They're different based on what you're trying to accomplish. Dromoka's is better versus burn, red decks in general and when the fight mode is valuable.
Simic Charm is better against Delve creatures, Path to Exile, anything trying to kill your permanents that aren't creatures. I've been choosing Simic main deck in decks that support both typically lately.
True enough. I prefer Dromoka's Command because it feels more objectively powerful due to the ability to get a 2-for-1 out of it in the right situation. Simic Charm is by no means weak, but it's just a little more limited.
Mass Hysteria intrigues me a lot. The deck would become super fast and be almost immune to removal. You try and kill the knight? Grab Sejiri Steppe in response. Try and kill a Mangara? He's exiling something before he goes down. All your creatures are now hasty, speeding up your beatdown plan. I don't know if there's enough to build around though. I just thought of this and it makes me want to try it out, because just maybe it would work. Any other relevant tap cards that would benefit from being hasty? Any other good haste providing cards?
This won't be good, because Mass Hysteria benefits your opponents as well. Sure, you automatically get value from Knight and Mangara, but I don't think that justifies playing a card that is otherwise weak and that could even negatively affect our game plan.
Play Dromoka's Command over Stubborn Denial. It does everything. Stops Twin, wins Goyf wars, is strong vs. Burn. (Even if you're not playing Goyf, it's stronger than Denial. Denial, as I'm sure you know, is pretty weak without Goyf anyways.)
Secondly, I've never liked Steppe Lynx with company. It seems like such a weak thing to drop into play at instant speed. But I haven't tested it, I'll admit.
The problem with Sunhome is that you can't punch through any chump blockers. What if they have Snapcasters? Manlands? They just chump and your whole combo is gone. You can leave up a Windswept to deal with a potential surprise blocker, but what if they have too many creatures to tap down? There's just so many possibilities of Sunhome not being able to get through. Wolf Run guarantees you get just about everything through to their face, ensuring an almost guaranteed victory once you've combo'd off. And as you've mentioned, Wolf Run is better without combo. It just lets you punch through defenses in so many different instances.
All fair points. I've had the manland situation come up already, and it's a pain to deal with. Against Merfolk especially it's relevant. I just hate the idea of taking 10 or so damage to combo against burn. I haven't done the math, but if Sunhome costs 5 life to deal 20, Kessig must cost a lot more than that...
Someone should figure out how bad it is if you're comboing off turn 3 with Knight, Dork, and Retreat in play, and just two lands (both of which are tapped), only one of which is a forest/plains. That's the bare minimum situation to combo. With Sunhome, I know it's 5 life. With Kessig... more.
I don't think we need Kessig Wolf Run anymore, It's more trouble than it's worth taking tons of damage to net enough mana to make a trampling knight big enough, we're inherently going to create extra tap triggers from Retreat to Coralhelm + fetchlands so I honestly think it makes more sense to run Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion and something like Soaring Seacliff because we're going to be tapping down a lot of blockers anyway. Then you only have to run through 8ish lands to get Knight of the Reliquary to a 10/10, and you only have to net 4 mana for the sunhome activation. Seems a lot safer and more reliable to me.
Completely agree. Yet if you're not comboing, you'd generally rather have Kessig Wolf Run. It's good late game with dorks. We don't want this deck to be a one trick pony.
My only issue (and its probably just a personal one) is I feel naked if I dont have Remand main, though I see you have negate in the side, what do you remove for them? Also how big are you finding Goyf to get? In my last several, he hasnt broken 3/4!
Goyf is usually a 3/4 of 4/5. Visions helps with that. It's pretty easy to get Sorcery, Instant, Land, Creature in the yard.
As to Remand: I never seriously considered playing Remand in this deck. This is not a control or even an aggro-control deck. It's an aggro-combo deck that can switch to a more controlling role. But you're never going to sit back with 2 mana up, and be winning, at least in the early game. This isn't Twin where you don't have to tap out almost every turn.
Negate is for switching into that more controllish role post-board. It's for Tron, Twin, and Scapeshift, mostly, as well as for anyone you think will Wrath you. You slow down to play a more conservative game. I'm not completely sure what to take out for it yet, but probably 1 Birds of Paradise, 2 Scavenging Ooze (Ooze being unexceptional in the above match-ups), and perhaps 1 Dromoka's Command or 1 Retreat to Coralhelm. That depends how combo-centric you want to be post-board. Finally, I want to say that the sideboard is still very up in the air. For instance, having 3 Spellskite may be too many, especially since the deck it's strongest against -- Twin -- is one against which we can already bring in 4 Negate and already have 3 Dromoka's Command and 3 Qasali Pridemage maindeck! This may all be overkill. And is there a better option than the 3rd Spellskite against Burn? Wondering.
The sideboard is tuned to beat Affinity and Tron, with game against Twin and Scapeshift as well. Against fair decks I'm chill not bringing in too many things and grinding. There may be better options out there. I'm considering siding out 4 Retreat to Coralhelm for 4 Blood Moon. I think our mana could handle it, and it would be a blow out against Tron and Scapeshift, enabling us to play less Ghost Quarters SB. But perhaps it's too cute.
Dromoka's Command is really good. I started at 1 and am now at 3. It's our swiss army knife. Removal and protection that's strong against Burn and Twin.
I still like the idea of a Collected Company list, but I haven't found one I'm particularly fond of yet. For now, I'm playing Serum Visions and have been relatively happy with it, although it's certainly no Brainstorm.
Naw, I don't like how expensive Order is to activate. If we're going CoCo I like the lists that have been playing 2-3 Retreat, 4 CoCo, and some number of Paths. Then 4 Knight, X EWitness, Voice, Pridemage, Scooze, Dorks. Ewitness is great with CoCo, as we all know. Whiteclay is only good with Knight.
That said, I think the synergy is still sort of lacking between CoCo and Retreat. And then, if we run removal on top of CoCo and Retreat, we probably don't have room to play Chord of Calling. I'm not sure what the right move is...
If your plan is to ramp into titan, why would you not just play bloom titan? It's way faster and much more consistent.
I would rather play emrakul and an eye of ugin if I was trying to ramp up, because that's better than titan in this strategy.
The reason I love the knight + retreat combo is that the deck can just be a proactive bant company deck that can randomly kill someone by comboing off or by just tapping their blockers and getting in with geist/knight/smiter.
If you read my post, you'd see I was advocating playing Titan alongside Knight as an alternative win-con. However, as isei3883 pointed out, it doesn't even work. So we can forget that.
Naw, I don't like how expensive Order is to activate. If we're going CoCo I like the lists that have been playing 2-3 Retreat, 4 CoCo, and some number of Paths. Then 4 Knight, X EWitness, Voice, Pridemage, Scooze, Dorks. Ewitness is great with CoCo, as we all know. Whiteclay is only good with Knight.
That said, I think the synergy is still sort of lacking between CoCo and Retreat. And then, if we run removal on top of CoCo and Retreat, we probably don't have room to play Chord of Calling. I'm not sure what the right move is...
I wanted to make a list of cards that may be interesting in this deck, for reference. Not sure if this will be helpful, but since my gears are already turning...
So I think Amulet-Bloom shoehorns quite nicely into this list, as follows:
Turn 1: Dork
Turn 2: Retreat to Coralhelm
Turn 3: Tap dork (1 floating). Play fetch, untap dork, tap dork (2 floating). Break fetch, get a land, untap dork, tap dork (3 floating). Tap three lands, play Titan. Grab two more lands. One of those lands is a fetchland and one is Slayers' Stronghold. Untap dork when fetchland EtB. Tap dork (1 floating). Slayers' Stronghold EtBs, untap dork, tap dork (2 floating). Break fetchland, untap dork, tap dork (3 floating). Activate Slayer's Stronghold (1 floating). Swing with Titan. Grab a fetchland and Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion. Untap dork when fetchland EtB, tap dork (2 floating). Untap dork when Sunhome EtB, tap dork (3 floating). Break fetch, get a land, untap dork, tap dork (4 floating). Activate Sunhome. Swing for 16 with Prime Time.
That's not GG, but it's strong. Now, I acknowledge that 8 dorks (9 if you count Arbor) and 4 Primeval Titans is a lot. Probably too many. But for testing purposes, it's what I want. (This is also why I must play 2 Stomping Ground. You need double red to active both Sunhome and Slayers' Stronghold in the same turn with a Noble Hierarch in play.)
Now, for part 2: Why I'm not playing Collected Company.
Collected Company is good. Really good. I've been on the bandwagon since day 1. I really hoped Abzan Company would break modern. It didn't. That's OK. However, to play CC here is something I (at least initially) want to stay away from. First off, it would mean dumping the Primeval Titan / Dork / Retreat combo, which is a nice plan B to the Knight combo (Plan C is beating face with Knight / Goyf / Prime Time). Secondly, I don't see many great target for CC, aside from Knight himself. Why would we want to get Smiter or Eternal Witness or Aven Mindcensor, here? Do they further our plan? Sure, they're threats, and they're powerful, but they're just a different plan. It could turn out that this deck is strongest going in on the CC plan, playing less Retreats and having this combo as more of a backup -- which is the way Abzan Company plays its Melira combo, for instance. However, I'm not inclined to take that path just yet, because 1) Retreat has anti-synergy with CC, and 2) Melira Company already exists, and it's not quite good enough. We already have a strong back-up plan for this combo: beat face with Goyf. That's good enough. Plus, Goyf and CC have never been good friends, and I want to play Goyf here.
That's enough for that tirade. It may prove that CC is the way to go. For now, I want to test other ideas.
Here are some other ideas, in that vein. These are all lands that should go in the deck, I think, or in the SB. But I don't know what to cut yet, and I want to test with a safe number of Plains and Forests for Knight before I start cutting them:
Ghost Quarter / Tectonic Edge: We need something against Tron and Bloom, and plus these cards are just randomly useful. I want at least some number of GQs in the SB, maybe 1 main. I'm undecided about Tech Edge.
Bojuka Bog: Anti storm or anything else that cares about the grave. 1 in the SB, for sure.
Sejiri Steppe: Clearly this should be a one-of, probably MD but maybe in the SB. The question is just whether to cut a forest or Temple Garden. For that, I need to test.
Kessig Wolf Run: it's good. Obviously. Better in a vacuum with just KotR than Sunhome is. However, it's worse when comboing. It doesn't' work with Prime Time. But, aside from that, it's also worse, because it requires you to fetch way more lands with KotR and take way more damage. With Sumhome, you can do the following:
Activate Knight, sac a forest or plains land (Knight 3/3).
Get a fetch, untap knight.
Break fetch, get a forest (-1 life; Knight 4/4). Tap down an opponent's dude.
Tap forest. G floating.
Activate knight, saccing the forest (Knight 5/5).
Get a fetch, untapping knight.
Break fetch, getting a forest (-2 life; Knight 6/6). Tap down an opponent's dude.
Tap forest. GG floating.
Activate knight, saccing the forest (Knight 7/7).
Get a fetch, untapping knight.
Break fetch, getting a plains (-3 life; Knight an 8/8). Tap down an opponent's dude.
Get Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion. Untap knight.
Activate Sunhome. 0 floating.
Swing for the win with all blockers tapped down.
That's only 5 life lost. With Kessig, I know you take way more, and need to run even more Forests / Plains to ensure 20 to the dome. As I've demonstrated here, trample is irrelevant when comboing.
There are probably many, many, more...
I also wonder about playing Commune with the Gods. It obviously has a lot of synergy, but wasting your second turn to dig for a Knight or Retreat isn't exactly where you want to be. Retreat is the only card in this deck that does not have immediate impact when in enters the battlefield, but, with the right build, it should just win the game.
On Voice of Resurgence vs. Goyf: If I was playing CoCo, I'd play Voice. I'm not.
Those are my thoughts so far. I can't wait till Retreat becomes usable on Cockatrice so I can test.
Anyone have any thoughts on all of this?
Edit: @isei8388: Mangara is genius in this deck! That makes CoCo more appealing. I want to test it at least in the Sideboard.
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Qasali Pridemage
2 Birds of Paradise
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Courser of Kruphix
4 Serum Visions
4 Path to Exile
2 Dromoka's Command
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
3 Forest
3 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Horizon Canopy
This is what I regard as my "core." It's still only 57 cards, however. There should be at least 1 more land -- I'm thinking Lumbering Falls, Celestial Colonnade, or Stirring Wildwood -- and 2 other things: perhaps 1 Ojutai's Command (instant speed Goyf seems nice) and 1 Dragonlord Ojutai.
Thoughts on these last 3 slots?
True enough. I prefer Dromoka's Command because it feels more objectively powerful due to the ability to get a 2-for-1 out of it in the right situation. Simic Charm is by no means weak, but it's just a little more limited.
This won't be good, because Mass Hysteria benefits your opponents as well. Sure, you automatically get value from Knight and Mangara, but I don't think that justifies playing a card that is otherwise weak and that could even negatively affect our game plan.
Secondly, I've never liked Steppe Lynx with company. It seems like such a weak thing to drop into play at instant speed. But I haven't tested it, I'll admit.
Edit: Simic Charm is also weaker than Dromoka's Command. Though I can imagine some sort of split.
All fair points. I've had the manland situation come up already, and it's a pain to deal with. Against Merfolk especially it's relevant. I just hate the idea of taking 10 or so damage to combo against burn. I haven't done the math, but if Sunhome costs 5 life to deal 20, Kessig must cost a lot more than that...
Someone should figure out how bad it is if you're comboing off turn 3 with Knight, Dork, and Retreat in play, and just two lands (both of which are tapped), only one of which is a forest/plains. That's the bare minimum situation to combo. With Sunhome, I know it's 5 life. With Kessig... more.
Completely agree. Yet if you're not comboing, you'd generally rather have Kessig Wolf Run. It's good late game with dorks. We don't want this deck to be a one trick pony.
Goyf is usually a 3/4 of 4/5. Visions helps with that. It's pretty easy to get Sorcery, Instant, Land, Creature in the yard.
As to Remand: I never seriously considered playing Remand in this deck. This is not a control or even an aggro-control deck. It's an aggro-combo deck that can switch to a more controlling role. But you're never going to sit back with 2 mana up, and be winning, at least in the early game. This isn't Twin where you don't have to tap out almost every turn.
Negate is for switching into that more controllish role post-board. It's for Tron, Twin, and Scapeshift, mostly, as well as for anyone you think will Wrath you. You slow down to play a more conservative game. I'm not completely sure what to take out for it yet, but probably 1 Birds of Paradise, 2 Scavenging Ooze (Ooze being unexceptional in the above match-ups), and perhaps 1 Dromoka's Command or 1 Retreat to Coralhelm. That depends how combo-centric you want to be post-board. Finally, I want to say that the sideboard is still very up in the air. For instance, having 3 Spellskite may be too many, especially since the deck it's strongest against -- Twin -- is one against which we can already bring in 4 Negate and already have 3 Dromoka's Command and 3 Qasali Pridemage maindeck! This may all be overkill. And is there a better option than the 3rd Spellskite against Burn? Wondering.
Ian
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Birds of Paradise
3 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Courser of Kruphix
Spells: 15
4 Retreat to Coralhelm
4 Serum Visions
4 Path to Exile
3 Dromoka's Command
Lands: 24
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
3 Forest
3 Temple Garden
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Stomping Ground
1 Breeding Pool
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Gavony Township
1 Aven Mindcensor
3 Spellskite
4 Negate
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Bojuku Bog
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Creeping Corrosion
The sideboard is tuned to beat Affinity and Tron, with game against Twin and Scapeshift as well. Against fair decks I'm chill not bringing in too many things and grinding. There may be better options out there. I'm considering siding out 4 Retreat to Coralhelm for 4 Blood Moon. I think our mana could handle it, and it would be a blow out against Tron and Scapeshift, enabling us to play less Ghost Quarters SB. But perhaps it's too cute.
Dromoka's Command is really good. I started at 1 and am now at 3. It's our swiss army knife. Removal and protection that's strong against Burn and Twin.
I still like the idea of a Collected Company list, but I haven't found one I'm particularly fond of yet. For now, I'm playing Serum Visions and have been relatively happy with it, although it's certainly no Brainstorm.
Still on Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion because it's easier to combo off with than Kessig Wolf Run. I get that Kessig is better if you're not comboing, however.
Thoughts? Ideas?
Good point. All the more reason to play some number of Path.
1 Mangara of Corondor
3 Noble Hierarch
2 Birds of Paradise
4 Voice of Resurgence
2 Eternal Witness
1 Spellskite
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Wall of Roots
2 Loxodon Smiter
3 Collected Company
2 Path to Exile
2 Chord of Calling
That leaves a lot of open slots. (It's only 32 cards). But I think it's a good start.
Agree. 1-2 Mangaras, 4 Knights. X Chord. We should still play some number of Paths because Mangara is inefficient to bad without Retreat in play.
If you read my post, you'd see I was advocating playing Titan alongside Knight as an alternative win-con. However, as isei3883 pointed out, it doesn't even work. So we can forget that.
That said, I think the synergy is still sort of lacking between CoCo and Retreat. And then, if we run removal on top of CoCo and Retreat, we probably don't have room to play Chord of Calling. I'm not sure what the right move is...
Let's keep expanding this list, and maybe add it to the premier in a spoiler box? Just for practical use.
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Primeval Titan
3 Qasali Pridemage
3 Scavenging Ooze
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Path to Exile
4 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Temple Garden
2 Stomping Ground
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Slayers' Stronghold
So I think Amulet-Bloom shoehorns quite nicely into this list, as follows:
Now, for part 2: Why I'm not playing Collected Company.
Collected Company is good. Really good. I've been on the bandwagon since day 1. I really hoped Abzan Company would break modern. It didn't. That's OK. However, to play CC here is something I (at least initially) want to stay away from. First off, it would mean dumping the Primeval Titan / Dork / Retreat combo, which is a nice plan B to the Knight combo (Plan C is beating face with Knight / Goyf / Prime Time). Secondly, I don't see many great target for CC, aside from Knight himself. Why would we want to get Smiter or Eternal Witness or Aven Mindcensor, here? Do they further our plan? Sure, they're threats, and they're powerful, but they're just a different plan. It could turn out that this deck is strongest going in on the CC plan, playing less Retreats and having this combo as more of a backup -- which is the way Abzan Company plays its Melira combo, for instance. However, I'm not inclined to take that path just yet, because 1) Retreat has anti-synergy with CC, and 2) Melira Company already exists, and it's not quite good enough. We already have a strong back-up plan for this combo: beat face with Goyf. That's good enough. Plus, Goyf and CC have never been good friends, and I want to play Goyf here.
That's enough for that tirade. It may prove that CC is the way to go. For now, I want to test other ideas.
Here are some other ideas, in that vein. These are all lands that should go in the deck, I think, or in the SB. But I don't know what to cut yet, and I want to test with a safe number of Plains and Forests for Knight before I start cutting them:
I also wonder about playing Commune with the Gods. It obviously has a lot of synergy, but wasting your second turn to dig for a Knight or Retreat isn't exactly where you want to be. Retreat is the only card in this deck that does not have immediate impact when in enters the battlefield, but, with the right build, it should just win the game.
On Voice of Resurgence vs. Goyf: If I was playing CoCo, I'd play Voice. I'm not.
Those are my thoughts so far. I can't wait till Retreat becomes usable on Cockatrice so I can test.
Anyone have any thoughts on all of this?
Edit: @isei8388: Mangara is genius in this deck! That makes CoCo more appealing. I want to test it at least in the Sideboard.