MTG Salvation

Played my first FNM with the deck physically, here's my list



Round 1: 2-1
Knightfall VS Jund
Game 1 - The game went typically, me curving out with Nacatl into Voice into Geist, with him removing every creature but the geist. He drops a tarmogoyf and passes on turn 4. I play my land and pass. He casts a liliana and -2s, I respond with a collected company, drop a 5/5 knight and a Voice, sac the voice, get a big token. I path his tarmogoyf on my turn, drop another Knight, swing 15, he's down to 2 due to fetching, he draws for his turn and scoops.

Game 2 - I mulligan to 4 keeping 3 lands and a Nacatl, he Inquisitions me turn 1 and runs away with the game as I procede to draw more lands.

Game 3 - off of a hierarch I turn 3 company in response to a liliana dropping on my board of hierarch + scavenging ooze, get a knight and a nacatl, sac the nacatl. Draw into the combo and kill him on the spot turn 4.

Round 2: 2-1
Knightfall VS Abzan
Game 1 - I mulligan to 5, hand is 2 lands, hierarch, double knight. He inquisitions my knight turn 1 and my other one turn 2, I eternal witness one back on turn three, he thoughtsiezes it out of my hand again, runs me over with tarmogoyfs.

Game 2 - I go first, curve out nacatl, spellskite, geist. Drop a coralhelm and start tapping down his tarmogoyfs and Siege Rhinos to get through, he dies.

Game 3 - This game goes really long, eventually we're both top decking with no board, I draw collected company, company into Geist + Eternal Witness getting back the company, He can't keep up.

Round 3: 2-1
Knightfall VS Boogles
Game 1 - Gross, he totally runs me over with a huge boogle, there's nothing I can do

Game 2 - Spellskite turn 2, he can't do anything the rest of the game, I turn my creatures sideways until he's dead.

Game 3 - I'm at 10 life due to boogle attacks by turn three, but I combo him out than and there and it's over. I feel like this is a hard match up but the combo helps.

Round 4: 0-2
Knightfall VS Scapeshift
Game 1: She runs optimally, turn 5 scapeshifts me with my combo in hand, I have no real way to interact in my mainboard

Game 2: I keep an incredibly aggressive seven with no sideboard cards like choke, Thalia, and magus of the moon thinking I'd have to be insane to mulligan, turn 1 Hierarch, turn 2 Geist, Turn 3 Knight, Turn 4 she taps the team with a cryptic command, I drop another knight and a nacatl and pass, she plays a thragtusk to get up to 25, I swing 21 damage from 6/6 knights, nacatl, geist, she blocks the geist and takes it all, combos me out the next turn

The deck is still weak to combo, but I feel having our own combo helps us out a lot. I feel that the scapeshift deck ran completely optimally in both games and there was not much I could do. All and all I'm happy with the list.

Quote from Pokken »

The same question I ask all the 'aggro with combo finsih' decks:
How do you dig to the combo? what good does it do?

In this deck, specifically, cutting retreats for 3 more aggro creatures or even 3 boros charms seems like it'd be straight up stronger.

The question I ask of the combo decks here are why are you playing an easy to disrupt combo with barely any control elements to protect it? The simple fact is that when observed objectively the combo is bad compared to something like splinter twin. It's in the wrong colors and it doesn't always guarantee a win. This combo is only good because of the the deck that wants to run knight is good anyway, and now it just has an oops I win with both cards being good on their own.

Once again, jund is an excellent match up for coco creature builds, especially of the zoo variety, the weakness of the deck has always been GOOD nonlinear combo decks, which coralhelm covers quite well. And for context, there has been 2 elf players in my meta since the GP win, until last week when one of them finally got frustrated with losing and switched to boogles. I question if you've actually given this build a chance, as you keep talking about terrible matchups for the deck that are just entirely the opposite of what multiple people here have been saying. We beat jund, we beat jund, we very often beat jund simply because we mainboard coco and they can't keep up. I honestly don't know what to say past this as your experience has been so entirely the opposite of my own, but essentially the reason this combo is great in coco zoo is that it provides an incredible mainboard patch to the decks that it often loses to game 1. It's as simple as that, a great deck that didn't have a maindeck answer to some nonlinear stuff in the format now has that answer. I wish you luck with what you're trying out but I sincerely can't help you with what I've experienced.

I've honestly never lost to an elves deck in modern since it won that GP, I think the deck is meh at best and totally overhyped. It's like a far, far worse affinity in terms of its explosiveness and I do not think other coco decks need to be considering elves a serious threat, especially with engineered explosives available in sideboard, and with removal mainboard beyond just 4 path to exile. So while other coco decks are slower, they don't rely on cute elf interactions and overrun effects that are easily disrupted to win, and instead coco becomes a far more potent value engine, letting creature decks come back from otherwise impossible odds. Even better in a deck that could just combo off by getting a knight of the reliquary in on the end step.

Quote from Maty78 »

MantisRider, mind posting the goyfless build youre currently talking about? Id love to see what youre currently on.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/knight-of-the-coralhelm/

Here's a Tappedout list, since it's late and I'm honestly too tired to reformat it. I'm on an extra Birds of paradise, Eternal Witness, and full 4 Voice of Resurgence, though I could see some Scavenging Ooze in the main too.

I have no idea why you insist on warping this deck into a preside boarded list against those decks when we beat them anyway. I'm honestly questioning the lists you've been testing with and against because my zoo list that even forgoes tarmogoyf is still winning against those decks a ton. It tapping out for a 6 drop sounds terrible against twin, tapped out for a courser of kruphix on turn three means you get comboed out next turn, and holding up counter spells to try and shove through a combo you can barely protect, can't easily dig for, and isn't even a guaranteed win if the game is long and haven't even dealt any damage yet because you've been waiting to cast a bunch of do nothing three drops make it sound like you'd rather being playing a dedicated combo deck far far from coral helm + knight

Quote from isei8388 »

Elves do not run mainboard disruption, look at both OKC GP decks (4th and 12th place). There is only 1 spellskite visible and that is more for protection than disruption.

Once again, just to be clear - I understand the concept of disruption but I feel like there is definitely a place and time for it. For this bant company deck, I feel we are fine vs each matchup game 1 without path.

The only deck I'd care to disrupt would be Tron but even then path does nothing there. If someone would like to present a case by case basis for path against each Tier 1 deck then please do so as I feel between exalted beats + qasali + dromokas, I have enough. I am a fan of disruption that also fuels/protects your game plan like Vines to Vastwood and Spellskite but unfortunately Skite doesn't further our beatdown plan.

Edit 1: Bolting a dork just means you play a voice next turn? Same as Abzan company...it's not "I got friggin annihilated". Nor is T1 IoK/Thoughtseize, deck has so much redundancy. My local meta is filled with Jund + Grixis Variants + Scapeshift and being T1 bolted is nowhere near game-ending so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. You can't just come up with the ideal situation for the opponent and give yourself a hand of 3 companies 4 lands.

Edit 2: either way I'm not here to persuade but rather fuel discussion. At the end of the day, we will all be running our own variants at FNM or larger events but until there is a big tournament win, nothing is really concrete and even then...

I suggest trying out everything extensively and objectively before reaching a conclusion.

I used to run a bant company deck similar to yours and I found just running 4 paths to be no where near enough interaction. I was constantly losing to twin and was desperately mulliganing to find my paths. When the deck worked it beat down hard but against combo it folded A LOT and that was with 4 paths mainboard. Dromoka's command is a good card but it is often near dead against jund/junk where your dudes are getting removed constantly. It's a great card when you're ahead but when you have an empty board it simply rots in your hand. Not only is path catch all removal it's flexible, it can target your dork to get a landfall trigger to protect your knight mid combo as well as self ramping when you're in a bind and need to cast a company. I honestly am shocked that you've had positive experiences in your meta with little mainboard disruption as I (and I suspect many people here) have had incredibly negative experiences. Even ignoring our personal experiences it has objectively been reached by dozens if not hundreds of pro level players that most successful decks in modern that aren't incredibly linear explosive strategies need interaction to survive. Look at any top 8 and you'll see this played out over and over again...this is something that has been extensively and objectively investigated by players of the game for years.

It doesn't rely on the combo at all to win though, it's incidental more than anything else. We simply can't rely on the combo to win against a deck that has so many main deck answers to it.

I have this deck proxied in paper (I have a 4 color zoo deck already and I just proxied the coralhelms) and against jund/junk you just side out the combo and go down the collected company value beat down plan. That's why I love Voice of Resurgence in this deck over tarmogoyf. Unless they're junk and they have the path they're 2 for 1ing it every time. I've played about 10ish matches with a jund player at my LGS and I'm at about 7 match wins to his 3. When he has to start trading whole cards for half of your voices it feels bad and Geist of Saint Traft is my best card against him. a hexproof threat he just can't deal with is golden in the match up. I also love a 1 of Grim Lavamancer for general use. This deck goes a little light on removal and burn so having a repeatable source that you can company out is great.

Exactly, It's what I love about the zoo version. So much fun to watch an opponent hold up removal to deal with your combo, sacrificing their own game plan only to aggro them to death anyway.

Also I'm fairly sure you have to declare which option from the Retreat to Coralhelmlandfall trigger you picked and if it's the tap/untap one which creature you're targeting with it when it goes on the stack so you can't just decide later you'd rather scry to some action if they have double removal for your knight or something. That means it's best to let each trigger resolve as you go.

The key to sequencing seems to be every time you fetch with the knight, grab a fetch land then fetch with that until you have one fetchable land and the steppe left in your deck. The most vulnerable part of the combo is when you first tap the knight to try to combo off if you weren't blessed with a fetch to play from your hand this turn. If that's your situation Knight of the Reliquary is going to die unless you have a path to exile in hand, another creature besides your knight, and the mana to play it, in which case you can fetch a basic, untap knight, tap knight, fetch the steppe, declare protection. If you do have the fetch to keep up, then your combo is safe from everything but double removal. One way to punish new players facing the combo for the first time when you don't have a fetch or a path to protect your knight with and they assume that they can just path your knight at the end of your combo is to make your first knight trigger grab a fetch land, untap your knight with the Retreat trigger, leave the fetch uncracked, then move onto sacing another plains/forest you have to begin the process as outlined above. By doing this if they don't remove the knight in response to the first knight fetch, you will still have protection for your knight when they go to remove it as you swing. Keep this in mind in the coming weeks when you're facing opponents who are not totally familiar with this combo. If they do not know when the best time is to disrupt you, they won't be able to beat the cautious player who makes sure to do this.

How has tarmogoyf preformed? I like having the main deck f you to controlish decks in Voice of Resurgence more personally as it seems half the games I play him in testing he never gets above a 3/4 for me.

Quote from bioship_paladin »

Whats the game plan vs rest in peace

The rest of the deck.

Yeah I've been blown out by an Aetherize before. Doesn't feel good. I always keep my Magus of the Moons in my sideboard for tron matchups.

Knightfall is growing on me.