Hey Marc, the list is looking tight.
I took a version of the deck out for a spin at my LGS last night.
went a pathetic 0-2-1 against Living End, Seismic Assault, and Maritlage snow.
I jammed a few games with some friends after. Izzet Pheonix, and a Sultai Mid-range going 1:2 against them.
Being my first venture out I expected to take a bunch of L's, but even with the bad beats I always felt like as long as I had a token, I could steal the game.
I can see why you've been so hot on Mardu charm, and the instant-speed duress mode. As fizzling to removal has been the rough spot in all the match-ups so far -- too bad their aren't less cmc options for this effect.
I was running Bolts instead of Paths in effort to smooth the manabase, but other than in a few niche cases I almost always wished it was path instead.
I ran 2 Kaya's Guile I think this card is gas. MB yard hate gave much needed space against living end, and pheonix and has great utility against the rest of the field.
I also had 2 Saheeli, Sublime Artificier, and to be honest i'm very medium on this card. I want to take it to another FNM before I make a judgement call, but it looks like you've put her in the SB - I'd love to hear your thoughts.
In your last list, what are your other 8 lands? are you still on the two filter lands?
I'm personally looking at the cycling lands as a way to dig into some more action.
I ran a Sunbaked Canyon, and the 1 of felt good. I'm considering running a Secluded Steppe, and Canyon Slough in place of Plains, and Blood crypt.
I'm enjoying the list and love the consistent tweaks and updates your making to it.
I agree with your analysis on Vivian @hannam72
Vivien's plus ability has felt much stronger than my initial thoughts - especially on KotR.
And I felt she really helped against BGx and control, having a 2nd 'hand' and playing at instant speed has been huge in the grindy attrition matches they end up being.
I can understand swapping Trackers for Vivian, card draw for card draw.
Did you miss not having the extra threat that tracker turns into? How about the extra card draw?
Would you consider cutting anything else for her?
---
My Last two FNMs were a little rough, I went 2-2 at each, with a bye one week so really 3-7
Some takeaways:
- Quellers vs Reflector mages/Deputy of Detention create this awful reactive-proactive pull in the deck. Vivian removed this tension, but without her it felt like holding up mana for queller punished us for not committing to the board. In the interest of all the turns without a Vivian in play, I think dropping the Reflector mages to the SB is the right move.
- Perhaps its bias from being on this side of Voice of Resurgence, but I don't think this guy is as impactful as he once was. Wanting to lean into Quellers and a reactive plan has me looking for other flash creatures to maintain tempo while keeping up quellers.
- My miser's Scryb Ranger still feels good. I have an old post on here about this pet card and can confirm it slices and dices with the best of them.
It blanks Colonnade, TiTi, Pteramander and others
It can flash block a big scary, or flash untap another blocker for a blow-out defense
It grants psudo vigilance - we've seen how good that has been with Vivian,
It has these great value loops with Tracker/Corsair/Retreat/Knight/Dorks
Its bad when, it doesn't have anything to interact with, and if we're mana flooding.
- Ramunap looks to be all upside, and especially so now with Blast Zone, I however haven't been able to 'live the dream' so to speak. Has anyone else tried this out, is it mostly wishful thinking, or have I just not experienced nirvana.
- While I like the Retreat combo I didn't miss it much in the last few weeks. I going to leave it out in favor of Vivian for now.
---
Spoiler Season!
Giver of Runes
This is our Sejiri Steppe on a dude. Do we want a mom effect? Where do we have wiggle-room, what match-up(s) does it improve?
Ice-Fang Coatl
Most of our lists run 5-6 basics, If we run snow-basics instead, and without any other snow-permanents, I think it more realistic to get snowcraft on turn 4-5. Is this too late to turn on deathtouch? We're still cantripping, and we can still flash it in. With deathtouch its basically a removal spell against titi/phoenix and other big scary threats and It lets us keep tempo if we're holding up a Queller. I'd considering running these over Voice, trying them as a 3-of to see them more often.
Waterlogged Grove
Some lists are running a Botanical Sanctum, others an Island here. I think this is a 3rd contender for the slot.
It's probably an upgrade over Sanctum, but can we support the life cost?
for thoes running a basic, its probably because you want to fetch for it, is this effect worth it? - for me no since I want to try out Ice-Fang.
