Yup either are options, i would say just any sort of interaction, whether it is bigger creatures (which dropping CoCo allows you to do, ebpnjoy all the 4+ cmc creatures) thinks like resto angels, or ojutai, detention sphere, chord of calling. Dropping CoCo opens lots of possibilities. Itll just take some playing on what you want to fill it with.
But you have to remember the deck does slow down a bit by dropping CoCo but it makes up for it in becoming slighly more reliable in what its casting.
Have there been any more successes in dailys or 8 mans online?
I believe three lists placed in the SCG States top8. I linked to it over in the Abzan Company thread, which I can probably edit this later and add the link. I think if you go on the SCG page too you can search for them.
Lantern Control 2-0
Lost roll
G1:He develops a bit and plays a turn 3 bridge to hold back the turn 2 smiter. I pridemage the bridge and he can't find another before the beats bring it in.
G2:He establishes a soft lock but I have a company in hand. I hit a knight and swing with a lethal bird of paradise + kessig
Elves 2-0
Lost roll
G1: He vomits out tons of cards and ends up with like 15 permanents by the time he passes his 3rd turn. I curved into knight, untap and combo.
G2: Slower start - he plays an elf, I keep a shakey hand with a birds into meddling mage and name ezuri. He dismembers it and plays out some elves. I play a knight and he gets to draw 5 from lead the stampede and plays out some cantripping/token making elves while dismembering my knight. I hold company mana up, and he goes off getting about 100 power on the board including ezuri, nyxthos and archdruids. He passes and I company into knight and aven mindcensor (i thought he was on chord, but after I discovered he didn't in fact play chord). Untap, swing for exactly lethal in the air with aven and kessig.
Grixis Twin 2-0
Lost roll
G1: He plays visions, I open noble. He remands my turn 2 voice, and noble beats. I land smiter the following turn and it eats terminate. Turn 4 he hits his 3rd land drop and remands voice again, but I can replay it. Voice sticks. After this, he main phases exarch and I path it during my turn, play knight and beat with voice. Beats bring it home shortly after
G2: Much the same as game 1 but he hits his land drop. A turn 3 spellskite puts him pretty far behind, and the beats close out the game quickly.
Gonna play this deck at comic-con events this weekend. Ill try to keep notes on the experience to share with you fine folks!
I've got to be honest, I'm just not super into CoCo. What would be an okay replacement? Counter spells? Draw?
Not going into CoCo lets you run a wider range of creatures and more non-creature spells overall. However, CoCo seems to add some non-combo explosiveness to the deck. I (and a few others) have been trying chord of calling--it is slower and less explosive, but more precise. Chord plus retreat gets you the combo, while CoCo plus retreat might get you the combo.
Another alternative with some legs is commune with the gods searches for either combo piece and turns on some graveyard tricks, including making goyf more useful in these builds.
That having been said, I think CoCo builds are currently favored.
Lantern Control 2-0
Lost roll
G1:He develops a bit and plays a turn 3 bridge to hold back the turn 2 smiter. I pridemage the bridge and he can't find another before the beats bring it in.
G2:He establishes a soft lock but I have a company in hand. I hit a knight and swing with a lethal bird of paradise + kessig
Elves 2-0
Lost roll
G1: He vomits out tons of cards and ends up with like 15 permanents by the time he passes his 3rd turn. I curved into knight, untap and combo.
G2: Slower start - he plays an elf, I keep a shakey hand with a birds into meddling mage and name ezuri. He dismembers it and plays out some elves. I play a knight and he gets to draw 5 from lead the stampede and plays out some cantripping/token making elves while dismembering my knight. I hold company mana up, and he goes off getting about 100 power on the board including ezuri, nyxthos and archdruids. He passes and I company into knight and aven mindcensor (i thought he was on chord, but after I discovered he didn't in fact play chord). Untap, swing for exactly lethal in the air with aven and kessig.
Grixis Twin 2-0
Lost roll
G1: He plays visions, I open noble. He remands my turn 2 voice, and noble beats. I land smiter the following turn and it eats terminate. Turn 4 he hits his 3rd land drop and remands voice again, but I can replay it. Voice sticks. After this, he main phases exarch and I path it during my turn, play knight and beat with voice. Beats bring it home shortly after
G2: Much the same as game 1 but he hits his land drop. A turn 3 spellskite puts him pretty far behind, and the beats close out the game quickly.
Gonna play this deck at comic-con events this weekend. Ill try to keep notes on the experience to share with you fine folks!
