Thanks for the different approach, we can work with these kind of post
Which makes me think of something a bit crazy.. what about collected company AND cryptic command? We can still have a decent curve but I'm worried about the required UUU.. though we have Noble and KoTR.
But then again, dork, threat, and then having the choice between CC AND CC (duh) sounds just too good.
Company and Cryptic would indeed me sweet side by side (+ they share initials, so there must be something there ). I don't think you'd want to play both Remand and Cryptic though, since I don't think that the math adds up then unless you cut Birds, but that seems counter productive adding more 4-drops while cutting the mana accel. But Cryptic is a good way to force damage through if you're running Geist, so it might actually be an upgrade.
That said, we really need more playable flash dudes in Modern. Strategies like these are hard to make work without them. I guess there's Aven Mindcensor too.
Cryptic were instead of Leak of course. That way you can always spend your mana, either 3cmc beater or 2cmc + PoE eventuality.
About flash dudes, I searched all of them and came up with those:
Snapcaster: obvious but can range from terrible to awesome with 12 flashbackable spells and 4~8 at 4cmc) Plaxmanta: protects even himself Jeskai Barricade: saves from spot removal, unboltable, blocks early aggro Skylasher: useful in some matchups Ambush Viper: meh
Difficult to evaluate as their value changes enormously when cast or from a CC. And we deviate from the inital plan, where Fleecemane/Voice/Qasali/Ooze fit so much better..
Hey guys,
I stumbled upon this forum and thought I'd share my list. I wouldn't say it's a true bant deck, it's more GW splashing U. I think it's very important to maximize creatures for Collected Company (especially when using legendary creatures. The math used in the Frank Karsten article is incredible but we should keep in mind that hitting a Birds of Paradise or a Noble Hierarch shouldn't be considered a win. That's acceptable some amount of the time but it's not powerful enough.
I'm really excited to try out Collected Company with Geist of Saint Traft. There are 29 legal targets for CC which is plenty. I use the disruptive creatures from a GW hatebears deck to slow down the opponent while dropping heavy hitters. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben has been one of the best cards in the deck so far. Voice of Resurgencelets you cast Collected Company on your own turn and give you some value if there is a counter on the opponent's side. The manabase will definitely include fetchlands so there are no Leonin Arbiters. Colourless Ghost Quarters would be mediocre in a 3 colour deck like this anyways. Geist is protected with Restoration Angel and Path to Exile in this deck and that may not be enough. Exalted triggers can help. There are other powerful hatebears in the SB which are targets for CC. The manabase still needs work. Also being able to force spike your opponent with Judge's Familiar off of a CC seems too great to not try. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
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Modern: Bant Company GWU Dredgevine GBR Affinity 0 Grixis Control UBR
I apologize for my previous comment, it was ill conceived. If it's any explanation, I was simply tired and had debated this topic before in the Bant primer thread. So, in an effort to make up for my indiscretion I'd like to add to the discussion.
The deck list posted is a blue splash justified by Geist of Saint Traft. I don't believe that such an alteration is enough to warrant a weaker manabase than simply even WG. A deck based on spamming creatures and gaining tempo with Collected Company would be better off with the strength of Abrupt Decay to interact with the opponent rather than soft counters that will mostly be used to counter counters countering company Currently these lists do not have the combo win that the Junk Company deck lists run and therefore can't afford to believe that just dumping 3-drops is somehow going to make it to tier in the current meta.
That being said, I love Bant. I want it to succeed and I think a Bant Company deck has potential. I think we need to be more critical about the cards and strategy we consider. I'll be following this thread doing my best to figure this deck out with everyone else. As a suggestion, I like the inclusion of Rhox War Monk - it becomes scary when flashed in with company. I would also say that at least 2 Qasali Pridemage mainboard are necessary to deal with the likes of Twin, Tron, Affinity, and Amulet Bloom.
EDIT: Just a thought, if we are considering the tempo focused route, why not drop the Collected Company count down to 2? It would give us the room to play the counter game while still making a strong tempo presence when needed.
AlonsoCagi, while I love this creature it shines in ramp decks. Being capped at 4cmc we don't really need it aside from Noble and his exalted trigger.
Storm_oldstylemagic, what do you think about switching Remands to Cryptic Commands?
And about Geist, Gobrien81 and I are playing them (I'll go for 2, better clock than Brimaz). It's probably too early to have a "final list" without them
Dromoka's Command is a card I found that worked as removal most often, but isn't frequently a 2 for 1. Most castings, I found it reads: Put a 1/1 on target creature you control; and destroy a second target creature. I would hardly call keeping the 1/1 counter a 2 for 1. It is really only a 2 for 1 when you don't choose the 1/1 counter as one of the options. At least in my experience, I found myself using it that way pretty often. I wouldn't play more than 2 maindeck, and presently don't play it at all. It is the leading contender for spell #9 though. Note that Rhox War Monk increases his value in lists featuring Dromoka's Command.
Strongly disagree about Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Aven Mindcensor are inappropriate for main deck. Aven mindcensor can single-handedly win you the game (often on the play) by stone raining a turn 1 fetch. Mindcensor also helps mitigate the drawback of path and answers RG tron and Bloom titan like nothing else. At worst, you can use it as a flash evasive threat which is helpful in stalled boardstates when you have some exalted triggers to use. Thalia is great against all the tier 1 decks. The best part about her is that she is so disruptive I've found opponent's removing her in time for me to start hitting collected company. The situations where she sticks around when I want to be casting collected company require the opponent to be very far behind.
Serum Visions is a highly questionable inclusion. It is an anti-tempo card, and we can't afford it.
Moreover, with only 25 creatures and of those, 6 mana dorks, you really only have 19 hits. I really strongly recommend against counting mana dorks as hits - they will go into play obviously, but they will not advance the board state (and feel really bad when you need a threat) which is the whole point. Furthermore, they really reduce the expected total CMC of creatures put into play. Channel Fireball has a great resource for seeing the expected value of collected company. I'd suggest that if you don't expect more than 4 mana of creatures to be coming into play with collected company, your deckbuilding is not executed to fully take advantage of collected company.
I don't like anafenza here, but there is some synergy with finks if you want to play that card.
I've been having great success with this list, I added a sort of tax element to the deck and found it really makes our creature focused strategy shine, making their removal more expensive and keeping them off their mana as well as often negating the downside of our path to exiles. Though Thalia can make collected company more expensive, it's often worth it to keep your opponent off their game and you pack enough ramp to reliably get the company out by turn 4 at the latest with a thalia in play anyway. I'm also experimenting with Dromoka's Command, it works well with exalted, adds some game against burn and splinter twin game one, and at worse it's decent removal.
Because I'm not ready to drop Thalia, I'm gonna try to minimize the non-creature spells. Dromoka's Command does seem great out of the SB for certain matchups so I'm gonna look to add those. I will also add one Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. It seems like a nice inclusion. It also has synergy with Kitchen Finks and the legendary lands. I also have a very high creature count of 29.
I also would strongly recommend Loxodon Smiter. I've had an incredible amount of success with him. He's an under-costed beater, his discard clause is great against Liliana of the Veil and Raven's Crime as well as targeted discard depending on the hand. More importantly though, if you are suspicious your opponent is holding up a remand they want to cycle on anything, run the uncounterable Loxodon Smiter out and let them waste their mana. He's able to simaltaneously shore up your Abzan/Jund, Twin, Control matchups. He's a must-include in my opinion.
Because I'm not ready to drop Thalia, I'm gonna try to minimize the non-creature spells. Dromoka's Command does seem great out of the SB for certain matchups so I'm gonna look to add those. I will also add one Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. It seems like a nice inclusion. It also has synergy with Kitchen Finks and the legendary lands. I also have a very high creature count of 29.
I also would strongly recommend Loxodon Smiter. I've had an incredible amount of success with him. He's an under-costed beater, his discard clause is great against Liliana of the Veil and Raven's Crime as well as targeted discard depending on the hand. More importantly though, if you are suspicious your opponent is holding up a remand they want to cycle on anything, run the uncounterable Loxodon Smiter out and let them waste their mana. He's able to simaltaneously shore up your Abzan/Jund, Twin, Control matchups. He's a must-include in my opinion.
I absolutely agree on the Loxodon Smiter, always a threat they can't get out of our hand with targeted discard or counter, he's only subject to straight up removal which Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Voice of Resurgence make very difficult to deploy in a timely and cost effective manner.
Why not drop the amount of Collected Company down to 2 mainboard to give the deck some room?
4x Path to Exile
4x Remand
2x Collected Company
It would still function in a similar fashion. Since there is no win combo, the focus doesn't need to be on Collected Company as much. It would do it's job amazingly when played but this way it wouldn't be restricting the deck so much.
