By Melissa DeTora
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Melissa is a former Magic pro player and strategy writer who is now working in R&D on the Play Design team.
Abzan is a popular color combination in Modern. With format staples such as Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant and quality removal such as Abrupt Decay and Path to Exile, it makes a lot of sense to put all of these cards into one deck. Today's deck is a Modern Abzan deck—but you won't be finding any of those all-star cards here. Blake Donnan's Abzan Blink deck uses a unique strategy that we don't see in top tournament decks very often.
All of Blake's creatures have strong enters-the-battlefield triggers that provide value throughout the game. He also plays cards that can "blink," or exile creatures and then return them to the battlefield. Blinking these creatures will give you that trigger again, gaining you some serious card advantage. One of these blink effects, Cloudshift, is an instant—which means you can do this in response to your opponent's removal spell or before it dies in combat.
One cool interaction that this deck has is Flickerwisp and Wasteland Strangler. If you Flickerwisp one of your opponent's permanents, you can then cast a Wasteland Strangler to process that card into its owner's graveyard and give one of your opponent's other creatures -3/-3. The best thing about this is your opponent will never get back the card that was exiled with Flickerwisp.
A deck that plays many low-mana creatures with enters-the-battlefield abilities really benefits from Collected Company. There are four copies in this deck for good reason; I think it's the best card in the deck. You can instantly put surprise blockers on the battlefield while also triggering their ETB effects. Collected Company really makes things difficult for your opponent. They will never know what to play around.
Congratulations to Blake Donnan on the Top 4 finish at the last Modern SCG Premier IQ!
Blake Donnan's Abzan Blink
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