Thanks for the info! I really am going to have to squeeze wolfrun in, aren't I?
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Sig by Dark Night Cavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios!
Not going into CoCo lets you run a wider range of creatures and more non-creature spells overall. However, CoCo seems to add some non-combo explosiveness to the deck. I (and a few others) have been trying chord of calling--it is slower and less explosive, but more precise. Chord plus retreat gets you the combo, while CoCo plus retreat might get you the combo.
Another alternative with some legs is commune with the gods searches for either combo piece and turns on some graveyard tricks, including making goyf more useful in these builds.
That having been said, I think CoCo builds are currently favored.
Thanks for the info! I really am going to have to squeeze wolfrun in, aren't I?
I think running the math shows that bant coco builds just really aren't that good-its too inconsistent (as opposed to abzan) and if you want to push the consistency, then you ruin the curve.
I also think commune is too clunky/inconsistent for modern (at least, in a non-enchantress style deck, which currently doesnt exist).
I'm not sure it's mathematically proven or anything but I find the coco variants to be worse than Abzan coco combo, and a lot worse than coco elves. Just this man's opinion but if you can play a combo that requires slightly more pieces (3 vs. 2) but they're cheaper and you can tutor for all of them, why wouldn't you do that?
Bant beats down a little harder, but at the cost of a lot of worse matchups.
I also think commune is too clunky/inconsistent for modern (at least, in a non-enchantress style deck, which currently doesnt exist).
My 2 cents.
Well, Complex Pants' list seemed intriguing. If you gear more of the deck to be focused on enchantment and creatures, commune makes some sense. Not only can you get combo pieces, but you can also pick occasional removal and put things in the yard. Moreover, there really aren't much better options for sorting through the deck--some people tried serum visions but I think it was generally unimpressive.
...
I think the problem the deck has at the moment is that it is an OK midrange deck with an OK combo (that it has no reliably way of putting together). The whole thing still feels like it is missing something to me. I suspect CoCo makes it better at beatdown while Chord makes it a bit better at combo, but I'm not sure and haven't played both versions.
Then there's naya--where you get a crazier manabase, bolt, and cats.
Then there's abzan--where you get lots of other stuff.
I swear, you can take the deck in a million directions, which is making it hard to determine which is a better route.
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I think we can look at top finishing decklists for indications as to which builds are the "best". Best is contextual - so we should keep that in mind, but AFAIK the only lists that have placed in an event were Lantern's MTGO result, and the following in SCG states:
As far as I can tell, the only empirical evidence we have include Collected Company as a card in the deck. Perhaps the discussion should start to transition away from brewing like mad-men, and towards decklists with results.
Interesting to see that Abzan company can just kinda jam in a couple retreats.
But there is a pattern: all decklists with results run Collected Company - Blue Naya, Blue Abzan and Bant.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Man, I really like the looks of that abzan company list. Might try that build out. Might be what's missing is the ability to attack on another angle.
Having chord and Anafenza and double gavony to make your mana dorks work for you feels really strong. Knight to tutor up gavony really slots into their gameplan too.
The ability to chord up and coco up all those fulminator mages is really, really strong vs. Tron too. Probably gives you a pretty decent post-board matchup.
I think we can look at top finishing decklists for indications as to which builds are the "best". Best is contextual - so we should keep that in mind, but AFAIK the only lists that have placed in an event were Lantern's MTGO result, and the following in SCG states:
As far as I can tell, the only empirical evidence we have include Collected Company as a card in the deck. Perhaps the discussion should start to transition away from brewing like mad-men, and towards decklists with results.
Interesting to see that Abzan company can just kinda jam in a couple retreats.
But there is a pattern: all decklists with results run Collected Company - Blue Naya, Blue Abzan and Bant.
I think thats more a symptom that people are taking existing archetypes (abzan and naya company) and jamming retreats in, instead of building the deck from the ground up.
3 results total really isnt a pattern. Now If we saw 1st place lists left and right, maybe we would be on to something. Still-variance is a huge part of magic. You can have 100 people play the deck, and 3 people end up doing well, but we cant conclude that that then is the best list by seeing that 3 people did well. The average record of the deck couldve been 1-5 for all we know, these 3 just ran a little good or had favorable matchups/opponents (or not, maybe they just crushed people).
Now, it still doesnt rule out that these lists could be headed in the right direction. But it isnt a confirmation of that fact.
Company just clashes with retreat way too much, and bant colors dont provide enough good hits evenly dispersed throughout the curve. No paths in that one list? Not over my dead body.
I never said anything about these lists being the best, simply that the only evidence available on the topic of "best knightfall list" includes collected company. The evidence in any direction is weak, but insofar that evidence exists, this is one thing it says.
I'm not about to debate what a pattern is, but yes it is a pattern for all the placing lists to all use collected company. That much is indisputable.
Nothing is ever 'confirmed' in some permanent sense. When is a list 'confirmed right direction'? All I did was state what the available evidence is and point out that an emerging pattern contradicts the latest discussions in this thread.
Company does not clash too much with retreat - and when you are not combing they have synergy for scrying away non-creatures to set up collected company. I get the impression that some posters here are not even playing the deck, yet are making broad statements about the value of certain cards in the deck.
I do agree that Abzan company plays with fire by not including path the exile, but its hard to argue with results.
The anti-synergy is that retreat reduces your chances of hitting a good creature to a borderline unacceptable level.
And it really isnt that hard to argue with scattered, weak results. They really dont give us anything we didnt know. It is nice to seeing retreat lists performing though.
I have been playing with the deck a lot. Chord has been amazing almost always, and is never poor-to-bad. The odds on company says it wont be at any level (in our deck) that it is in other decks that perform with it. You dont need to test with it to come to that conclusion-you can just run the math.
I think we should look at the future of knight fall decks this way, we are a deck that runs somewhat like Naya zoo but in Bant colours with a combo engine if we hit what we need to combo off.
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Standard : What is Stand-tart
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
I think that collected company is slow, clunky and ultimately just not worth the slot.
Sure it can be insane, there are times when it hits a knight at instant speed or a pair of smiters and steals a game.
The problem is, unlike other coco decks, hitting a 1-cmc dork for us does almost nothing, we have no sac outlet, no way to capitalize on the mana and aside from township no way to convert them to any real pressure. We only have like ~20 actual 'hits' with company which only gives us a ~65% chance of getting two 'hits' and a ~90% chance of hitting one (sure 90% is a lot but 10% of the time your 4-cmc spell literally does nothing), I think I'd just rather an actual dude at that point.
Coco is fine, it wins games but I dont think it belongs in our best 75, it's too inconsistent and its payoff isnt even really that great.
I had the following matchups:
Mono Blue Tron: Win 2-0
Izzet Splinter Twin: Win 2-1
Sun Titan Emeria Control: Win 2-1
Naya Zoo: Win 2-1
The new Treetop Village was fantastic and helped apply additional pressure without opening myself up to a sweeper 2-for-1. I didn't combo out all night, party because I didn't draw it much game 1's, and partly because it came out against in sideboarding against Twin and Zoo. Match details to follow later.
It's a 2-for-1 that's a method of uncounterably putting either a Knight or a Retreat into play. It costs some mana, but with dorks getting to 5 mana doesn't seem difficult, and especially so with retreat+dorks, or knight as pseudo-ramp.
Anyone tried it? It's more mana efficient than wargate, potentially, but obviously not as precise, but also synergizes pretty well with Courser of Kruphix (providing a shuffle effect and a way to take advantage of knowledge of your top card).
Because it's a cast trigger it's not vulnerable to stuff that is normally a problem for us, like tempo counterspells and such. Having your Chord remanded feels pretty poor, but this guy does not want to interact--he just wants to spit out free cards.
But you have to remember the deck does slow down a bit by dropping CoCo but it makes up for it in becoming slighly more reliable in what its casting.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Voice of Resurgence
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging ooze
3x Geist of Saint Traft
4x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Loxodon Smiter
1x Eternal Witness
Noncreature (12)
4x Collected Company
4x Path to Exile
4x Retreat to Coralhelm
1x Flooded Strand
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Windswept Heath
3x Forest
2x Plains
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Breeding Pool
2x Temple Garden
1x Stomping Ground
1x Kessig Wolf Run
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Sejiri Steppe
3x Aven Mindcensor
2x Burrenton Forge-tender
2x Spellskite
2x Kataki, War's Wage
2x Meddling Mage
1x Vendilion Clique
Lost roll
G1:He develops a bit and plays a turn 3 bridge to hold back the turn 2 smiter. I pridemage the bridge and he can't find another before the beats bring it in.
G2:He establishes a soft lock but I have a company in hand. I hit a knight and swing with a lethal bird of paradise + kessig
UW quest for the holy relic 2-0
Lost roll
Games too short to say much, I saw quest for the holy relic, invisible stalker, vault skirge and a sword. It didn't really go anywhere in either game before the beats brought it home.
