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Evaluating Allosurus Evolution in Modern

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Last Friday morning, Allosaurus Rider went from a $.50 bulk-binder warmer to the next $20 buyout. The Coldsnap and Duel Deck throwback has since stabilized in the $5-$7 range with most major retailers, but dino hype hasn't had this much bite since Jurassic World trailers started appearing in late 2014. You can thank Gavin Verhey for the buyout; his Eldritch Moon preview last Thursday threw Modern speculators into a panic as they raced to find the best combo with Magic's newest Birthing Pod and Natural Order effect. Now that the hype has (somewhat) subsided, it's time to see if the Allosaurus Evolution combo has the fangs its buyout suggested, or if it's a bust like 90% of scenes in Jurassic World.

Allosaurus-Evolution-art

My minimal contribution to the Allosaurus Rider buyout was a four-copy purchase for MTGO. What can I say? I was already snagging cards to try and improve the abysmal RG Tron vs. Ad Nauseam matchup (with me on Urzatron this time), and decided it couldn't hurt to throw a few Riders in the cart. As for [tippy title="Eldritch Evolution" width="330" height="330"]
Eldritch Evolution[/tippy] itself, I'm staying away until the pre-order price drops. Although the card is likely to succeed in at least one format, its current price-tag is a bit steep for a rare in a set that is sure to benefit from metric tons of cracked packs. That drop is even more inevitable for paper copies of Rider, which are already falling as mania wanes and more rational card evaluation eyes take over.

In preparation for today's article, I conducted a number of tests with a few different [tippy title="Eldritch Evolution" width="330" height="330"]
Eldritch Evolution[/tippy] and Allosaurus Rider brews, tweaking ratios and singletons to get a sense of Allosaurus Evolution's feasibility in Modern. Today, we'll go over the general results and high-level findings, which will come as good news to people who both stayed away from the Rider buyout peaks, but also to those who got in early and picked up Riders for mere quarters.

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The Allosaurus Evolution Combo

Most Moderners with an Internet connection have either seen the combo on social media or looked it up themselves. In case you haven't, or in case you've forgotten the origin of this particular buyout like most people tend to forget all the rest, here's a quick summary.

Like Birthing Pod before it, [tippy title="Eldritch Evolution" width="330" height="330"]
Eldritch Evolution[/tippy] is limited by the casting-cost of sacrificed creatures. In most cases, this means a gradual, although still powerful, jump up the curve. Birds of Paradise becomes Kitchen Finks. Voice of Resurgence becomes Siege Rhino. Kitchen Finks becomes Sigarda, Host of Herons. You don't need to Evolve two mana up the curve if you don't want to: Birds is happy to become Voice just as Voice is happy to become Finks. Or Finks into your hater of choice, whether two-drop Spellskite or three-drop Aven Mindcensor. Indeed, these are the small, toolbox synergies where Evolution is most likely to excel in Modern, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The dinosaur in the room is growling at me to go bigger. Much bigger.

Unlike puny Voice or Finks, an evolved Allosaurus jumps the chain up to a whopping nine mana. That's Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite big. Disciple of Griselbrand big. Iona, Shield of Emeria big. Rider also does it for free, as early as turn two if you have the Evolution in hand, Rider at the ready, a dork and mana in play, and green cards to pitch. No one wants to wait until turns 6-7 to organically power out a seven-drop, or even 4-5 to do so off an acceleration package. We want to attain the turn 2-3 knockout that is the gold standard of Modern combo, and the free Allosaurus is just the evolutionary trampoline to help us make the leap.

Here's the dinosaur dream we're all trying to live (especially if you want your overpriced Riders to hold value):

  • GriselbrandOpen with land and Birds of Paradise.
  • Draw a card and play a second land.
  • Pitch two green cards (more Birds, a redundant Rider, Finks/Voice, Abrupt Decay) to cast Allosaurus Rider.
  • Rider hits the battlefield. You have priority before an opponent can Lightning Bolt the dino, so cast [tippy title="Eldritch Evolution" width="330" height="330"]
    Eldritch Evolution[/tippy].
  • If Evolution resolves, fetch your choice of turn two Disciple of Griselbrand, Elesh Norn, Iona, or another monster of your choice.