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KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Which makes me think of something a bit crazy.. what about collected company AND cryptic command? We can still have a decent curve but I'm worried about the required UUU.. though we have Noble and KoTR.
But then again, dork, threat, and then having the choice between CC AND CC (duh) sounds just too good.
That said, we really need more playable flash dudes in Modern. Strategies like these are hard to make work without them. I guess there's Aven Mindcensor too.
About flash dudes, I searched all of them and came up with those:
Snapcaster: obvious but can range from terrible to awesome with 12 flashbackable spells and 4~8 at 4cmc)
Plaxmanta: protects even himself
Jeskai Barricade: saves from spot removal, unboltable, blocks early aggro
Skylasher: useful in some matchups
Ambush Viper: meh
Difficult to evaluate as their value changes enormously when cast or from a CC. And we deviate from the inital plan, where Fleecemane/Voice/Qasali/Ooze fit so much better..
I stumbled upon this forum and thought I'd share my list. I wouldn't say it's a true bant deck, it's more GW splashing U. I think it's very important to maximize creatures for Collected Company (especially when using legendary creatures. The math used in the Frank Karsten article is incredible but we should keep in mind that hitting a Birds of Paradise or a Noble Hierarch shouldn't be considered a win. That's acceptable some amount of the time but it's not powerful enough.
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Birds of Paradise
2 Voice of Resurgence
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Qasali Pridemage
3 Scavenging Ooze
1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
3 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Loxodon Smiter
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Aven Mindcensor
2 Restoration Angel
4 Collected Company
4 Path to Exile
Land (23)
1 Okina,Temple to Grandfathers
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Breeding Pool
2 Forest
2 Gavony Township
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Plains
4 Razorverge Thicket
2 Stirring Wildwood
4 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
2 Judge's Familiar
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
3 Hushwing Gryff
1 Kataki, War's Sage
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Meddling Mage
2 Mirran Crusader
1 Rest In Peace
1 Stony Silence
I'm really excited to try out Collected Company with Geist of Saint Traft. There are 29 legal targets for CC which is plenty. I use the disruptive creatures from a GW hatebears deck to slow down the opponent while dropping heavy hitters. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben has been one of the best cards in the deck so far. Voice of Resurgencelets you cast Collected Company on your own turn and give you some value if there is a counter on the opponent's side. The manabase will definitely include fetchlands so there are no Leonin Arbiters. Colourless Ghost Quarters would be mediocre in a 3 colour deck like this anyways. Geist is protected with Restoration Angel and Path to Exile in this deck and that may not be enough. Exalted triggers can help. There are other powerful hatebears in the SB which are targets for CC. The manabase still needs work. Also being able to force spike your opponent with Judge's Familiar off of a CC seems too great to not try. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
The deck list posted is a blue splash justified by Geist of Saint Traft. I don't believe that such an alteration is enough to warrant a weaker manabase than simply even WG. A deck based on spamming creatures and gaining tempo with Collected Company would be better off with the strength of Abrupt Decay to interact with the opponent rather than soft counters that will mostly be used to counter counters countering company
That being said, I love Bant. I want it to succeed and I think a Bant Company deck has potential. I think we need to be more critical about the cards and strategy we consider. I'll be following this thread doing my best to figure this deck out with everyone else. As a suggestion, I like the inclusion of Rhox War Monk - it becomes scary when flashed in with company. I would also say that at least 2 Qasali Pridemage mainboard are necessary to deal with the likes of Twin, Tron, Affinity, and Amulet Bloom.
EDIT: Just a thought, if we are considering the tempo focused route, why not drop the Collected Company count down to 2? It would give us the room to play the counter game while still making a strong tempo presence when needed.
AlonsoCagi, while I love this creature it shines in ramp decks. Being capped at 4cmc we don't really need it aside from Noble and his exalted trigger.
Storm_oldstylemagic, what do you think about switching Remands to Cryptic Commands?
And about Geist, Gobrien81 and I are playing them (I'll go for 2, better clock than Brimaz). It's probably too early to have a "final list" without them
Dromoka's Command is a card I found that worked as removal most often, but isn't frequently a 2 for 1. Most castings, I found it reads: Put a 1/1 on target creature you control; and destroy a second target creature. I would hardly call keeping the 1/1 counter a 2 for 1. It is really only a 2 for 1 when you don't choose the 1/1 counter as one of the options. At least in my experience, I found myself using it that way pretty often. I wouldn't play more than 2 maindeck, and presently don't play it at all. It is the leading contender for spell #9 though. Note that Rhox War Monk increases his value in lists featuring Dromoka's Command.