Elves 2-0
Lost roll
G1: He vomits out tons of cards and ends up with like 15 permanents by the time he passes his 3rd turn. I curved into knight, untap and combo.
G2: Slower start - he plays an elf, I keep a shakey hand with a birds into meddling mage and name ezuri. He dismembers it and plays out some elves. I play a knight and he gets to draw 5 from lead the stampede and plays out some cantripping/token making elves while dismembering my knight. I hold company mana up, and he goes off getting about 100 power on the board including ezuri, nyxthos and archdruids. He passes and I company into knight and aven mindcensor (i thought he was on chord, but after I discovered he didn't in fact play chord). Untap, swing for exactly lethal in the air with aven and kessig.
Grixis Twin 2-0
Lost roll
G1: He plays visions, I open noble. He remands my turn 2 voice, and noble beats. I land smiter the following turn and it eats terminate. Turn 4 he hits his 3rd land drop and remands voice again, but I can replay it. Voice sticks. After this, he main phases exarch and I path it during my turn, play knight and beat with voice. Beats bring it home shortly after
G2: Much the same as game 1 but he hits his land drop. A turn 3 spellskite puts him pretty far behind, and the beats close out the game quickly.
Gonna play this deck at comic-con events this weekend. Ill try to keep notes on the experience to share with you fine folks!
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Not going into CoCo lets you run a wider range of creatures and more non-creature spells overall. However, CoCo seems to add some non-combo explosiveness to the deck. I (and a few others) have been trying chord of calling--it is slower and less explosive, but more precise. Chord plus retreat gets you the combo, while CoCo plus retreat might get you the combo.
Another alternative with some legs is commune with the gods searches for either combo piece and turns on some graveyard tricks, including making goyf more useful in these builds.
That having been said, I think CoCo builds are currently favored.
Thanks for the info! I really am going to have to squeeze wolfrun in, aren't I?
I think running the math shows that bant coco builds just really aren't that good-its too inconsistent (as opposed to abzan) and if you want to push the consistency, then you ruin the curve.
I also think commune is too clunky/inconsistent for modern (at least, in a non-enchantress style deck, which currently doesnt exist).
My 2 cents.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Bant beats down a little harder, but at the cost of a lot of worse matchups.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Well, Complex Pants' list seemed intriguing. If you gear more of the deck to be focused on enchantment and creatures, commune makes some sense. Not only can you get combo pieces, but you can also pick occasional removal and put things in the yard. Moreover, there really aren't much better options for sorting through the deck--some people tried serum visions but I think it was generally unimpressive.
...
I think the problem the deck has at the moment is that it is an OK midrange deck with an OK combo (that it has no reliably way of putting together). The whole thing still feels like it is missing something to me. I suspect CoCo makes it better at beatdown while Chord makes it a bit better at combo, but I'm not sure and haven't played both versions.
Then there's naya--where you get a crazier manabase, bolt, and cats.
Then there's abzan--where you get lots of other stuff.
I swear, you can take the deck in a million directions, which is making it hard to determine which is a better route.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=93898
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=93706
As far as I can tell, the only empirical evidence we have include Collected Company as a card in the deck. Perhaps the discussion should start to transition away from brewing like mad-men, and towards decklists with results.
Interesting to see that Abzan company can just kinda jam in a couple retreats.
But there is a pattern: all decklists with results run Collected Company - Blue Naya, Blue Abzan and Bant.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Having chord and Anafenza and double gavony to make your mana dorks work for you feels really strong. Knight to tutor up gavony really slots into their gameplan too.
The ability to chord up and coco up all those fulminator mages is really, really strong vs. Tron too. Probably gives you a pretty decent post-board matchup.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I think thats more a symptom that people are taking existing archetypes (abzan and naya company) and jamming retreats in, instead of building the deck from the ground up.
3 results total really isnt a pattern. Now If we saw 1st place lists left and right, maybe we would be on to something. Still-variance is a huge part of magic. You can have 100 people play the deck, and 3 people end up doing well, but we cant conclude that that then is the best list by seeing that 3 people did well. The average record of the deck couldve been 1-5 for all we know, these 3 just ran a little good or had favorable matchups/opponents (or not, maybe they just crushed people).
Now, it still doesnt rule out that these lists could be headed in the right direction. But it isnt a confirmation of that fact.
