If you are looking for more grindy creatures, I think Tireless Tracker is better than Duskwatch Recruiter. Tireless tracker can serve as a win-con, is more likely to have an immediate impact (it's easier to play a land than to have three mana open), and has incredible synergy with knight. Also, even if you draw a land with the clue, he makes it almost a redraw. Lastly, drawing means that you can hit a Coco or a path.
How did you sideboard against humans? I think that matchup is like playing against a worse eldrazi. I would have kept the combo, included more removal and worship. Seems to be one of this weird matchups (like against lifegain) where you might think that grinding is a good idea but its not, and you need to be aggressive.
I believe I went -2 Pridemage -3 Retreat -2..Selfless Spirit, I think? +2 Alliance +2 Courser +2 Worship (which managed to steal me a game) +1 Baloth. This matchup felt a lot more like Goblins, tbh. They had a super aggressive curve of Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant, Soldier of the Pantheon, Voltaic Brawler, Mayor of Avabruck and I just got swarmed. My cards were more powerful than theirs but they were able to dump theirs out much faster.
After playing both tracker and duskwatch: both are good, but tracker ends the game. I found duskwatch good for dumping your whole hand and not being dead lategame. That was frontier though, the strategy is not really viable in modern.
So, new removal spell, aggro powered down, what do we do with our decks? Queller doesnt look as good now that more interaction is played, and less aggro means more tron/valakut/eldrazi.
Unified will is good against tron and valakut, but bad against eldrazi. Land destruction is good against all three, but LD cards are all bad (I mean, we are already running 2 GQ/Tectonic, more is excessive). Creature removal is good against eldrazi but not against the other two. Would definitely remove rhox and similar cards and go up to 3 copies of coralhelm, dont really know what else to do...
I've been thinking of playing Geist of Saint Traft again, like I used to a year ago. Geist + exalted (or Elspeth, of which I would run 1-2) is good at giving non-interective decks the business. He's also good if people are leaning on Fatal Push.
Voice of Resurgence is good again! I think it should go back to being a staple in the deck. Geist of Saint Traft may be worth considering now as well, with the format slowing down considerably. It's also possible that we move away from Spell Queller. Then again, Push means that fewer decks will play Path, which means that Selfless Spirit shines more than ever in protecting Knight of the Reliquary and Spell Queller.
Either way the B&R announcement is great news for us. The hyper-aggro decks will be hamstrung, our opponents lose perfect information, and we no longer need to dedicate 4-6 sideboard slots to dredge (2-4 or so should suffice...). Not to mention fewer Anger of the Gods running around (and Rest in Peace, but I was never really bothered by the opponent wasting a card just to prevent the infinite combo).
The real challenge will be how to beat the Big Land decks that will benefit the most from these changes. I'm not quite sure what the solution is but I think it may involve more Ghost Quarters + Surgical Extraction. Unified Will is also a possibility.
Not trying to harsh anyone's excitement but Fatal Push isn't likely to slow the format down that much. That fast uninteractive decks like infect already beat 1 mana removal and they will continue to. Hopefully I'm wrong but I doubt it'll have a massive effect on this turn 3 format.
The format isn't going to slow down a lot, but it should slow down a little. Without perfect information, a lot of decks are going to have to be weary of a few open mana. Also, fatal push should help heavy removal decks, like grixis delver, a little. As I think we have really strong matchup against heavy removal decks (I run 3 voice), I am more than happy for them to get a boost to keep other decks in line.
I've been thinking of playing Geist of Saint Traft again, like I used to a year ago. Geist + exalted (or Elspeth, of which I would run 1-2) is good at giving non-interective decks the business. He's also good if people are leaning on Fatal Push.
Thought the same. Anyway, if geist is well positioned, we want more copies of selfless and ways to protect spell queller, why not run bant spirits then?
PD - Is anyone actually interested in spirits discussion here? I know that deus usually runs a spirit heavy knightfall but other than that... I might just post in the UW spirits thread.
I've been thinking of playing Geist of Saint Traft again, like I used to a year ago. Geist + exalted (or Elspeth, of which I would run 1-2) is good at giving non-interective decks the business. He's also good if people are leaning on Fatal Push.
Thought the same. Anyway, if geist is well positioned, we want more copies of selfless and ways to protect spell queller, why not run bant spirits then?
PD - Is anyone actually interested in spirits discussion here? I know that deus usually runs a spirit heavy knightfall but other than that... I might just post in the UW spirits thread.