You can also postpone the combo until turn three, eliminating the opening Birds from the chain to totally insulate yourself from removal. Because you have priority when Rider himself resolves, there's no window for an opponent to slay the Allosaurus before you morph it into something far scarier. As an added bonus, the combo doesn't use the graveyard, offering an edge over the heavily graveyard-dependent (but faster) Goryo's Vengeance strategies.

Although I highlight Elesh Norn, Yawgmoth's Bargain with wings, and Iona, the Modern cardpool offers plenty of other nightmares to close the game off an evolved Rider. Here's a brief list of interesting options:

  • Sigarda, Host of Herons: BGx can kill Ionas. Innistrad's leading angel, however, is largely untouchable.
  • Sundering Titan: send their mana back to turn 0.
  • Sire of Insanity: game-over against slow control decks if resolved on turn two. Jeskai better have Path because Bolt doesn't cut it against the 6/4 Sire.
  • Keranos, God of Storms: Gods are creatures too! Another BGx knockout from the Twin days. Also, like Sigarda, much more attainable even without Rider.
  • Blazing Archon: There are aggro decks that can't win through this effect in Game 1. Be careful of double Bolt/Galvanic Blast or Path.
  • Primeval Titan: Prime Time can't win on the spot as in Amulet Bloom, but the mana advantage generated should be decisive.

Been playing around with other Evolution targets? Share your tech in the comments!

Brewing Allosaurus Evolution

When I tested Emrakul a few weeks back, I used a single decklist with a consistent one-for-one trade between an old card and a new one. This method is effective when you know a card slots into an existing strategy, but useless when you're not even sure the best way to build around a card in the first place. That's precisely the problem I faced with [tippy title="Eldritch Evolution" width="330" height="330"]
Eldritch Evolution[/tippy].

Birthing PodFrom my first test through my last, I couldn't decide the best way to build the Allosaurus Evolution list. What was the framework? Was it contemporary Abzan Company or Kiki Chord? Was it old-school Siege Rhino Pod? Was it something entirely new? Even deciding on a general template, I struggled with adjusting the relative number of Birds and Ignoble Hierarchs against toolbox creatures, combo pieces, supporting cards, and interactive bullets.

Ultimately, I tested not one, not two, but literally six different builds of the strategy against a variety of top-tier exemplars. Rather than list out sub-optimal decklists in various states of development disrepair, I'm going to present just a single decklist that combines all the ideas from the six feeder builds. This brew is still a disaster, but it accurately captures most of the technology I experimented with over the course of my tests.

Allosaurus Evolution Experiment, by Sheridan Lardner

As promised, it's a real circus of a list. In Game 1, you're playing a toolbox deck with a combo Plan A and a value Plan B. This means we make concessions to Rider. Kiki Chord's Wall of Omens becomes the worse Rider-bait Elvish Visionary. White Path to Exile switches to green Abrupt Decay. We even include a Summoner's Pact pair as Rider #5 if you're comboing on turn four or later. The three creatures are knockouts against most decks in the format, with Elesh Norn sweeping away low-to-the-ground critters, Griselbrand pulling you too far ahead in cards and value, and Iona shutting down most strategies in between.

aven mindcensorKeeping with the combo theme, the deck's singleton creatures (both in the main 60 and the sideboard) all act as mini haymakers in certain matchups. Turn two Spellskite or Gaddock Teeg is lights-out against many unfair strategies. Aven Mindcensor shores up the Company/Chord/Pod historic weakness to big-mana decks relying on search effects, and the sideboard offers a host of options for sniping matchups in open metagames. As a final note, the lone Eternal Witness can't return exiled [tippy title="Eldritch Evolution" width="330" height="330"]
Eldritch Evolution[/tippy]s (read the card's final clause), but does recur sacrificed Voices and Ouphes in grindier matchups.

Again, I'm deliberately presenting this list as a happy mess to showcase the wide range of options available to Evolution brewers. It gives you a sense of how old synergies (Gavony Township plus one-drops and persist) can combine with Rider combo requirements (Voice, a historic roleplayer in these toolbox decks, finds new purpose as turn three Evolution fodder). Here are other interactions I tinkered with before omitting them from the list above---they had steeper deckbuilding requirements and would have required their own builds.