Company just clashes with retreat way too much, and bant colors dont provide enough good hits evenly dispersed throughout the curve. No paths in that one list? Not over my dead body.
I'm not about to debate what a pattern is, but yes it is a pattern for all the placing lists to all use collected company. That much is indisputable.
Nothing is ever 'confirmed' in some permanent sense. When is a list 'confirmed right direction'? All I did was state what the available evidence is and point out that an emerging pattern contradicts the latest discussions in this thread.
Company does not clash too much with retreat - and when you are not combing they have synergy for scrying away non-creatures to set up collected company. I get the impression that some posters here are not even playing the deck, yet are making broad statements about the value of certain cards in the deck.
I do agree that Abzan company plays with fire by not including path the exile, but its hard to argue with results.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
And it really isnt that hard to argue with scattered, weak results. They really dont give us anything we didnt know. It is nice to seeing retreat lists performing though.
I have been playing with the deck a lot. Chord has been amazing almost always, and is never poor-to-bad. The odds on company says it wont be at any level (in our deck) that it is in other decks that perform with it. You dont need to test with it to come to that conclusion-you can just run the math.
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
Sure it can be insane, there are times when it hits a knight at instant speed or a pair of smiters and steals a game.
The problem is, unlike other coco decks, hitting a 1-cmc dork for us does almost nothing, we have no sac outlet, no way to capitalize on the mana and aside from township no way to convert them to any real pressure. We only have like ~20 actual 'hits' with company which only gives us a ~65% chance of getting two 'hits' and a ~90% chance of hitting one (sure 90% is a lot but 10% of the time your 4-cmc spell literally does nothing), I think I'd just rather an actual dude at that point.
Coco is fine, it wins games but I dont think it belongs in our best 75, it's too inconsistent and its payoff isnt even really that great.
1x Polluted Delta
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Windswept Heath
2x Forest
2x Plains
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Breeding Pool
2x Temple Garden
1x Godless Shrine
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Gavony Township
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Sejiri Steppe
4x Noble Hierarch
3x Birds of Paradise
3x Voice of Resurgence
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging ooze
3x Geist of Saint Traft
4x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Loxodon Smiter
1x Eternal Witness
Spells (13)
3x Chord of Calling
3x Abrupt Decay
4x Path to Exile
3x Retreat to Coralhelm
3x Rhox War Monk
3x Aven Mindcensor
2x Burrenton Forge-tender
2x Spellskite
2x Kataki, War's Wage
2x Meddling Mage
1x Vendilion Clique
Current List
2x Breeding Pool
1x Treetop Village
2x Flooded Strand
2x Forest
2x Gavony Township
2x Hallowed Fountain
1x Island
3x Misty Rainforest
1x Plains
1x Sejiri Steppe
2x Temple Garden
4x Windswept Heath
3x Birds of Paradise
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Qasali Pridemage
4x Geist of Saint Traft
3x Kitchen Finks
4x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Loxodon Smiter
1x Wilt-Leaf Liege
Instant (6)
2x Chord of Calling
4x Path to Exile
Enchantment (4)
4x Retreat to Coralhelm
2 Aven Mindcensor
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Spellskite
4 Stony Silence
3 Dromoka's Command
I had the following matchups:
Mono Blue Tron: Win 2-0
Izzet Splinter Twin: Win 2-1
Sun Titan Emeria Control: Win 2-1
Naya Zoo: Win 2-1
The new Treetop Village was fantastic and helped apply additional pressure without opening myself up to a sweeper 2-for-1. I didn't combo out all night, party because I didn't draw it much game 1's, and partly because it came out against in sideboarding against Twin and Zoo. Match details to follow later.
Check out Odds//Ends - My articles on Quirky Cards and Oddball Builds
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Currently playing Knight of the Reliquary - Retreat to Coralhelm Combo
Genesis Hydra
It's a 2-for-1 that's a method of uncounterably putting either a Knight or a Retreat into play. It costs some mana, but with dorks getting to 5 mana doesn't seem difficult, and especially so with retreat+dorks, or knight as pseudo-ramp.
Anyone tried it? It's more mana efficient than wargate, potentially, but obviously not as precise, but also synergizes pretty well with Courser of Kruphix (providing a shuffle effect and a way to take advantage of knowledge of your top card).
Because it's a cast trigger it's not vulnerable to stuff that is normally a problem for us, like tempo counterspells and such. Having your Chord remanded feels pretty poor, but this guy does not want to interact--he just wants to spit out free cards.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall