This seems like it has a good possibility of making the cut in at least some 4/5 colour decks.
I think the biggest advantage that Unclaimed Territory brings is that it allows Bant-Red builds to more comfortably and consistently run the Avacyn's Pilgrim plan (More stellar 3-drops, fewer OK 2-drops, better compatibility with both Thalias) if they choose to do so.
I think a single gemstone mine might be OK in conjunction with 7 dorks and a fast clock. While the manabase absolutely folds to Blood Moon it seems less painful on average than the fetch lists.
I would cut your last 2 Pilgrims if you're going to keep going in that direction. Pilgrim -> Mantis Rider is already an awkward and painful sequence, and Pilgrim -> Brawler makes Pilgrim awkward even more frequently.
Those two Pilgrims can become your 4th Brawler and 22nd land / Channeler Mage / Some other 2-drop. Cutting the Pilgrims means I personally wouldn't run Thalia HC.
Tireless Tracker is OK here, and if you find yourself routinely needing her card advantage she can stick around. With that said, the rest of your list is pushing in the aggro-tempo direction and Tracker is pushing back in the grind direction. I think these 2 slot might best be served as Mirran Crusader since he's super relevant and awesome right now, but it could also be something like Lyev Skyknight, Sunscourge Champion, or perhaps Renegade Rallier.
I think there's enough overlap in tools that you can get what you want from any 3-4 color combo, and it's not really worth running the full 5C with rainbow lands.
As you mentioned, if you're running red you're probably running Mantis Rider. Mantis Rider synergizes poorly with Avacyn's Pilgrim, so most Red players (AFAIK) have cut down the ramp, shaved off some 3 drops, and filled in more 2-drops relative to GWu(b) lists. Shaving ramp also causes you to run into more problems with Thalia GoT, so you'll probably end up cutting her. Overall this pushes you down more of an aggressive route, whereas GWu(b) aligns more with hatebears. Both builds are faced with an ongoing optimization problem of identifying the best 2-drops, but this question is much more central to red builds since they usually run more 2-drops. These approaches both have their own match-up spreads so picking an optimal base is probably a meta call -- if you let us know what you expect to be facing we can try to be more helpful.
headminerve have you tried Trinket Mage + EE? Making EE findable by CoCo could be strong. But Trinket Mage does become a bad card if you already have EE. Perhaps already having EE puts you in a favorable enough position for this to not matter, though?
It looks like it would do well when you're drawing the right ratio of humans and spells, and have some explosive starts (a la Burn) that get under some decks that other slower Human builds have trouble with. But at 22 humans I worry about running into hands with more burn than creatures, where Champion and Lieutenant become suboptimal. How often does this come up?
3 copies of Always Watching seems a little clunky outside of its payoff with Initiate. With enough Prowess triggers would Seeker of the way become better than Initiate? If so, it might be worth trading Always Watching for something like 2 more spells (Boros Charm? Smuggler's Copter?) and another Human (Magus of the Moon? Grim Lavamancer?)
I was playing WGub Humans last weekend vs GWru Saheeli Evolution and realized that Big Thalia shuts down twin-esque combos such as Copycat since all the copies enter the battlefield tapped and can't attack before getting exiled at end of turn. Getting Big T to stick against Jeskai will be harder, but she's a very reasonable main deck inclusion if you want to bolster your chances in game 1.
1. Maulfist Revolutionary isn't a bad card, it's just competing against a lot of other good cards for the 3 CMC slot. The trample is nice, though Maulfist is dependent upon having another card with a counter on it already to gain value from its ETB and on-death abilities. This is not unusual in a Humans deck, but it's not guaranteed, either. Mirran Crusader and Knight of the Reliquary can also have evasion (Crusader via protection, Knight via Kessig Wolf Run), a degree of resiliency, and the ability to punch for damage that exceeds their CMC.
2. Both Thalias and Avacyn's Pilgrim are all loosely part of a package. The Thalias together are effective against a huge swath of the format, though they both miss against hand-spewing creature-based aggro decks like Affinity. Running the Pilgrims is important to cast Big Thalia earlier, which is strongest T2 on the play, and it also helps you ease the tension between Thalia GoT & CoCo by hitting 5 mana if necessary. Because you have more dorks you can then shave some weaker 2 CMC humans and load on a few more good 3 CMC ones. If you aren't running 3+ Pilgrims you can get away with 2-3 Thalia GoT but I wouldn't bother with Big Thalia. Running CoCo, Path, and Reflector Mage already gives you some decent game against midrange decks. Rallier's value depends upon how many 2 CMC creatures you keep. If you move to the Pilgrim + 3-drop plan you'll end up shaving some 2-drops which weakens Rallier and makes Eternal Witness more attractive. Overall I'm not pushing you to adopt this package, I just want you make sure that you understand the downstream build decisions that come from it.
3. Mantis Rider is an excellent card, and perhaps equally important is Izzet Staticaster in the board. However, Avacyn's Pilgrim does not play well with Mantis Rider. Trading black for red and cutting Pilgrim (which admittedly is a weak card in and of itself) means cutting down 3 drops to 9-10, cutting Big Thalia / Kambal / Sin Collector, and adding more 2-drops. These 2-drops could be Meddling Mage (see Headminerve's lists), Metallic Mimic, Mayor, Baby Jace, etc.. the community hasn't really aligned on an optimal 2-drop yet. Most are usually OK, and even situationally decent, but none have been consistently incredible. I cut Mimic once I realized that it doesn't do anything off of CoCo.
The overall choice of red vs black is largely a meta call IMO. I personally think black usually does a bit better against control and unfair decks while red does better against affinity / infect and a few other small aggro decks, but you can build both lists to try to minimize their respective weaknesses. For instance, I'm running 2x Ceremonious Rejection to try to shore up WGUB's matchup against Affinity (and help with E-Tron). Conversely you can build WGUR lists with more Mana leaks in the side to help against unfair matchups. Finally, you have some lists that try to stick as closely to WG(u) as possible (see EpicEmpiricism's list above) -- this gives you the most consistent and painless experience, which can be just as valuable as either Red or Black.
4. Don't worry about Solemnity for now. In terms of enchantments be prepared with a plan against Blood Moon. I prefer Reclamation Sage or Qasali Pridemage to War Priest as the ability to hit artifacts and do double duty against Affinity etc is more important than being a human.
That's a neat direction. I would add 1-2x Vault of the Archangel to help push through crowded boards states and gain life advantage while racing against aggro. I also think that you have enough grindy card advantage between Bloodsoaked Champ, Inspector, and Bob, so you'll probably get more use out of running the full set of Crusader over Liliana (Maybe move her to the side?). Faster beats, more help against Shadow, and pairs well with deathtouch. You could possibly add 1x Gideon AoZ for a stronger topdeck, which I find the CoCo-less builds miss a bit.
Welcome, Xaricore. Yeah, Knight of the Holy Nimbus has come up a few times. I personally haven't used him but he seems very reliable and especially useful in the face of increasing sweepers. If you're expecting lots of spot removal Deft Duelist is another card to consider if you're in blue.
My previous impression was that Mono-white was wonderfully painless and consistent, but that it couldn't keep up with the tempo afforded by Hierarch + CoCo. Missing the interaction afforded by U or B splashes also made unfair matchups harder. IMO the biggest strength to Mono-white was the ability to run Brave the Elements as an evasion spell / counterspell, but the evasion utility of BtE has taken a hit with Affinity and E-Tron at the top of the tier list. However, the current strength of Mirran Crusader and the printing of Glory-Bound Initiate might make it worth reviewing. Definitely could be a better meta call if you're up against a lot of Burn or Blood Moon and see fewer unfair decks. Would you be able to post your friend's list?
The first time I looked at SS Champ I missed the fact that his Eternalize cost includes discarding a card -- I just thought I'd mention that in case anyone else here gave the card a cursory glance and missed it, too. Because of the discard he doesn't technically give you any CA, so I'd argue that he might rank lower than Witness or Tracker in matchups where you need raw CA. His Eternalize does give you the option to replace a poor topdeck, which is still valuable, though, since you can swap that land / Hierarch off the top for a hearty 4/4 body.
Some notes on the currently developing meta from Lejoon's site:
We are technically tier 1 according to Lukas's methodology
Grixis Shadow, Affinity, Jeskai Flash, and UW control are all rising quickly
Burn, Dredge, Vizier Company, and Storm are all still present but are trending down significantly (for the moment)
So yeah, prepare for the return of main-deck'd Supreme Verdicts, Bolts, and Helices.
Xathrid Necromancer has come up a few times as anti-sweeper tech, but despite it being a pet card of mine, I'm still not very fond it in this build since it's not very aggressive but needs to stay on the board in case of sweepers. I would prefer to run some combination of Meddling Mage and possibly Sin Collector (exiling is nice to avoid snap-backs) and/or counterspells out the side. Eternal Witness might work its way back into the SB to grind against Grixis Shadow and UX Control. Any other anti-sweeper tech for Redless builds? I guess there's Knight of the Holy Nimbus as a generally hearty lil beater.
I've also been trying to think of tech for Redless builds against Affinity beyond Natural State.. Engineered Explosives.. Qasali Pridemage. Anyone have experience with Orzhov Pontiff? I guess with Storm and Dredge on the decline (for now) it might be safe to cut down to 2x RIP and run a few more copies of Stony Silence, which would also help with Gx Tron, which has been gaining. Unfortunately both of the Thalias are mediocre against robots outside of some corner cases where they stumble and you get one down on T2.
I might go up to 2x Anafenza since she dodges bolts from Jeskai, limits recursion shenanigans in Shadow, puts counters on things to help dodge Bolt/Anger and enable Falconer, and limits Modular shenanigans.
Wow, looks like a lot has happened here in the last few weeks. Very interesting to see a non-red (Mantis Rider) list being the one to break out into the metagame, but I suppose Mirran Crusader is just as good, if not better in the current meta. The shift to black is also very interesting with the lack of Dark Confidant.
I think the current iteration has been so successful because it accepted that it would never have a faster clock than other linear decks, and instead leaned into the hatebears angle to drain opponents' tempo down to parity with ours. Thalia V1 + Thlia V2 + Reflector Mage (and Kambal / Aethersworn Canonist / Meddling Mage out the side) present a spectrum of disruption that covers midrange and unfair combo decks better than any other configuration so far.
A lot of players have expressed a desire to work Bob in but I've yet to see someone post encouraging results after following through. In brief there are two problems. The first is that optimizing your curve for good 3 CMC CoCo hits leaves you with a higher avg CMC than Bob is usually run at. Between these extra painful draws and the pain of shocking yourself to fetch black (especially if black is a quaternary splash color) you lose a lot of life. Between the high threat density and CoCo the deck already keeps up in card advantage with most other decks -- an Eternal Witness or Tireless Tracker out the side can painlessly supplement your CA in your secondary color if you're facing a really grindy control matchup. The second issue is that between Thalias & Reflector Mage the deck is really built to leverage transient tempo advantages, which pushes the deck in a different axis than grinding out victories through CA over long games. That's not to say that Bob is bad or can't run away with games, but he doesn't seem at his best here.
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@Headminerve: I agree that Affinity, especially, is a weak matchup that's getting swept under the rug a bit. Running 8x flyers in Bant Red helps a lot. Ray Gordon reported his Bant match against Affinity here
Round 15 - Andrew on Affinity - Kept a hand that had turn 2 Anafenza, and it turned out my opponent kept a hand with double Arcbound Ravager. Anafenza holds off modular nonsense until I top deck an Abzan Falconer which lets me stabilize at 4, block his Vault Skirges, and Fly over with 7/7 Champions while fading a top deck Galvanic Blast. Game 2 I kept a hand with Pontiff, hoping it would be enough as he was on Bomat Couriers. I remembered why Izzet Staticaster is better, as I got beat down by Plating wielding Nexuses. Game 3, my opponent mulled to 4, and a turn two Big Thalia backed by 3 Path to Exiles was enough to punch my ticket.
It sounds like he got pretty lucky, but I wonder if Gavony Township + Falconer is a worthwhile emergency plan for Bant Hate-humans against flying decks.
Also I agree that GBI is somewhat underrated, so you have my support there
Most of the 4c lists are like 50-60% white, with Noble Hierarch helping to cover WGU. In this case just fetching your needed splash color can be less painful than getting dinged for each land tap. Additionally, running fetches makes sure you can fetch Forest, so that you're at least able to cast CoCo through a Blood Moon.
With that said the coverage of the splash colors (especially Black) for the popular 4c list is lower than it needs to be, and going full rainbow might be the best way to fix that. Give it a shot and let us know how it goes. Only thing I'll note is that you don't want Ziggurat in a CoCo list.
3x Avacyn's Pilgrim
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Voltaic Brawler
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
4x Mantis Rider
4x Reflector Mage
2x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
2x Anafenza, the Foremost
4x Unclaimed Territory
4x Cavern of Souls
4x City of Brass
1x Gemstone Mine
3x Reflecting Pool
2x Copperline Gorge
1x Botanical Sanctum
1x Razorverge Thicket
1x Plains
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
Those two Pilgrims can become your 4th Brawler and 22nd land / Channeler Mage / Some other 2-drop. Cutting the Pilgrims means I personally wouldn't run Thalia HC.
