MTG Salvation

I'm very intrigued with Knight of Autumn as something in the Bant version. It adds a huge amount of versatility to the main, even if it is not a spirit. Lifegain, enchantment and artifact destruction, and a 4/3 beater when it is nothing else all seems quite powerful. Craig Wescoe is arguing for it to be the new hotness in WG Hatebears for good reasons, but I think it actually works very well in Spirits.

Not sure what the build ought to be in that case, essentially if I want it main or sideboard.

Creatures 27
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
4 Knight of Autumn
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Phantasmal Image

Or
Creatures 27
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Phantasmal Image
2 Knight of Autumn
2 Geist of Saint Traft

This is a given for Bant (for now.)
Spells: 11
3 Aether Vial
4 Path to Exile
4 Collected Company

Lands 22

I still want GoST for control I'll either move them to the side or I want a 2/2 split of GoST\KoA, and if I do the latter then Dromoka's Command comes out since, except for the fight function, KoA is just better in a CoCo deck.

Also, curious to see what happens with Tron now.

So, I am playing a ~100 ppl tournament next weekend and Bant spirits is one of the two decks I'm considering (other being Hardened scales). Due to Assassin's trophy I'm expecting a lot of GBx (already popular befor GRN in my area), do you guys think is worth going back to 4x Rattlechains to blank more one for one removal or does vial remain superior?

So I'm almost done trading for and gathering the pieces for Azorious Spirits. I loooooove tribal decks and I play Death & Taxes and Merfolk, so I'm familiar with playing tempo, but wanted some advice for a n00b on what to keep in mind for spirits specifically, compared to my other tempo decks.

My LGS meta leans more towards control, but a lot of old players have started coming back, so there are more combo and aggro decks showing up. Off the top of my head, we have multiple Bridgevine players, Blue Moon, Ponza, 2 KCI, BW 8 Rack, Affinity, and Jeskai midrange for the FNM regulars.

Thanks for the tips, ghost-senpais~

Looking forward to joining the spirit fam!

Quote from ketoglutarate »

Quote from jokerstyle00 »

So I'm almost done trading for and gathering the pieces for Azorious Spirits. I loooooove tribal decks and I play Death & Taxes and Merfolk, so I'm familiar with playing tempo, but wanted some advice for a n00b on what to keep in mind for spirits specifically, compared to my other tempo decks.

My LGS meta leans more towards control, but a lot of old players have started coming back, so there are more combo and aggro decks showing up. Off the top of my head, we have multiple Bridgevine players, Blue Moon, Ponza, 2 KCI, BW 8 Rack, Affinity, and Jeskai midrange for the FNM regulars.

Thanks for the tips, ghost-senpais~

Looking forward to joining the spirit fam!

Welcome to the fold!

It seems that in your meta the build with 3 Thalia, guardian of thraben could be very good. great against aggro and combo, still very useful against control. I think it might be better than the curious obsession gameplan, or than the version running nebelgast herald.

Thanks for the welcome and advice!

So I replaced Nebelgast with Thalia, here's my preliminary list:



Any suggestions/advice? Thanks a ton!

Quote from StreexGeist »

Supreme Phantom is the reason why I consider UW spirit a tier 2 power deck right now, you should stick to 4x and never go lower than that. Check the paragraph about Supreme Phantom in the primer to clear your mind in case of doubts about its role in the deck

I'm skeptical about thalia in general, but thalia + remand looks a bit of a nonsense, cause my experience with remand says it's a tempo card you want to steal one turn, tick up vial and get to land your 3rd land drop to cast spell queller. Now 3x thalia mean to me you'll be casting remand for 3 mana instead of two( I'm assuming you re interested in playing thalia first). Is that still reasonable? I think there are better options for 3 mana in general.

Mutavault are so incredibly good now we've got 8 lords, they help so much to take chunks of life away from your opponent. I find them really critical to sustain your race against tron, control and titanshift. I can see them playing a major role in keeping the field planewalker-free against GBx decks. These take advantage by trading one for one and then slamming a PW to earn incremental value out of it. Having an animable land down prevents them from getting high with loyalty counters. I have recently moved to the 3-1 split muta/moorland haunt and I can say it's very reasonable.

As for your side,I have been testing Spirit of the Labyrinth and let me tell you it won't stop storm from going off, it's good vs control and ad nauseam, but I'd rather have Geist of Saint Traft against them aswell. Detention sphere isn't as good as echoing truth and Engineered Explosives because it's coming at sorcery speed and that's a really big downside once you get to master the instant speed nature of the deck.

This is my experience, have fun testing yourself!

Thanks so much for the advice! I'm too poor to afford Eng Explosives, but I already have a full set of Mutas and I'll look to getting Geist when I can. Not entirely sure what lands to replace with Mutas. Unfortunately I discovered I only have 3 Remand at the moment, so this is my updated list, based on what I own:



EDIT

I just got destroyed at my FNM tonight running UG Merfolk, I got paired up with some of the worst matchups imo. Affinity, then KCI, 8 Rack (only match I won, redeemed myself from last week at least), and Burn.

Next week, I'm gonna bring ^ Spirits list to FNM, will report back then. Does anyone think it's safe/workable to cut lands down to 20 instead of 21?

The turnout was lower than expercted, ended up being a 60 ppl tournament instead of the 100+ I immagined, so only 6 rounds. I brought a (now) stock Bant list with 3 vials, the deck was a blast to play as usual. In the end I opted to keep the 3 vials and add the third Thalia, Guardian of Thraben in the sb to counter the (expected) flood of GBx I mentioned a few posts above.

R1 Tron 2-1
G1 I put up a fast clock with Geist and a lord and get there.
G2 he does tron things with a t3 Karn and t4 Ulamog
G3 I Queller one map and counter the second one, he remains stuck on 2 lands and my lords help me get him before he manages to build up tron

R2 UR Breach 2-1
G1 fast clock plus disruption wins me the game
G2 he manages to control the game until a breach + Emkakuul
G3 replay of G1 plus counters and thalia to help

R3 Mirror 1-2
G1 lords+vial allowed me to grow a wanderer big enough to counter his coco and take over from there
G2 he has a decent hand plus I completely whiff on coco...
G3 It's a good fight with removal from both sides but he has more lords and blows me up in combat. Very nice match overall with very complex combat steps.

R4 Burn 2-0
G1 he gets me to 5 life but I get double captain and he cannot kill my guys anymore, I eventually have lethal in the air before he can draw enough burn to finish me off
G2 he mulls to 5 and floods

R5 Infect 2-0
G1 he has 3 elfs but not enough pump spells, I manage to go wide with coco and get enough blockers to avoid the 10 poisons. I eventually swing for lethal in the air
G2 I path the first Blighted Agent and queller the second, he doesn't draw any more creatures after that

R6 UR Wizards 1-2
G1 I go wide and block his burn with quellers and wanderers I then swing for lethal with the help of a couple of lords
G2 I get stuck on 3 lands with 2 cocos in hand while he slowly chips away one damage at a time with Soulscar Mage
G3 I have cavern to cast my spirits but no white source for my path so he eventually kills my guys and swing with 3 transformed delvers
I did not draw any of my 3 sideboard Thalias in either G2 or G3.

Ecept being a bit salty after R6 I think the deck is extremely solid and I had a ton of fun playing it. I believe Collected company makes Bant the superior version at the moment, the ability to rebuild after a sweeper is really valuable. On the other hand I am biased because I love the card so...

Quote from Brgz87 »

The turnout was lower than expercted, ended up being a 60 ppl tournament instead of the 100+ I immagined, so only 6 rounds. I brought a (now) stock Bant list with 3 vials, the deck was a blast to play as usual. In the end I opted to keep the 3 vials and add the third Thalia, Guardian of Thraben in the sb to counter the (expected) flood of GBx I mentioned a few posts above.

R1 Tron 2-1
G1 I put up a fast clock with Geist and a lord and get there.
G2 he does tron things with a t3 Karn and t4 Ulamog
G3 I Queller one map and counter the second one, he remains stuck on 2 lands and my lords help me get him before he manages to build up tron

R2 UR Breach 2-1
G1 fast clock plus disruption wins me the game
G2 he manages to control the game until a breach + Emkakuul
G3 replay of G1 plus counters and thalia to help

R3 Mirror 1-2
G1 lords+vial allowed me to grow a wanderer big enough to counter his coco and take over from there
G2 he has a decent hand plus I completely whiff on coco...
G3 It's a good fight with removal from both sides but he has more lords and blows me up in combat. Very nice match overall with very complex combat steps.

R4 Burn 2-0
G1 he gets me to 5 life but I get double captain and he cannot kill my guys anymore, I eventually have lethal in the air before he can draw enough burn to finish me off
G2 he mulls to 5 and floods

R5 Infect 2-0
G1 he has 3 elfs but not enough pump spells, I manage to go wide with coco and get enough blockers to avoid the 10 poisons. I eventually swing for lethal in the air
G2 I path the first Blighted Agent and queller the second, he doesn't draw any more creatures after that

R6 UR Wizards 1-2
G1 I go wide and block his burn with quellers and wanderers I then swing for lethal with the help of a couple of lords
G2 I get stuck on 3 lands with 2 cocos in hand while he slowly chips away one damage at a time with Soulscar Mage
G3 I have cavern to cast my spirits but no white source for my path so he eventually kills my guys and swing with 3 transformed delvers
I did not draw any of my 3 sideboard Thalias in either G2 or G3.

Ecept being a bit salty after R6 I think the deck is extremely solid and I had a ton of fun playing it. I believe Collected company makes Bant the superior version at the moment, the ability to rebuild after a sweeper is really valuable. On the other hand I am biased because I love the card so...

Nice! I wish I could afford Bant Spirits, but I'm too poor for a set of Hierarchs *weeps*.

Birds of Paradise are ok as a budget replacement for Hierarch. Loosing the exalted trigger will hurt you from time to time but it should be manageable nonetheless

Definitely, I've been toying around with bant spirits since spring or so (before the new lord pushed it to t1) and I had 1 hierarch and 3 birds. While hierarch is better birds are a very solid replacement. Same thing for the manabase cavern is good (vs control of course) and canopies help you a bit if you flood but is still playable without.

Glad to hear Birds are a workable substitute. I have a full playset of them, since I just rediscovered my old GW Hatebears cards I thought I'd lost years ago. I have a full set of Cavern thanks to being obsessed with tribal even when Avacyn first came out, and I have one Canopy. Anyone got any tips for building the Bant version? Planning to get good with UW Spirits first tho.

Quote from Jonny_Tempel »

For what it's worth i'm still no fan of this Vial+CoCo mashup in the deck (maybe because the amount of my hands with a T1 Vial is only slightly above zero) so i may go back to Rattlechains + Birds over Vial + Image in the future.

Funny thing about this, in the last 3 tournaments my starting hands that included vials (which have been a decent amount) always had 2 of them...

Hey fellow Ghost Busters!

Picked up the deck (bant) last weekend and went to a 60+ tournament ending 3-4

1-2 vs GW Vizier Company
1-2 vs Merfolk
2-1 vs Hollow One
1-2 vs Colorless Eldrazi
2-1 vs Storm
2-0 vs Abzan Evo
1-2 vs Dredge

Made a lot of misplays and kept bad hands but it was ok for the first try. I'm not confident in the sideboard.
Mine looks something like this:


How do you deal with artifacts like Ensnaring Bridge, Grafdiggers Cage and stuff like that? I had 2x Knight of Autumn in they board but the didn't convinced me. Maybe I had no matchups where they're good. Also I want to have some Damping Sphere in the board.
How is the Lantern and Tron matchup in generel?

Also a house against Burn, another not good match.

Knight seems a little too slow and unwieldy despite its utility. Plus it's adding another non-Spirit to the deck. :/

The fact that Knight of Autumn isn't a spirits sucks... as a long time true-tribal devotee (damn, that sounds a little racist ) I was upset when people started to play Gaddock Teeg or Reclamation Sage in the Humans deck. But the meta calls for it and competative magic don't care about lore and flavor
Printing a Spirit that destroys an artifact/enchantment would be sweet but that on the otherhand would be contra flavor

It's weird all the top 8 Spirits deck don't play any artifact removal. Do they lean on the counter/Quller on the right timing? I mean you can face an Ensnaring Bridge in a burn matchup which would be the coffin nail.

The other option would be Qasali Pridemage but Knight is more flexible and I think we can support the 3-drop after sideboarding.
Despite the lack of Artifact removal I really like the deck!

At FNM I will try this SB tonight:

Gonna be taking the below UW list to FNM tonight, my first time running Spirits at an event. D:

Any tips to keep in mind?

On Knight of Autumn:
1. Yes, it is not a Spirit, but neither is Qasali Pridemage, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, etc. that have seen play in the deck. The fact is, Spirits does not have the near infinite variety of cards Humans has, and even then, both Tribes have to pull in some non-Tribe peeps to get the job done.

2. 4 abilities on a spell we can cast and/or CoCo and/or Vial in and which we can copy for new effects with Phantasmal Image seems perfect for the deck. Try to Phantasmal Image a sacrificed Pridemage or Thalia, whereas with KoA, you get the ability then you get to copy KoA and choose one of three abilities again.

3. All 4 abilities are relevant in the meta: artifact destruction against Affinity, Hardened Scales, KCI, Lantern, Tron, any Vial match, Infect, Hollowed One; enchantment destruction against the mirror, Burn, Control, Blood Moon decks, Hardened Scales; Lifegain vs. Burn, the new Red Deck Wins deck (see Gerry Thompson on SCG about it), in any close match where a little life is the difference between winning and losing on the crack-back; a 4/3 beater for 3, which is a very good rate.

Aside from not being a Spirit (see point 1), what isn't amazing about this card? CMC 3 is arguably it's worst thing, but at its power level, 1WG is already under-costed.

Quote from redtwister »

On Knight of Autumn:
1. Yes, it is not a Spirit, but neither is Qasali Pridemage, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, etc. that have seen play in the deck. The fact is, Spirits does not have the near infinite variety of cards Humans has, and even then, both Tribes have to pull in some non-Tribe peeps to get the job done.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. The "all tribal"-thing was more of a joke. I think Knight of Autumn is super flexible card and should be played if you can afford the manacost.

Short FNM report:
Round 1 lost 1-2 vs UB Faeries. Game one I played the control game. Game two and three I lost to bad sideboarding, Cryptic Command and beeing dumb.
Round 2 I won 2-0 vs Grixis Shadow. Everything my opponent could do wrong he did wrong. A lot of misplay on his side.
Round 3 2-1 vs Saheeli Combo. Game one I lost because I had no Path/Queller. Game 2 and 3 I kept all my interaction for his combopieces and in the last swing Thalia, Guardian of Thraben saved my arse by taxing his Settle the Wreckage.
Round 4 lost 0-2 vs Grixis Shadow. Game one was close but he had the saving push. If I had played defensive I would draw a Spell Queller wich would safe me. Game two mulligan to 5, no business vs. turn 3 Angler/Shadow/Shadow

Deck felt ok. Still not playing to my outs, still a lot to learn!

I got destroyed last night, 1-2. My win was against RB Hollow One, almost lost the first game of that match except I topdeck a Supreme Phantom to get the 2 extra power I needed for the kill. Second game, completely shut him down with Rest in Peace.

My two losses were against 2 UR Thing in the Ice decks, but the second match played almost like my old Elemental Combo deck, he was swinging with a flipped Thing in the Ice that was pumped by Mutagenic Growth and Assault Strobe.

Considering yesterday, I'm conflicted on whether or not to give Spirits another shot or to rebuild my old GW Hatebears deck with the cards I just found again.

@StreexGeist
Any games in against the new Dredge? That match seems harder than it was thanks to the new spell they got.

FWIW, after playing Curious Obsession in Mono-U Tempo in Standard, I am sold on that card. Wow, it is so freaking good.

Also, interesting article challenging the CoCo/Vial Bant build.