About Spirits, obviously I'm somewhat biased here, but I think there is a lot to be gained by comparing and contrasting the strengths of the two decks. There is a lot of overlap between them and a lot of design space to play with. I've had almost no time to test my hybrid build due to work, life, etc., but the few events I brought it to it performed pretty well, pretty much no different than regular Knightfall would have (lost to Infect's nut draws (which were unbeatable pre-Probe ban - literally lost after successfully playing Path, Staticaster and Spell Queller), Tron is still a problem; but I steamrolled control, Eldrazi and Taxes; performed well against midrange) and I do think it can be improved on.
I have been playtesting some spirits. They are a bit inconwistent on the draw and when they winn they tend to 'winn more'. They are good though. But UW hasa bad early game. Bant non-spirits opens up so much good options, while loosing only a litle.
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Your Bant spirits looks good! I think I might borrow Voice of Resurgence from this deck, for the usual reasons... Have you gotten a lot of suprise blowouts from the Aven Mindcensors in the main? I think of this usually as a SB card.
...absolutely dominated in testing, putting up impressive showings against Infect, Bant Eldrazi, and Sultai with Fatal Push (aka 'Blue Jund')... (see videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0OFObRNMjSsnuEMGA-K29Q)) and it already plays 4x Knight and a TON of fetchlands. The synergy with Retreat to Coralhelm is too obvious to ignore. Even where you don't combo, you would activate Retreat multiple times virtually every turn, clearing the way for landfall threats or, at worst, scrying. It's definitely slow without acceleration so we wouldn't want to play more than 2, or perhaps the Retreats could go in the sideboard as a trump for non-interactive matchups. As to what we would switch, I'm tempted to say 1 Path or Bolt (Seal of Fire is just too sweet with Renegade Rallier) and maybe a Goyf? Not sure. Adding one Breeding Pool to support the Retreat shouldn't cause any problems when we play 14 Fetchlands, 4 Ralliers to recur them, and 4 Knights (we would likely want to swap the Marsh Flats and Mire for Flooded Strand/Misty Rainforest.
Really cool to see landfall coming up again, certainly got a lot stronger now that it has a three drop to double up on landfall triggers turn 3. I remember when coralhelm had just been spoiled and people where thinking of running the landfall duo with the combo as it has some obvious synergy. Problem was sometimes your landfall dudes just sit there looking foolish but hopefully rallier is going to keep them swinging. I adjusted the landbase for blue and just swapped out the seals for 2 coralhelms.
Really cool to see landfall coming up again, certainly got a lot stronger now that it has a three drop to double up on landfall triggers turn 3
Even though I dismissed the rallier for regular knightfall, in a more dedicated landfall deck I like it. Adding retreat to it seems correct, at least to copies. If you don't have knight, retreat can be used to tap blockers so your huge steppe lynx can deal damage (just what the early geist versions tried to do, but with bigger creatures)
About my spirits deck. I haven't got many mindcensor blowouts, but it's the most mainboardable sideboard card and I can afford running some "bad" cards maindeck (I don't usually need all my cards to win a game, so if mindcensor isn't relevant it can just sit in my hand)
Also Renegade Rallier is a clear allstar in the videos, pulling out turn 3 kills as well as grinding out a sultai midrange deck by bringing back your fatal pushed dudes
Really cool to see landfall coming up again, certainly got a lot stronger now that it has a three drop to double up on landfall triggers turn 3. I remember when coralhelm had just been spoiled and people where thinking of running the landfall duo with the combo as it has some obvious synergy. Problem was sometimes your landfall dudes just sit there looking foolish but hopefully rallier is going to keep them swinging. I adjusted the landbase for blue and just swapped out the seals for 2 coralhelms.
Simple and fair enough adjustment, but cutting Seal of Fire loses the awesome synergy with Rallier: it both enables Rallier by triggering Revolt, and acts as a payoff for Rallier since Rallier can return it, turning him into a mini-Flametongue Kavu. Removing Seal of Fire also weakens Tarmogoyf.
That being said I'm going to ask the question that's probably on the mind of any budget-conscious people who would be interested in this deck: what's a good replacement for Tarmogoyf, if any? In the videos Jeff Hoogland basically answered this question with "play another deck" but... What do you guys think? If anything, Selfless Spirit seems a reasonable candidate: good to return with Rallier, can enable Rallier in a pinch, offers protection to Knight and our landfall dorks, and it's an evasive threat.
Not to mention, I've never been impressed with Goyf in decks like this one that mainly only run creatures, lands and instants.
I decided to post my Wednesday night modern games. I was running a fairly standard list with a Clique instead of a third retreat. Also, I like voice.
Round 1 - Grixsis Delver: 2-0 - got a little land screwed even with a Courser out and so the game went a fair bit longer than it needed to, but it's a fairly one sided matchup. Enough said.
