Historic Selesnya Company Deck Guide: For Both Bo1 and Bo3 – The Best Collected Company Deck!

Luminarch Aspirant: This is one of your weaker cards in the deck, but it’s a good role player. It buffs up your fliers, which is great, and it enables Lovestruck Beast as well.

Scavenging Ooze: Scoozy is really well positioned right now because of the amount of decks that rely on the graveyard. It’s also notorious for being one of the best 2-drops that you can draw in the late game, because it easily becomes a 10/10 when the dust settles and everything else died off already. I am not a big fan of playing more than 2 copies of this card, because the second copy is drastically worse on the battlefield than the first one and we don’t run too many lands in this deck to begin with.

Archon of Emeria: I’m going to humble brag a bit here, because in my Zendikar Rising constructed set review I gave this card a high rating and said that this card can be incredible in the right shell. It took a long time, but we finally found it! Archon is such an annoying card to play against with all the shock lands in Historic and it for sure stops your phoenix opponents from doing anything meaningful. Most decks just don’t operate that well playing only 1 spell a turn.

Elite Spellbinder: This card is just perfect for this deck and it’s honestly the card that revitalized this whole archetype. It’s a strong, evasive beater, and it’s one hell of a find off your Collected Company. I never want to hear “white cards are bad” ever again!

Skyclave Apparition: Skyclave apparition is the second best candidate for your Collected Company (most of the time). Sometimes it can be rough to play this card because of the casting cost. Be careful with your Branchloft Pathway in the early game for that reason, and sometimes it’s better to play Temple Garden on turn 1 instead of a basic forest for your Llanowar Elf – this allows you to play Skyclave Apparition on turn 2.

Lovestruck Beast: What a surprise! Who would’ve thought that Lovestruck Beast is good! Jokes aside, Lovestruck and Great Henge has always been one hell of a drug, so we’re playing it. It’s also another pseudo 1-drop because of the adventure half.

Kazandu Mammoth: Not only does this prevent flooding and manascrew at the same time, it’s also just a very reasonably beater and Great Henge enabler.

Collected Company: Honestly, this card might get the award for being the single strongest card in Historic, or at least in contention. Instant speed 4 mana spell that’s essentially 6 mana is just so messed up – and it’s the reason why this archetype is as good as it is.

The Great Henge: I found this card to be quite effective in this meta game, but you can certainly cut it if you’re facing too many control with sweepers. It easily overpowers a lot of creature decks though, which is why I like it right now.

No Reidane, God of the Worthy: Right now I am facing too many Rogues and control decks for this to be an inclusion. If you’re facing a lot of control decks and sweepers, then this might be a card that you want to play instead.

No Rhonas, the Indomitable: We don’t need the trample right now, but it can be a cheeky 1-of that you could be playing. Most of the time this is just worse than Lovestruck Beast though, so I am not sure how much I want this.

No Thalia, Guardian of Thraben: Even though it’s a good main deck card against a good number of decks right now, the fact that this also hinders our Collected Company and Henge is what puts me off a bit. We are such a good proactive deck game 1 and we just want to delay ourselves in that regard.

Sideboard

In general, you don’t to sideboard in too many noncreature cards because it ruins your creature count for Collected Company. This is why you will sometimes see lower numbers of cards, even though they are good in the current meta.

2 Baffling End: Just some additional removal cheap removal. Usually we are fine against creatures because of Skyclave Apparition and Lovestruck Beast, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little bit more.

2 Rest in Peace: This card is lights out against Rogues, but Dreadhorde Arcanist decks also struggle quite a bit against this.

2 Knight of Autumn: There are always enchantments and artifacts in the formats and Knight of Autumn is exactly what this deck stands for – interact with your opponent while having a beater.

2 Shifting Ceratops: Against blue decks, this is the best bonker. Works wonders!

2 Giant Killer: This is surprisingly needed in some matchups, which can be tough otherwise. In a pinch you can also find this off Collected Company, which won’t let you kill things, but at least tap them down.

2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben: The taxing ability is really good in some matchups and it usually hits them harder than it hits us (and they usually want to kill this anyway). Especially phoenix and control decks do not want to play against this for a long time. I face more phoenix decks than control decks at the moment, so I have this instead of Reidane, for example.

2 Rule of Law: On the play this can be crushing against phoenix, but the main reason for this card is definitely the new Tainted Pact deck. Good luck finding an answer for that, opponent!

1 The Great Henge: Incredible card in most creature matchups.

Matchups and Sideboard Guide

Orzhov Auras

Rule of Law is lights out for them, and so is Archon of Emeria if they can’t remove it in time. This matchup boils down to if they have early Kaya's Ghostform and Thoughtseize and they need a specific combination of cards to beat you. Overall it’s quite an even matchup overall, but Rule of Law will be very hard to beat for them.

Gruul Aggro

This is a good matchup, but you can get overrun in game 1 because Archon of Emeria and Adanto Vanguard aren’t very good. Knight of Autumn can be a nice comeback against Embercleave and for the life gain. If you survive until turn 5 you usually win, so play accordingly.

Izzet Phoenix

This matchup has been pretty close for me. Phoenix has good amounts of removal and you’re not doing a lot when they put 2 phoenixes into their graveyard by turn 2. Giant Killer is surprisingly good here because the tapping ability can be potent. Great Henge is usually a tiny bit too slow post-board because they always kill your stuff as well. I think that Spellbinder is not worth it because it just gets pinged down and most spells are incredibly cheap anyway. I’m still on the fence about the Ceratops – it can be super good but sometimes it just gets Lightning Axed.

Jeskai Control

Knight of Autumn isn’t great but it’s certainly better than Skyclave Apparition. Be careful with your Collected Company – ideally you want to play this after they used their Wrath of God. Sometimes it’s also the correct play to play it in your own turn, because your opponent tapped out. Try to identify what could be in your opponent’s hand and make your choices based on that. Recent data suggests that this is a bad matchup for Selesnya, but I honestly think that it’s about even – your threats are pretty good and so are their answers.

Simic Stompy

You can answer your emails and make yourself some sandwiches while playing this matchup. You just have all the answers and you’re essentially the mirror match with much better cards.

Dimir Rogues

Rogues wants to pressure while interacting and that’s exactly what we are doing as well. Rogues can have a tough time keeping up with cheap threats and Collected Company is a key card here. In game 1, just slam your The Great Henge as soon as you can and don’t play too much around counterspells.

Selesnya Company (Mirror)

On the play I want to be more proactive than reactive, so I’m just not playing the Knight of Autumn there. This matchup can be a bit miserable because the turn 1 Llanowar Elves is just such a force and it really punishes the player on the draw. Luminarch Aspirant can be massive on the play, but also a bit too slow on the draw. On the play, enable your The Great Henge if you have it in hand. On the draw, remove their creatures first before trying to enable yours.

Tainted Pact Combo

This matchup isn’t very good. Not only are they playing tons of sweepers, they are also playing a 2-card combo that’s hard to interact with. Archon of Emeria and Rule of Law are your best cards, but focus on putting enough pressure on the board first. Don’t play around the turn 4 kill too much. If they have it, you lose, simple as that. Shouldn’t happen too often anyway, considering that it’s a singleton deck. The most important thing is early pressure.

End Step

Thank you so much for reading again, it’s always a pleasure. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions regarding this deck, I’ve been playing this deck ad nauseam and I’ve tried a lot of cards out already!

Stay safe everyone!