The rounds went Abzan (W 2-1), RG Ponza (W 2-1), Ad Nauseam (W 2-1), Dredge (D 1-1-1), Merfolk (L 1-2), Bant Eldrazi (W 2-0). Cut to top8 put me in 7th seed vs dredge were I lost 1-2. The games overall for the whole day were really good, mostly close games. However, the deck did not really offer up any great draws the whole event, and I lost 4/5 die rolls to decide the play. I don't think I combo'd a single time here. So very mediocre hands and still managed to top8 with it.
The lone Fairgrounds Warden is interesting. It makes sense considering the amount of creature protection we play.
Love the Vendillion Clique. I personally play 1 in the side, but it looked pretty sweet in the main.
I'm still wondering whether or not Voice has a place in this deck. Nathan Smith's list did really well without it, but on the other hand his matchup against Grixis and even GB may have been better with Voice. It may be that Voice is a good card to play in the deck when the meta slows down a bit, since it excels against control and the GBx decks. When it's a fast meta (like now), Voice may not be the best choice.
I also want to draw your attention to a list that just 5-0'd a daily that eschews the Knightfall Combo and even plays an AWESOME mainboard Voidmage Prodigy alongside Meddling Mage and Reflector Mage:
I wanted to bring up the Tron matchup for a second, not because it's terribly relevant right now but because of something mentioned earlier in the thread about how retreat is needed to actually win.
I spent a bunch of hours yesterday testing a version of knightfall with both a ghost quarter and a tectonic edge main, and I found that games with a turn 2 knight were already very favorable, to the point that having the retreat doesn't matter.
Are you guys winning games where you company into a knight after they get Tron online and then retreat-kill them? Because with a competent and aware opponent that wasn't happening for me.
I actually found the matchup to be fairly close with a tectonic edge main and two stony in the board. Edge is great against scapeshift as well, I've been maining one for a while and I love it's utility
I also want to draw your attention to a list that just 5-0'd a daily that eschews the Knightfall Combo and even plays an AWESOME mainboard Voidmage Prodigy alongside Meddling Mage and Reflector Mage:
@bfitz88 I can't really say anything about it since it's been ages since I faced RG tron. Seems like there are too many blighted agents scaring them.
Anyway, what's the rationale behind tectonic edge? I always find it slow...
I also want to draw your attention to a list that just 5-0'd a daily that eschews the Knightfall Combo and even plays an AWESOME mainboard Voidmage Prodigy alongside Meddling Mage and Reflector Mage:
I really can't understand where's the value in the wizard theme. Where's the payoff? 1 main 1 side voidmage? There's not even cavern of souls in there. I don't see the value in cutting the best creature in the game knight of the reliquary and adding a bunch wizards with no statistical synergy. I think that the 5-0 is due to spell queller and collected company, plus being skilled with the deck.
I've been noticing more and more lists trying to run tireless tracker, and it got me thinking about what else synergises with it and hopefully the rest of our knightfall deck. Scryb Ranger came to mind. It’s a common include in legacy maverick lists, and I think that knightfall runs enough creatures with activated abilities, and landfall effects that scryb ranger should fit right in.
I haven't seen it included in other versions of knightfall, and maybe there's a point that I'm missing, but I think the faerie fits in well in the archetype. It allows extra knight activations and allows us to generate extra mana in the main phase, or mana fixing with birds, and nobel. If we can manage to squeeze dryad arbor into the manabase, scryb ranger lets us use it to block, then bring it to hand before damage. And because we can just play back down the land we can guarantee consistent landfall triggers for our courser of kruphix, tireless tracker and retreat to coralhelm.
A magical christmas land scenario is being able to generate clue tokens, pumping the tracker and drawing a card for every turn you have a manadork, a forest, scryb ranger and tireless tracker in play. The interaction would go like this: Float 2 mana (dork+forest) -> activate ranger, returning forest, untap dork -> play the forest, trigger tracker -> use floating 2 to pop the clue, draw 1 and pump the tracker. At the end of it all it cost you your land drop, and the scryb ranger activation to draw 1 and grow a threat.