Round 2 - Sun and moon: 2-1 - Game one I couldn't find a keep-able hand until I had 2 cards. Obviously, I lost. Game 2 I sided out all the paths because they're next to useless and brought in my negates as well as the forge tender (I thought I would try one in my side for the night). Game 2 I dropped an early skite which ate a Journey to nowhere. I waited till knight was a 4/4 before I dropped it. Then, in response the an anger of the gods, I sacrificed pridemage to kill the journey to get back skite. I managed think drop two more knights and I kept swinging with both knight and skite (playing around Nahiri and blessed Alliance). From there, I won. Game 3, I collected companied into a spell queller (for his chandra) and a selfless spirit. I Townshipped a few times and won through a bit of removal.
Side note: What do you guys do against sun and moon? While I've beaten sun and moon 2 out of the three times I've played it, I feel like it was due to luck. Especially with the new bans, I feel like they are our worst matchup (Valakut is close but I keep winning). Maybe I'm just being paranoid though by the fact that they're one of two match losses in the past 35ish matches.
Round 3 - R/G Tron: 2-1 - Game one I didn't see a third land so I couldn't company after Ugin the spirit dragon for his last three life. I brought in three negates and a Ghost Quarter for a Courser, two Scavenging oozes and a skite. In hindsight, I feel like maybe I should have boarded out One path. Anyway, in game two, I turn two spell queller a Ancient Stirrings. He draws natural tron, but doesn't draw a threat before I win. In other words, turn two spell queller probably won me the game. Game three, I Clique away his ugin. He drops an oblivion stone. As I had company in my hand, I just attacked with my voice and Clique before passing (dropping him to 8). He couldn't really play a threat and o-stone so he just passed and popped o-stone in response to attacking. With two companies now in hand, I passed. He Karned away my voice token before passing where I Cocoed into two spell quellers aND attacked for 4 before passing again. He Karned away a land forcing me to coco where I got a Knight and a pridemage. He then dropped an ulamog. To me, this was the most interesting moment in the game. He didn't have red mana for a Pyroclasm effect. I didn't have any white mana for my path. Obviously, as he was at four, he had to kill a spell queller. Thus, the only way for him to live would be exile a queller and pridemage (I had a Hierarch in hand) and hope I don't topdeck a white source. He missed this and took knight instead and I won.
Updated primer up! Check it out, let me know what you think and if I missed anything. I'll continue to add some small tweaks over time and possibly a sideboard guide eventually... but those take a long time to do. Compiling the images takes forever to make them look good on the site (Abzan Company has what I mean) and you can even see ho there is a blue background on the Knight + Retreat picture in the first section since the site has changed colour since I put up the first version. That annoys me and will be fixed soon.
Updated primer up! Check it out, let me know what you think and if I missed anything. I'll continue to add some small tweaks over time and possibly a sideboard guide eventually... but those take a long time to do. Compiling the images takes forever to make them look good on the site (Abzan Company has what I mean) and you can even see ho there is a blue background on the Knight + Retreat picture in the first section since the site has changed colour since I put up the first version. That annoys me and will be fixed soon.
Hey, great update Torpf! I just (re-)read the primer to (re-)familiarize myself with the deck after a hiatus, and this definitely has my gears turning. Thanks for the excellent update!
Now I've just gotta find me some Spell Quellers. Mmmmmm…
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Hey everybody! I'm very strongly considering buying into knightfall (I love a lot of things about this deck) but I have to ask before I start getting the pieces, is there any chance that a version running Eldritch Evolutionor Chord of Callingcould be competitive? I think I personally would just like something with a little stronger of a creature toolbox, and I don't think Collected Companyis the best enabler for cards you're running a low count of.
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I believe I went -2 Pridemage -3 Retreat -2..Selfless Spirit, I think? +2 Alliance +2 Courser +2 Worship (which managed to steal me a game) +1 Baloth. This matchup felt a lot more like Goblins, tbh. They had a super aggressive curve of Champion of the Parish, Thalia's Lieutenant, Soldier of the Pantheon, Voltaic Brawler, Mayor of Avabruck and I just got swarmed. My cards were more powerful than theirs but they were able to dump theirs out much faster.
So, new removal spell, aggro powered down, what do we do with our decks? Queller doesnt look as good now that more interaction is played, and less aggro means more tron/valakut/eldrazi.
Unified will is good against tron and valakut, but bad against eldrazi. Land destruction is good against all three, but LD cards are all bad (I mean, we are already running 2 GQ/Tectonic, more is excessive). Creature removal is good against eldrazi but not against the other two. Would definitely remove rhox and similar cards and go up to 3 copies of coralhelm, dont really know what else to do...
