Hey Guys, So I've seen Red Knightfall with BBE do well online recently, and I've gone around and theory-crafted and started to test this deck, and I really like it. Could I get some feedback?
Hey man, I've been playing almost the same deck as you for the past few leagues. It's really fun, and surprisingly good. Courser had been lackluster for me though, so I cut both and now I am playing 2 Thalia, heretic Cathar. The card is SO good, especially with 8 mana dorks. I had a game where I mulled to 5 against Tron on the play, and my first play was Thalia on t3. It slowed him down 2 turns and I won.
The problem I've been having with the deck is lackluster 2-drops, but any bant company deck has always had that problem (aside from Devoted Druid). My 2-drop suite is 4 VoR, 2 Qasali, 2 Scooze, and I was considering trying Meddling mage in the board. But it might just be better main. I also was considering Clique to make combo matchups better, but I think the double Blue is too hard for the deck to cast it consistently.
2-drop Thalia is interesting. I could see it being good.
I really don't want to put any Quellers in the board. It's such vulnerable card, and I don't really even like it in most matchups where it would seem good. That, combined with the non-bo with BBE, makes it an easy cut.
Here's my current board:
2x Izzet Staticaster
2x Stony silence
2x Worship
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Eidolon of Rhetoric
3x Crumble to Dust (looking to replace these. Maybe with a stony silence, or fracturing Gust, or meddling mages, or maybe I will try thalia. Probably dampening Sphere when it comes out. Maybe a bojuka Bog)
If you can get out ahead of the 8rack player, you will probably be fine. Tracker is really good here. If you're on the draw and they T2 smallpox you to kill a land and dork, you're done for. Jace is great in this matchup. If you can ever land him, you basically win on the spot. Also stop playing lands once you hit 4 mana sources to keep your card count up in your hand. Unless you are locked under a Lilly +1 or Raven's Crime. Also Spell Queller can exile a Raven's Crime forever. You did mull to 5, which helps the 8rack deck immensely.
Every deck nowadays is running 4 bolt effects mainboard. Valakut decks, Affinity (Galv blast), RB Hollow One, Burn, Ponza, GR Eldrazi etc. It makes the devoted Druid combo plan hard to pull off (in my experience on mtgo over the past two days).
It's still sort of all-in on the infinite mana combo plan, but you can recharge pretty easily with Trackers, as well as have large Knights. I would look at add an eternal witness or two in there though. Maybe +2 Eternal Witness +1 Duskwatch, -1 Vizier -2 Courser.
I like the way it is set up, although that manabase looks rough. kessig Wolf run and a stomping ground should be in there as a combo piece.
Thanks for the write-up! Your report really resonated with me, as I've had the same experience playing Bant Company since the unbannings as you had during the GP. I played around 400 mtgo matches with Knightfall last year and was happy with it - it used to outgrind and outvalue all other midrange (old Abzan/Jund lists, Death's Shadow decks) and control decks like no ones business, but that is not true to the same degree anymore since new midrange decks have BBE to go over the top. Combo and Tron were always non-ideal matchups, and I feel like there are so many more linear decks nowadays to go under Jund/UW Control. Just look at your matchup list from the GP - Burn x2, Affinity, Storm. Not exactly dream matchups for Jace and KOTR. So, if we can't beat linear aggro, combo OR midrange anymore - what are we doing?
To me, it is super important to have speed. I don't want to durdle around with Voices and Coursers in this meta... unless you join team Jund, it is so important to kill them dead. I've had success in the last month with Vikrams list (12-3 record), normal Counters Company (38-10 record) and 5C Humans (79-26 record), and it feels much better to have a coherent, proactive gameplan instead of playing Jace value or casting Spell Quellers against 12-piece removal decks. I was thinking that a good halfway solution would be Vizier Bant without Knights/retreats a'la Kyle Boggemes' latest lists, but I ran that back to a 4-6 record yesterday and it felt so clunky.
I really want Bant Company to be good, and I'll probably keep at it now and again, but it just feels awful to me at the moment.
Honestly, I really liked Vikram's Devoted Druid combo list. But I didn't like the failrate. I also really like the Counters Company combo right now, but it sucks that the Finks/Seer combo is hard to execute on mtgo. I've had some previous 5-0 comp league success with an all-in devoted druid combo deck on mtgo last year when GDS was huge, so I'm going to try that again. And now that Stubborn Denial isn't as big, it might even be better! Here's the list:
I'm not sure on the split between Chord and Evolution. Chord is usually better overall, but with only 20 lands, it's often hard to make chord live. Aether vial is surprisingly good here. It let's you play around sorcery speed removal. It turns your eternal witnesses and Duskwatch Recruiters into card advantage engines. And then Commune With nature is there to give you more T3 wins by fishing for Devoted Druid on T1.
Again, this isn't just theory crafting. I've played this similar list to multiple comp league 5-0s last year. I think the meta could be ripe for it, especially with Jeskai control, grixis control, and grixis Death's Shadow performing poorly right now.
I took everyone's advice and replaced a 3rd Blessed Alliance with a single Worship. The logic made sense to me. Here are my rounds:
R1: Bye R2: Burn (0-2)
G1 He went 1-drop, searing blaze, searing blaze on the play. Mega dead.
G2 He went 1-drop, searing blood, searing blood, searing blaze. I didn't draw any fetches so my knight couldn't survive the onslaught. great draw from burn. Kind of impossible for a deck like Knightfall to beat. R3: RG Eldrazi (0-2)
G1 I mull to 6 but keep a solid hand of dork, V-Clique, CoCo, 3 land. He's on the play. He goes t-1 Noble, t-2 matter reshaper. I pass on T-2 to V-Clique on his draw step because it was his TKS turn and the only gas in my hand was my lonesome coco. He has more matter reshapers, Stirrings, a smasher, and no TKS.I decide to Clique his smasher because I have no answer to it in hand, barring the possibility to hit a TKS on the CLique draw to strip my only action in hand. He did. Took Coco, and I draw land dork land dork and lose.
G2: Mull to 6 again but keep triple dork, reflector mage, 2 lands on play. I reflector Mage his t-1 noble. Then I draw 3 more dorks and lose. Rough R4: Burn (2-1)
G1: I lose the dice roll and lose to natural burn stuff.
G2: I keep a solid hand with Dork, Knight with fetches, Queller, Scooze, and stuff. Drew into some blessed Alliances and a Worship. I was very far ahead, within a turn of winning, and I made a calculated decision of playing out Worship before my final winning turn. The reason I did this is to scare him into siding in some Destructive Revelries for G3, a card that is basically dead against my deck unless I draw into exactly Worship or my single Courser of Kruphix. Guess what? It worked.
G3: He fetches a Stomping Ground on t1, and plays mountain on t2. I have a solid creature hand, which outsizes his quickly. He never draws another land and I get there. He reveals his hand at the end and it's a bunch of white cards and a restructive revelery. He made the mistake of fetching stomping ground t1 to make sure he has green for Revelery. Mistake by him, although I believe that my Worship play in G2 scared him enough to make that mistake. R5: Jeskai Control (2-0)
Up against a young guy, probably about 14 or so, with a foiled out Jeskai Control deck.
G1: He flashed an electrolyze to me while he was shuffling, so I knew it was some sort of blue control deck. I kept a solid hand with a dork, Jace, 3 lands, and double coco. We trade resources on everything until the last card in hand is Jace. I land him with opponent on like 1 card. jace gets there.
G2: V-Clique, CoCOs, Tireless Trackers, Negates. He can't keep up. I feel like Bant CoCo is ehavily favored in these matchups if played correctly. R6: Affinity (1-2)
get matchup up against a buddy of mine. At this point we are still both alive for day 2 at 3-2.
G1: He does affinity stuff on the play, and I lose. I really think G1 against affinity is almost impossible to win, especially without the combo in my deck anymore.
G2: We trade a lot of resources, he plays a bloodmoon into my basics and birds board. I have 4 mana dorks, but I draw like 3 paths so I hang in there for a few turns until I draw a Coco and get there.
G3: I keep a 6-card hand of bird bird V-cique 3 lands on the draw. Only drew lands and dorks. Out of day 2 contention.
At this point I'm out of day 2 contention and my friend offers me some rum to drown my sorrows with him. I happily oblige and toss some into my Pepsi. Gotta enjoy my last two rounds, right?
R7: Storm (0-2)
Get matchup up against the guy I drove up with. Of course. I know he's on Storm. We are both dead for day 2 and I'm a bit tipsy so we talk a lot of *****, and joke around with each other.
G1: I just get crushed. G1 is almost impossible.
G2: I Clique him, take his win con and leave him with a bunch of rituals. Then he passes. I draw a Unifed Will (thank the lord). I play courser leave up unified Will. He tries to go off, and I counter his gifts after a few rituals so he fizzles and passes. He sees me draw a Queller. I get him down to 2, and he topdecks a gifts. He casts it. I quell it. Then he casts the last card in hand, a Past In Flames. That top-decking bastard. In retrospect, I potentially should have casted the Queller the turn before at his end step to lethal him in combat. But I was drinking. and we were ******* around. it was fun though.
R8: Jund (0-2)
At this point my care level is VERY low. Just having fun.
G1: He's on the play, and goes discard my noble, t-2 Dark Confidant. I have mono 3-drops in hand. Good start for him. he gets some rough flips on Dark Confidant and gets down to 1, but is able to take me out. Bob probably did about 10-2 damage to him.
G2: I keep a hand of 2 lands, double VoR, path, Courser and Knight. Never draw 3rd land. Oh well.
Overall, I ended 3-5, although I don't really count the last 2 rounds because I was drinking. I drew A LOT of mana dorks all day. I think I was pretty unlucky in that regard. Especially against RG eldrazi, which seems like a good matchup, especially with 3 Reflector Mages and 2 Kitchen Finks post board. But that happens sometimes with the deck. I'm not a big proponent of the deck going forward. It just doesn't have good matchups. I think control is favorable, Humans is favorable, and Jund is too, but every linear deck is good against you and winning game 1 is hard. Bringing Retreat back helps though.
That being said, I tried Vikram's Devoted Combo list in two comp leagues and went 10-0 in games in the first league. It felt really good, although I think I got pretty lucky in drawing the combo in a lot of those games. I did another league and went 3-2, and I felt like I got pretty unlucky in a lot of those games. For example, against RG valakut I assembled the infinite mana combo with a Selfless Spirit to defend it, a Unified will to stop titan, and a queller to stop Scapeshift/other shenanigans. I even drew another Queller. All I needed was the final combo piece (Wolfrun, Coco, chord, ballista, buskwatch) to finish him off. I bricked for about 5 turns and lost. Seems like just the way the deck plays though.
I'm pretty locked in on the main and sideboard spell choices. The one thing I'm not quite sure about is the 2 Botanical Sanctum, 1 Stirring Wildwood. I'm not sold on Wildwood, and maybe it should be a Razorverge Thicket. Or maybe one of the Botanical Sanctums should be a Razorverge Thicket or possibly a second Temple Garden.
I'm pretty much dead to dredge, and don't have much game on storm either. You gotta make some concessions when making a SB, and those are mine. Wish me luck!
I think it's important to have at least 2 of some planeswalker in the deck. Not many decks can handle all our creatures, so PWs are back-breaking. Have you considered Bloodbraid Elf if you're going red? You just can't run Spell Quellers (as they'll counter BBE on cascade), but running Blood Moon is good tradeoff. You can run 2-3 Retreats and cascade into them.
I'm personally not a fan of Staticasters. They sometimes can't stop combo fast enough as Devoted Druid can be activated on the stack (right?). When you get Izzets with Elvish Archdruid already out, it doesn't do much. Getting that red mana is sometimes awkward, too. I like Phyrexian Revoker a lot more. Shut down Ezuri and Elves aren't very good anymore. Revokers are really good versus Affinity too.
I like Gideon, too. He is very proactive and aggressive, and sometimes Knightfall doesn't feel aggressive enough. In grindy matchups, his Knight token is serviceable, at least. It's just more of a risk to use him as an attacker cause he can be Pathed.
We managed with zero planeswalkers in our deck before JtMS got unbanned. I think we can still manage :). I think if you want to play BBE and cut Queller, we need to re-tool the deck completely.
While you're right about Staticaster not being able to stop the natural Devoted Druid combo, we have enough disruption postboard with path, Reflector Mage, and Queller to slow them down. And then Staticaster cleans everything up. I've had a lot of success with this strategy when Devoted Druid combo was everywhere on mtgo last year. Getting red mana is sometimes awkward though. Revoker sounds like a decent strategy. He's just a temporary solution though. Affinity can galv blast him, elves can push/decay him, etc. At least staticaster can kill some stuff before he dies
What does everyone think about dropping jace and going back to Bant splash red for kessig and staticaster? Jace has been pretty unimpressive for me, although not terrible. Just not good. I am going to run a league tonight and replace my two maindeck jace with two maindeck retreats again. That makes me want to pick up red again too because I won't need double blue anymore (I would have to drop Clique too).
I've also noticed an influx of green decks on mtgo, specifically Vizier combo decks and green Saheeli combo decks. Izzet staticaster can decimate those matchups (as well as other matchups like elves, affinity, lingering souls, and storm) and I don't like not having staticaster in the board. I think if I'm dropping jace, I'm going back to red.
Gideon, AoZ has been a beast in the board, and I want to have two of him in the 75. Maybe I just replace the 2 maindeck jace with 2 maindeck gideon instead of retreats and see how it goes. I think Gideon is more matchup dependent though.
It's overall fairly solid. I don't mind not playing the combo, though I do miss Kessig sometimes. That card is just so good with KotR.
I think the Field of Ruin is a bit greedy and I think I'm going to just play a second GQ in the board and play either another shock or a second Sanctum in place of Field of Ruin. I also might cut a Clique and replace it with the second Scooze - could be wrong but I keep drawing multiples. Jace has been solidly medium. I definitely need more practice playing with the card.
I'm also really not impressed with Blessed Alliance. I feel like without Courser (maybe I can make room for one) we're super weak to Burn and Alliance just isn't a good card in that MU - two mana gain four is just so weak. It's great against stuff like Boggles and Infect, but against most midrangey decks I never bring in the card because there's really not much to board out and we want CoCo to remain relevant. I feel like it just rots in my sideboard most of the time.
Kessig is the card I miss the most by cutting red too. It makes Knight a bit weaker for sure. Izzet staticaster isn't that great right now so I don't really miss it from the board. Blessed Alliance is pretty average against burn, but it's serviceable. It's like just another negate. Blessed Alliance is pretty solid against affinity though. I generally lose against affinity when they play etched champion, and it's an easy way to kill them since they like to go all-in on etched champions. It's also great against humans, like I said in my previous post. I wouldn't bring them in against midrange matchups though (Except against DS decks).
I've been on this deck for a long time now, but this was the first time playing it with JtMS. Jace was fine in the deck, but not super impressive. Gideon on the the other hand was a beast. More impressive than jace. The whole deck felt really good, although I want to play one more Clique main. Not sure what to cut. Thinking about Courser. I also want to add another Blessed Alliance in the board with all the Bogles decks running around. Blessed Alliance proved to be really good against humans. Their best card against us is Mantis rider, and this can get an exalted Mantis Rider AND/OR kill a phantasmal Image AND/OR gain 4 life. Really flexible.
Don't forget about Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. He's very similar to Elspeth, but does create a bit more "value" while still pressuring the opponent. Elspeth is probably better with her jump ability in some situations, and Gideon in others.
Before the unbans I played 3 Retreats. It depends on the meta, if there are few interactive decks you should increase the odds of comboing. In the other hand if the matchups are grindy drawing a retreat without a Knight on the board is really painful. Now I`m testing with 2.
I will echo Trasno here and say that the slots are less about "utility creatures" and more about mana curve. 7-8 Dorks. 7-9 2-drops (Scooze, Qasali Pridemage, VoR, Selfless Spirit, occasionally JVP), then 12-14 3-drops. The 'always include' 3-drops being 4 KotR and 4 Queller, and then normally 2 Courser and 2 Tracker, and then some flex spots like eternal witness, Geist of Saint Traft, or Vendilion Clique(looking to make a comeback now). Then you have your 4 CoCo and 4 Path, and usually 0-3 Retreats. I like having 2, but many lists have 1. I have a friend who cut 4th path for a 3rd retreat, and he pushes the combo a lot. He also runs Geist though, so the retreat can come down with a fetchland and tap down a blocker or two.
In general, the land/mana dork split is usually 8 dorks/22 lands or 7 dorks/23 lands. If you're up against a lot of jund and control, I like the 7/23. If you're up against more "ignore what opponent is doing" decks, I like 8/22.
Probably my favorite thing about this configuration is I've been able to consistently win through the combo by quite a larger margin than with CoCo or Jace being the curve topper. I've probably had more turn three or four wins the last couple days than I've had the previous month--Dork into Knight into BBE cascading into Retreat is very much real. It's faster, more proactive, and more consistent with the combo which I feel is a better place to be in the meta. Knightfall is a deck that likes to fight on the ground and have high-value cards, BBE is imo a better enabler. Also, Lightning Bolt is a good card.
This deck looks really sweet. One thing I might suggest trying is cutting out a lot of the value cards like Courser and Voice, and play more aggro cards like Goyf and maybe Lightning Helix. BBE is much more effective when your deck is pressuring the opponent. I think tireless tracker is still solid as he gets big and lets you grind. And like people suggested, Geist is very good at pressuring as well. And Geist/Retreat has some synergy together too (fetchland taps down 2 blockers). I might try this on mtgo soon.
I feel like it's going to be hard to fit in Jace, Retreat, CoCo, AND path all in the maindeck. That's why I suggested the CoCo-less deck. But maybe we just drop retreat and play 2x jace in place of the 2x retreat. And I really like Clique 1-2 in the main. One little Clique trick is to cast it in response to a fetchland after an opponent brainstormed with Jace. That causes you to take the best card from their hand, and their draw is the unwanted card on top that they were trying to shuffle away.
Yeah, just remember that you can only sac Forests or Plains. That's a reason you don't often see the basic Island in the deck (not saying it's wrong though). If you are inexperienced with KotR, sometimes you forget because it lets you fetch any land but can only sac G/W. I've been playing this deck for awhile now, and I almost never need the Kessig to do the full 20 damage. Usually you have already pecked in a few damage with Quellers or Coursers, or the opponent did 2-4 damage to themselves and only really need 14-17 damage from the Knight. That being said, you really need it if you want to combo against Tron (which is probably the matchup where you want to combo the most)
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Hey man, I've been playing almost the same deck as you for the past few leagues. It's really fun, and surprisingly good. Courser had been lackluster for me though, so I cut both and now I am playing 2 Thalia, heretic Cathar. The card is SO good, especially with 8 mana dorks. I had a game where I mulled to 5 against Tron on the play, and my first play was Thalia on t3. It slowed him down 2 turns and I won.
The problem I've been having with the deck is lackluster 2-drops, but any bant company deck has always had that problem (aside from Devoted Druid). My 2-drop suite is 4 VoR, 2 Qasali, 2 Scooze, and I was considering trying Meddling mage in the board. But it might just be better main. I also was considering Clique to make combo matchups better, but I think the double Blue is too hard for the deck to cast it consistently.
2-drop Thalia is interesting. I could see it being good.
I really don't want to put any Quellers in the board. It's such vulnerable card, and I don't really even like it in most matchups where it would seem good. That, combined with the non-bo with BBE, makes it an easy cut.
Here's my current board:
2x Izzet Staticaster
2x Stony silence
2x Worship
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Eidolon of Rhetoric
3x Crumble to Dust (looking to replace these. Maybe with a stony silence, or fracturing Gust, or meddling mages, or maybe I will try thalia. Probably dampening Sphere when it comes out. Maybe a bojuka Bog)
I saw this deck in the 5-0 lists today:
3 Birds of Paradise
2 Courser of Kruphix
4 Devoted Druid
1 Duskwatch Recruiter
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Selfless Spirit
4 Tireless Tracker
4 Vizier of Remedies
1 Walking Ballista
4 Collected Company
3 Field of Ruin
6 Forest
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Plains
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
60 Cards
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Chameleon Colossus
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Stony Silence
1 Worship
It's still sort of all-in on the infinite mana combo plan, but you can recharge pretty easily with Trackers, as well as have large Knights. I would look at add an eternal witness or two in there though. Maybe +2 Eternal Witness +1 Duskwatch, -1 Vizier -2 Courser.
I like the way it is set up, although that manabase looks rough. kessig Wolf run and a stomping ground should be in there as a combo piece.
Honestly, I really liked Vikram's Devoted Druid combo list. But I didn't like the failrate. I also really like the Counters Company combo right now, but it sucks that the Finks/Seer combo is hard to execute on mtgo. I've had some previous 5-0 comp league success with an all-in devoted druid combo deck on mtgo last year when GDS was huge, so I'm going to try that again. And now that Stubborn Denial isn't as big, it might even be better! Here's the list:
4x Commune With Nature
3x Chord of Calling
2x Eldritch Evolution
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Devoted Druid
4x Duskwatch
3x Vizier of Remedies
1x Selfless Spirit
2x Voice of Resurgence
2x Fauna Shaman
4x Eternal Witness
2x Renegade Rallier
1x Walking ballista
3x misty Rainforest
2x Temple garden
3x Forest
1x plains
2x Horizon Canopy
2x RazorVerge Thicket
1x Stomping Ground
1x Kessig Wolfrun
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Voice of Resurgence
2x Path
2x Fiery Justice
1x Kataki
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Selfless Spirit
1x Sigarda, Host of herons
2x Lone missionary
1x Burrenton Forge Tender
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
I'm not sure on the split between Chord and Evolution. Chord is usually better overall, but with only 20 lands, it's often hard to make chord live. Aether vial is surprisingly good here. It let's you play around sorcery speed removal. It turns your eternal witnesses and Duskwatch Recruiters into card advantage engines. And then Commune With nature is there to give you more T3 wins by fishing for Devoted Druid on T1.
Again, this isn't just theory crafting. I've played this similar list to multiple comp league 5-0s last year. I think the meta could be ripe for it, especially with Jeskai control, grixis control, and grixis Death's Shadow performing poorly right now.
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging Ooze
3x Voice of Resurgence
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Spell Queller
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Vendilion Clique
1x Courser of Kruphix
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
2x Jace. the Mind Scultor
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Gavony Township
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Island
2x Botanical Sanctum
1x Stirring Wildwood
2x Negate
3x Unified Will
3x Reflector Mage
2x Blessed Alliance
1x Worship
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Stony Silence
Spoiler Alert: It sucked.
I took everyone's advice and replaced a 3rd Blessed Alliance with a single Worship. The logic made sense to me. Here are my rounds:
R1: Bye
R2: Burn (0-2)
G1 He went 1-drop, searing blaze, searing blaze on the play. Mega dead.
G2 He went 1-drop, searing blood, searing blood, searing blaze. I didn't draw any fetches so my knight couldn't survive the onslaught. great draw from burn. Kind of impossible for a deck like Knightfall to beat.
R3: RG Eldrazi (0-2)
G1 I mull to 6 but keep a solid hand of dork, V-Clique, CoCo, 3 land. He's on the play. He goes t-1 Noble, t-2 matter reshaper. I pass on T-2 to V-Clique on his draw step because it was his TKS turn and the only gas in my hand was my lonesome coco. He has more matter reshapers, Stirrings, a smasher, and no TKS.I decide to Clique his smasher because I have no answer to it in hand, barring the possibility to hit a TKS on the CLique draw to strip my only action in hand. He did. Took Coco, and I draw land dork land dork and lose.
G2: Mull to 6 again but keep triple dork, reflector mage, 2 lands on play. I reflector Mage his t-1 noble. Then I draw 3 more dorks and lose. Rough
R4: Burn (2-1)
G1: I lose the dice roll and lose to natural burn stuff.
G2: I keep a solid hand with Dork, Knight with fetches, Queller, Scooze, and stuff. Drew into some blessed Alliances and a Worship. I was very far ahead, within a turn of winning, and I made a calculated decision of playing out Worship before my final winning turn. The reason I did this is to scare him into siding in some Destructive Revelries for G3, a card that is basically dead against my deck unless I draw into exactly Worship or my single Courser of Kruphix. Guess what? It worked.
G3: He fetches a Stomping Ground on t1, and plays mountain on t2. I have a solid creature hand, which outsizes his quickly. He never draws another land and I get there. He reveals his hand at the end and it's a bunch of white cards and a restructive revelery. He made the mistake of fetching stomping ground t1 to make sure he has green for Revelery. Mistake by him, although I believe that my Worship play in G2 scared him enough to make that mistake.
R5: Jeskai Control (2-0)
Up against a young guy, probably about 14 or so, with a foiled out Jeskai Control deck.
G1: He flashed an electrolyze to me while he was shuffling, so I knew it was some sort of blue control deck. I kept a solid hand with a dork, Jace, 3 lands, and double coco. We trade resources on everything until the last card in hand is Jace. I land him with opponent on like 1 card. jace gets there.
G2: V-Clique, CoCOs, Tireless Trackers, Negates. He can't keep up. I feel like Bant CoCo is ehavily favored in these matchups if played correctly.
R6: Affinity (1-2)
get matchup up against a buddy of mine. At this point we are still both alive for day 2 at 3-2.
G1: He does affinity stuff on the play, and I lose. I really think G1 against affinity is almost impossible to win, especially without the combo in my deck anymore.
G2: We trade a lot of resources, he plays a bloodmoon into my basics and birds board. I have 4 mana dorks, but I draw like 3 paths so I hang in there for a few turns until I draw a Coco and get there.
G3: I keep a 6-card hand of bird bird V-cique 3 lands on the draw. Only drew lands and dorks. Out of day 2 contention.
At this point I'm out of day 2 contention and my friend offers me some rum to drown my sorrows with him. I happily oblige and toss some into my Pepsi. Gotta enjoy my last two rounds, right?
R7: Storm (0-2)
Get matchup up against the guy I drove up with. Of course. I know he's on Storm. We are both dead for day 2 and I'm a bit tipsy so we talk a lot of *****, and joke around with each other.
G1: I just get crushed. G1 is almost impossible.
G2: I Clique him, take his win con and leave him with a bunch of rituals. Then he passes. I draw a Unifed Will (thank the lord). I play courser leave up unified Will. He tries to go off, and I counter his gifts after a few rituals so he fizzles and passes. He sees me draw a Queller. I get him down to 2, and he topdecks a gifts. He casts it. I quell it. Then he casts the last card in hand, a Past In Flames. That top-decking bastard. In retrospect, I potentially should have casted the Queller the turn before at his end step to lethal him in combat. But I was drinking. and we were ******* around. it was fun though.
R8: Jund (0-2)
At this point my care level is VERY low. Just having fun.
G1: He's on the play, and goes discard my noble, t-2 Dark Confidant. I have mono 3-drops in hand. Good start for him. he gets some rough flips on Dark Confidant and gets down to 1, but is able to take me out. Bob probably did about 10-2 damage to him.
G2: I keep a hand of 2 lands, double VoR, path, Courser and Knight. Never draw 3rd land. Oh well.
Overall, I ended 3-5, although I don't really count the last 2 rounds because I was drinking. I drew A LOT of mana dorks all day. I think I was pretty unlucky in that regard. Especially against RG eldrazi, which seems like a good matchup, especially with 3 Reflector Mages and 2 Kitchen Finks post board. But that happens sometimes with the deck. I'm not a big proponent of the deck going forward. It just doesn't have good matchups. I think control is favorable, Humans is favorable, and Jund is too, but every linear deck is good against you and winning game 1 is hard. Bringing Retreat back helps though.
That being said, I tried Vikram's Devoted Combo list in two comp leagues and went 10-0 in games in the first league. It felt really good, although I think I got pretty lucky in drawing the combo in a lot of those games. I did another league and went 3-2, and I felt like I got pretty unlucky in a lot of those games. For example, against RG valakut I assembled the infinite mana combo with a Selfless Spirit to defend it, a Unified will to stop titan, and a queller to stop Scapeshift/other shenanigans. I even drew another Queller. All I needed was the final combo piece (Wolfrun, Coco, chord, ballista, buskwatch) to finish him off. I bricked for about 5 turns and lost. Seems like just the way the deck plays though.
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging Ooze
3x Voice of Resurgence
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Spell Queller
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Vendilion Clique
1x Courser of Kruphix
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
2x Jace. the Mind Scultor
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Gavony Township
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Island
2x Botanical Sanctum
1x Stirring Wildwood
2x Negate
3x Unified Will
3x Reflector Mage
3x Blessed Alliance
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Stony Silence
I'm pretty locked in on the main and sideboard spell choices. The one thing I'm not quite sure about is the 2 Botanical Sanctum, 1 Stirring Wildwood. I'm not sold on Wildwood, and maybe it should be a Razorverge Thicket. Or maybe one of the Botanical Sanctums should be a Razorverge Thicket or possibly a second Temple Garden.
I'm pretty much dead to dredge, and don't have much game on storm either. You gotta make some concessions when making a SB, and those are mine. Wish me luck!
We managed with zero planeswalkers in our deck before JtMS got unbanned. I think we can still manage :). I think if you want to play BBE and cut Queller, we need to re-tool the deck completely.
While you're right about Staticaster not being able to stop the natural Devoted Druid combo, we have enough disruption postboard with path, Reflector Mage, and Queller to slow them down. And then Staticaster cleans everything up. I've had a lot of success with this strategy when Devoted Druid combo was everywhere on mtgo last year. Getting red mana is sometimes awkward though. Revoker sounds like a decent strategy. He's just a temporary solution though. Affinity can galv blast him, elves can push/decay him, etc. At least staticaster can kill some stuff before he dies
I've also noticed an influx of green decks on mtgo, specifically Vizier combo decks and green Saheeli combo decks. Izzet staticaster can decimate those matchups (as well as other matchups like elves, affinity, lingering souls, and storm) and I don't like not having staticaster in the board. I think if I'm dropping jace, I'm going back to red.
Gideon, AoZ has been a beast in the board, and I want to have two of him in the 75. Maybe I just replace the 2 maindeck jace with 2 maindeck gideon instead of retreats and see how it goes. I think Gideon is more matchup dependent though.
Kessig is the card I miss the most by cutting red too. It makes Knight a bit weaker for sure. Izzet staticaster isn't that great right now so I don't really miss it from the board. Blessed Alliance is pretty average against burn, but it's serviceable. It's like just another negate. Blessed Alliance is pretty solid against affinity though. I generally lose against affinity when they play etched champion, and it's an easy way to kill them since they like to go all-in on etched champions. It's also great against humans, like I said in my previous post. I wouldn't bring them in against midrange matchups though (Except against DS decks).
4x Noblie Hierarch
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging Ooze
3x Voice of Resurgence
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Spell Queller
2x Courser of Kruphix
2x Tireless Tracker
1x Vendilion CLique
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
4x Windswept Heath
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed FOuntain
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Gavony Township
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Island
1x Botanical Sanctum
1x Razorverge Thicket
1x Stirring Wildwood
2x Negate
3x Unified Will
2x Stony Silence
2x Blessed Alliance
3x Reflector mage
2x Kitchen Finks
I've been on this deck for a long time now, but this was the first time playing it with JtMS. Jace was fine in the deck, but not super impressive. Gideon on the the other hand was a beast. More impressive than jace. The whole deck felt really good, although I want to play one more Clique main. Not sure what to cut. Thinking about Courser. I also want to add another Blessed Alliance in the board with all the Bogles decks running around. Blessed Alliance proved to be really good against humans. Their best card against us is Mantis rider, and this can get an exalted Mantis Rider AND/OR kill a phantasmal Image AND/OR gain 4 life. Really flexible.
I will echo Trasno here and say that the slots are less about "utility creatures" and more about mana curve. 7-8 Dorks. 7-9 2-drops (Scooze, Qasali Pridemage, VoR, Selfless Spirit, occasionally JVP), then 12-14 3-drops. The 'always include' 3-drops being 4 KotR and 4 Queller, and then normally 2 Courser and 2 Tracker, and then some flex spots like eternal witness, Geist of Saint Traft, or Vendilion Clique(looking to make a comeback now). Then you have your 4 CoCo and 4 Path, and usually 0-3 Retreats. I like having 2, but many lists have 1. I have a friend who cut 4th path for a 3rd retreat, and he pushes the combo a lot. He also runs Geist though, so the retreat can come down with a fetchland and tap down a blocker or two.
In general, the land/mana dork split is usually 8 dorks/22 lands or 7 dorks/23 lands. If you're up against a lot of jund and control, I like the 7/23. If you're up against more "ignore what opponent is doing" decks, I like 8/22.
This deck looks really sweet. One thing I might suggest trying is cutting out a lot of the value cards like Courser and Voice, and play more aggro cards like Goyf and maybe Lightning Helix. BBE is much more effective when your deck is pressuring the opponent. I think tireless tracker is still solid as he gets big and lets you grind. And like people suggested, Geist is very good at pressuring as well. And Geist/Retreat has some synergy together too (fetchland taps down 2 blockers). I might try this on mtgo soon.