Tireless Tracker is OK here, and if you find yourself routinely needing her card advantage she can stick around. With that said, the rest of your list is pushing in the aggro-tempo direction and Tracker is pushing back in the grind direction. I think these 2 slot might best be served as Mirran Crusader since he's super relevant and awesome right now, but it could also be something like Lyev Skyknight, Sunscourge Champion, or perhaps Renegade Rallier.
As you mentioned, if you're running red you're probably running Mantis Rider. Mantis Rider synergizes poorly with Avacyn's Pilgrim, so most Red players (AFAIK) have cut down the ramp, shaved off some 3 drops, and filled in more 2-drops relative to GWu(b) lists. Shaving ramp also causes you to run into more problems with Thalia GoT, so you'll probably end up cutting her. Overall this pushes you down more of an aggressive route, whereas GWu(b) aligns more with hatebears. Both builds are faced with an ongoing optimization problem of identifying the best 2-drops, but this question is much more central to red builds since they usually run more 2-drops. These approaches both have their own match-up spreads so picking an optimal base is probably a meta call -- if you let us know what you expect to be facing we can try to be more helpful.
It looks like it would do well when you're drawing the right ratio of humans and spells, and have some explosive starts (a la Burn) that get under some decks that other slower Human builds have trouble with. But at 22 humans I worry about running into hands with more burn than creatures, where Champion and Lieutenant become suboptimal. How often does this come up?
3 copies of Always Watching seems a little clunky outside of its payoff with Initiate. With enough Prowess triggers would Seeker of the way become better than Initiate? If so, it might be worth trading Always Watching for something like 2 more spells (Boros Charm? Smuggler's Copter?) and another Human (Magus of the Moon? Grim Lavamancer?)
1. Maulfist Revolutionary isn't a bad card, it's just competing against a lot of other good cards for the 3 CMC slot. The trample is nice, though Maulfist is dependent upon having another card with a counter on it already to gain value from its ETB and on-death abilities. This is not unusual in a Humans deck, but it's not guaranteed, either. Mirran Crusader and Knight of the Reliquary can also have evasion (Crusader via protection, Knight via Kessig Wolf Run), a degree of resiliency, and the ability to punch for damage that exceeds their CMC.
2. Both Thalias and Avacyn's Pilgrim are all loosely part of a package. The Thalias together are effective against a huge swath of the format, though they both miss against hand-spewing creature-based aggro decks like Affinity. Running the Pilgrims is important to cast Big Thalia earlier, which is strongest T2 on the play, and it also helps you ease the tension between Thalia GoT & CoCo by hitting 5 mana if necessary. Because you have more dorks you can then shave some weaker 2 CMC humans and load on a few more good 3 CMC ones. If you aren't running 3+ Pilgrims you can get away with 2-3 Thalia GoT but I wouldn't bother with Big Thalia. Running CoCo, Path, and Reflector Mage already gives you some decent game against midrange decks. Rallier's value depends upon how many 2 CMC creatures you keep. If you move to the Pilgrim + 3-drop plan you'll end up shaving some 2-drops which weakens Rallier and makes Eternal Witness more attractive. Overall I'm not pushing you to adopt this package, I just want you make sure that you understand the downstream build decisions that come from it.
3. Mantis Rider is an excellent card, and perhaps equally important is Izzet Staticaster in the board. However, Avacyn's Pilgrim does not play well with Mantis Rider. Trading black for red and cutting Pilgrim (which admittedly is a weak card in and of itself) means cutting down 3 drops to 9-10, cutting Big Thalia / Kambal / Sin Collector, and adding more 2-drops. These 2-drops could be Meddling Mage (see Headminerve's lists), Metallic Mimic, Mayor, Baby Jace, etc.. the community hasn't really aligned on an optimal 2-drop yet. Most are usually OK, and even situationally decent, but none have been consistently incredible. I cut Mimic once I realized that it doesn't do anything off of CoCo.
The overall choice of red vs black is largely a meta call IMO. I personally think black usually does a bit better against control and unfair decks while red does better against affinity / infect and a few other small aggro decks, but you can build both lists to try to minimize their respective weaknesses. For instance, I'm running 2x Ceremonious Rejection to try to shore up WGUB's matchup against Affinity (and help with E-Tron). Conversely you can build WGUR lists with more Mana leaks in the side to help against unfair matchups. Finally, you have some lists that try to stick as closely to WG(u) as possible (see EpicEmpiricism's list above) -- this gives you the most consistent and painless experience, which can be just as valuable as either Red or Black.