L: Maverick
Either way the B&R announcement is great news for us. The hyper-aggro decks will be hamstrung, our opponents lose perfect information, and we no longer need to dedicate 4-6 sideboard slots to dredge (2-4 or so should suffice...). Not to mention fewer Anger of the Gods running around (and Rest in Peace, but I was never really bothered by the opponent wasting a card just to prevent the infinite combo).
The real challenge will be how to beat the Big Land decks that will benefit the most from these changes. I'm not quite sure what the solution is but I think it may involve more Ghost Quarters + Surgical Extraction. Unified Will is also a possibility.
GWU Knightfall Spirit Company GWU
GWB Abzan Evolution GWB
~Modern~
BGURWhiteless Death's ShadowRUGB
GWRUSaheeli BlinkURWG
RGBUGood Ole' DredgeUBGR
~Commander~
URWNarset, Enlightened Time-TravelerWRU
UBRWBreya, Etherium ArchitectWRBU
A Prolific Loser To Blood Moon
Thought the same. Anyway, if geist is well positioned, we want more copies of selfless and ways to protect spell queller, why not run bant spirits then?
Pre bannings I thought that knightfall was better, but now might be the time for spirits. I'll be testing this list (Quite stock, 3 quarters and 2 mindcensor main is the only fringe thing)
https://deckstats.net/decks/2563/643208-bant-spirits-post-push-v1-1/en
PD - Is anyone actually interested in spirits discussion here? I know that deus usually runs a spirit heavy knightfall but other than that... I might just post in the UW spirits thread.
L: Maverick
About Spirits, obviously I'm somewhat biased here, but I think there is a lot to be gained by comparing and contrasting the strengths of the two decks. There is a lot of overlap between them and a lot of design space to play with. I've had almost no time to test my hybrid build due to work, life, etc., but the few events I brought it to it performed pretty well, pretty much no different than regular Knightfall would have (lost to Infect's nut draws (which were unbeatable pre-Probe ban - literally lost after successfully playing Path, Staticaster and Spell Queller), Tron is still a problem; but I steamrolled control, Eldrazi and Taxes; performed well against midrange) and I do think it can be improved on.
GWU Knightfall Spirit Company GWU
GWB Abzan Evolution GWB
4x Arid Mesa
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Forest
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Marsh Flats
1x Mountain
1x Plains
2x Sacred Foundry
2x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
1x Treetop Village
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Plated Geopede
4x Renegade Rallier
4x Steppe Lynx
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Wild Nacatl
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
2x Seal of Fire
2x Burrenton Forge-Tender
2x Ghost Quarter
3x Lightning Helix
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Selfless Spirit
2x Thrun, the Last Troll
...absolutely dominated in testing, putting up impressive showings against Infect, Bant Eldrazi, and Sultai with Fatal Push (aka 'Blue Jund')... (see videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0OFObRNMjSsnuEMGA-K29Q)) and it already plays 4x Knight and a TON of fetchlands. The synergy with Retreat to Coralhelm is too obvious to ignore. Even where you don't combo, you would activate Retreat multiple times virtually every turn, clearing the way for landfall threats or, at worst, scrying. It's definitely slow without acceleration so we wouldn't want to play more than 2, or perhaps the Retreats could go in the sideboard as a trump for non-interactive matchups. As to what we would switch, I'm tempted to say 1 Path or Bolt (Seal of Fire is just too sweet with Renegade Rallier) and maybe a Goyf? Not sure. Adding one Breeding Pool to support the Retreat shouldn't cause any problems when we play 14 Fetchlands, 4 Ralliers to recur them, and 4 Knights (we would likely want to swap the Marsh Flats and Mire for Flooded Strand/Misty Rainforest.
This is a promising possibility.
GWU Knightfall Spirit Company GWU
GWB Abzan Evolution GWB
4x Arid Mesa
1x Flooded Strand
1x Forest
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Mountain
1x Plains
1x Sacred Foundry
2x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Plated Geopede
4x Renegade Rallier
4x Steppe Lynx
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Wild Nacatl
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
2x Retreat to Coralhelm
2x Burrenton Forge-Tender
2x Ghost Quarter
3x Lightning Helix
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Selfless Spirit
2x Thrun, the Last Troll
Excited to test it out. Good to be the most aggressive one at the table in modern these days.
~Modern~
BGURWhiteless Death's ShadowRUGB
GWRUSaheeli BlinkURWG
RGBUGood Ole' DredgeUBGR
~Commander~
URWNarset, Enlightened Time-TravelerWRU
UBRWBreya, Etherium ArchitectWRBU
A Prolific Loser To Blood Moon
Even though I dismissed the rallier for regular knightfall, in a more dedicated landfall deck I like it. Adding retreat to it seems correct, at least to copies. If you don't have knight, retreat can be used to tap blockers so your huge steppe lynx can deal damage (just what the early geist versions tried to do, but with bigger creatures)
If someone is interested in watching games, hoogland has some uploaded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDVZXj2TdHo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3csX_vc7YI
About my spirits deck. I haven't got many mindcensor blowouts, but it's the most mainboardable sideboard card and I can afford running some "bad" cards maindeck (I don't usually need all my cards to win a game, so if mindcensor isn't relevant it can just sit in my hand)
L: Maverick
~Modern~
BGURWhiteless Death's ShadowRUGB
GWRUSaheeli BlinkURWG
RGBUGood Ole' DredgeUBGR
~Commander~
URWNarset, Enlightened Time-TravelerWRU
UBRWBreya, Etherium ArchitectWRBU
A Prolific Loser To Blood Moon
Simple and fair enough adjustment, but cutting Seal of Fire loses the awesome synergy with Rallier: it both enables Rallier by triggering Revolt, and acts as a payoff for Rallier since Rallier can return it, turning him into a mini-Flametongue Kavu. Removing Seal of Fire also weakens Tarmogoyf.
That being said I'm going to ask the question that's probably on the mind of any budget-conscious people who would be interested in this deck: what's a good replacement for Tarmogoyf, if any? In the videos Jeff Hoogland basically answered this question with "play another deck" but... What do you guys think? If anything, Selfless Spirit seems a reasonable candidate: good to return with Rallier, can enable Rallier in a pinch, offers protection to Knight and our landfall dorks, and it's an evasive threat.
Not to mention, I've never been impressed with Goyf in decks like this one that mainly only run creatures, lands and instants.
GWU Knightfall Spirit Company GWU
GWB Abzan Evolution GWB
Round 1 - Grixsis Delver: 2-0 - got a little land screwed even with a Courser out and so the game went a fair bit longer than it needed to, but it's a fairly one sided matchup. Enough said.
Round 2 - Sun and moon: 2-1 - Game one I couldn't find a keep-able hand until I had 2 cards. Obviously, I lost. Game 2 I sided out all the paths because they're next to useless and brought in my negates as well as the forge tender (I thought I would try one in my side for the night). Game 2 I dropped an early skite which ate a Journey to nowhere. I waited till knight was a 4/4 before I dropped it. Then, in response the an anger of the gods, I sacrificed pridemage to kill the journey to get back skite. I managed think drop two more knights and I kept swinging with both knight and skite (playing around Nahiri and blessed Alliance). From there, I won. Game 3, I collected companied into a spell queller (for his chandra) and a selfless spirit. I Townshipped a few times and won through a bit of removal.
Side note: What do you guys do against sun and moon? While I've beaten sun and moon 2 out of the three times I've played it, I feel like it was due to luck. Especially with the new bans, I feel like they are our worst matchup (Valakut is close but I keep winning). Maybe I'm just being paranoid though by the fact that they're one of two match losses in the past 35ish matches.
Round 3 - R/G Tron: 2-1 - Game one I didn't see a third land so I couldn't company after Ugin the spirit dragon for his last three life. I brought in three negates and a Ghost Quarter for a Courser, two Scavenging oozes and a skite. In hindsight, I feel like maybe I should have boarded out One path. Anyway, in game two, I turn two spell queller a Ancient Stirrings. He draws natural tron, but doesn't draw a threat before I win. In other words, turn two spell queller probably won me the game. Game three, I Clique away his ugin. He drops an oblivion stone. As I had company in my hand, I just attacked with my voice and Clique before passing (dropping him to 8). He couldn't really play a threat and o-stone so he just passed and popped o-stone in response to attacking. With two companies now in hand, I passed. He Karned away my voice token before passing where I Cocoed into two spell quellers aND attacked for 4 before passing again. He Karned away a land forcing me to coco where I got a Knight and a pridemage. He then dropped an ulamog. To me, this was the most interesting moment in the game. He didn't have red mana for a Pyroclasm effect. I didn't have any white mana for my path. Obviously, as he was at four, he had to kill a spell queller. Thus, the only way for him to live would be exile a queller and pridemage (I had a Hierarch in hand) and hope I don't topdeck a white source. He missed this and took knight instead and I won.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Hey, great update Torpf! I just (re-)read the primer to (re-)familiarize myself with the deck after a hiatus, and this definitely has my gears turning. Thanks for the excellent update!
Now I've just gotta find me some Spell Quellers. Mmmmmm…
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon