W/B is the way to go I think. Red doesn't offer much, Inspiring veteran is alright but not really that exciting and the mana get's significantly worse with red, not for example that tournament grounds doesn't cast the Adventure part of Murderous rider.
The certainties to me are:
4x venerable knight
4x knight of the ebon legion
4x worthy knight
4x acclaimed contender
4x murderous rider
These are the strongest knight cards imo and the reason to want to go this deck in the first place. What knights to fill up with I'm not entirely sure.
I don't think there are any other 1-drops good enough to consider, ideally you had played another but Fervent Champion is too hard on the mana and the other 1-drops are too weak, Foulmire knight is really lackluster.
For 2-drops the best options besides Worthy knight are Order of Midnight, Corpse Knight, Blacklance paragon and Smitten swordmaster. I quite like order of midnight, it's flexibility is good but not the best turn 2 play, same for smitten swordmaster. I think you want a bit of a mix here but I like Order the most overall. Blacklance really depends on how bad or good a 3/1 is in the format, I have a feeling that could be very good and you actually want him as 4-of. Smitter swordmaster might not be good enough to make the cut. The deck probably wants a high count of 2-drops as they are flexible and that way Worthy Knight is protected, against decks with removal you probably want to go Worth Knight into another knight at turn 3 or 4 and play something that can catch the bullet first like Blacklance or Corpse Knight. Order of Midnight really fits well into this.
At 3 mana you probably want a bit extra as murderous rider is more removal, choice probably between Midnight Reaper and Oathsworn knight, depends a bit what the nature of (mass) removal will be in this format. If it's damage based mostly I think the Oathsworn knight a lot but overall I guess Midnight reaper is probably the way to go.
Not sure you want to go higher up the curve, maybe some sorin. With castles and the adventures you already have lots of lategame so i'd want to play a reasonably high land count (24 or 25) but not go too far up the curve.
Basically this would just be an excuse to make more $10 packs travesties like the masters sets.
They can just print the cards for standard I feel. Sometimes you have a card that requires a certain framework to do anything in standard which might be hard to develop but you still want it in modern but these cases are limited. Astral slide would be an example, cool to potentially have in modern but a bit rough to introduce in standard as it would make no sense without proper cycle cards, but designing around that isn't so hard.
I can't think of a single card that is neccesary in modern but can't be introduced to standard. Hatecards like back to basics you don't want in modern anyway, those are crappy design. Other generic strong cards which might be interesting like baleful strix or whatever can be introduced to standard just fine, standard has had over the top strong cards plenty of times. Just give that color combination less strength elsewhere so it doesn't become a dominant deck. Many of these legacy staples, for example brainstorm, aren't even strong in standard anyway.
a chainwirler ban seems the most logical course of action. It's the only consistent thing across all these lists. The two drops are varied between hearth, scrounger, kari and earthshaker with none of them significantly in every list. Similarly 4-drops are not consistent amongst lists with pretty much every combination of 2 out 3 from chandra/hazoret/phoenix seeing play.
THe only efficient ban to tackle it would be chainwirler which would open the format enough I think.
Is Damping Sphere really an upgrade over Thorn of Amethyst here?
The Amethyst doesn't slow you down too.
Amethyst doesn't seem very good. Storm counteracts it with one Baral/electromancer and it doesn't bother tron enough.
Damping sphere has more value against amulet & tron while being a harder hoser against storm and KCI. It hurts yourself more though but I think that's worth it as these matchups are quite a bit of a race and you can drop the sphere after dumping your hand mostly. Overall though I doubt you want the sphere. If you play white I still prefer eidolon, if you play black I prefer thoughtseize and potentially stain the mind I think.
Damping sphere looks to have a pretty strong effect on the metagame though which could be good or bad for elves. Storm, KCI and tron are hurt quite a bit by damping sphere as often it's a hatecard that attacks from a completely different angle, especially from creature decks like humans it's very tough to deal with.
None of the CoCo decks is great now it seems. CoCo elves or GWx are both decent but have little interaction and struggle against the decks like storm and humans.
Besides Elves there is GWb focused on the devoted druid combo, i'm not a fan of this list, the devoted druid or finks + vizier combo's are too vulnerable I feel, both basically require 3 pieces (druid + vizier + mana outlet or vizier + finks + sac outlet).
Then there is also just GW value with knight of the reliquary and so on. This deck stinks I think, you have no speed and no interaction which is an awful combination in modern. Without those you need to be really sturdy to at least dominate the matchups against other midrange decks or be able to win combo matchups based on the sideboard but that's not even the case I think.
There are also versions with blue, either for knightfall combo or just blue creatures like reflecting mage and spell queller. Not a huge fan of those either, those creatures are much more conditional so you have to guess when to use CoCo.
Gb Elves is just the most solid Coco deck I think, it's fast and fairly resilient.
There are 2 ways to build the deck: focus on balance and trying to abuse that or just play a singleton balance as a tutor target for tolaria west.
I've tested both quite a bit and I found the second to be FAR superior. As foretold into balance is nice but to focus on abusing it is too flimsy. The problem mostly is that the cards that make balance better like manarocks and greater gargadon don't with well with as foretold. Secondly you rely very much on a flimsy combo then which can easily be interrupted by counters or discard.
Better is just to play 3 As foretold, 4 ancestral vision, 1 restore balance and 3 tolaria west. Key is to play enough 1 and 2 drop instants so as foretold gives great value outside the suspend spells too. A free suspend spell is nice but it get's really strong when you get a free serum visions, removal, spreading seas and snapcaster mage in the next 2 turns. By keeping the As foretold and suspend card package minimal too the deck isn't too reliant on the combo either, against some decks you just take out as foretold and restore balance. The lists I see here that focus more on restore balance just suck because they rely too much on the As foretold and getting the right balance setup (which is quite hard against burn or decks with lots of graveyard value).
Just not sure which colors you want to be in besides blue. UW, UB, UR and UBR all have their merits. Because of tolaria wests i prefer sticking to 2 colors and I think I like white best as it provides the strongest sideboard. But all the color combinations are possible.
Sure there have been more cards that cast suspend cards for free or do are good in combo's like the expertise cycle but none of them have been close to this in efficiency really.
The fact that it sais x OR LESS and you can use it each turn really make this pay itself back fast and give huge advantages.
Take some U/W control list in modern, it already wants to play ancestral vision and a singleton restore balance and possibly some lotus blooms are great with it. The normal weakness of the suspend cards that they suck lategame is completely sidestepped by As foretold, if you have them in your opener just suspend, if you draw them later you get instant effect with as foretold.
This package will dominate UW control in modern:
3-4 As Foretold
4 Ancestral vision
1-2 Restore balance
3-4 Tolaria west
This card is much better than Vial in modern because of the suspend interaction. Vial takes much longer to pay off. As foretold into vision or restore balance is instant insane value and you still have the as foretold afterwards. Tolaria west is basically a free tutor to set this up and if you don't draw the as foretold your visions are still fine by themselves.
The value of as foretold afterwards is also pretty huge. Play enough 1 mana cards and you already get 2 mana the next turn out of it, 1 during your turn like a serum visions and 1 during their turn, ie some 1 mana removal. From 2 and onwards it really get's going, you can play anything with counter backup, start casting snapcasters for value etc. Aether vial get's even in mana 1 turn after cast and goes 2 up 2 turns after cast needing a 1 and 2-drop for that. As foretold with two 1 CC spells and two 2 CC spells (not hard in a control deck full of cantrips counters and removal) will be 1 mana down 1 turn after but will be 3 mana up 2 turns after. It overtakes aether vial really fast and if you have it with a suspend card it's bonkers immediately of course as a direct ancestral visions or restore balance is worth ~4 mana i'd say.
The deck doesn't need to be UW either, restore balance is never suspended for W anyway so the package is just blue. Playing 3 or 4 tolaria west makes three color harder to do but not impossible, grixis for example could be good too as it has a ton of 1 and 2 mana instants enabling the as foretold even more and the loop of snapcaster + kolaghan is really strong once you get as foretold with a few ticks up.
I suspect a ban really, this card is just too strong and slides so well into decks which are already fairly good.
This seems really good.
Not too hard to activate as RG is the easiest color combination to get devotion in and even without it provides an awesome ability for RG. Just dropping this against something controllish you can start beating very hard every next turn with your polukranos and whatnot,
seems a little on the weak side but can't rule it out yet.
The explore ability is quite good but costing a loyalty and only starting with 2 is harsh. The other ability is a decent protection spell. Overall not very strong but the abilities at least synergize well together, if the coast is clear the explore ability is really strong and against a single target you can neutralize it pretty well. If this had a bit more loyalty it would have been fine I think now it;s a little weak but potentially playable.
The worst color often tends to create fine monocolored decks once the format get's older.
At first all colors are drafted roughly equal and red sucked. After some point people start to dislike red heavily and take stuff like voyage's end over lightning strike because lightning strike has a much higher chance of not being played because red is so shallow. Sometimes though this goes so far that just one persons ends up playing red and get's an insane deck.
If the format is fresh it's really crucial to know what the weak colors are to avoid them. After it stabilizes those weak colors get interesting again because they are so underdrafted. Any color can make good monocolored decks these way but in theros for example you'll never be monoblue because too many players will be picking it.
Good things about theros: Tricks relatively good compared to removal, makes it fun to play. Relatively deep that there isn't a clear amount of unplayables making there be more interesting picks a bit later down the line. Not really any broken cards either that are just unbeatable. Sealed is not just about bombs for example.
Bad things: it's a bit bland. except heroic there are hardly any decks relying on synergy and it's just pick goodstuff and any colors can match. Play can also be a bit too tempo driven which makes it a bit of a racing affair too often. Also dislike the ordeal cycle, it's too high reward high risk but for many decks good enough to play so you get games with a blowout on turn 2 either way.
Rakdos return is the only great card red offers for control, making it a lousy option compared to white. All the other stuff like izzet charm, turn/burn etc. is stuff you wouldn't be running anyway.
Anger of the gods and mizzium mortars are both ok but anger misses too much now. When a 1/4 is part of aggro you don't want to be running a card like anger..
Even rakdos return is not that awesome for control as it's just inferior to revelation. Some cases in control mirrors rakdos return will do better but revelations is great against aggro too while rakdos is mediocre there.
Azorius charm, verdict, elspeth, detention sphere and revelation VS anger and rakdos return is what you really come down to when testing it. A ton of mediocre options is not as useful as just a few great ones when deciding on colors. Spot removal plenty in black already. I also believe esper has better mana.. Esper vs azorius is a more relevant choice really.
Haven't followed the rest but the pick is between battlewise valor and battlewise hoplite. The deck is somewhat favored to RW instead of UW at the moment but I can't really comment on how red was flowing. Looking at these cards I guess the draft is going rather poorly at the moment and the RW deck isn't really coming through which pushed me towards the battlewise hoplite. Hoplite is huge if you end up UW, valor is not the biggest loss if you end up RW anyway.
you just need stuff to survive the earlygame and deal with an early ordeal or other quick start.
Ramp, sedge scorpion or removal from your secondary color are great for this. Green almost never tends to be my first picks as it has a lot of decent cards but few of these great cards i really want. I very often end up in green though after starting off with something like a gray merchant, griptide, voyage's end, lightning strike or whatever. The satyr is definately up there as one of green's most important commons, probably second after nessian asp. Tempo and thus acceleration is just huge in this format and garanteeing double mana of one color is just sweet.
Looks a bit slow for a heroic deck. W/G is not really my favorite combination for the heroic deck, the green heroic creatures are bad, staunch-hearted warrior can be 'ok' in this specific type of deck but i much rather have blue or red as second color. They are faster and much better at being aggressive, plus there are great gold WU or WR cards you want in this type of deck.
Always a bit worrisome such a list though when you run into someone with plenty of last breaths, pharika's cure's etc.
The certainties to me are:
4x venerable knight
4x knight of the ebon legion
4x worthy knight
4x acclaimed contender
4x murderous rider
These are the strongest knight cards imo and the reason to want to go this deck in the first place. What knights to fill up with I'm not entirely sure.
I don't think there are any other 1-drops good enough to consider, ideally you had played another but Fervent Champion is too hard on the mana and the other 1-drops are too weak, Foulmire knight is really lackluster.
For 2-drops the best options besides Worthy knight are Order of Midnight, Corpse Knight, Blacklance paragon and Smitten swordmaster. I quite like order of midnight, it's flexibility is good but not the best turn 2 play, same for smitten swordmaster. I think you want a bit of a mix here but I like Order the most overall. Blacklance really depends on how bad or good a 3/1 is in the format, I have a feeling that could be very good and you actually want him as 4-of. Smitter swordmaster might not be good enough to make the cut. The deck probably wants a high count of 2-drops as they are flexible and that way Worthy Knight is protected, against decks with removal you probably want to go Worth Knight into another knight at turn 3 or 4 and play something that can catch the bullet first like Blacklance or Corpse Knight. Order of Midnight really fits well into this.
At 3 mana you probably want a bit extra as murderous rider is more removal, choice probably between Midnight Reaper and Oathsworn knight, depends a bit what the nature of (mass) removal will be in this format. If it's damage based mostly I think the Oathsworn knight a lot but overall I guess Midnight reaper is probably the way to go.
Not sure you want to go higher up the curve, maybe some sorin. With castles and the adventures you already have lots of lategame so i'd want to play a reasonably high land count (24 or 25) but not go too far up the curve.
They can just print the cards for standard I feel. Sometimes you have a card that requires a certain framework to do anything in standard which might be hard to develop but you still want it in modern but these cases are limited. Astral slide would be an example, cool to potentially have in modern but a bit rough to introduce in standard as it would make no sense without proper cycle cards, but designing around that isn't so hard.
I can't think of a single card that is neccesary in modern but can't be introduced to standard. Hatecards like back to basics you don't want in modern anyway, those are crappy design. Other generic strong cards which might be interesting like baleful strix or whatever can be introduced to standard just fine, standard has had over the top strong cards plenty of times. Just give that color combination less strength elsewhere so it doesn't become a dominant deck. Many of these legacy staples, for example brainstorm, aren't even strong in standard anyway.
THe only efficient ban to tackle it would be chainwirler which would open the format enough I think.
Amethyst doesn't seem very good. Storm counteracts it with one Baral/electromancer and it doesn't bother tron enough.
Damping sphere has more value against amulet & tron while being a harder hoser against storm and KCI. It hurts yourself more though but I think that's worth it as these matchups are quite a bit of a race and you can drop the sphere after dumping your hand mostly. Overall though I doubt you want the sphere. If you play white I still prefer eidolon, if you play black I prefer thoughtseize and potentially stain the mind I think.
Damping sphere looks to have a pretty strong effect on the metagame though which could be good or bad for elves. Storm, KCI and tron are hurt quite a bit by damping sphere as often it's a hatecard that attacks from a completely different angle, especially from creature decks like humans it's very tough to deal with.
Besides Elves there is GWb focused on the devoted druid combo, i'm not a fan of this list, the devoted druid or finks + vizier combo's are too vulnerable I feel, both basically require 3 pieces (druid + vizier + mana outlet or vizier + finks + sac outlet).
Then there is also just GW value with knight of the reliquary and so on. This deck stinks I think, you have no speed and no interaction which is an awful combination in modern. Without those you need to be really sturdy to at least dominate the matchups against other midrange decks or be able to win combo matchups based on the sideboard but that's not even the case I think.
There are also versions with blue, either for knightfall combo or just blue creatures like reflecting mage and spell queller. Not a huge fan of those either, those creatures are much more conditional so you have to guess when to use CoCo.
Gb Elves is just the most solid Coco deck I think, it's fast and fairly resilient.
I've tested both quite a bit and I found the second to be FAR superior. As foretold into balance is nice but to focus on abusing it is too flimsy. The problem mostly is that the cards that make balance better like manarocks and greater gargadon don't with well with as foretold. Secondly you rely very much on a flimsy combo then which can easily be interrupted by counters or discard.
Better is just to play 3 As foretold, 4 ancestral vision, 1 restore balance and 3 tolaria west. Key is to play enough 1 and 2 drop instants so as foretold gives great value outside the suspend spells too. A free suspend spell is nice but it get's really strong when you get a free serum visions, removal, spreading seas and snapcaster mage in the next 2 turns. By keeping the As foretold and suspend card package minimal too the deck isn't too reliant on the combo either, against some decks you just take out as foretold and restore balance. The lists I see here that focus more on restore balance just suck because they rely too much on the As foretold and getting the right balance setup (which is quite hard against burn or decks with lots of graveyard value).
Just not sure which colors you want to be in besides blue. UW, UB, UR and UBR all have their merits. Because of tolaria wests i prefer sticking to 2 colors and I think I like white best as it provides the strongest sideboard. But all the color combinations are possible.
Sure there have been more cards that cast suspend cards for free or do are good in combo's like the expertise cycle but none of them have been close to this in efficiency really.
The fact that it sais x OR LESS and you can use it each turn really make this pay itself back fast and give huge advantages.