4. Don't worry about Solemnity for now. In terms of enchantments be prepared with a plan against Blood Moon. I prefer Reclamation Sage or Qasali Pridemage to War Priest as the ability to hit artifacts and do double duty against Affinity etc is more important than being a human.
My previous impression was that Mono-white was wonderfully painless and consistent, but that it couldn't keep up with the tempo afforded by Hierarch + CoCo. Missing the interaction afforded by U or B splashes also made unfair matchups harder. IMO the biggest strength to Mono-white was the ability to run Brave the Elements as an evasion spell / counterspell, but the evasion utility of BtE has taken a hit with Affinity and E-Tron at the top of the tier list. However, the current strength of Mirran Crusader and the printing of Glory-Bound Initiate might make it worth reviewing. Definitely could be a better meta call if you're up against a lot of Burn or Blood Moon and see fewer unfair decks. Would you be able to post your friend's list?
Xathrid Necromancer has come up a few times as anti-sweeper tech, but despite it being a pet card of mine, I'm still not very fond it in this build since it's not very aggressive but needs to stay on the board in case of sweepers. I would prefer to run some combination of Meddling Mage and possibly Sin Collector (exiling is nice to avoid snap-backs) and/or counterspells out the side. Eternal Witness might work its way back into the SB to grind against Grixis Shadow and UX Control. Any other anti-sweeper tech for Redless builds? I guess there's Knight of the Holy Nimbus as a generally hearty lil beater.
I've also been trying to think of tech for Redless builds against Affinity beyond Natural State.. Engineered Explosives.. Qasali Pridemage. Anyone have experience with Orzhov Pontiff? I guess with Storm and Dredge on the decline (for now) it might be safe to cut down to 2x RIP and run a few more copies of Stony Silence, which would also help with Gx Tron, which has been gaining. Unfortunately both of the Thalias are mediocre against robots outside of some corner cases where they stumble and you get one down on T2.
I might go up to 2x Anafenza since she dodges bolts from Jeskai, limits recursion shenanigans in Shadow, puts counters on things to help dodge Bolt/Anger and enable Falconer, and limits Modular shenanigans.
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Noble Hierarch
3x Avacyn's Pilgrim
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Glory-Bound Initiate
4x Reflector Mage
2x Anafenza, the Foremost
2x Mirran Crusader
2x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1x Abzan Falconer
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
Land (21)
4x Cavern of Souls
4x Flooded Strand
1x Forest
2x Gavony Township
1x Godless Shrine
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Plains
2x Razorverge Thicket
1x Temple Garden
4x Windswept Heath
3x Meddling Mage
1x Qasali Pridemage
2x Rest in Peace
3x Stony Silence
2x Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1x Mirran Crusader
1x Eternal Witness
2x Sin Collector
A lot of players have expressed a desire to work Bob in but I've yet to see someone post encouraging results after following through. In brief there are two problems. The first is that optimizing your curve for good 3 CMC CoCo hits leaves you with a higher avg CMC than Bob is usually run at. Between these extra painful draws and the pain of shocking yourself to fetch black (especially if black is a quaternary splash color) you lose a lot of life. Between the high threat density and CoCo the deck already keeps up in card advantage with most other decks -- an Eternal Witness or Tireless Tracker out the side can painlessly supplement your CA in your secondary color if you're facing a really grindy control matchup. The second issue is that between Thalias & Reflector Mage the deck is really built to leverage transient tempo advantages, which pushes the deck in a different axis than grinding out victories through CA over long games. That's not to say that Bob is bad or can't run away with games, but he doesn't seem at his best here.
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@Headminerve: I agree that Affinity, especially, is a weak matchup that's getting swept under the rug a bit. Running 8x flyers in Bant Red helps a lot. Ray Gordon reported his Bant match against Affinity here
It sounds like he got pretty lucky, but I wonder if Gavony Township + Falconer is a worthwhile emergency plan for Bant Hate-humans against flying decks.
Also I agree that GBI is somewhat underrated, so you have my support there
With that said the coverage of the splash colors (especially Black) for the popular 4c list is lower than it needs to be, and going full rainbow might be the best way to fix that. Give it a shot and let us know how it goes. Only thing I'll note is that you don't want Ziggurat in a CoCo list.