Introduction:

There are a few major archetypes in the Black, Green, White section of Historic Color Pie, and those are:

• Samwise Combo,
• Amalia Combo,
• White/GW LifeGain,
• Yawgmoth Combo

And while I still think Samwise Combo is closer to the kind of list I'd want to take to a tournament because of how lethal the CatLoop is, the speed with which the combo turns go in Arena makes Amalia the nicer deck to hop on the ladder with.

With that said, we're taking a look today and seeing if what works in Pioneer also works in a digital-cards-included format like Historic.

This is intended to be in conversation with Samwise Combo list found here: https://aetherhub.com/Deck/Edit/993170

Combo in Historic:

*Caveat: Everything I'm about to say applies to competitive only. Play whatever you want. MtG is a game. Have fun with it however you'd like.

This section copies heavily from the Samwise Combo discussion.

As a reminder, the triangle meta of Historic is as follows:

The meta isn't even really about "Fair" vs "Unfair". You can play an "Unfair" Turn 5 Kill list if you'd like, but if you die first in the combo matchups, you'll get weeded out pretty quick since the "Fair" decks already have to be built to interact with decks just like you.

Despite WotC's claims for how it would like things to be, they're simply awful at managing their formats. Their supposed "Turn 4 Format" has things like Greasefang, Leyline Geist Combo, Kethis and, of course, Samwise Gamgee running around in it. So, no, this is the Turn 3 Kills is the meta we're stuck with because they're quite happy to leave it as it is for whatever reason.

Anyway, all this is to provide what I think the context is for the card choices I made for this build.

The Combo:

+

+ Any Explore or Lifegain Trigger

Now is as good a time as any to point out that this list completely forgoes Explore in favor of a solid number of Lifegain effects. So in the case of this deck, the following are used:

The "Competition":

Much like we did before, let's do a comparison against Amalia's nearest neighbors and see what shakes out, eh?

• Rosie Cotton LifeGain | GW LifeGain | MonoWhite LifeGain:
  • Arguably they're all the same deck just going about things slightly differently.
  • Our build of Amalia draws clear inspiration from what's trying to be accomplished here.
  • Pros:
    • Loads more lifegain.
    • Goes "tall". It's tough to block an 4/4 on Turn 3. Much less an 7/7 on Turn 4.
  • Cons:
    • Again, can't really 1-Shot.
    • Doesn't draw extra cards so once the initial storm has been weathered, there's generally no path back into the game.
    • Playing synergistic creatures and expecting them to survive for several turns can be optimistic.
• Samwise Combo:
  • Trades simplicity for raw kill threat.
  • Far fewer slots to play around with so main-deck utility is sparce and you can sideboard 5-6 cards in at max without eating into the gameplan.
  • Pros: 
    • Most lethal kill out of the whole lot.
    • Let's repeat that since it's by far the biggest strength: The CatLoop kills people dead on the spot.
  • Cons:
    • The CatLoop is insanely user interface intensive to execute so unless your opponent has the good grace to concede, you'll both be there for a minute... or three.
    • More all-in on the combo, not a lot of utility slots.
    • The individual card quality isn't as high.
    • Mana base needs are more restictive. Not a 2-color-splash-x deck; you need all 3 colors fully supported along the curve.
• BG Yawgmoth:
  • Beyond the core of the Samwise Combo, the utility cards I'm playing were inspired by the Yawg deck.
  • Chord of Calling provides plenty of consistency and there is some sneaky card draw to help keep the hand stocked.
  • Pros:
    • Waaaay~ more board control (over creatures moreso than other permanent types)
    • Two color mana base is much cleaner and allows for utility lands.
  • Cons:
    • So many moving parts to the Kill make it more difficult to snag free-wins out of nowhere if they foolishly tap out

CoCo vs Chord (vs Knight-Errant?):

vs

"But didn't you prefer CoCo in the Samwise discussion!?" I hear you say calmly and reasonably.

Well, unlike the Samwise Combo build, I've gone with Chord here because of just how bloody simple the Amalia combo is to assemble.

This build of Amalia comes with plenty of ETB-Lifegain pieces and 8x of either Amalia|Walker. These quantities mean you're far more likely to only really need 1x of the missing pieces which is where Chord shines.

Also, Chord's ability to be cast is made trivial by the sheer quantity of 1|2-drop creatures that this deck runs. Be mindful of having enough green sources though, you might need a green creature or two to actually get triple-G so fair warning.

vs

The keen eyed among you will have noticed that, after determining that Chord is better for this deck, I didn't just add CoCo in afterwards. No, friend, I've instead opted for Knight-Errant of Eos as my Dig-6-Get-2.

This is because the Knight-Errant:

• is a creature
  • Directly serves to trigger the ETB-Lifegain effects
  • Happens to be a creature that plays well against Fatal Push, Fragment Reality and Skyclave Apparition.
• is threat/blocker
• allows for establishment of redundacy in your hand (ie. You can hit 2 Amalias without Legend ruling)
• has a better "floor" than CoCo
  • If you completely wiff with Knight, you still have a 4/4.
• works better in a land-light, cheap-creature-heavy list like what we have here
  • Since this build doesn't have any mana dorks (besides Innkeeper) it's brave to think you'll get 4 lands every game in this 21 land deck.

And perhaps most crucially: I don't overvalue Collected Company. It's a good card, but it's ruled the roost for so long that people have actually forgotten what drawbacks it actually has.

What makes CoCo so good are really only 2 things: [#1] It lets creatures that don't have Flash play at Instant Speed (if they're randomly on the top of your deck). [#2] It lets you get 6 mana of value for 4 spent onto the board (aka cheats on mana).

This deck has such a low curve that #2 is moot (and in fact increases the value of the Convoke mechanic) so the only real tradeoff for going Knight-Errant is the ability to Flash in the combo. Obviously, I feel that the points I've listed above are enough to give the nod to LionRiderPointingBirdForward.

Remember: CoCo is only at its best when you have an abundance of 3-drops. 4mana to maybe hit 2x 2-drops or worse is not the way.

The Main Deck:

Fixed:

• 4x Amalia Benavides Aguirre: Namesake card. The rest of the LifeGain sub-theme happens because of her triggers.
• 4x Wildgrowth Walker: Only here for the combo. Extremely limited (if any) means of Exploring in this build besides Amalia.
  • The Explore mechanic isn't especially powerful and most of the cards with it aren't busted either, especially when compared to the life-gain synergy cards (which can go absolutely out of control) so don't worry about jamming Explore or Map-maker cards in.
  • As any Rakdos player will tell you: "You win more games when you don't put bad cards into your deck", so leave the Cenote Scouts at home.
• 4x Soul Warden: The biggest upgrade we get over the Pioneer version. Triggers off of both our and opposing creatures. Crazy.
• 3x Prosperous Innkeeper: There an argument for 4x, but we already have so many other 2-drops. The Treasure does provide that Black or extra White source a lot of the time though...
• 4x Chord of Calling: See the CoCo vs Chord discussion above for more.
• 4x Knight-Errant of Eos: See the CoCo vs Chord discussion above for more.

The Rest of the LifeGain Sub-theme:

• 3x Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom: WotC figured out that it was more inituitive for newer players to only need to keep track of their own nonsense? Yay~! Makes for a weaker card than the resident Soul Sister, but it's better game design so I'll take it.
• 4x Voice of the Blessed: An Ajani's Pridemate that gets Flying? And then becomes Indestructible? Yes, please.
• 1x Trelasarra, Moon Dancer: An Ajani's Pridemate that lets us Scry away the clutter atop our deck? Yes, please.

Flex Slots:

• 2x Return to the Ranks: It's nice to have this looming on the top of the deck once you've used Amalia to Explore away everything else, but I'm not sure it's strictly a must-have.
• 2x Skyclave Apparition: I see people run Haywire Mite all the time and I have to ask why. Apparition is strictly better when you have enough access to white since it hits literally everything Mite hits while being able to hit Creatures and Planeswalkers too.
  
  • Seriously, name me something the Mite hits (that people actually play in Historic) that Apparition couldn't also deal with.
  • UPDATE: The exception I've found is Leyline Binding, but that's such a fringe card in Historic that it doesn't matter much.

Super-Flex Slots:

There are 4 slots that I'm still fiddling around with, if I update things I'll just slap what's there and/or what I've tried here.

• Voice of Resurgence: This vanilla bear is middling in the super-fast Combo matchups, but is such a pain for Control and Midrange to deal with.Look to the 4x's in the Maybeboard for other cards I've tested. None were too thrilling so jam in whatever GW 2-drop you want.
• Dina, Soul Steeper: Synergizes well with all the incidental lifegain. She'll get it for a surprising amount of chip damage, but she's not usually how you'll be closing out the game since we're aiming to 1-shot with one ginormous swing from Amalia. Good to have as a backup plan against decks where the chip damage matters though.
• Kellan, Daring Traveler: He's not amazing, but Cenote Scout sucks and sometimes you do just want to trigger Explore and the accompanying 2/3 body isn't half bad.
• Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose: Another Dina that synergizes with all the lifegain effects, but this guy's a better blocker.
• Extraction Specialist: Another situational card, but servers as faux-card advantage. Especially scary when they can reanimate that last combo piece.
• Sentinel of the Nameless City: Dude's mostly a stat-stick, but he does make a string of map tokens that let us actually use the Walker. Wow~. 

Sideboard:

• Vs Control of various flavors:
  • Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
  • Archon of Emeria
  • Reidane, God of the Worthy
  • Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar: More here for Midrange, but if they're Counter heavy.
  • Aetherflux Reservoir: Having another way to finish the game is nice. You can probably get the lifegain part of the combo off, but then they'll exile Amalia or whatever.
• "The Mirror":
  • Knight of Dusk's Shadow
  • Skyclave Apparition
• Misc Combo:
  • Juggernaut Peddler
  • Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
  • Archon of Emeria
• Graveyard Hate:
  • Jirina, Dauntless General
  • Kutzil's Flanker
• Midrange (Rakdos, Jund)
  • Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar
  • Skyclave Apparition
• Mill Hate:
  • Gaea's Blessing