There are lots of combo decks in Modern, ranging from the aggressive pseudo-combo decks like Infect to the controlling combo decks like Jeskai Nahiri, the Harbinger. There are also more midrangey decks that are more focused on generating value and incidentally comboing off, like the Abzan Collected Company decks. The problem with those decks is that they can frequently be dismantled by an abundance of removal spells. Fortunately, there are more resilient ways to build the Abzan midrange decks:

Abzan Chord - Modern | Montre82, 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (23)
• 4 Archangel of Thune
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Wall of Roots
• 3 Noble Hierarch
• 3 Spike Feeder
• 1 Anafenza, the Foremost
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Spellskite

• Spells (14)
• 4 Chord of Calling
• 4 Lingering Souls
• 3 Path to Exile
• 3 Worship

• Lands (23)
• 2 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 4 Gavony Township
• 4 Verdant Catacombs
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 2 Razorverge Thicket
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Temple Garden

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Spellskite
• 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
• 1 Ethersworn Canonist
• 1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
• 3 Memoricide
• 1 Orzhov Pontiff
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 2 Stony Silence
• 3 Thoughtseize

Buy This Deck

The combo here is between Archangel of Thune and Spike Feeder, which allows you to gain infinite life and make your creatures infinitely large. The ability for these combo pieces to gain life on their own makes them a huge boon in aggressive matchups. That, combined with the fact that Archangel of Thune is a must-answer threat in midrange and control matchups means that there’s plenty of raw power to work with here.

The difference between this deck and Collected Company strategies is that you’re more focused on utilizing Lingering Souls to win midrange matchups. Lingering Souls teams up with Gavony Township and Archangel of Thune to take over games. The density of mana creatures gives you plenty of extra bodies to power up with your Gavony Township activations and allows you to ramp into your powerful top end.

The other upside of Lingering Souls is that it teams up with Wall of Roots to make your Chord of Callings terrifyingly efficient. It’s easy to start Chording for giant haymakers like Scavenging Ooze and Anafenza, the Foremost or combo pieces if your opponent ever gives you an opening.

Sure, compared to Abzan Company, you lose the potential for Collected Company to find most of your combo. But this is a much better Lingering Souls deck, and Lingering Souls is an incredible tool in a format where Affinity and Infect are as popular as they are. The ability to generate a huge number of blockers and utilize them in so many ways to take over the game is a huge boon, and may make this the Abzan combo-midrange deck of choice in the coming weeks.