Strongly disagree about Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Aven Mindcensor are inappropriate for main deck. Aven mindcensor can single-handedly win you the game (often on the play) by stone raining a turn 1 fetch. Mindcensor also helps mitigate the drawback of path and answers RG tron and Bloom titan like nothing else. At worst, you can use it as a flash evasive threat which is helpful in stalled boardstates when you have some exalted triggers to use. Thalia is great against all the tier 1 decks. The best part about her is that she is so disruptive I've found opponent's removing her in time for me to start hitting collected company. The situations where she sticks around when I want to be casting collected company require the opponent to be very far behind.
Serum Visions is a highly questionable inclusion. It is an anti-tempo card, and we can't afford it.
Moreover, with only 25 creatures and of those, 6 mana dorks, you really only have 19 hits. I really strongly recommend against counting mana dorks as hits - they will go into play obviously, but they will not advance the board state (and feel really bad when you need a threat) which is the whole point. Furthermore, they really reduce the expected total CMC of creatures put into play. Channel Fireball has a great resource for seeing the expected value of collected company. I'd suggest that if you don't expect more than 4 mana of creatures to be coming into play with collected company, your deckbuilding is not executed to fully take advantage of collected company.
I don't like anafenza here, but there is some synergy with finks if you want to play that card.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Birds of Paradise
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Qasali Pridemage
3 Voice of Resurgence
3 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Aven Mindcensor
4 Loxodon Smiter
2 Eternal Witness
2 Rhox War Monk
2 Dromoka's Command
4 Path to Exile
4 Collected Company
4 Windswept Heath
1 Breeding Pool
2 Temple Garden
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
2 Forest
1 Plains
1 Island
1 Gavony Township
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Meddling Mage
2 Spellskite
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Kitchen Finks
~Modern~
BGURWhiteless Death's ShadowRUGB
GWRUSaheeli BlinkURWG
RGBUGood Ole' DredgeUBGR
~Commander~
URWNarset, Enlightened Time-TravelerWRU
UBRWBreya, Etherium ArchitectWRBU
A Prolific Loser To Blood Moon
Although again misty is better than flooded.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
~Modern~
BGURWhiteless Death's ShadowRUGB
GWRUSaheeli BlinkURWG
RGBUGood Ole' DredgeUBGR
~Commander~
URWNarset, Enlightened Time-TravelerWRU
UBRWBreya, Etherium ArchitectWRBU
A Prolific Loser To Blood Moon
Because I'm not ready to drop Thalia, I'm gonna try to minimize the non-creature spells. Dromoka's Command does seem great out of the SB for certain matchups so I'm gonna look to add those. I will also add one Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. It seems like a nice inclusion. It also has synergy with Kitchen Finks and the legendary lands. I also have a very high creature count of 29.
I also would strongly recommend Loxodon Smiter. I've had an incredible amount of success with him. He's an under-costed beater, his discard clause is great against Liliana of the Veil and Raven's Crime as well as targeted discard depending on the hand. More importantly though, if you are suspicious your opponent is holding up a remand they want to cycle on anything, run the uncounterable Loxodon Smiter out and let them waste their mana. He's able to simaltaneously shore up your Abzan/Jund, Twin, Control matchups. He's a must-include in my opinion.
I absolutely agree on the Loxodon Smiter, always a threat they can't get out of our hand with targeted discard or counter, he's only subject to straight up removal which Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Voice of Resurgence make very difficult to deploy in a timely and cost effective manner.
~Modern~
BGURWhiteless Death's ShadowRUGB
GWRUSaheeli BlinkURWG
RGBUGood Ole' DredgeUBGR
~Commander~
URWNarset, Enlightened Time-TravelerWRU
UBRWBreya, Etherium ArchitectWRBU
A Prolific Loser To Blood Moon
- 4x Path to Exile
- 4x Remand
- 2x Collected Company
It would still function in a similar fashion. Since there is no win combo, the focus doesn't need to be on Collected Company as much. It would do it's job amazingly when played but this way it wouldn't be restricting the deck so much.