/Titan:

Aegis of the Gods - Gives you hexproof against Storm, Burn, and other decks that want to target you.
Auriok Champion - Life gain, protection from Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push, and lets x2 Felidard Guardian gain you infinite life.
Blessed Alliance - Versatile card that can pad your life total and punishes Infect or other "go tall" strategies.
Eidolon of Rhetoric - Storm hate
Elspeth, Sun's Champion - Durable high-end threat for the attrition game against other midrange decks.
Engineered Explosives - Sort of a catchall but particularly good against token-based strategies, where recurring it to play (X=0) is of actual value. Maybe Ratchet Bomb makes more sense, though slower.
Kataki, War's Wage - Affinity hate
Lone Missionary - Life gain vs Burn/Aggro
Melira, Sylvok Outcast - Infect hate
Nihil Spellbomb - Graveyard hate that is one-sided. It's possible, with Birds of Paradise, to pay the B to draw are card when used.
Reclamation Sage- Another disenchant effect that trades the ability to be recurred with Rallier for the ability to be flickered with Felidar Guardian.
Stony Silence - Hate for Affinity and Tron
Thragtusk - For grindy matchups. It's ridiculous to copy with Saheeli or flicker with Felidar Guardian.

I've been playing a Kiki-Chord Variant with Saheeli as well. This way it has Felidar Guardian+ Saheeli, 2xSaheeli + Sun titan, Felidar+Kiki-Jiki, and Felidar+kiki in the yard with revilark. It's still midrange-y with all the value you can get off the creature package, but it does enable a a combo finish a lot more.


The list I've been working on is:

//22 Lands

//Creatures
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Wall of Roots
1 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Wall of Omens
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Filigree Familiar
1 Reflector Mage
1 Fairgrounds Warden
2 Eternal Witness
2 Felidar Guardian
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Kiki-Jiki, MIrror Breaker
1 Sun Titan

//Planeswalkers
4 Saheeli Rai
1 Nahiri, the Harbinger

//Inst. and Sorc.
4 Eldritch Evolution
2 Chord of Calling
1 Bring to Light
2 Path to Exile


I've considered rallier, but I never play anything too awesome in the 2drop slot so it didn't seem worth it to me. Then I don't have to worry about triggering revolt with seal of fire. I definitely want a reviliark but I don't have one at the moment. Huntmaster is pretty sweet value, I might try to pick one up.

For the sideboard, I might suggest Izzet Staticaster which wipes the floor with spirit tokes, elemental tokens, any creature in a grixis match up that doesn't have delve. It seems sweet though, let me know if you find any other cool interactions because I think this will be my modern deck for a while.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kobra_D

I've been playing a Kiki-Chord Variant with Saheeli as well. This way it has Felidar Guardian+ Saheeli, 2xSaheeli + Sun titan, Felidar+Kiki-Jiki, and Felidar+kiki in the yard with revilark. It's still midrange-y with all the value you can get off the creature package, but it does enable a a combo finish a lot more.

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I like the idea. Incorporating Kiki was something I had considered, but hadn't gotten around to testing yet. I think I always got hung up on the fact that Restoration Angel is just so much better than Felidar Guardian most of the time. That said, Guardian plays nicer with Reveillark. I do think that only a single copy of Kiki is going to be correct though, as he's hard on the mana and you mostly want to Chord/Evolution for him anyway. The added redundancy of having Saheeli should be more than enough to enable combos.

Speaking to your list specifically, I'm not a fan of Bring to Light in this build and think you'd be better off with a 3rd Chord of Calling. BTL can't find Saheeli, so I don't really see he upside to a sorcery speed tutor that taxes your mana harder. Also, I think the single Sylvan Caryatid would be better as a Noble Hierarch. Perhaps that's a budget concession, but I feel like you have enough solid 3-drops that having an extra turn 1 mana creature is worth it. Alternatively, Sakura-Tribe Elder is a card that I've been very pleased with; it's a bit better with Renegade Rallier, but any of the graveyard recursion effects play well with it.

I'm not even going to try to argue that felidar guardian is as good as restoration angel. It's not. But it does open a ton of doors to an already non-linear strategy.

To combo off:
Felidar + Kiki
Felidar and Kiki in the yard+revilark
Felidar + Saheeli
Nahiri ult + Kiki/Felidar/or Saheeli in play.

And since adding Saheeli,
1(2) Saheeli in the yard + 1(0) Saheeli in play + Sun Titan

So yeah, resto is the better card, but felidar just allows for too much dumb stuff to pass up on.

Bring to light has been terrible, I might swap it for chord 3 but I was also thinking about a third path to exile instead.

The Carytid was kind of because I had it and don't have a heirarch, but it does tap for rainbow with hexproof which is kind of nice. And for me the familiar became a second fairgrounds warden because sometimes you need multiples and the second pridemage became a thragtusk because thragtusk. I noticed that I am cutting down my value beats by not having voice, if I get there with just critters it is almost always grinding through several Pia and Kiran flickers. Maybe I can swap the carytid for it but I'm not sold just yet.

As an aside on the mana, I started running 2 grove of the burnwillows after seeing T-Woo's living end update and it has been super helpful. Especially if I try to go infinite I don't mind if my opponent gains a couple of life.

Played a list very similar to Captain's in the OP(2 Eldritch Evolution, 0 Chord of Calling) with a slight modification to the mana base for maindeck Kiki-jiki. It was a small weekly tournament where I went 2-2, losing to Grixis Death's Shadow(Horrible punt involving a missed Sun Titan trigger, I deserved to lose this) and Affinity with Ensoul Artifact(G1 He killed me his turn 3 before I could untap for my turn 3). I beat Bant Knightfall and Abzan Rallier.

Overall the deck was pretty sweet and I really like Oath of Nissa and it was nice not having to fetch out the Breeding Pool or Hallowed Fountain to cast Saheeli. Sometimes you naturally draw the combo and the opponent just doesn't have an answer, which was awesome. The single Phantasmal Image was quite good as well.

What I did not like is the frequency of mulligans. Some opening hands are so awkward without a clear plan or the right mana.

I was underwhelmed by the Ralliers, mostly because I never got to do cool things with them. The value that Rallier occasionally brought was pretty much just getting back a fetchland or extra Oath of Nissa. I may have returned a Voice of Resurgence as well.

Nahiri was great. Very solid card that I was always happy to draw.

Kiki-jiki wasn't really necessary, in my opinion. He was a slight strain on the mana, and I think the deck can function perfectly fine without him.

My metagame is saturated with Burn decks so I would likely swap the 2 Ralliers with another Kitchen Finks and a Spike Feeder while swapping Kiki with Archangel of Thune. Without Ralliers, Sakura Tribe Elder would likely get cut for an additional Voice of Resurgence. In an open metagame, I would probably cut 2 Ralliers and the Tribe Elder for a third Eldritch Evolution, a second Kitchen Finks and a third Voice of Resurgence.

I will probably have additional thoughts later. Fun deck.

Gerry Thompson did a video for a build of Kiki Saheeli, which you can see here.

If you watch all the games, Gerry makes some comments at the end about some of the slots that seem like they could be adjusted. I was really surprised by how close the list I had been playing was to what Gerry had come up with. That said, I did tweak some of the numbers and made a few swaps. Here's the maindeck that I've come to:

Saheeli Kiki Evolution
CREATURES
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Noble Hierarch
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Voice of Resurgence
3 Wall of Omens
1 Eternal Witness
2 Reflector Mage
4 Felidar Guardian
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Reveillark
1 Sun Titan
SPELLS
4 Oath of Nissa
3 Path to Exile
3 Eldritch Evolution
4 Saheeli Rai
LAND
2 Forest
1 Plains
1 Breeding Pool
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills

A summary of the changes from Gerry's list:

Gerry was playing 2 copies of Razorverge Thicket and, by the end of the matches, he stated they were garbage and should be cut. I replaced them with a Horizon Canopy and an additional Temple Garden. Simply put, you don't want your lands coming into play tapped. Horizon Canopy also allows you to play a more protracted long game with Sun Titan facilitating additional draws. I also swapped a Wooded Foothills for a Grove of the Burnwillows so that the deck would actually contain 3 separate red lands, aside from Fire-lit Thicket, allowing more ready casting of Kiki-Jiki in drawn out cames. Also, 11 fetch lands felt like too much and caused unnecessary amounts of life loss.

I swapped out 1 of the 3 Voice of Resurgence to include a maindeck Qasali Pridemage. I'm a little less impressed with Voice in this deck than in others and I wanted a maindeck answer to problematic artifacts and enchantments. Having an extra source of exalted is also handy, as it allows beating down with a flyer to be a more realistic alternate route to victory.

Gerry included a single Restoration Angel. While I think the Angel is a solid card, the fact that the rest of the deck is sorcery speed really took away a lot of the surprise factor. Felidar Guardian and Saheeli provide enough sources of value flicker/copy. As such I cut the Resto. Gerry was also playing 3 copies of Reflector Mage. While a powerful card that can soft lock an opponent when combined with flickery/copy effects, I felt that 3 copies was a bit much, given that there are some matchups where the card is not going to be of any significant value. My replacements for the Angel and Mage were Huntmaster of the Fells and Reveillark. Huntmaster provides a life boost and multiple bodies, as well as the potential to be removal against problem creatures (e.g. Thalia, Heretic Cathar). Pia and Kiran Nalaar was a consideration, but not being able to copy the with Kiki, the lack of actual life gain, and the need to commit mana to use them as removal made me opt for the Huntmaster. Reveillark is a value machine that can do absurd things when flickered with Felidar Guardian. It recurs every creature in the list, save for the single Sun Titan.

Cards I've considered/played in the past that are absent:

Renegade Rallier - While I love this cards, it simply wasn't consistent enough. I could lead to some overpowered plays, but it caused you to skew toward 2-drops and required lines of play that would present increased opportunity for things to go wrong by giving incentive for trades/chump blocks.

Phantasmal Image - The ultimate "cute" card. Cutting Rallier made Image less good and I wanted to keep my color requirements as G/W as possible.

Cards I'm still considering:

Magus of the Moon - This is really a meta call. If a Blood Moon effect wrecks most of the expected field, then I think Magus is worth considering. I'd probably want to try to fit in another basic Plains if I were going to run it though. Vizier of the Menagerie plays well with the Magus, but it's a bit clunky and can't be recurred with Reveillark, which is something I'd like out of my 4-drop.

Final Thoughts:

The deck is solid and worth playing. What makes the deck good is also what makes it hard to build, namely that fact that it's a creature-toolbox deck. There are many cards worth consideration, which is why I didn't bother including a sideboard, as the options are endless.