Return to the Ranks vs
Rally the AncestorsThis is one of the biggest debates I've seen around this archetype, and I'll give my reasoning for Return here.
Return vs. Rally Show
Return to the Ranks Pros: Casting with convoke makes this spell incredibly easy to cast early in the game or after playing other spells. More often than not I'll play this spell on the same turn as casting allies or playing
Tracker's Instincts to fill my graveyard. With
Rally the Ancestors, I have to have 4 mana untapped to cast it. Additionally, If I start the game with a Return and a
Snapcaster Mage in my hand, or two Returns, I won't hesitate to cast a Return for X=2 just to better my board position.
Cons: Sorcery Speed means that this deck will tap out on almost every turn, so you can't bluff counterspells or something similar during your opponent's turn.
Rally the Ancestors
Pros: Gets more creatures for less mana, very useful turn 4 and later if your opponent just board wiped you. Additionally, casting at instant speed is always preferential, you can wait for your opponent to use their Desolate Lighthouse to ensure you can cast it without being countered.
Cons: Its all-in. This is my biggest issue with this card, every part of it screams "One use only". The allies are exiled the turn later, so if you don't win with that play, those cards are now useless. It exiles itself, meaning you couldn't snapcast it back even if you did want to. Basically if your opponent does anything to disrupt your cast (and believe me, they can do a lot), you've ruined your board state. Rally is a powerful card, more powerful than Return to the Ranks, but it is infinitely less flexible.
Halimar Excavator
The most important ally in the deck, Halimar makes us able to mill our opponent explosively. This card must always be 4 copies.
Ondu Cleric
The second most important ally, Ondu Cleric lets us do what no other combo deck does, gain a ****-ton of life. Against any deck that involves doing non-infinite damage to win, the Cleric will often save your life. However, this ally is particularly weak to Electrolyze and
Forked Bolt
, and is useless against decks that either do infinite damage or kill with infect, so you can drop this to 3 in some matchups, and drop to 2 against infect.
Harabaz Druid
A debated ally to me, Harabaz Druid has an enormous amount of value if left unchecked. If your opponent does not kill your turn 2 Harabaz Druid, its almost ensured that you'll win on turn 4. However, the 1 toughness makes her incredibly fragile, so she can be sideboarded out against burn-heavy decks.
Hedron Crab
A problem this deck used to have is that if I couldn't fill my graveyard efficiently, I was dead in the water. Hedron Crab helps to round out the curve and quickly add cards to my graveyard. I keep it at 3 because its not an ally, but I wouldn't go any lower than that in the maindeck.
Jwari Shapeshifter
Incredibly useful but risky, Jwari Shapeshifter allows us to combo off much more reliably. Notable however is that when entering from the graveyard, there must be an ally on the battlefield for her to copy, or else she'll enter as a 0/0 (Even if she's entering at the same time as multiple other allies.) Never cast this card turn 2 if your opponent has untapped mana, if they kill the only target for her, you've suffered a 2 for 1.
Snapcaster Mage
For this deck to work, we need to cast Return to the Ranks. To get that consistently, we need a way to cast it from our graveyard. Snapcaster has the benefit of being 2 mana, so you can return it to cast the same Return again for a second time (I've done this on multiple occasions). He's found by Tracker's Instincts and also allows more consistent casting of some of our sideboard cards. A slower, but potentially more useful alternative is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
.
Tracker's Instincts
This card is everything we want. It fills our graveyard, it gets us allies (or Snapcaster Mage), and it can be cast from a graveyard. It overall increases the consistency of the deck by many times. NEVER drop this card to less than 4.
Cards I will not use
Rally the Ancestors, Cloudshift,
Momentary Blink
, Collected Company, Lead the Stampede.
