While Abzan Amalia Combo wreaked havoc in Pioneer prior to its ban back in 2024, it hasn’t really made an impact in older formats where it remains legal. Despite popping up from time to time in Modern, its lack of resiliency was hard to overcome in such a cutthroat environment.
That being said, the strategy did just unexpectedly 5-0 a Magic Online Modern League, utilizing a powerful new Reality Fracture tool. This potent one-drop helps the deck on multiple angles, giving it a better shot to compete.
A New Combo Helper
Like the once-popular Abzan Amalia Pioneer deck, this Modern shell revolves around two combo pieces: Amalia Benavides Aguirre and Wildgrowth Walker. With both cards in play, all you need to do is gain life once to start a chain reaction. Amalia will Explore once, which in turn triggers Walker to gain three life, retriggering Amalia and so on.
The easiest way to reliably trigger life gain is just to land one of your Soul Sisters effects. Both Guide of Souls
Guide of SoulsWhenever another creature you control enters, you gain 1 life and get {E} (an energy counter).
Whenever you attack, you may pay {E}{E}{E}. When you do, put two +1/+1 counters and a flying counter on target attacking creature. It becomes an Angel in addition to its other types. and Haliya, Guided by Light fill the role nicely, but now, this deck even gets to add Liliana the Faultless in the mix. This one-drop is particularly powerful because it also doubles as a protection source for Amalia, essentially forcing your opponent to kill it before they can mess with your combo pieces.
Once you manage to get your combo engine rolling, you’ll end up with a 20-power Amalia that wipes the rest of the board, setting up a lethal attack. While this technically opens the door for the opponent to kill Amalia, your numerous Explore and Life Gain triggers help find and enable Aetherflux Reservoir as an alternate win condition.
Notably, finding Return to the Ranks also enables you to reassemble the combo altogether when necessary. This card even increases your chances of winning fairly by reviving Guide of Souls and Ocelot Pride
Ocelot PrideFirst strike, lifelink
Ascend (If you control ten or more permanents, you get the city's blessing for the rest of the game.)
At the beginning of your end step, if you gained life this turn, create a 1/1 white Cat creature token. Then if you have the city's blessing, for each token you control that entered this turn, create a token that's a copy of it. at will. The inclusion of Ajani Resolute further helps the cause, threatening to continuously create Ajani’s Pridemate tokens or provide a double anthem effect via its ultimate ability.
Better, but Still Flawed
As a deck with tons of sources of life gain and a board-wiping combo, it isn’t too shocking that Abzan Amalia lines up well against opposing creature decks. Having your own copies of Guide of Souls and Ocelot Pride lets you stave off early pressure from Boros Energy, while the combo provides inevitability. The only real concern is Goblin Bombardment, but Thraben Charm takes care of that just fine.
If that weren’t enough, you also have access to a playset of Solitude, which answers any problematic threat without sacrificing tempo. This makes the Prowess matchup significantly easier, as it stops you from getting punked by Slickshot Show-Off.
Unfortunately, you don’t have much room for other pieces of interaction in the maindeck, which hurts your chances against faster combo strategies like Ruby Storm. Similarly, racing a fast Living End is tough, especially in draws involving Subtlety. While Damping Sphere and Vexing Bauble will sometimes cheese the sideboarded games, you’re pretty reliant on sticking one of these trinkets to have a chance.
On a different axis, the combination of Wrath of the Skies and Solitude makes it tough to get traction versus Azorius Control. Even if you manage to combo off, this deck can easily exile your huge Amalia and then counter Reservoir, effectively negating your progress.
All things considered, Abzan Amalia is still a flawed archetype in Modern, and will likely remain overshadowed by Abzan Devoted Druid and other creature combo decks. Nonetheless, Liliana is a solid addition to Abzan Amalia, and could help it pop up from time to time.
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