My Thoughts on Strict Proctor

Me: "Can we just play Elesh Norn in the SB?"

"LOL, can you just play strict proctor?" *light chuckling commences*

"Wait... maybe we can just do that..."

3+ hours of testing vs 4-Color, and that's how I landed here:

For anyone not in the know, I finished 6-2 this weekend at the Modern 5K in Cincinnati with the following list:

Elk's SCG Cincinnati Hammer

You'll notice that it is very similar to my Linear list that I posted in the monthly update with some tweaks to the board, most notably being the FULL 4 Strict Proctor in the sideboard.

As it is *easily* the card I've gotten the most questions/pushback on since the adoption of Solitude, I figured it deserved its own separate discussion.

Why Strict Proctor?
It hits *every* ETB trigger, and there are a LOT of ETBs at the moment. The most important ones off the top of my head are:

-The old staples: Leyline Binding, Solitude, Fury, Omnath, Primeval Titan, Archon of Creativity

-The One Ring. Its Protection Trigger is indeed an ETB.

-Cards that most people forget about: Amulet of Vigor, Valakut, Omnath landfall triggers, Emry, Dwarven Mine.

But why not just play Hushbringer instead? Simply put, the non-creatures. Expanding on this though, I’ll point out the cards that Hushy-B misses from the above list: Leyline Binding, The One Ring, Amulet of Vigor, Valakut, Omnath landfall triggers, Emry, Dwarven Mine.

“But think of the nonbos with our own deck, Travis. Think of the NONBOS!”

Let’s be real, our only triggers that we care about proctor hitting are:

SFM, Sigarda’s Aid, Kaldra’s Living Weapon, and *sometimes* Forge Anew’s first line of text.

Here’s my innovative strategy with this: Simply pay the 2 mana for Sigarda’s Aid or SFM trigger. Or have a Paladin/Forge Anew to equip for free anyway.

Am I happy to pay 2 mana for an aid trigger with proctor in play? No.
Am I happy that proctor being in play means that their removal spells and value ETBs cost 2-4 mana? Yes. In fact, I’m so happy about this that I don’t care about paying for the Aid trigger. Keep in mind that Proctors also stack, so if you ever have 2+ proctors in play, it means that Solitude is now a 4-mana pitch spell, Binding costs 5+ mana, Omnath landfall triggers cost 4+ mana *each*, and The One Ring costs 8+ mana if they want the protection effect.

“But they don’t have to pay for the evoke trigger so they keep their Fury/Solitude around!”

Who cares, them having an extra creature is simply *not* what the matchup is about.

Proctor can be annoying for us, but it can be *backbreaking* for 4C.

Another nice upside to proctor is that as a flier, it can pretty easily plink down Teferi, Time Raveler.

As an aside, here are the matchups I like to bring in Proctor (sometimes 4, sometime less): 4C, Amulet, Mill, Grinding Station Breach, UWx Ring Control, Scapeshift, and Tribal decks.

***To clarify, do NOT board out Sigarda's Aid when you board in Proctor. Just pay 2 mana like an adult.***

Fun Bonus Facts:

-The evoke elementals are 2 separate triggers (the "sacrifice" trigger and the ETB trigger). Against decks like Titan where you want both Proctor and Solitude, you can evoke Solitude, pay 2 mana to exile their creature, and decline to pay for the sacrifice trigger.

-Sagas are not impacted by Proctor. I won't touch on why that is, but you don't need to worry about it. Just know that it doesn't matter.

TL;DR: Proctor making our deck 10% less efficient is worth making our OP's decks 90% less efficient.