Scryb ranger itself is a small 1/1, but the rest of its textbox, flash, flying and protection from blue, are all relevant. Flash allows us to use it like the untap mode of blessed alliance, flying is relevant against infect lands, thopters, vault scourge and other airborne threats. Protection from blue holds off merfolk, celestial colonnade, and vendilion clique.
Two immediate issues I do see is the body - its boltable, and it doesn’t attack very well without an exalted trigger, but its ability isn't affected by summoning sickness, so you can eek out some value. Secondly, unlike maverick we don't have green sun’s zenith to grab the faerie consistently, it is however a Collected Company target.
Has anyone tried out Scryb Ranger? Any thoughts?
This is a list I’m thinking of list
@mds688 i'll show my opinion, since I play both decks.
I wanted to test scryb ranger because I liked the idea of playing at instant speed after the first few turns (company, queller, fauna shaman and scryb ranger). The synergy is there but in the end I felt like it was not enough. This was the list I played.
In my experience, scryb ranger is a grindy card. You might pump knight by flash untapping it, sure, but most of the time it's a card to do grindy tricks. Attack with one exalted creature, untap it... This meta is aggresive. Eldrazi doesn't care about your cute scryb ranger, and whoever cares just kills it.
One more thing is that dryad arbor is better in maverick because it allows T1 green sun's zenith. In my list it has cute synergies (coco target, discarding it to fauna shaman, blocking then returning it to your hand with scryb) same as tireless tracker, but it's not enough. Plus, in legacy you have mother of runes, and scryb+mom is absolutely huge.
I don't like to double post, but the thread has been inactive for a few days...
Anyway, I went 3-1 at a local tournament. My pairings were: infect 0-2, grishoalbrand 2-1, TiTi ascension 2-0, death and taxes 2-0. I could have won against infect, but I played really bad. I need to play more against that deck, definitely.
Overall, I really like the deck. Maybe collected company is better, but eldritch evolution is such a powerful and fast card... and when your opponent has cards against evolution (TiTi ascension has remand, death and taxes has arbiter and mindcensor) you can side them all out and the deck will work just as fine. Maybe it's just me not liking collected company restrictions and variance.
Oh, and geist is an absolute beast in this deck. You can T2 evolve a dork into geist and not worry about getting blown out by removal. It also plays nicely with worship, which would be a mediocre card otherwise (it's better when paired with collected company).
I'm attending my first paper event with Knightfall tonight, and I have a question about executing the combo:
-When comboing off, how do you normally demonstrate the combo? Is it necessary to go through every Knight activation, tracking mana, life total, etc., or do you more often demonstrate the combo once, find Kessig Wolf Run and end the game? I know that it will often depend on your opponent, but what do you find yourself doing the most in terms of the actual mechanics of comboing off?
I've found that the best way to do it is to pick up your deck, shuffle all your lands to the front, and quickly go through the combo. You're allowed to do this because you're "shortcutting" and generally your opponent will be able to follow along. I like moving all the lands forward first because it means less searching through the deck, and also gives you a good idea of how many lands/triggers you have left at a glance.
If you have a courser in play, it gets pretty brutal because they will want to see your top card between every activation and you need to thoroughly randomize each time. I've called a judge over before and literally just handed my opponent my deck so they could see they were dead (plus get all the potential information), because we were low on time. Again, not really a problem without coursers or maybe a lantern in play.
If yes, I ask if they're okay with me not shuffling between Triggers/Knight activations. If yes, I pull my lands to the front and arrange them in the order I'll use them to combo, go through the first few iterations of tap your blockers and then floating mana if necessary with a dork. Usually once Knight gets to about a 15/15 with Kessig and Red Mana floating they concede. If they're not okay with me not shuffling between Triggers/Knight activations I go through everything manually.. which is pretty annoying.
If no, I'm a lot slower to walk them through it with them. I helps them to understand what's going on so I never have to do it again.
And then sometimes you just go Knight on 2 and Coralhelm on 3 and your opponent is smart enough to just scoop and save everyone time.
Bigunp - it might be good, but I'm not sure those cards are worth the three mana when you can't make infinite of them. Have you tried clique? I've been testing the two from the GP Dallas list and really liking it.
On a similar note, have we discussed that fair-grounds warden much yet? I love having that style of effect in the deck, but why is he playing it over reflector mage? Mage beats down harder, can wreck people with multiple copies of something, and isn't weak to removal. Are there any creatures we really need gone for more than two turns in a format this fast?
Assuming you got the retreat of course, i was just considering the pestermite as a tempo/disruptive card, tapping out the land needed to path our knigth if we want to combo, while winning stalled board by flying with exalted. I agree that clique can also be disruptive altough, more attacking power too(while being rougher on the mana).
I'm attending my first paper event with Knightfall tonight, and I have a question about executing the combo:
-When comboing off, how do you normally demonstrate the combo? Is it necessary to go through every Knight activation, tracking mana, life total, etc., or do you more often demonstrate the combo once, find Kessig Wolf Run and end the game? I know that it will often depend on your opponent, but what do you find yourself doing the most in terms of the actual mechanics of comboing off?
You must execute the combo since there is no loop to demonstrate that allows you the entirely shortcut the combo. After you show the untap loop, you can suggest a shortcut of skipping the shuffling (unless you have a courser in play) which your opponent must accept lest they be warned for slow play. Once you establish that you are skipping the shuffling, move all the lands to the front of the deck which will dramatically shorten your combo time. This will require a very good shuffle after you're done to avoid land clumps in subsequent games.
I highly recommend executing the combo vs a goldfish a few times in paper to make sure you have it down - can't be wasteful of the clock! Have fun!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
3 Birds
4 Hierarch
2 Qasali
2 Ooze
2 Selfless
2 Goyf
1 Fairgrounds Warden
4 KotR
4 Queller
2 Vendilion
4 CoCo
2 Retreat
4 Path
1 Breeding Pool
2 Flooded strand
2 Forest
1 Gavony
1 Quarter
1 Hallowed fountain
1 Canopy
1 Island
1 Kessig wolf run
4 Misty
1 Plains
1 Stomping ground
1 Temple garden
4 Windswept
//SB
1 spell pierce
1 blessed alliance
1 negate
1 ooze
2 stony silence
1 unified will
1 intrepid hero
3 izzet staticaster
1 loaming shaman
2 worship
L: Maverick
On saturday I decided to play Knightfall again in local 6 round event.
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Voice of Resurgence
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Spellskite
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Spell Queller
1 Reflector mage
1 Vendilion Clique
4 Path to exile
3 Retreat to Coralhelm
4 Collected Company
4 Windswept Heath
1 Flooded Strand
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
3 Forest
2 Plains
1 Kessig wolf Run
1 Gavony Township
1 Ghost quarter
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Stony Silence
1 Dromoka's Command
1 Blessed Alliance
1 Kataki, War's wage
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Kor Firewalker
1 Meddling Mage
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Rhox War Monk
The rounds went Abzan (W 2-1), RG Ponza (W 2-1), Ad Nauseam (W 2-1), Dredge (D 1-1-1), Merfolk (L 1-2), Bant Eldrazi (W 2-0). Cut to top8 put me in 7th seed vs dredge were I lost 1-2. The games overall for the whole day were really good, mostly close games. However, the deck did not really offer up any great draws the whole event, and I lost 4/5 die rolls to decide the play. I don't think I combo'd a single time here. So very mediocre hands and still managed to top8 with it.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Love the Vendillion Clique. I personally play 1 in the side, but it looked pretty sweet in the main.
I'm still wondering whether or not Voice has a place in this deck. Nathan Smith's list did really well without it, but on the other hand his matchup against Grixis and even GB may have been better with Voice. It may be that Voice is a good card to play in the deck when the meta slows down a bit, since it excels against control and the GBx decks. When it's a fast meta (like now), Voice may not be the best choice.