Take some U/W control list in modern, it already wants to play ancestral vision and a singleton restore balance and possibly some lotus blooms are great with it. The normal weakness of the suspend cards that they suck lategame is completely sidestepped by As foretold, if you have them in your opener just suspend, if you draw them later you get instant effect with as foretold.
This package will dominate UW control in modern:
3-4 As Foretold
4 Ancestral vision
1-2 Restore balance
3-4 Tolaria west
This card is much better than Vial in modern because of the suspend interaction. Vial takes much longer to pay off. As foretold into vision or restore balance is instant insane value and you still have the as foretold afterwards. Tolaria west is basically a free tutor to set this up and if you don't draw the as foretold your visions are still fine by themselves.
The value of as foretold afterwards is also pretty huge. Play enough 1 mana cards and you already get 2 mana the next turn out of it, 1 during your turn like a serum visions and 1 during their turn, ie some 1 mana removal. From 2 and onwards it really get's going, you can play anything with counter backup, start casting snapcasters for value etc. Aether vial get's even in mana 1 turn after cast and goes 2 up 2 turns after cast needing a 1 and 2-drop for that. As foretold with two 1 CC spells and two 2 CC spells (not hard in a control deck full of cantrips counters and removal) will be 1 mana down 1 turn after but will be 3 mana up 2 turns after. It overtakes aether vial really fast and if you have it with a suspend card it's bonkers immediately of course as a direct ancestral visions or restore balance is worth ~4 mana i'd say.
The deck doesn't need to be UW either, restore balance is never suspended for W anyway so the package is just blue. Playing 3 or 4 tolaria west makes three color harder to do but not impossible, grixis for example could be good too as it has a ton of 1 and 2 mana instants enabling the as foretold even more and the loop of snapcaster + kolaghan is really strong once you get as foretold with a few ticks up.
I suspect a ban really, this card is just too strong and slides so well into decks which are already fairly good.
Not too hard to activate as RG is the easiest color combination to get devotion in and even without it provides an awesome ability for RG. Just dropping this against something controllish you can start beating very hard every next turn with your polukranos and whatnot,
The explore ability is quite good but costing a loyalty and only starting with 2 is harsh. The other ability is a decent protection spell. Overall not very strong but the abilities at least synergize well together, if the coast is clear the explore ability is really strong and against a single target you can neutralize it pretty well. If this had a bit more loyalty it would have been fine I think now it;s a little weak but potentially playable.
At first all colors are drafted roughly equal and red sucked. After some point people start to dislike red heavily and take stuff like voyage's end over lightning strike because lightning strike has a much higher chance of not being played because red is so shallow. Sometimes though this goes so far that just one persons ends up playing red and get's an insane deck.
If the format is fresh it's really crucial to know what the weak colors are to avoid them. After it stabilizes those weak colors get interesting again because they are so underdrafted. Any color can make good monocolored decks these way but in theros for example you'll never be monoblue because too many players will be picking it.
Bad things: it's a bit bland. except heroic there are hardly any decks relying on synergy and it's just pick goodstuff and any colors can match. Play can also be a bit too tempo driven which makes it a bit of a racing affair too often. Also dislike the ordeal cycle, it's too high reward high risk but for many decks good enough to play so you get games with a blowout on turn 2 either way.
Good but bland set, i'd give it B+.
Anger of the gods and mizzium mortars are both ok but anger misses too much now. When a 1/4 is part of aggro you don't want to be running a card like anger..
Even rakdos return is not that awesome for control as it's just inferior to revelation. Some cases in control mirrors rakdos return will do better but revelations is great against aggro too while rakdos is mediocre there.
Azorius charm, verdict, elspeth, detention sphere and revelation VS anger and rakdos return is what you really come down to when testing it. A ton of mediocre options is not as useful as just a few great ones when deciding on colors. Spot removal plenty in black already. I also believe esper has better mana.. Esper vs azorius is a more relevant choice really.
Ramp, sedge scorpion or removal from your secondary color are great for this. Green almost never tends to be my first picks as it has a lot of decent cards but few of these great cards i really want. I very often end up in green though after starting off with something like a gray merchant, griptide, voyage's end, lightning strike or whatever. The satyr is definately up there as one of green's most important commons, probably second after nessian asp. Tempo and thus acceleration is just huge in this format and garanteeing double mana of one color is just sweet.
Always a bit worrisome such a list though when you run into someone with plenty of last breaths, pharika's cure's etc.