I think its a pretty solid addition, my issue is, I have next to none of those cards and I dont know if I want to go this way in paper, or Grishoalbrand.
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.
How many times have you played it? Coco/chord toolbox elves has, in my experience, been a ridiculous performer. My match win rate with it at FNMs (with top tier decks) is about 80% in a meta that has another elf player so people're jamming angers and darkblasts and such. Deck is blisteringly fast and includes tons of card advantage and silver bullets (chord for forge tender, chord for dauntless escort.
The problem with these hypothetical Knight coco decks is they can't generate any card advantage except with coco--elf deck generates cards off of close to 10 maindeck cards (and tons of phantom advantage with Ezuri/Entity/Spellskite shutting off lots of removal). 4 visionaries, 2-4 elites, 1 witness in addition to coco.
If you jam value dudes like voice and finks you can beat jund, but you lose to faster aggro decks and combo decks both. If you don't jam value dudes you can't beat either jund or aggro/combo decks
Like the concept! Done any playtesting vs. combo decks and fast linear decks? 4 paths was, in my experience, far too little interaction to hang with twin, infect, affinity, etc.
Your touching on a few of the issues I've found here.
1. Card Advantage, and protection, is limited.
2. Interaction, is super low.
To get around both issues, you need to try and play fast, leaning us toward the Zoo type builds, and away from any hope of a midrange style. It feels like while we have quality cards in the build, if things dont go quite right, we can get overwhelmed and disrupted quite easily.
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.
I was looking over at the Knight Primer to see if anyone is doing this, with Rafiq of the Many as my top of the curve card.
I really dont know how to navigate through that deck. If you dont draw a Knight (or cannot protect it), what are you hoping to drive the creation of a larger Hangerback?
I dont know, feels like too much work. Even a Turn 1 play of a Dork still sits uncomfortably with me, if its Hierarch, its got benefits, and there are edge cases, but a whole bunch of stuff just to add value isnt going to get us there.
I like the breakdown from Maty78, I think I'll go through that on my own once I'm done this OT for the day, but I'm not convinced on this other path yet. :]
I'm not huge on the Command myself, I've had more success with Simic personally. I dont agree this deck needs to be full on tap out, aggro to be successful. Its valid, it will be successful, but at that point its just Zoo with Retreat thrown in and it can be discussed in the Zoo thread. If you are intending to do nothing but tap out and jam cards, there's no reason one would avoid Red, because adding some will get you there faster, and then you add Nacatl, Bolt, and you are really just running aggro zoo.
Its a question of the flex slots to me. I do think CoCo is extreme value, and can lead to huge blow outs in the early game. It can also whiff, leaving you essentially dead, but its my kind of high risk/reward card.
Out of the spell slots though, we have depending on your build, between what 4-8? I think 4 Path is required, and if we can pull out value from either Charms, or Commands, the flexibility seems to be key to me.
If you are looking for interaction, I think it should be some kind of removal or bounce, and perhaps a 1 of Vendillion Clique. I dont think there are enough slots to run counters + CoCo, and we dont have enough dig or draw, to get at those counters reliably when I compare to my Twin decks (UR or Grixis).
Creature beats has to be Plan A unless we are warping to a less potent spell base that is better done in Twin. If we can go over the top by hitting our land drops with a bit of Mana Dork Ramp, I think hasnt been explored, but I dont know if we have the speed to do so well within this shell, while keeping the creature count high, and leveraging things like CoCo.
It still feels like a more Midrange style deck works best, unless going for a Zoo Naya build with reach.
Pokken have you tried things like Sun Titan or Prime Time? If the objective of Courser is to reliably hit land drops, I agree a higher top end is supportable. I have not lost with a Sun Titan hitting the table so far, but I was away a few days here and haven't play tested as much as I would have hoped so far this week.
Spirits
Spirits
Spirits
Your touching on a few of the issues I've found here.
1. Card Advantage, and protection, is limited.
2. Interaction, is super low.
To get around both issues, you need to try and play fast, leaning us toward the Zoo type builds, and away from any hope of a midrange style. It feels like while we have quality cards in the build, if things dont go quite right, we can get overwhelmed and disrupted quite easily.
Spirits
I was looking over at the Knight Primer to see if anyone is doing this, with Rafiq of the Many as my top of the curve card.
I dont know if anyone's playing it though.
Spirits
Spirits
So many times, I've got people leaving blockers thinking they will chump (or obliterate with something better!) my Knight, and in she goes for lethal.
Spirits
I think people are calling it Knightfall, personally I like Reliquary Retreat, but what can ya do.
Edit: Pokken I went back to some U spells and sleeved up a single Swan Song for fun, haven't drawn it yet though.
I am trying to find a good 5/6 cmc spell that can seal up the game, but no luck so far.
Spirits
I like the breakdown from Maty78, I think I'll go through that on my own once I'm done this OT for the day, but I'm not convinced on this other path yet. :]
Spirits
Spirits
I'm not huge on the Command myself, I've had more success with Simic personally. I dont agree this deck needs to be full on tap out, aggro to be successful. Its valid, it will be successful, but at that point its just Zoo with Retreat thrown in and it can be discussed in the Zoo thread. If you are intending to do nothing but tap out and jam cards, there's no reason one would avoid Red, because adding some will get you there faster, and then you add Nacatl, Bolt, and you are really just running aggro zoo.
Spirits
If you get locked out of green too fast, thats just the luck of the draw I guess. :]
Spirits
Out of the spell slots though, we have depending on your build, between what 4-8? I think 4 Path is required, and if we can pull out value from either Charms, or Commands, the flexibility seems to be key to me.
If you are looking for interaction, I think it should be some kind of removal or bounce, and perhaps a 1 of Vendillion Clique. I dont think there are enough slots to run counters + CoCo, and we dont have enough dig or draw, to get at those counters reliably when I compare to my Twin decks (UR or Grixis).
Creature beats has to be Plan A unless we are warping to a less potent spell base that is better done in Twin. If we can go over the top by hitting our land drops with a bit of Mana Dork Ramp, I think hasnt been explored, but I dont know if we have the speed to do so well within this shell, while keeping the creature count high, and leveraging things like CoCo.
It still feels like a more Midrange style deck works best, unless going for a Zoo Naya build with reach.
Spirits
Spirits
Spirits