  • Primeval titanPrimeval Titan and Summoner's Pact
    Relive the Amulet Bloom glory days with an inconsistent turn 2-3 Titan off Pact. Titan triggers ensure you can pay the Pact upkeep cost.
  • Magus of the Moon in RG Evolution
    Tutorable Blood Moon on command is powerful if it doesn't shut down your whole deck. A straight Gruul build limits these risks while also preserving many of the green Evolution synergies (notably Finks).
  • Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker Evolution
    Take one part Kiki Chord and add 3-4 Evolutions. Top marks for redundancy on our combo evaluation scale.
  • Eldritch delving with Hooting Mandrills
    Any delve creature will do to accelerate you up to Disciple of Griselbrand or Elesh Norn (Iona is sitting that one out unless it's Angler).

Regardless of your take on Allosaurus Evolution, most builds are going to share three components: the Allosaurus combo itself, a hateful toolbox package, and a midrange backup plan. Don't downplay the second route in your testing! Evolution is the only Modern tutor capable of putting haters like Aven Mindcensor or even Thalia, Guardian of Thraben directly into play from your library as early as turn two. That's a decisive edge over Company and Chord decks which can't do that at absolute earliest until turn three.

Evaluating a Combo

Whenever I come across a new combo and my Johnny sense start tingling, I take a deep breath, sit down, and ask myself three questions before I start buying cards and brewing decks:

  1. Is it consistent? How reliably can you draw and cast/execute the combo?
  2. Is it resilient? How does the combo resist interaction?
  3. Is it powerful? How decisively and regularly does the combo close the game?

ScapeshiftDecks like Scapeshift and Ad Nauseam are high on all three counts. These strategies use multiple copies of one- or two-card combos (Scapeshift/Bring to Light for one, Angel's Grace/Phyrexian Unlife for the other). They are also highly resilient to interaction. Ad Nauseam can win at instant speed and half of its combo is uncounterable. Scapeshift wins at sorcery speed but, as a one-card combo, allows you to hold up mana for interaction. Of course, both combos are also instant K.Os if they resolve, at least in most game states.

You can map other Modern strategies in the combo family along these standards. Infect and Abzan Company (to the extent they are more "combo" than "aggro" and "midrange," respectively) are at the top of their class. Storm and Grishoalbrand are barely getting by on even a single benchmark, and sometimes go a flat 0 for 3 in certain metagames.

Puresteel PaladinDeck tiering and prevalence is often a good indicator of a combo's success, even if the Goblin Electromancer diehards will maintain their deck is just "under the radar." That may be so, but for every Amulet Bloom that is legitimately overlooked, there are dozens of fun but probably bad combo decks masquerading as the next turn four rule violator. Take that from a Puresteel Paladin Cheerios player who loves turn two Retract kills.

As Modern combo players, it's our job to assess any new combo using these three questions, which should be done both theoretically and through testing. This was certainly my objective in sleeving up some Forests with bad dinosaur drawings penned across the image.

Allosaurus Evolution Test Results

As mentioned earlier, I tested a variety of Allosaurus Evolution builds against a handful of top-tier decks. These included Infect, Burn, RG Tron, Jund, and Jeskai Control. If you read my QuietSpeculation Insider pieces, this was Birds of Paradisea continuation and expansion of my initial test results done for my recent Monday article.

In each game, I used a variation on the list posted above, making small adjustments in between games. This isn't a very scientific testing method if you're trying to calculate exact match-win-percentages, but it's significantly more useful if you're just trying to assess general viability. The Rider core remained largely unchanged, which allowed me to see how it worked in each matchup without worrying about if I got the number of Hierarchs vs. Birds right.

Here's a quick match and game breakdown of my results.

  • Infect: 2-3 (3-6 in games)
  • Burn: 3-2 (6-2 in games)
  • RG Tron: 3-2 (6-3 in games)
  • Jund: 1-4 (2-8 in games)
  • Jeskai Control: 1-4 (1-8 in games)

Not the best showing for a new deck, but also not the worst. Honestly, I expected Allosaurus Evolution to bomb worse than Jurassic Park III, so positive records in at least a few of these top-tier matches were heartening on their own. Rather than discuss each match as a whole, I'll discuss each of the three combo benchmarks from the previous section through the lens of my different rounds.

1. Is the Rider/Evolution combo consistent? Not really.

On paper, the deck appears to be built around a two-card combo: Rider plus Evolution. But once you add the three lands (or two lands plus one dork) and the two green Rider pitches, the probabilities start to fall, and your chance of executing this combo by turn three starts to hover around the 15% range. Unlike other two-card combos in Modern, you also don't have any redundancy outside of a wildly unreliable Summoner's Pact.

Fulminator MageThe combo gets much more consistent when you're not under pressure and can organically draw into it by turns 4-5. This happened in the Tron matchup, especially when you can fire off a timely turn two Voice into turn three Evolution/Fulminator to jam up their mana. Indeed, that Mindcensor and Fulminator combo was much better in this deck against Tron than in other Company or Chord strategies: Evolution lets you tutor it directly from your deck so you're effectively playing five copies.

That said, if you were under pressure from Infect and didn't have the combo, you weren't going to have time or selection spells (Serum Visions) to assemble it.

2. Is the Rider/Evolution combo resilient? Definitely not.

Jund and Jeskai Control were major problems for Allosaurus Evolution specifically because of their disruption. I was nervous about Goremand before I started testing, and Jeskai matchups only confirmed my fears. Getting an Evolution countered in any way, particularly off a cantripped counter like Goremand, ranges between a two-for-one or a five-for-one. The virtual five happens when you're losing Rider, the two Remandexiled cards, Evolution, and your entire turn while your opponent didn't even lose a card off the Goremand draw. Disgusting. Jund also caused problems with its discard spells, stranding useless Riders in the hand or forcing us to play them as the world's most expensive Tarmogoyf chumps.

If I played [tippy title="Eldritch Evolution" width="330" height="330"]
Eldritch Evolution[/tippy] tomorrow, I'd probably ditch or trim the Riders in favor of more toolbox options. The deck was significantly more resilient when it was playing a toolbox and midrange plan with an Evolution Plan B; an opponent couldn't just hold up Goremand mana every turn if they were getting smashed by a Voice and a Finks. I noticed this in some tight Jund games where the basic toolbox worked very well (turn four Sigarda, Host of Herons is terrifying for BGx when you effectively run five copies), but where bad Rider topdecks pulled games out of reach.

3. Is the Rider/Evolution combo powerful? Absolutely.

I lived the Evolution dream in three games, going turn one dork into turn two haymaker on separate occasions against Infect, Tron, and Jund. I also executed the combo on turn three in another six games against each deck in the gauntlet. I won seven of those nine games, losing one against Jeskai when the Disciple of Griselbrand was stuck in my hand and I had to fetch Iona instead (she took a Cryptic Command next turn, and losing another to RG Tron's Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. That means my win-rate in games with the turn 2-3 combo was 78%. Time to take down a Grand Prix?

Sadly, it also means my win-rate when I didn't have the combo was a hilarious 29%. Although I went 7/9 in combo games, I was only 11/38 in the non-combo games. Guess Allosaurus Rider might not be making any Grand Prix victory laps anytime soon. This ties back with the combo's consistency issues, particularly in games where you don't have the fast combo (which will be at least 70%-80% of matches). If enterprising brewers can improve those comboless games, or the games where you can't combo until later, the deck may be more viable. But with so much of its power bundled in the glass-cannon opener, there's little incentive to play Allosaurus Evolution over other fragile decks.

Eldritch Evolution's Future

Despite some lackluster performances by Allosaurus Rider, Evolution itself was a great card. I fully expect to see its toolbox and midrange elements once Eldritch Moon becomes Modern-legal, chiefly on the power of a turn two tutor up the curve. This was the major competitive edge Evolution maintained over Chord and Company decks, and in a format that rewards speed as much as Modern, this dual function as a fast tutor or a mid-game value generator (in tandem with Finks/Voice) is invaluable.

How have you been testing Modern's very own Natural Order? Any brews or builds to report? Let me know in the comments and stay tuned next week as we keep reviewing the exciting Eldritch Moon action. As for Allosaurus Rider, he might not be the competitive workhorsedino we were hoping for, but he'll always have one of the best illustrations in Modern.

12 thoughts on “Evaluating Allosurus Evolution in Modern

  1. Thanks for being the voice of reason, Sheridan. I felt that this combo wouldn’t be consisent enough to truly be a contender, and having numbers that backed up my instincts is excellent.

    Unrelated: Are we going to get a metagame update article soon? I’m very interested in seeing how things have changed in this month-plus.

    1. I’m sure there are more places to try Evolution (Elves, Zoo, Abzan Liege, etc.), so it’s possible the Rider synergy holds more water in another home. We’ll have to wait and see!

      No metagame update this month; we’re shifting some roles and responsibilities around and that affects metagame stats timing.

  2. The pool of selectable cards for Eldritch Evolution is tremendously deep. I know that in the next few weeks and months, we’re going to be discovering more and more. For instance, Realm Razer is probably the best target against Tron.

    1. Agree! That said, I don’t think they key with Evolution is the target. The bigger issue is the framework around which you’re building the deck. This limits our depth, because even the best new Modern cards still excel in existing frameworks. They very rarely create new archetypes altogether with brand new frameworks, unless it’s something like a Tier 3 jump to Tier 2. Even so, between Kiki Chord, Abzan Company, Elves, Zoo, and a variety of other strategies, there are tons of fun frameworks to work from!

  3. if I may recommend two per cards:
    1- Dryad Arbor: acts as a land while also being a green card we can exile, boosting consistency.
    2- Qasali Ambusher: a much less stylish but immensely more pragmatic option than allosaurus rider, could slot as a package into gw hatebears. likely we would need to settle for a less ambituous finisher like old sigarda or new avacyn, but could give us some nice tutoring and inevitability. if we slot in some of the gw tango lands along with temple gardens, these guys actually become fairly solid tempo/removal in their own right, and a free three mana creature to tutor off of. has the disadvantage of being a largely dead card against creatureless decks (ad naus, scapeshift) and decks that only swing for one shot or two shot kills (tron).

    1. Arbor is a nice consistency bump. Can also get Evolved into Voice or Spellskite (or other 2 CMC creatures), which is nothing to sneeze at. Ambusher is interesting but a) very conditional and b) doesn’t really insulate us from removal. They can always kill the Ambusher before we Evolve it, unlike Rider or another creature cast on our turn. Still, interesting ideas worth testing!

  4. Dude. I just want to say that you’re awesome. Thank you for loving modern enough to do all this work and write thoughtfully about it. This article was a great read, you covered all the bases, and I’m just generally impressed and appreciative.

    1. Glad you enjoyed it! It’s always fun to produce Modern content with all the testing and examples in it; too much under-researched content already out there on the Internet!

  5. I’ve been working on Coco Kiki Chord & Kiki Chord for over a year now and have high hopes for Eldritch Evolution improving those lists. Below is where testing has led me so far but there are still a number of tweaks I believe may be necessary before I’m happy with a 75.

    Creature (30)
    4x Birds of Paradise
    1x Deceiver Exarch
    2x Eternal Witness
    1x Izzet Staticaster
    2x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
    3x Kitchen Finks
    1x Magus of the Moon
    3x Noble Hierarch
    1x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
    1x Reclamation Sage
    3x Restoration Angel
    1x Reveillark
    1x Scavenging Ooze
    1x Spellskite
    3x Voice of Resurgence
    2x Wall of Roots

    Land (22)
    1x Breeding Pool
    1x Fire-Lit Thicket
    2x Forest
    2x Gavony Township
    1x Grove of the Burnwillows
    1x Horizon Canopy
    1x Misty Rainforest
    1x Plains
    1x Sacred Foundry
    2x Stomping Ground
    1x Temple Garden
    4x Windswept Heath
    4x Wooded Foothills

    Instant (4)
    4x Chord of Calling

    Sorcery (4)
    4x Eldritch Evolution

    Sideboard (15)
    2x Avalanche Riders
    1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
    1x Engineered Explosives
    1x Glen Elendra Archmage
    1x Kataki, War’s Wage
    2x Negate
    3x Path to Exile
    1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
    1x Stony Silence
    1x Thragtusk
    1x Thrun, the Last Troll

    The ability to goldfish non-interactive opponents on Turn 4-5 goes through the roof compared to the current Kiki Chord lists. Additionally your ability to Tutor into relevant bullets is boosted significantly.

    Feedback appreciated.

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