Skred is bad. I had a feeling that and post-board Blood Moons would be which is one of the reasons I'm advocating Qasali Pridemage so hard. It gives you an out to Blood Moon mainboard, it gives you a way of destroying Splinter Twin, destroying Graveyard hate that can stop your combo, removing Cranial Plating as well.
I'm probably going to run four Pridemage mainboard. The toss up after that is do you run Voice, do you run Skite, do you run something like Meddling Mage... there are so many options there.
Good first outing anyway. Sounds like Smiter put in work as well. I'd definitely be running Smiter over Geist in this deck because of the meta.
I can definitely agree with this. Pridemage put in so much work whenever I saw him, I'm probably going to run 3 copies in main. I can also agree with cutting Geist, I'm glad I didn't pick them up. He just gets blocked by everything or dies to board wipes. This deck is working out so well, I love it so much. I can't wait to see where this all goes.
Had my first modern event with Knightfall zoo, got a lot of good testing in before the tourny too. Couldn't get my hands on a few things (Geists, more Qasali) so I tried out some tech because why not.
Tech Results Kitchen Finks - Favorite tech. I expected it to be too slow, but it puts in a lot of work. Very hard to deal with, and the life is very relevant. Fleecemane Lion - Hated it. Dies to everything. No good chance to monstrosity it. Spellskite - Way too slow, doesn't contribute to the aggro that this deck wants. Gets wrecked by Kolaghan's Command. Helps your stuff survive, but I'd rather just have another threat. Worth keeping in the board for Twin or Infect, I suppose.
Tournament Report
3-1
Overall, deck played out great. Only saw Coralhelm in 2 games, but it was great whenever I did.
2-1 VS UW Midrange
I got hit by Supreme Verdict three times in game 1, couldn't recover at that point when the Sun Titan came swinging in afterwards. Game 2 went off with Coralhelm on turn 4 after baiting out a counterspell with company on his endstep. Game 3 I saw the Supreme Verdicts again, but the survivability of Finks+Voice and the fast advantage of company let me pull it together. I was suspicious of a Cryptic Command on my turn of potential lethal, so I dropped down a fetch (I now had 2 sitting on field, along with Coralhelm). Move to combat, he throws down the tap+bounce cryptic. Cryptic resolves, and then I crack both my fetches to untap 2 creatures and swing for lethal. Throughout games 2 and 3, Wolf Run put in a massive amount of work, pushing through for tons of damage when I had all this mana floating around.
2-0 VS Aristocrats
Pretty easy matchup, I just rushed him down each game. He wasn't fast enough to deal with my threats, I outnumbered him pretty quickly. Finks and Voice did their thing again and just provided too much value for him to deal with. Well placed Bolts forced him into bad combat situations when needed.
2-0 VS Jund
Game 1 was a lot of back and forth trading. When the Lili came down, discarding Smiter turned the board around and let me swarm pretty quickly. Game 2 was similar, but Sejiri Steppe actually put in a lot of work, making a very favorable combat situation that forced him into making bad blocks to not die. Overall the matchup comes down to a lot of trades, but I tend to always be ahead of the clock, and my threats are recurring.
0-2 VS Skred Red
Brutal matchup. Throughout both games I faced the wrath of plentiful board wipes, blood moons, and batterskull to negate all of my work.
Had my first modern event with this deck, got a lot of good testing in before the tourny too. Couldn't get my hands on a few things (Geists, more Qasali) so I tried out some tech because why not.
Tech Results Kitchen Finks - Favorite tech. I expected it to be too slow, but it puts in a lot of work. Very hard to deal with, and the life is very relevant. Fleecemane Lion - Hated it. Dies to everything. No good chance to monstrosity it. Spellskite - Way too slow, doesn't contribute to the aggro that this deck wants. Gets wrecked by Kolaghan's Command. Helps your stuff survive, but I'd rather just have another threat. Worth keeping in the board for Twin or Infect, I suppose.
Tournament Report
3-1
Overall, deck played out great. Only saw Coralhelm in 2 games, but it was great whenever I did.
2-1 VS UW Midrange
I got hit by Supreme Verdict three times in game 1, couldn't recover at that point when the Sun Titan came swinging in afterwards. Game 2 went off with Coralhelm on turn 4 after baiting out a counterspell with company on his endstep. Game 3 I saw the Supreme Verdicts again, but the survivability of Finks+Voice and the fast advantage of company let me pull it together. I was suspicious of a Cryptic Command on my turn of potential lethal, so I dropped down a fetch (I now had 2 sitting on field, along with Coralhelm). Move to combat, he throws down the tap+bounce cryptic. Cryptic resolves, and then I crack both my fetches to untap 2 creatures and swing for lethal. Throughout games 2 and 3, Wolf Run put in a massive amount of work, pushing through for tons of damage when I had all this mana floating around.
2-0 VS Aristocrats
Pretty easy matchup, I just rushed him down each game. He wasn't fast enough to deal with my threats, I outnumbered him pretty quickly. Finks and Voice did their thing again and just provided too much value for him to deal with. Well placed Bolts forced him into bad combat situations when needed.
2-0 VS Jund
Game 1 was a lot of back and forth trading. When the Lili came down, discarding Smiter turned the board around and let me swarm pretty quickly. Game 2 was similar, but Sejiri Steppe actually put in a lot of work, making a very favorable combat situation that forced him into making bad blocks to not die. Overall the matchup comes down to a lot of trades, but I tend to always be ahead of the clock, and my threats are recurring.
0-2 VS Skred Red
Brutal matchup. Throughout both games I faced the wrath of plentiful board wipes, blood moons, and batterskull to negate all of my work.
All of you advocating Courser need to remember that it pretty much prevents you from ever going off during your combo. You cannot legally shortcut the combo anymore. In between each fetch or knight activation, you will have to shuffle and let your opponent cut, then reveal the top card of your library.
In terms of shortcutting normally (just Knight+Retreat, no Courser involved), I've been asking many judges about this. The general consensus is that you are fine to shortcut it unless your opponent has a valid reason to disallow your shortcut (I.E. they have a response at some point during the combo). So they cannot force you to shuffle in between each fetch without a valid reason.
Round 1 Turbo Fog 2-1, not going to comment on this match
Round 2 Affinity 2-1, Game 1 retreat was able to tap creatures and allow geist to hit in chunks. Game 3 Retreat was once again able to tap down attacker/blockers. Never combo'd.
Round 3 Junk 2-1, Game 1 Knight for wolf run kill. Game 3 retreat did major work in tapping voice of resurgences and getting insane value while forcing bad blocks.
Didn't like magus in the board, taking those out asap. Not sure what to replace them with yet.
I like this list a lot. I've been playtesting an almost identical build (I play Voice instead of Goyf partly because money and partly because I do think that voice has some place in the deck). The 4c zoo build has been testing soo much better than the midrange build for me. This deck goes in aggressive fast, and when it can't pull it together, it has a win now button plus difficult to remove creatures. Everything about this build just works so well together, I love this direction for the deck.
For your build, I might want to cut down the number of fetches because you're going to run out of targets pretty fast while trying to combo, by the looks of it. I think 8 fetches is fine for this deck. And how are the Thalias working out for you? I played them for a while back in Anafenza's Company, but I found they always just ate a bolt or Kola command right away and never really did much of anything.
You shouldn't be planning to win via the combo. You should be planning to win via beatdown and if you happen to assemble the combo then it makes it all that much faster.
Play so that your opponent is on the back foot and fearing the fact that you could combo out at any second. Twin even sides out Splinter Twin sometimes, and just the fear from their opponent thinking it's still in the deck makes them make sloppy plays and hold up mana when they don't need too. Use that thinking and incorporate it into the deck.
This. So much this. I don't think this deck has any decent way to play as a linear combo deck, this should not be the goal. We are not Amulet Bloom, we are nowhere close. The Twin mindset is a great one to have for this deck.
This is also why I like the naya zoo build of this deck. You play heavy aggro and they're forced to deal with your threats, but they also have to be wary of a potential surprise combo for the kill. They are already under a lot of pressure trying to deal with zoo as is, now they have other things to worry about. "What if he has Coco or a Chord at the end of my turn, and then a Retreat on his turn?" Things like that are exactly the fear that forces players into second guessing themselves and saving kill spells at the wrong times. This is a huge advantage we have. Just like Twin, we have the option of boarding out the enchantments when needed, but the opponent will never know if we still have them or not.
One thing I've been thinking about is a pros/cons list of this combo as compared to Splinter Twin. People act like it's really obvious how much better Twin is as a functionally 6 mana combo.
So, without further ado, a starting point:
-snip-
Very good points. Let's not forget that Twin just sits in your hand until combo as you don't want to play it and waste it if you draw combo. Also, it's dead drawing multiples. Retreat works well in multiples, is able to be dropped early, and has amazing utility without combo. Tapping down blockers is amazing in zoo and still good in midrange. Free scrys are great too. Not to mention it can untap mana dorks for weird mana ramp.
I think you can't shortcut and not shuffle each time you fetch a land but keep the deck in your hands and repeatedly activate knight. I don't think your opponent can demand you truly randomize your deck each time
To paraphrase Rule 103.1, an opponent can indeed request a complete shuffle and can also insist on cutting the deck each time the deck is shuffled. Shuffling, as defined in the rules, means to randomize the deck.
Maybe 1 person you ever meet will insist you shuffle each time. Everyone else is going to be ok with you not shuffling in between knight activations since you're cycling through it all in 1 go anyway. It might be a rule that they can enforce, but no one's going to.
I've been lurking this thread for a while now. I just got back into MTG and decided to jump into modern with bant company as bant is my favorite color combination.
Just fairly recently got the cards for the bant shell cause bant company, so I was wondering if the consensus now is that the naya/GWur shell consistently outperforms the bant shell? If so, I'm gonna start trading for/buying lands.
I'm hoping for a successful bant shell as well, but I guess you can't argue with results. Bolts seem like a really solid choice.
This deck is just a few days old, it's a newborn baby compared to the other veteran decks of modern. I wouldn't lock in on any build being the "best" build until we get a lot more testing and tournament results in. They both have their merits, so play test both or just play your favorite variant!
Kola is annoying, but I feel like having the ability to flash in Knights at end of turn is always useful. Having a vial on 3 seems threating. Perhaps it could only work in a bant tempo/hatebear style build.
I'll screw around with it tomorrow, see if anything is there.
Huh, a hatebear approach hasn't been looked at yet. Could be worth a shot I suppose. Let us know how it goes.
Side note, I'd just like to mention how many opponents I've made furious when I discard a Smiter to their Lili.
We could support it with Aether Vial. If we run 3 aether vials and 3 CoCo, almost anything becomes reasonable to play. The mana problems smooth themselves out.
Why Vial though? This seems like a deck that hardly needs instant-speed creatures (See hatebears) and it doesn't have any card advantage or enough same-cost creatures to warrant playing it for mana conservation (See Merfolk). I really don't like Vial in general because it just gives them more value out of Kola.
vendilion clique can protect knight against both targeted and mass removal and can be brought in with collected company. Does anyone think it could also be used in the Bant shell?
I greatly dislike the double blue mana cost, it's going to be problematic.
And after testing this so much, I really do think it has the potential to be tier 1.5 easily, maybe better once we work out the optimal build. And I do have to agree with MantisRider, I feel like playing slow isn't something this deck can win at doing. Face is the place!
After playtesting the GWu build for a while and now trying GWur zoo, I'm feeling a lot more confidant in the capabilities of the zoo build. They have to try and remove everything you play, meaning that your Knight can very often hit the board more safely or you're going in for tons of damage. I'm loving Wild Nacatl and bolt. Overall the whole deck seems much more synergistic in the zoo build, Coralhelm works wonders tapping down your opponent's blockers.
I can definitely agree with this. Pridemage put in so much work whenever I saw him, I'm probably going to run 3 copies in main. I can also agree with cutting Geist, I'm glad I didn't pick them up. He just gets blocked by everything or dies to board wipes. This deck is working out so well, I love it so much. I can't wait to see where this all goes.
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Loxodon Smiter
4 Wild Nacatl
3 Voice of Resurgence
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Fleecemane Lion
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Spellskite
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Retreat to Coralhelm
3 Collected Company
2 Path to Exile
Lands (22)
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Sejiri Steppe
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Razorverge Thicket
1 Breeding Pool
1 Temple Garden
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
5 Forest
1 Plains
Tech Results
Kitchen Finks - Favorite tech. I expected it to be too slow, but it puts in a lot of work. Very hard to deal with, and the life is very relevant.
Fleecemane Lion - Hated it. Dies to everything. No good chance to monstrosity it.
Spellskite - Way too slow, doesn't contribute to the aggro that this deck wants. Gets wrecked by Kolaghan's Command. Helps your stuff survive, but I'd rather just have another threat. Worth keeping in the board for Twin or Infect, I suppose.
Tournament Report
3-1
Overall, deck played out great. Only saw Coralhelm in 2 games, but it was great whenever I did.
2-1 VS UW Midrange
I got hit by Supreme Verdict three times in game 1, couldn't recover at that point when the Sun Titan came swinging in afterwards. Game 2 went off with Coralhelm on turn 4 after baiting out a counterspell with company on his endstep. Game 3 I saw the Supreme Verdicts again, but the survivability of Finks+Voice and the fast advantage of company let me pull it together. I was suspicious of a Cryptic Command on my turn of potential lethal, so I dropped down a fetch (I now had 2 sitting on field, along with Coralhelm). Move to combat, he throws down the tap+bounce cryptic. Cryptic resolves, and then I crack both my fetches to untap 2 creatures and swing for lethal. Throughout games 2 and 3, Wolf Run put in a massive amount of work, pushing through for tons of damage when I had all this mana floating around.
2-0 VS Aristocrats
Pretty easy matchup, I just rushed him down each game. He wasn't fast enough to deal with my threats, I outnumbered him pretty quickly. Finks and Voice did their thing again and just provided too much value for him to deal with. Well placed Bolts forced him into bad combat situations when needed.
2-0 VS Jund
Game 1 was a lot of back and forth trading. When the Lili came down, discarding Smiter turned the board around and let me swarm pretty quickly. Game 2 was similar, but Sejiri Steppe actually put in a lot of work, making a very favorable combat situation that forced him into making bad blocks to not die. Overall the matchup comes down to a lot of trades, but I tend to always be ahead of the clock, and my threats are recurring.
0-2 VS Skred Red
Brutal matchup. Throughout both games I faced the wrath of plentiful board wipes, blood moons, and batterskull to negate all of my work.
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Loxodon Smiter
4 Wild Nacatl
3 Voice of Resurgence
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Fleecemane Lion
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Spellskite
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Retreat to Coralhelm
3 Collected Company
2 Path to Exile
Lands (22)
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Sejiri Steppe
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Razorverge Thicket
1 Breeding Pool
1 Temple Garden
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
5 Forest
1 Plains
Tech Results
Kitchen Finks - Favorite tech. I expected it to be too slow, but it puts in a lot of work. Very hard to deal with, and the life is very relevant.
Fleecemane Lion - Hated it. Dies to everything. No good chance to monstrosity it.
Spellskite - Way too slow, doesn't contribute to the aggro that this deck wants. Gets wrecked by Kolaghan's Command. Helps your stuff survive, but I'd rather just have another threat. Worth keeping in the board for Twin or Infect, I suppose.
Tournament Report
3-1
Overall, deck played out great. Only saw Coralhelm in 2 games, but it was great whenever I did.
2-1 VS UW Midrange
I got hit by Supreme Verdict three times in game 1, couldn't recover at that point when the Sun Titan came swinging in afterwards. Game 2 went off with Coralhelm on turn 4 after baiting out a counterspell with company on his endstep. Game 3 I saw the Supreme Verdicts again, but the survivability of Finks+Voice and the fast advantage of company let me pull it together. I was suspicious of a Cryptic Command on my turn of potential lethal, so I dropped down a fetch (I now had 2 sitting on field, along with Coralhelm). Move to combat, he throws down the tap+bounce cryptic. Cryptic resolves, and then I crack both my fetches to untap 2 creatures and swing for lethal. Throughout games 2 and 3, Wolf Run put in a massive amount of work, pushing through for tons of damage when I had all this mana floating around.
2-0 VS Aristocrats
Pretty easy matchup, I just rushed him down each game. He wasn't fast enough to deal with my threats, I outnumbered him pretty quickly. Finks and Voice did their thing again and just provided too much value for him to deal with. Well placed Bolts forced him into bad combat situations when needed.
2-0 VS Jund
Game 1 was a lot of back and forth trading. When the Lili came down, discarding Smiter turned the board around and let me swarm pretty quickly. Game 2 was similar, but Sejiri Steppe actually put in a lot of work, making a very favorable combat situation that forced him into making bad blocks to not die. Overall the matchup comes down to a lot of trades, but I tend to always be ahead of the clock, and my threats are recurring.
0-2 VS Skred Red
Brutal matchup. Throughout both games I faced the wrath of plentiful board wipes, blood moons, and batterskull to negate all of my work.
In terms of shortcutting normally (just Knight+Retreat, no Courser involved), I've been asking many judges about this. The general consensus is that you are fine to shortcut it unless your opponent has a valid reason to disallow your shortcut (I.E. they have a response at some point during the combo). So they cannot force you to shuffle in between each fetch without a valid reason.
I like this list a lot. I've been playtesting an almost identical build (I play Voice instead of Goyf partly because money and partly because I do think that voice has some place in the deck). The 4c zoo build has been testing soo much better than the midrange build for me. This deck goes in aggressive fast, and when it can't pull it together, it has a win now button plus difficult to remove creatures. Everything about this build just works so well together, I love this direction for the deck.
For your build, I might want to cut down the number of fetches because you're going to run out of targets pretty fast while trying to combo, by the looks of it. I think 8 fetches is fine for this deck. And how are the Thalias working out for you? I played them for a while back in Anafenza's Company, but I found they always just ate a bolt or Kola command right away and never really did much of anything.
No. His CMC is 0. And if you get him off of chord or CoCo, he will come in with 0 counters and die.
This. So much this. I don't think this deck has any decent way to play as a linear combo deck, this should not be the goal. We are not Amulet Bloom, we are nowhere close. The Twin mindset is a great one to have for this deck.
This is also why I like the naya zoo build of this deck. You play heavy aggro and they're forced to deal with your threats, but they also have to be wary of a potential surprise combo for the kill. They are already under a lot of pressure trying to deal with zoo as is, now they have other things to worry about. "What if he has Coco or a Chord at the end of my turn, and then a Retreat on his turn?" Things like that are exactly the fear that forces players into second guessing themselves and saving kill spells at the wrong times. This is a huge advantage we have. Just like Twin, we have the option of boarding out the enchantments when needed, but the opponent will never know if we still have them or not.
Very good points. Let's not forget that Twin just sits in your hand until combo as you don't want to play it and waste it if you draw combo. Also, it's dead drawing multiples. Retreat works well in multiples, is able to be dropped early, and has amazing utility without combo. Tapping down blockers is amazing in zoo and still good in midrange. Free scrys are great too. Not to mention it can untap mana dorks for weird mana ramp.
Maybe 1 person you ever meet will insist you shuffle each time. Everyone else is going to be ok with you not shuffling in between knight activations since you're cycling through it all in 1 go anyway. It might be a rule that they can enforce, but no one's going to.
http://strawpoll.me/5554583
This deck is just a few days old, it's a newborn baby compared to the other veteran decks of modern. I wouldn't lock in on any build being the "best" build until we get a lot more testing and tournament results in. They both have their merits, so play test both or just play your favorite variant!
Huh, a hatebear approach hasn't been looked at yet. Could be worth a shot I suppose. Let us know how it goes.
Side note, I'd just like to mention how many opponents I've made furious when I discard a Smiter to their Lili.
Why Vial though? This seems like a deck that hardly needs instant-speed creatures (See hatebears) and it doesn't have any card advantage or enough same-cost creatures to warrant playing it for mana conservation (See Merfolk). I really don't like Vial in general because it just gives them more value out of Kola.
I greatly dislike the double blue mana cost, it's going to be problematic.
And after testing this so much, I really do think it has the potential to be tier 1.5 easily, maybe better once we work out the optimal build. And I do have to agree with MantisRider, I feel like playing slow isn't something this deck can win at doing. Face is the place!