MTG Salvation

Weighing in on three things:

I've only been playing 7 dorks when playing the deck. I"d go up to 8 if I knew every deck I was up against was going to be combo, but against anything else (including RG titan shift and Goryo's) I would not want that 8th dork. Since we aren't too reliant on producing a lot of mana quickly I don't think the chance of getting a dork in mid-late game is worth it.

I picked up Tireless Tracker a while back, put one in the deck, then put another, and I'm looking to put in a third. The reason is she provides a lot with one card. Grindy opponents remove her before knight, midrange remove her because she grows quickly, and control heavy remove her because she provides good card advantage. she tends to be my favorite hit on CoCo besides knight. She's not that good in the opening 7, but I'm almost guaranteed to be happy to draw her mid-late game.

I've been testing a single Wargate in the place of my 3rd retreat, and I'm quite happy with it. I've used it to fetch retreat twice and combo off the following turn, used it to fetch selfless to protect against an Anger of the Gods, and I've used it twice to get tireless tracker to grind out a esper control.

I used to have lots of issues with tron. Literally the most hated matchup of mine. Lately, however, against the 8+ games I've played against various tron decks (U, GR, GB) I've won ever single game. Granted, part of it could be good draws, but the combination of Unified Will, an extra Ghost Quarter, Stony Silence, and Surgical Extraction from the board help immensely. I cut unified will then brought it back recently, so I can't vouch for it's effectiveness, but I am a fan of the card. if you can keep a sub-par hand with either the combo or a turn 2 stony silence it can easily create a win for you.

On a side note, I picked up a Wargate recently. I'm testing a 1-of in the main, eventually I want to try a 2-of in the 75. So far, it allowed me to combo off after an ugin wipe from tron (lol). EOT CoCo, wargate is pretty good.

I just want to weigh in on the combo vs. combo-less versions. Something which I've noticed, from just mostly playing Knightfall at 2-3 different stores: people recognize that I play Knightfall. Therefore, not matter what happens game 1, They side in graveyard and enchantment hate. I've told a couple people that I often side out the combo games 2 and 3 depending on the match up, but I still see people bring in the enchantment hate (to a lesser extent I see Pithing Needles too). I guess this might not be possible for everyone, but if you have a regular store you go to for FNM switching up the deck from combo to combo-less to combo-centric could be the right play, just to screw with people who assume what deck you're playing and side in hate for specific cards.

I'll try Bento's list at the next couple of FNMs and see how it'll play out. One question, what other cards would fill Elspeth's role? I have one, but don't know if I'll try and pick up another until I see how she plays

Quote from RPD »

Hey, quick question. Yesterday played against esper draw-go and BW eldrazi and taxes and I had some problems in both matchups. What should be our gameplan there? [...]

PS: Has someone tested slayer's stonghold in this deck? I'm 99% sure that it isn't good but there is some value in there. I want it mainly because of the haste clause, but +2+0 and vigilance can be relevant too.

I was debating posting after the last local ~FNM I went to. 2-0-1, beat Tron and Kiki-chord, then tied Esper draw-go.
My list for reference:



A couple edits I'm making are: - 2 Voice, + 2 Geist in main, - 2 Izzet Staticaster, + 2 Voice in the side. (I know my sideboard isn't the best, I'm pretty terrible at sideboarding anyways)

I had lots of trouble with the Esper, my threats didn't stick around long enough or get there quick enough. I'm going to start testing Geist as they're be forced to wipe the board to get rid of him, which I the list I played against only had verdict as a board wipe. I definitely wanted at least one more Tracker, but I don't have one due to budget.

Budget also explains the weird assortment of fetches. I won't mind testing stronghold, but I feel like it would have to take Gavony's place. I'm on the fence about Gavony, it is nice but it's only felt like a win more card to me when Wolf Run would have been just as useful, if not better. Even if I just tied for second, it still was a nice night since it was the first time I beat Tron 2-0. I can try and remember more, or actually write down stuff to make a solid report the next couple of times I play.

Quote from MTG_Owlskins »

Thanks! When boarding in staticaster what are you looking to hit? Glistener elf, elves and affinity pieces right?

It can be good against abzan too, hitting the viscera seer. I've used it against delver decks that tried to flood with young pyro on games 2 or 3. Also with retreat in play you can hit X/2s

I think the new Thalia, Heretic Cathar does warrant some testing, although it could make the deck more like GW hatebears. Not necessarily a bad thing, I think I saw a couple deck lists a while back running the original Thalia.

Tamiyo, Field Researcher could probably go into a straight bant deck, and one with more Chords instead of Collected Company's, otherwise it'd be too many non-creature cards to reliably get even one creature from CoCo. I run a bant with bolts and kessigs, so having CoCos, bolts, paths, retreats, and Tamiyo would push my creature count below ~23 which is too low for me.

Quote from Maty78 »

Many people have done many statistics, and actually statistics not feelings and hunches, about coco and the number of creatures that should be run. The general rule of thumb is never under 25 creatures and generally closer to 27. 18 is way to low to make coco worth playing

But that's for a CoCo deck trying to always hit multiple choices for the two creatures. I'm using it more of a dig engine to get the Knight Exemplar or Knight of the Reliquary. I know I'm playing a lot less creatures than a usual CoCo deck, but I can't see much a way to keep the interaction I want and to utilize CoCo to it's fullest extent.

I'm not trying to call in to question the statistic you mentioned about CoCo, but do they factor in deck thinning from fetches? I don't want to start a flame war I just want some clarification.

I was most likely going to test out a decklist like this:



I might cut some counters for more creatures, to increase the CoCo hitting two creatures. I've been doing some messing around with a Naya knights before BfZ and didn't get too hampered down by only having 18-22 creatures for CoCo. With enough fetches you can thin the deck significantly to where CoCo always hits two creatures, I think I had 10 fetches in the Naya version since it was attempting to be budget.

I'm not sure if it's been explored yet, but what about taking a CoCo knight deck and added Retreat to it? Then you can have the plan of beatdown with indestructible knights as well as the reliquary retreat pseudo-combo.