Mist-Clan Naga
Probably be too cute, but It does clock the opponent for 3 and clone itself when we ninjitsu it in, hopefully snow-balling out of control in later turns. The value play is to return an ewitt, or an Ice-Fang. Birds of Paradise or Selfless Spirit are enablers, as is Remorseful Cleric, and Vendilion Clique out of the board. Do we ever return Knight/Scooze/Tracker? how about re-setting a queller or deputy?
Any other spoilers worth talking about?
Force of Vigor?
Eladamri's Call?
I'm looking forward to giving the new Vivien a shot.
playing everything at instant speed seems like a huge boon for us.
Instant-speed Reflector Mage or Deputy of Detention or always having Queller mana open gives us great flexibility in deploying our threats, and answering theirs.
Her Plus ability seems fine on Kotr for vigilance shenanigans, and Reach is always useful, but this isn't really the compelling reason to play her.
Her Minus ability seems good despite having to work around it, as a 'soft' cantrip, looking 3 cards deep should frequently hit a creature in lists with ~30 dudes, so we should be getting our value. Because this puts her to 2 loyalty she requires us to have existing blockers, or additional mana to make use of the card 'drawn' for protection. For this reason, It makes me a little worried that she may end up being a bit of a win-more type card, as she's not going to vastly improve an already bad board state.
I am also excited about playing Blast Zone.
Being able to tutor up a ratchet bomb effect seems very powerful, EOT Kotr into Blast Zone, Add counter(s)
I think this finds a home in our sideboards, right next to Bojuka Bog
I feel like sygg would require us to build around him to get maximum value. I've been playing around with Hoofprints of the Stag in this list and think their might be some decent synergy.
Hoofprints is a slow card, It will accrue a counter each upkeep, meaning at the soonest at T6 elemental, that's obviously far too slow without outside assistance. Mardu doesn't have pure draw spells, but it does have 'rummage' effects. Things like Faithless looting would let us buy a T4 elementals, and Nahiri +1's gain us an extra counter each turn, for an elemental every other turn. Sygg and Kambal seem like ways to generate some additional counters from our opponents plays, while also dividing attention across our threats.
to me, all of these pieces form an engine that can continually draw cards, and buy 4/4's. Sygg and Hoofprints specifically, have the ability to play off of eachother. the Elemental tokens can get in for 4, drawing a card and adding a counter. Alone, this means a new elemental every-other turn while keeping a well stocked hand. drawing into a Bolt, means that we can effectively cycle it at the opponent end step which would set us up for another elemental the following turn.
I think this could set us in a favored position for attrition matchups. MD Kambal hedges against storm and burn, and with the amount of rummage effects we should be able to dig into our answers against combo and big mana strategies, or maybe its entirely too slow and just an amusing diversion at FNM
3 Sygg,
2 Kambal,
1 Emmy
4 Nahiri,
3 Lili of the veil
4 Lingering Souls
2 Thoughtseize
3 Iok
3 Looting
4 Bolt
4 Push
3 Hoofprints of the Stag
24 land.
Would knightfall 'need' to run more than one ghost quarter and horizon canopy? I could see running a second ghost quarter in the sideboard, but with knights we're able to pull up our singleton when we land ramunap excavator for repeatable shenanigans.
How many excavator are you thinking of running? I think the 3-drop section is pretty crowded as-is.
x4 Knight, x4 Queller, x1 Courser, x1 Tracker, x1 Excavator ?
x10 2-drops,
x7 dorks.
Yeah GoST great points. I should maybe try this out at FNM just for fun. Maybe with Knight in it? lol.
Hey anybody have any update to knightfall with vizier combo in it? I'm interesting in testing it.
Kelvin Chew just posted a guide to Vizier Knightfall on MTG Mint. It looks interesting, but i'm still on the fence. I'll need to proxy up some of the cards and playtest.
Please help me out here. I have a good friend who is objectively saying that push is better than bolt in this deck. I am trying to convince him but at this point I need some assistance convincing him (and myself a bit) that 4 bolt is still correct. Thanks in advance!
Bolt (and Helix) give the control and midrange versions of the deck that much needed reach to close out games. Push is objectively better at removing creatures, but bolt has the versatility of going upstairs. I don't think running less than 4 is correct in either the control or midrange variants. As far as the DS versions most still seems to be running 4, so It may not be as necessary there. But I am not as familiar with that version.
I would like to hear your friends arguments as to why push should replace bolt.
This article was interesting in talking about both vizier and nissa in modern, I'm going to test with this cards for sure. Also hates on Rhonas which I'm on the fence about. Thoughts from you guys? http://modernnexus.com/comprehensively-reviewing-amonkhet/
I really like the Vizier, it has decent stats (3/4) that survive bolt, he is decay proof, and requires revolt to be pushed. Top if off with the potential for card advantage and selection makes it hard not to want to try it out.
Peaking at our topcard without giving up information is relevant, and we have plenty of ways to change our top card. Between Fetchlands, Knight, and Clue tokens or even just playing the card, we can manipulate the top of the deck to hopefully dig to the answer or threat that we need.
Flash creatures and Vizier look like they will play very well together. Having a queller or clique on top, and have that card immune to discard effects is going to feel pretty nice. There aren't very many fateseal effects in modern, and mill isnt exactly a strategy worth worrying about, so the top card is more than likely going to be there until you decide to change it. The commonly played cards that come to mind that would mess with this are Path, and Thought Scour. But our opponent would need to get pretty lucky, or pickup on a tell that we have action on top to make this a successful play.
Like the article mentions, Vizier also fixes our mana for creature spells, and even lets us play through a resolved Blood moon. I'm not sure how often that exact situation will come up, more commonly, it will allow us to play Scavenging Ooze and have more G open to eat up the graveyard, or allow us to keep up a path/queller while still deploying a threat.
Being 4 cmc, and not a CoCo hit is its biggest fault, also being weak to Grafdigger's Cage, an already common SB card against CoCo strategies is a disadvantage. it probably replaces Courser in most lists, and losing that synergy with trackers and the incidental lifegain will probably be felt, especially in burn matchups. To me, It feels like the pros outweigh the cons here, and i'm looking forward to testing it out.
Perhaps I'm greedy but I would have liked the P/T reversed on this one to insulate from bolt and have some type of evasion. Menace or Trample maybe? I don't think pitching a card for this is a big deal, we can toss a lingering souls, Emmy or a redundant discard effect. Late game it's a bad topdeck If we're hellbent, but we should almost always be sandbagging a land at that point. I read that wrong, I thought the discard was an additional cost, This is much better when we're hellbent.
I'll still probably pickup a set and give it a try.
... you should get a fetch first and GQ the fetch if you are leading that way - otherwise you're not using all your fetches. The way you do it leaves an extra fetch in the deck.
edit: It's almost never correct to hit your basics/shocks with GQ since that leaves fetches in your deck. Instead, use them to hit fetches (saves some life as well).
edit2: Moreover, if you lead with a GQ instead of finishing with a GQ, you'll be reducing the number of lands in play during your combo sequence, which means you can't insulate yourself with an extra fetch to keep comboing through removal (getting most of the lands out of the deck is still going to be gas even if knight is removed, and you can still hit with a large dork/other critter with kessig).
The sequence I'd suggest is (from the same position of 2 basics in play empty yard)
...
The exact sequence is different from game to game based on which lands you drew (if you drew all basics/shocks, you'll have too many fetches, if you drew fetches you won't have enough basics/shocks). This is why its important to start by getting 2 fetches in play by either playing one or searching them, and then sort the lands to the front of the deck and sort them into basics/shocks, fetches and other.
...
Thanks for the comments, you are correct in your criticisms.
Step 1 can be improved by getting a fetch, then getting a ghost quarter to hit the fetchland, this would add 1 more land to the yard
Ghost quartering our self will put us down a land, and should probably be considered an all in play.
It could be a useful interaction to grow the knight outside of the combo when you are flooded.
It is a very mutable combo, and there are many different variables to take into account, so it is nearly impossible to give a definitive optimal sequence. Speaking in generalities, and paraphrasing wpgstevo we should only go for GQ when you don't have the life, are flooded on board, or need that extra 2 power to put you in, and you should always get 2 fetches in play before you continue with the combo.
Have you guys figured how much life you need to be able to combo a 20HP??
How do we get Knight to a 20/20?
Since every game, and each deck will be different, we're going to have to make a few generalizations to crunch some numbers.
Most lists run 4 forest/plains basics, 4 forest/plains shock lands and 8-9 fetchlands.
Doing the least amount of self-harm, how do we get knight to attack for 20?
Knight: size of the knight after the step
Yard: number of lands in the graveyard
Life: life spent so far, we assume we always pay the 2 for shock lands
Floating: assumed we float all mana the the end of a sequence, and that a 2nd uptap trigger goes to the manadork () is floating mana if we have one.
Attacks for: calculates knights power if we were to grab a kessig wolf-run next, and use all floating mana to activate it.
E Exalted = 1,
K Kessig = 1,
X Kessig value = Floating -2
if we assume we have 2 basics in play, no land in hand, and an empty graveyard.
If we have a hierarch as the manadork we can't use kessig until at least step 3 as we wont have the R to activate. If we have a bird instead we could generate R, and get kessig as soon as the 1st step, but you would not have the exalted trigger. If we had 1-2 land in graveyard before we started the combo we would just add that value to the knights power in the attacks for row.
the above sequence is drawn out to show least life taken when you don't have a manadork, If you do have a manadork, you can optimize slightly by replacing step 5 with
5 Shock
Knight: 12/12
Yard: 10
Life spent: 9
Floating: 5(9)
Attacks for 12+1+1+3(7) =16(21)
This would just be a general case, obviously there are many many different variables that could change this sequencing. Different target value, number of blockers, number of other attackers or Exalted triggers you have, and what specific lands you have left in your deck.
I think the reasoning behind no path is that you don't want to hand your opponent more land as the control deck. Letting the opponent draw into them naturally blanks a few draw steps and being that we can easily run fatal push and or terminate in its place we dont lose out on much.
I've found Collective Brutality to be excellent in a nahiri build, all modes are relevant, and being able to throw away that emrakul that inevitably gets stuck in your hand for value feels pretty good. Pitching the first half of lingering souls, or an extra land for a second effect is fine too. CB is almost never dead as a removal spell, but in the rare times it is, drain for 2 and duress are very viable alternatives.
I agree with you about the life gain, and the abundance of discard (7+2CB+4Lili) and would shave an Inquisition and a Thoughtseize for two helix. The burn spells give you that extra reach, and the lifegain is useful to buy another draw step. Midgame I would rather see a Helix as a topdeck than another discard spell.
I like Shauns list, but im still not sold on the Wall of Omens and I'm maybe too chicken to run Bob. So I'm holding out hope for a powerful 2 drop for this deck, maybe we'll get a RW/RB/WB Vizier that's good for us in this set?
I like the inclusion of Botanical Sanctum, especially since more lists are running Vendilion Clique and Reflector mages in either main or side, but wouldn't a Hinterland Harbor be better? You're often trying to get a forest on turn 1, and that would allow the Harbor to enter untapped on turn 2 and beyond. Is being guaranteed its untapped on turns one, two, and three better than harbor being untapped as early as turn 2?
To be honest, the butcher build seems more reliable than the Nahiri package.
Thanks for the feed-back. I'm curious as to your thoughts on why butcher is more reliable.
I understand butcher is a 5 power flyer, and that represents a ~3-4 turn clock when he lands, but I feel that he is much easier to stop than Nahiri/Emrakul. With Shadow Jund/Sultai/Esper running around more lists are running Fatal Push, Paths and Blessed Alliance to deal with Death Shadows. My thoughts would be to move away from threats that also get tagged by these removal spells.
-2 retreat
-3 two-drops
+batterskull
+sword of x and y
+3 Stoneforge Mystic
BG sword helps outgrind the opponent,and let's us untap to hold up quellers and other flash cards
RU sword, draws and shocks but with less good protection
BW sword offers the most relevant color protection againt spot removal and returns sword carriers
are there any other equipment worth talking about? elbrus blade?
I took a version of the deck out for a spin at my LGS last night.
went a pathetic 0-2-1 against Living End, Seismic Assault, and Maritlage snow.
I jammed a few games with some friends after. Izzet Pheonix, and a Sultai Mid-range going 1:2 against them.
Being my first venture out I expected to take a bunch of L's, but even with the bad beats I always felt like as long as I had a token, I could steal the game.
I can see why you've been so hot on Mardu charm, and the instant-speed duress mode. As fizzling to removal has been the rough spot in all the match-ups so far -- too bad their aren't less cmc options for this effect.
I was running Bolts instead of Paths in effort to smooth the manabase, but other than in a few niche cases I almost always wished it was path instead.
I ran 2 Kaya's Guile I think this card is gas. MB yard hate gave much needed space against living end, and pheonix and has great utility against the rest of the field.
I also had 2 Saheeli, Sublime Artificier, and to be honest i'm very medium on this card. I want to take it to another FNM before I make a judgement call, but it looks like you've put her in the SB - I'd love to hear your thoughts.
In your last list, what are your other 8 lands? are you still on the two filter lands?
I'm personally looking at the cycling lands as a way to dig into some more action.
I ran a Sunbaked Canyon, and the 1 of felt good. I'm considering running a Secluded Steppe, and Canyon Slough in place of Plains, and Blood crypt.
I'm enjoying the list and love the consistent tweaks and updates your making to it.
Vivien's plus ability has felt much stronger than my initial thoughts - especially on KotR.
And I felt she really helped against BGx and control, having a 2nd 'hand' and playing at instant speed has been huge in the grindy attrition matches they end up being.
I can understand swapping Trackers for Vivian, card draw for card draw.
Did you miss not having the extra threat that tracker turns into? How about the extra card draw?
Would you consider cutting anything else for her?
---
My Last two FNMs were a little rough, I went 2-2 at each, with a bye one week so really 3-7
Some takeaways:
- Quellers vs Reflector mages/Deputy of Detention create this awful reactive-proactive pull in the deck. Vivian removed this tension, but without her it felt like holding up mana for queller punished us for not committing to the board. In the interest of all the turns without a Vivian in play, I think dropping the Reflector mages to the SB is the right move.
- Perhaps its bias from being on this side of Voice of Resurgence, but I don't think this guy is as impactful as he once was. Wanting to lean into Quellers and a reactive plan has me looking for other flash creatures to maintain tempo while keeping up quellers.
- My miser's Scryb Ranger still feels good. I have an old post on here about this pet card and can confirm it slices and dices with the best of them.
It blanks Colonnade, TiTi, Pteramander and others
It can flash block a big scary, or flash untap another blocker for a blow-out defense
It grants psudo vigilance - we've seen how good that has been with Vivian,
It has these great value loops with Tracker/Corsair/Retreat/Knight/Dorks
Its bad when, it doesn't have anything to interact with, and if we're mana flooding.
- Ramunap looks to be all upside, and especially so now with Blast Zone, I however haven't been able to 'live the dream' so to speak. Has anyone else tried this out, is it mostly wishful thinking, or have I just not experienced nirvana.
- While I like the Retreat combo I didn't miss it much in the last few weeks. I going to leave it out in favor of Vivian for now.
---
Spoiler Season!
Giver of Runes
This is our Sejiri Steppe on a dude. Do we want a mom effect? Where do we have wiggle-room, what match-up(s) does it improve?
Ice-Fang Coatl
Most of our lists run 5-6 basics, If we run snow-basics instead, and without any other snow-permanents, I think it more realistic to get snowcraft on turn 4-5. Is this too late to turn on deathtouch? We're still cantripping, and we can still flash it in. With deathtouch its basically a removal spell against titi/phoenix and other big scary threats and It lets us keep tempo if we're holding up a Queller. I'd considering running these over Voice, trying them as a 3-of to see them more often.
Waterlogged Grove
Some lists are running a Botanical Sanctum, others an Island here. I think this is a 3rd contender for the slot.
It's probably an upgrade over Sanctum, but can we support the life cost?
for thoes running a basic, its probably because you want to fetch for it, is this effect worth it? - for me no since I want to try out Ice-Fang.
Mist-Clan Naga
Probably be too cute, but It does clock the opponent for 3 and clone itself when we ninjitsu it in, hopefully snow-balling out of control in later turns. The value play is to return an ewitt, or an Ice-Fang. Birds of Paradise or Selfless Spirit are enablers, as is Remorseful Cleric, and Vendilion Clique out of the board. Do we ever return Knight/Scooze/Tracker? how about re-setting a queller or deputy?
Any other spoilers worth talking about?
Force of Vigor?
Eladamri's Call?
playing everything at instant speed seems like a huge boon for us.
Instant-speed Reflector Mage or Deputy of Detention or always having Queller mana open gives us great flexibility in deploying our threats, and answering theirs.
Her Plus ability seems fine on Kotr for vigilance shenanigans, and Reach is always useful, but this isn't really the compelling reason to play her.
Her Minus ability seems good despite having to work around it, as a 'soft' cantrip, looking 3 cards deep should frequently hit a creature in lists with ~30 dudes, so we should be getting our value. Because this puts her to 2 loyalty she requires us to have existing blockers, or additional mana to make use of the card 'drawn' for protection. For this reason, It makes me a little worried that she may end up being a bit of a win-more type card, as she's not going to vastly improve an already bad board state.
I am also excited about playing Blast Zone.
Being able to tutor up a ratchet bomb effect seems very powerful, EOT Kotr into Blast Zone, Add counter(s)
I think this finds a home in our sideboards, right next to Bojuka Bog
Hoofprints is a slow card, It will accrue a counter each upkeep, meaning at the soonest at T6 elemental, that's obviously far too slow without outside assistance. Mardu doesn't have pure draw spells, but it does have 'rummage' effects. Things like Faithless looting would let us buy a T4 elementals, and Nahiri +1's gain us an extra counter each turn, for an elemental every other turn. Sygg and Kambal seem like ways to generate some additional counters from our opponents plays, while also dividing attention across our threats.
to me, all of these pieces form an engine that can continually draw cards, and buy 4/4's. Sygg and Hoofprints specifically, have the ability to play off of eachother. the Elemental tokens can get in for 4, drawing a card and adding a counter. Alone, this means a new elemental every-other turn while keeping a well stocked hand. drawing into a Bolt, means that we can effectively cycle it at the opponent end step which would set us up for another elemental the following turn.
I think this could set us in a favored position for attrition matchups. MD Kambal hedges against storm and burn, and with the amount of rummage effects we should be able to dig into our answers against combo and big mana strategies, or maybe its entirely too slow and just an amusing diversion at FNM
3 Sygg,
2 Kambal,
1 Emmy
4 Nahiri,
3 Lili of the veil
4 Lingering Souls
2 Thoughtseize
3 Iok
3 Looting
4 Bolt
4 Push
3 Hoofprints of the Stag
24 land.
How many excavator are you thinking of running? I think the 3-drop section is pretty crowded as-is.
x4 Knight, x4 Queller, x1 Courser, x1 Tracker, x1 Excavator ?
x10 2-drops,
x7 dorks.
Kelvin Chew just posted a guide to Vizier Knightfall on MTG Mint. It looks interesting, but i'm still on the fence. I'll need to proxy up some of the cards and playtest.
Bolt (and Helix) give the control and midrange versions of the deck that much needed reach to close out games. Push is objectively better at removing creatures, but bolt has the versatility of going upstairs. I don't think running less than 4 is correct in either the control or midrange variants. As far as the DS versions most still seems to be running 4, so It may not be as necessary there. But I am not as familiar with that version.
I would like to hear your friends arguments as to why push should replace bolt.
I really like the Vizier, it has decent stats (3/4) that survive bolt, he is decay proof, and requires revolt to be pushed. Top if off with the potential for card advantage and selection makes it hard not to want to try it out.
Peaking at our topcard without giving up information is relevant, and we have plenty of ways to change our top card. Between Fetchlands, Knight, and Clue tokens or even just playing the card, we can manipulate the top of the deck to hopefully dig to the answer or threat that we need.
Flash creatures and Vizier look like they will play very well together. Having a queller or clique on top, and have that card immune to discard effects is going to feel pretty nice. There aren't very many fateseal effects in modern, and mill isnt exactly a strategy worth worrying about, so the top card is more than likely going to be there until you decide to change it. The commonly played cards that come to mind that would mess with this are Path, and Thought Scour. But our opponent would need to get pretty lucky, or pickup on a tell that we have action on top to make this a successful play.
Like the article mentions, Vizier also fixes our mana for creature spells, and even lets us play through a resolved Blood moon. I'm not sure how often that exact situation will come up, more commonly, it will allow us to play Scavenging Ooze and have more G open to eat up the graveyard, or allow us to keep up a path/queller while still deploying a threat.
Being 4 cmc, and not a CoCo hit is its biggest fault, also being weak to Grafdigger's Cage, an already common SB card against CoCo strategies is a disadvantage. it probably replaces Courser in most lists, and losing that synergy with trackers and the incidental lifegain will probably be felt, especially in burn matchups. To me, It feels like the pros outweigh the cons here, and i'm looking forward to testing it out.
Late game it's a bad topdeck If we're hellbent, but we should almost always be sandbagging a land at that point.I read that wrong, I thought the discard was an additional cost, This is much better when we're hellbent.I'll still probably pickup a set and give it a try.
Thanks for the comments, you are correct in your criticisms.
Step 1 can be improved by getting a fetch, then getting a ghost quarter to hit the fetchland, this would add 1 more land to the yard
Ghost quartering our self will put us down a land, and should probably be considered an all in play.
It could be a useful interaction to grow the knight outside of the combo when you are flooded.
It is a very mutable combo, and there are many different variables to take into account, so it is nearly impossible to give a definitive optimal sequence. Speaking in generalities, and paraphrasing wpgstevo we should only go for GQ when you don't have the life, are flooded on board, or need that extra 2 power to put you in, and you should always get 2 fetches in play before you continue with the combo.
How do we get Knight to a 20/20?
Since every game, and each deck will be different, we're going to have to make a few generalizations to crunch some numbers.
Most lists run 4 forest/plains basics, 4 forest/plains shock lands and 8-9 fetchlands.
Doing the least amount of self-harm, how do we get knight to attack for 20?
Knight: size of the knight after the step
Yard: number of lands in the graveyard
Life: life spent so far, we assume we always pay the 2 for shock lands
Floating: assumed we float all mana the the end of a sequence, and that a 2nd uptap trigger goes to the manadork () is floating mana if we have one.
Attacks for: calculates knights power if we were to grab a kessig wolf-run next, and use all floating mana to activate it.
E Exalted = 1,
K Kessig = 1,
X Kessig value = Floating -2
if we assume we have 2 basics in play, no land in hand, and an empty graveyard.
Yard: 0
Life spent: 0
Floating: 0(0)
Attacks for: 2 +E+K+X
Yard: 3
Life spent: 0
Floating: 1(2)
Attacks for: 5 +1+1+0(0) =7(7)
Yard: 5
Life spent: 1
Floating: 2(4)
Attacks for: 7 +1+1+0(2) =9(11)
Yard: 7
Life spent: 4
Floating: 3(6)
Attacks for: 9 +1+1+1(4) =12(15)
Yard: 9
Life spent: 7
Floating: 4(8)
Attacks for: 11+1+1+2(6) =15(19)
Yard: 11
Life spent: 10
Floating: 5(10)
Attacks for: 13+1+1+3(8) =18(23)
Yard: 13
Life spent: 13
Floating: 6(12)
Attacks for: 15+1+1+4(10) =21(27)
If we have a hierarch as the manadork we can't use kessig until at least step 3 as we wont have the R to activate. If we have a bird instead we could generate R, and get kessig as soon as the 1st step, but you would not have the exalted trigger. If we had 1-2 land in graveyard before we started the combo we would just add that value to the knights power in the attacks for row.
the above sequence is drawn out to show least life taken when you don't have a manadork, If you do have a manadork, you can optimize slightly by replacing step 5 with
Yard: 10
Life spent: 9
Floating: 5(9)
Attacks for 12+1+1+3(7) =16(21)
This would just be a general case, obviously there are many many different variables that could change this sequencing. Different target value, number of blockers, number of other attackers or Exalted triggers you have, and what specific lands you have left in your deck.
I think the reasoning behind no path is that you don't want to hand your opponent more land as the control deck. Letting the opponent draw into them naturally blanks a few draw steps and being that we can easily run fatal push and or terminate in its place we dont lose out on much.
I've found Collective Brutality to be excellent in a nahiri build, all modes are relevant, and being able to throw away that emrakul that inevitably gets stuck in your hand for value feels pretty good. Pitching the first half of lingering souls, or an extra land for a second effect is fine too. CB is almost never dead as a removal spell, but in the rare times it is, drain for 2 and duress are very viable alternatives.
I agree with you about the life gain, and the abundance of discard (7+2CB+4Lili) and would shave an Inquisition and a Thoughtseize for two helix. The burn spells give you that extra reach, and the lifegain is useful to buy another draw step. Midgame I would rather see a Helix as a topdeck than another discard spell.
I like Shauns list, but im still not sold on the Wall of Omens and I'm maybe too chicken to run Bob. So I'm holding out hope for a powerful 2 drop for this deck, maybe we'll get a RW/RB/WB Vizier that's good for us in this set?
Thanks for the feed-back. I'm curious as to your thoughts on why butcher is more reliable.
I understand butcher is a 5 power flyer, and that represents a ~3-4 turn clock when he lands, but I feel that he is much easier to stop than Nahiri/Emrakul. With Shadow Jund/Sultai/Esper running around more lists are running Fatal Push, Paths and Blessed Alliance to deal with Death Shadows. My thoughts would be to move away from threats that also get tagged by these removal spells.