GWU Knightfall Spirit Company GWU
GWB Abzan Evolution GWB
3 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Selfless Spirit
2 Spellskite
2 Tarmogoyf
1 Fairgrounds Warden
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Spell Queller
2 Vendilion Clique
Spells (8)
4 Path to Exile
4 Collected Company
Enchantments (2)
2 Retreat to Coralhelm
1 Breeding Pool
2 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
1 Gavony Township
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Island
1 Kessig Wolf Run
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Plains
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Spell Pierce
1 Blessed Alliance
1 Negate
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Stony Silence
1 Unified Will
1 Intrepid Hero
3 Izzet Staticaster
1 Loaming Shaman
2 Worship
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Duskwatch Recruiter
2 Eternal Witness
4 Meddling Mage
4 Reflector Mage
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Spell Queller
3 Tireless Tracker
1 Voidmage Prodigy
Instant:
3 Path to Exile
4 Collected Company
1 Plains
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Moorland Haunt
3 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
2 Gavony Township
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
2 Botanical Sanctum
1 Breeding Pool
2 Aven Mindcensor
2 Blessed Alliance
4 Kitchen Finks
1 Path to Exile
3 Qasali Pridemage
1 Spellskite
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Voidmage Prodigy
I spent a bunch of hours yesterday testing a version of knightfall with both a ghost quarter and a tectonic edge main, and I found that games with a turn 2 knight were already very favorable, to the point that having the retreat doesn't matter.
Are you guys winning games where you company into a knight after they get Tron online and then retreat-kill them? Because with a competent and aware opponent that wasn't happening for me.
I actually found the matchup to be fairly close with a tectonic edge main and two stony in the board. Edge is great against scapeshift as well, I've been maining one for a while and I love it's utility
Bant Wizards essentially.. Voidmage Prodigy is actually pretty awesome.. the list of playable 3CMC or less wizards in Modern is pretty funny too:
Qasali Pridemage
Aven Mindcensor
Reflector Mage
Meddling Mage
Snapcaster Mage
Vendilion Clique
Burrenton Forge-Tender
Izzet Staticaster
Mangara of Corondor
Magus of the Moon
Dark Confidant
Now if they would just errata all Shamans to Wizards, then you're getting somewhere.
Anyway, what's the rationale behind tectonic edge? I always find it slow...
I really can't understand where's the value in the wizard theme. Where's the payoff? 1 main 1 side voidmage? There's not even cavern of souls in there. I don't see the value in cutting
the best creature in the gameknight of the reliquary and adding a bunch wizards with no statistical synergy. I think that the 5-0 is due to spell queller and collected company, plus being skilled with the deck.L: Maverick
I haven't seen it included in other versions of knightfall, and maybe there's a point that I'm missing, but I think the faerie fits in well in the archetype. It allows extra knight activations and allows us to generate extra mana in the main phase, or mana fixing with birds, and nobel. If we can manage to squeeze dryad arbor into the manabase, scryb ranger lets us use it to block, then bring it to hand before damage. And because we can just play back down the land we can guarantee consistent landfall triggers for our courser of kruphix, tireless tracker and retreat to coralhelm.
A magical christmas land scenario is being able to generate clue tokens, pumping the tracker and drawing a card for every turn you have a manadork, a forest, scryb ranger and tireless tracker in play. The interaction would go like this: Float 2 mana (dork+forest) -> activate ranger, returning forest, untap dork -> play the forest, trigger tracker -> use floating 2 to pop the clue, draw 1 and pump the tracker. At the end of it all it cost you your land drop, and the scryb ranger activation to draw 1 and grow a threat.
Scryb ranger itself is a small 1/1, but the rest of its textbox, flash, flying and protection from blue, are all relevant. Flash allows us to use it like the untap mode of blessed alliance, flying is relevant against infect lands, thopters, vault scourge and other airborne threats. Protection from blue holds off merfolk, celestial colonnade, and vendilion clique.
Two immediate issues I do see is the body - its boltable, and it doesn’t attack very well without an exalted trigger, but its ability isn't affected by summoning sickness, so you can eek out some value. Secondly, unlike maverick we don't have green sun’s zenith to grab the faerie consistently, it is however a Collected Company target.
Has anyone tried out Scryb Ranger? Any thoughts?
This is a list I’m thinking of list
I wanted to test scryb ranger because I liked the idea of playing at instant speed after the first few turns (company, queller, fauna shaman and scryb ranger). The synergy is there but in the end I felt like it was not enough. This was the list I played.
1 Breeding Pool
3 Forest
1 Gavony Township
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Plains
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Retreat to Coralhelm
//Instants
4 Collected Company
4 Path to Exile
//Creatures
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Courser of Kruphix
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Fauna Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Noble Hierarch
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Scryb Ranger
2 Selfless Spirit
4 Spell Queller
2 Spellskite
2 Voice of Resurgence
In my experience, scryb ranger is a grindy card. You might pump knight by flash untapping it, sure, but most of the time it's a card to do grindy tricks. Attack with one exalted creature, untap it... This meta is aggresive. Eldrazi doesn't care about your cute scryb ranger, and whoever cares just kills it.
One more thing is that dryad arbor is better in maverick because it allows T1 green sun's zenith. In my list it has cute synergies (coco target, discarding it to fauna shaman, blocking then returning it to your hand with scryb) same as tireless tracker, but it's not enough. Plus, in legacy you have mother of runes, and scryb+mom is absolutely huge.
L: Maverick
Anyway, I went 3-1 at a local tournament. My pairings were: infect 0-2, grishoalbrand 2-1, TiTi ascension 2-0, death and taxes 2-0. I could have won against infect, but I played really bad. I need to play more against that deck, definitely.
Overall, I really like the deck. Maybe collected company is better, but eldritch evolution is such a powerful and fast card... and when your opponent has cards against evolution (TiTi ascension has remand, death and taxes has arbiter and mindcensor) you can side them all out and the deck will work just as fine. Maybe it's just me not liking collected company restrictions and variance.
Oh, and geist is an absolute beast in this deck. You can T2 evolve a dork into geist and not worry about getting blown out by removal. It also plays nicely with worship, which would be a mediocre card otherwise (it's better when paired with collected company).
1 Breeding Pool
3 Flooded Strand
4 Forest
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Plains
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
//Enchantments
2 Retreat to Coralhelm
//Instants
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Condemn
4 Path to Exile
4 Eldritch Evolution
//Creatures
2 Birds of Paradise
1 Eternal Witness
3 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Kitchen Finks
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Rhox War Monk
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
4 Voice of Resurgence
1 Cataclysmic Gearhulk
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
3 Negate
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Thragtusk
2 Worship
L: Maverick
-When comboing off, how do you normally demonstrate the combo? Is it necessary to go through every Knight activation, tracking mana, life total, etc., or do you more often demonstrate the combo once, find Kessig Wolf Run and end the game? I know that it will often depend on your opponent, but what do you find yourself doing the most in terms of the actual mechanics of comboing off?
If you have a courser in play, it gets pretty brutal because they will want to see your top card between every activation and you need to thoroughly randomize each time. I've called a judge over before and literally just handed my opponent my deck so they could see they were dead (plus get all the potential information), because we were low on time. Again, not really a problem without coursers or maybe a lantern in play.
If yes, I ask if they're okay with me not shuffling between Triggers/Knight activations. If yes, I pull my lands to the front and arrange them in the order I'll use them to combo, go through the first few iterations of tap your blockers and then floating mana if necessary with a dork. Usually once Knight gets to about a 15/15 with Kessig and Red Mana floating they concede. If they're not okay with me not shuffling between Triggers/Knight activations I go through everything manually.. which is pretty annoying.
If no, I'm a lot slower to walk them through it with them. I helps them to understand what's going on so I never have to do it again.
And then sometimes you just go Knight on 2 and Coralhelm on 3 and your opponent is smart enough to just scoop and save everyone time.
As for the deck record, it is still positive in my highly competitive store
I want to jam a deceiver exarch or a pestermite for a surprise untap of the knight and keep up spell quelller mana
Anyone tried it?
On a similar note, have we discussed that fair-grounds warden much yet? I love having that style of effect in the deck, but why is he playing it over reflector mage? Mage beats down harder, can wreck people with multiple copies of something, and isn't weak to removal. Are there any creatures we really need gone for more than two turns in a format this fast?
no need to do that, just keep a fetchland in play and you can crack it at any time to untap knight.
In short, 'aint nobody got time for that.
Scryb Ranger is probably better for that purpose anyways.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
I highly recommend executing the combo vs a goldfish a few times in paper to make sure you have it down - can't be wasteful of the clock! Have fun!
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG