Sideboards are very meta dependant, so I usually don't post mine. (My last event was SCG Philly and I was playing green, so I my SB was waaaaaaay different too.)
If you're playing against a lot of aggro/midrange decks, then some number of Zealous Persecution and at least one Toxic Deluge is going to be a house. If you're really worried about Miracles, pithing needle is good, though the matchup gets so much worse when you don't have access to abrupt decays, krosan grips, and choke, which is why I suggest playing green. I'd also play containment priest, and have been tinkering with the idea of playing humility too. Engineered Plague is going to be great against certain decks, and surgical extraction and RiP and grafiddger's cage are usually good too.
I would always play DRS in my main. He's the source of your most powerful starts--T1 DRS, T2 Wasteland+Hymn is so good. Following that up with Vindicates and Liliana is almost always game. He also wins the game if left unanswered.
7 removal spells + 2 Lilianas seems like a lot already, that's a huge creature meta if you have to play more removal.
Have you thought about playing Mother of Runes? She's also a great T1 play. T1 Mom T2 SFM is really powerful.
Miracles has a hard time dealing with resolved planes walkers and also with 3-cmc stuff. I beat miracles through a combination of hand disruption and quick threats and not over-extending, but they're still a hard matchup. Mostly you beat miracles players because most miracle players aren't that good at playing miracles.
I never formally tried the mentor plan out, but agree blue's cantrips make it way better for blue decks. It's too slow here.
Every time I put a tidehollow sculler into the deck I take it out. I think sculler is great in decks that want to aggro out their opponent. My builds always tend to be grindier/slower, so I'm not a fan of it.
I also think if I was to put a 4-drop into the deck, it would be Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Being able to pump out a crapton of tokens is a huge game, and it's much harder to remove than hero.
Painful Truths is The Truth. It is so, so good. Every game I cast Painful Truths I win, unless I am so far behind there's really no hope.
I like playing 3 Hymns. T1 Deathrite into T2 Wasteland+Hymn just wins games. It crushes all fair decks and usually puts unfair decks off their game or forces them to force+pitch a spell, which is still a 2-for-1 and provides valuable information.
I really like this deck. It's simple, but requires you to play a near-perfect game.
I played a BWg stoneblade list in SCG Philly that's deadguy ale-ish, but it plays out more like a Midrange deck than an aggro deck, which is why I posted it in the BWx stoneblade thread in the midrange forum and not here. I went 6-2-1, tying for 65th and thus barely not making Day 2, beating infect twice, miracles, shardless, esper mentor, goblins, and losing to miracles and lands and drawing against nic fit. I think the archetype is totally viable, as it has good matchups against all the fair decks and, because of white's SB and black's disruption, some decent game against unfair decks too.
I played BWg Deathblade at the SCG Philly open this weekend and went 6-2-1 day 1, tying for 65th and just barely missing the cut to day 2 (top 64 made day 2).
My SB was a hot mess, and it showed in my two losses (to Miracles and to Lands). Basically, I had zero graveyard interaction outside of DRS, and in the one match I needed to really use my DRS I totally forgot about it and punted the match. (It was early and against a pro and, well, I just sucked that match.)
I beat Miracles, Shardless, Esper Mentor, Goblins, and Infect twice. The draw was to a GBx mirror.
Lingering Souls beats Miracles by not over extending. Cast it once, apply pressure, and when they cast Terminus cast it from your graveyard. Because they don't play many 3-mana spells, souls can usually sneak past their counterbalance lock. Plus you have 4 main abrupt decays.
I think this is a good list for someone who likes fair magic and wants to get into Legacy. The decision trees are very limited, and you generally only have 2-3 good plays/things you can do each turn. You're only interested in eeking out value, disrupting their hand while advancing your board. I had a lot of fun, and didn't feel really taxed between matches. It's also a very cheap deck by Legacy's standards. The format is really bad against lingering souls right now, especially fair decks, and unfair decks are fragile enough that the ability to disrupt and apply pressure can keep them off their gameplan.
5/5 angel tokens kill tasigur, thanks for playing though.
I'm only seeming smart because your points are completely lacking in that area. The spreading seas discussion is only going on so long since this poster continues to suggest that knight of the reliquary can answer spreading seas, which it certainly can't unless the opponent walks into it with 100% shared information.
As I said, there were multiple answers in my post, you're just obnoxiously fixated on this one. I believe I ended my original post with "Bant has tons of answers" or something like it.
Anyway, if your point was that you're going to attack with geist and use Dromoka's +1/+1 on a token to kill Tasigur... well, that too is terrible. But congrats on convincing yourself you've successfully defended a card you don't even want to play.
@Pokken pridemage is an answer to Twin in addition to path, and somewhere earlier in the thread I mentioned this deck should be bringing Dismembers from the board. Game 1 against Twin isn't an auto-win, but let's not play bad cards in order to shore up one matchup.
Mana intensive = GW. It requires 2 colors of mana. This is bad because, as you keep conveniently ignoring in your counterpoints, we're trying to curve out, and to do that, we tap out. The difference between 2 colors of mana for Dromoka, as opposed to W for Path, are so huge it's entirely on you to get it, not for me to explain it. Though, to paraphrase your earlier post, it's hard to take your opinion seriously since you don't seem to get this.
Anyway, blah blah blah, abrupt decay is in jund/different deck, blah blah blah, pride mage is better, blah blah blah, angel tokens don't kill 4/5 tasigurs, blah, blah blah.
Actually I was answering a question about what to do against Merfolk, and I provided more than one answer, you just decided to be nitpicky about part of my response, I guess because you really like Dromoka or something.
(just to be clear, my "Cracking lands" comment was about knight cracking forests/plains... just thought it was obvious since this is the knightfall thread :P)
Perhaps you could elaborate on your distain for Dromoka's Command? The card is a counter to red removal/sweepers, creature removal and enchantment removal all in one for 2 cmc. Plus it can grow your dude as a random bonus to the other modes.
I find your opinion hard to take seriously when you imply that a fish player is targeting fetchlands or that a player is leaving all their lands uncracked just so they can be immune to spreading seas targeting. If you are trying to say that Knight of the Reliquary can sac it, then you're either missing that it will be an island by the time Knight is online and thus not saccable, or you're implying that a fish player is spreading seas into your untapped knight on a valid sac target.
Dromoka's Command (fight/sac enchant mode) is a reasonable answer that you dismiss as terrible, which your answers are for unreasonable scenarios.
Like I said, hard to take your opinion seriously in the face of that.
There is obviously no way I am *implying* fish players target fetchlands, that's an inexplicable assumption on your part.
1. Dromoka is mana intensive
a) Holding up GW in a deck with 22-23 lands to stop Twin on turn 4 is not where this deck wants to be or what it wants to be doing
b) In the event Dromoka is "good" and you have the mana open and the relevant modes available, you likely have already established a board presence and are "winning"
2. Dromoka is reactive in a proactive deck
c) This is a deck where you want to play dudes on curve. This is not a deck where you sandbag your creatures because you want to "gotcha" your opponent and beat them via tempo
3. If Dromoka was good, it would see play outside of fringe Naya Company decks already. It does not.
4. There is an alternative option in Qasali Pridemage that increases your board, hits the same targets, and activates for colorless mana
You are more than welcome to disagree with my opinions, but it's a stretch to think I was talking about fetchlands. Additionally, the notion that the land will be an island by the time the knight is "online" is variable at best. It's like you're assuming the merfolk deck will perform optimally on the play every time (Vial into Seas I guess) while assuming ours will not... it makes little sense to me.
To sum, Dromoka's command is terrible because of the points above, and to boot it just doesn't advance our game plan. If there are decks that really want mainboard Dromoka Commands, they have not been invented yet, and I am positive this deck is not "it."
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
QFT
Also:
Jund/Abzan: loxodon smiter comes into play off Liliana, we have paths and beaters
Twin: qasali pridemage and path; should pull in dismember from the SB
Burn: bring in finks from the SB
Bloom: path and pridemage
GR Tron: a terrible match up that we sometimes just win
I don't get the reasoning behind making this a worse Modern midrange deck by adding planeswalkers like Elspeth, who literally does absolutely nothing for the deck except maybe gives a knight flying for 4 mana, and random cards like dromoka's command, which I guess is an attempt at a reactive 2-for-1 for a color-intensive mana cost in a deck that's probably trying to tap out every turn regardless.
This is a Naya Company deck. We've stripped the reach red (lightning bolt) gives us and the aggro start for an enchantment that auto-wins, thus making is Bant Company. We need to play these creatures:
Qasali Pridemage - attacks well, good against twin
Scavenging Ooze - attacks well, good at munching on graveyards
Tarmogoyf - because Tarmogoyf
Voice of Resurgence - good against blue decks, can get reasonably large
Knight of the Reliquary - attacks well, combo, gets out of hand really quickly
Either Geist of Saint Traft or Loxodon Smiter - the former is good against spot removal but bad against creature decks, the latter is good against control and jund
Not playing CoCo is bad because every other midrange deck has access to card advantage. (Jund has Bob, Grixis has cantrips, Naya Company has CoCo, Abzan has Lingering Souls and Tasigur, Merfolk has fish shenanigans.) This deck is not able to keep up without CoCo. Serum Visions does not replace CoCo as it neither accelerates our game plan, nor is it justifiable in a creature deck anyway.
Courser is not a good card in this deck. You don't care about life gain because your opponent should be losing more life than you every turn, and in a format of fetching and shocks, attacking with a 2-powered dude is awful. The fact that he smoothes out land draws would be OK if we were going for grindier matchups, but we're not. We want to win before turn 5 if possible, and hopefully never after turn 7. Squeezing a courser in there to gain maybe 1-2 life and help us hitting a 4th land drop that we likely don't need anyway just seems awful.
Path to Exile is a good card in this deck. Cheap, unconditional removal is good. You can argue that other decks do not have interaction and do well, but those decks make up for their lack of interaction with their more powerful engines and card advantage.
Counterspells seem bad in this deck. I know I suggested Stubborn Denial earlier, but being reactive just strikes me as a way to slow yourself down. This deck is simple. Deploy threats, force your opponent to deal with them, or not, and then you win, or they do, and then you oops, win.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
EDIT: Oh, and stop worrying about Jund. Our "curve topper" should be Gavony Township and attacking with dorks. It's fetchable with Knight and fits into our gameplan at the cost of 0. How is Sigaarda going to help us beat Jund? Because hexproof?? If we're lucky enough to draw into our miser's copy??? No.
If you're playing against a lot of aggro/midrange decks, then some number of Zealous Persecution and at least one Toxic Deluge is going to be a house. If you're really worried about Miracles, pithing needle is good, though the matchup gets so much worse when you don't have access to abrupt decays, krosan grips, and choke, which is why I suggest playing green. I'd also play containment priest, and have been tinkering with the idea of playing humility too. Engineered Plague is going to be great against certain decks, and surgical extraction and RiP and grafiddger's cage are usually good too.
I would always play DRS in my main. He's the source of your most powerful starts--T1 DRS, T2 Wasteland+Hymn is so good. Following that up with Vindicates and Liliana is almost always game. He also wins the game if left unanswered.
7 removal spells + 2 Lilianas seems like a lot already, that's a huge creature meta if you have to play more removal.
Have you thought about playing Mother of Runes? She's also a great T1 play. T1 Mom T2 SFM is really powerful.
4 Dark Confidant
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Thoughtseize
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Hymn to Tourach
4 Lingering Souls
3 Vindicate
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Batterskull
4 Wasteland
4 Marsh Flats
2 Windswept Heath
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Scrubland
2 Shambling Vent
1 Karakas
2 Swamp
1 Plains
Miracles has a hard time dealing with resolved planes walkers and also with 3-cmc stuff. I beat miracles through a combination of hand disruption and quick threats and not over-extending, but they're still a hard matchup. Mostly you beat miracles players because most miracle players aren't that good at playing miracles.
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Dark Confidant
3 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Tarmogoyf
Instants/Sorceries (18)
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Thoughtseize
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Hymn to Tourach
2 Painful Truths
3 Lingering Souls
1 Sylvan Library
Artifactes (3)
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Batterskull
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Liliana of the Veil
Lands (22)
4 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Marsh Flats
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
2 Scrubland
1 Karakas
1 Shambling Vent
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Swamp
I never formally tried the mentor plan out, but agree blue's cantrips make it way better for blue decks. It's too slow here.
Every time I put a tidehollow sculler into the deck I take it out. I think sculler is great in decks that want to aggro out their opponent. My builds always tend to be grindier/slower, so I'm not a fan of it.
I also think if I was to put a 4-drop into the deck, it would be Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Being able to pump out a crapton of tokens is a huge game, and it's much harder to remove than hero.
Painful Truths is The Truth. It is so, so good. Every game I cast Painful Truths I win, unless I am so far behind there's really no hope.
I like playing 3 Hymns. T1 Deathrite into T2 Wasteland+Hymn just wins games. It crushes all fair decks and usually puts unfair decks off their game or forces them to force+pitch a spell, which is still a 2-for-1 and provides valuable information.
I really like this deck. It's simple, but requires you to play a near-perfect game.
My list:
3 Mother of Runes
3 Dark Confidant
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Hymn to Tourach
2 Bitterblossom
1 Sylvan Library
3 Lingering Souls
2 Painful Truths
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Batterskull
4 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Marsh Flats
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
2 Scrubland
1 Karakas
1 Shambling Vent
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Swamp
My SB was a hot mess, and it showed in my two losses (to Miracles and to Lands). Basically, I had zero graveyard interaction outside of DRS, and in the one match I needed to really use my DRS I totally forgot about it and punted the match. (It was early and against a pro and, well, I just sucked that match.)
I beat Miracles, Shardless, Esper Mentor, Goblins, and Infect twice. The draw was to a GBx mirror.
Bitterblossom was not a good card for me. I would replace the two in this list with one Hymn to Tourach and the fourth Lingering Souls.
Painful Truths is insanely good. Basically, this deck beats all fair decks handily, and loses really hard to combo. Don't even worry about fair matches in your SB, just fill it with Rest in Peace and Pithing Needle and Ethersworn Canonist and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and you should be fine. EDIT: well, and Zealous Persecution deserves a slot, along with Containment Priest.
Lingering Souls beats Miracles by not over extending. Cast it once, apply pressure, and when they cast Terminus cast it from your graveyard. Because they don't play many 3-mana spells, souls can usually sneak past their counterbalance lock. Plus you have 4 main abrupt decays.
I think this is a good list for someone who likes fair magic and wants to get into Legacy. The decision trees are very limited, and you generally only have 2-3 good plays/things you can do each turn. You're only interested in eeking out value, disrupting their hand while advancing your board. I had a lot of fun, and didn't feel really taxed between matches. It's also a very cheap deck by Legacy's standards. The format is really bad against lingering souls right now, especially fair decks, and unfair decks are fragile enough that the ability to disrupt and apply pressure can keep them off their gameplan.
4 dark confidant
2 stoneforge mystic
4 monastery mentor
3 sensei's divining top
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Batterskull
2 thoughtseize
4 swords to plowshares
4 hymn to tourach
3 lingering souls
2 liliana of the veil
4 marsh flats
4 verdant catacombs
4 wasteland
3 scrubland
2 bayou
1 savannah
1 karakas
2 swamp
1 plains
As I said, there were multiple answers in my post, you're just obnoxiously fixated on this one. I believe I ended my original post with "Bant has tons of answers" or something like it.
Anyway, if your point was that you're going to attack with geist and use Dromoka's +1/+1 on a token to kill Tasigur... well, that too is terrible. But congrats on convincing yourself you've successfully defended a card you don't even want to play.
@Pokken pridemage is an answer to Twin in addition to path, and somewhere earlier in the thread I mentioned this deck should be bringing Dismembers from the board. Game 1 against Twin isn't an auto-win, but let's not play bad cards in order to shore up one matchup.
Mana intensive = GW. It requires 2 colors of mana. This is bad because, as you keep conveniently ignoring in your counterpoints, we're trying to curve out, and to do that, we tap out. The difference between 2 colors of mana for Dromoka, as opposed to W for Path, are so huge it's entirely on you to get it, not for me to explain it. Though, to paraphrase your earlier post, it's hard to take your opinion seriously since you don't seem to get this.
Anyway, blah blah blah, abrupt decay is in jund/different deck, blah blah blah, pride mage is better, blah blah blah, angel tokens don't kill 4/5 tasigurs, blah, blah blah.
Which, btw, is terrible. Have I mentioned that?
There is obviously no way I am *implying* fish players target fetchlands, that's an inexplicable assumption on your part.
1. Dromoka is mana intensive
a) Holding up GW in a deck with 22-23 lands to stop Twin on turn 4 is not where this deck wants to be or what it wants to be doing
b) In the event Dromoka is "good" and you have the mana open and the relevant modes available, you likely have already established a board presence and are "winning"
2. Dromoka is reactive in a proactive deck
c) This is a deck where you want to play dudes on curve. This is not a deck where you sandbag your creatures because you want to "gotcha" your opponent and beat them via tempo
3. If Dromoka was good, it would see play outside of fringe Naya Company decks already. It does not.
4. There is an alternative option in Qasali Pridemage that increases your board, hits the same targets, and activates for colorless mana
You are more than welcome to disagree with my opinions, but it's a stretch to think I was talking about fetchlands. Additionally, the notion that the land will be an island by the time the knight is "online" is variable at best. It's like you're assuming the merfolk deck will perform optimally on the play every time (Vial into Seas I guess) while assuming ours will not... it makes little sense to me.
To sum, Dromoka's command is terrible because of the points above, and to boot it just doesn't advance our game plan. If there are decks that really want mainboard Dromoka Commands, they have not been invented yet, and I am positive this deck is not "it."
Respond by cracking the land and fetching another one?
Qasali pridemage?
Bant has loads of answers.
I still think Dromoka's command is terrible and have no idea why ppl keep referencing it.
QFT
Also:
Jund/Abzan: loxodon smiter comes into play off Liliana, we have paths and beaters
Twin: qasali pridemage and path; should pull in dismember from the SB
Burn: bring in finks from the SB
Bloom: path and pridemage
GR Tron: a terrible match up that we sometimes just win
*shrug*
This is a Naya Company deck. We've stripped the reach red (lightning bolt) gives us and the aggro start for an enchantment that auto-wins, thus making is Bant Company. We need to play these creatures:
Qasali Pridemage - attacks well, good against twin
Scavenging Ooze - attacks well, good at munching on graveyards
Tarmogoyf - because Tarmogoyf
Voice of Resurgence - good against blue decks, can get reasonably large
Knight of the Reliquary - attacks well, combo, gets out of hand really quickly
Either Geist of Saint Traft or Loxodon Smiter - the former is good against spot removal but bad against creature decks, the latter is good against control and jund
Not playing CoCo is bad because every other midrange deck has access to card advantage. (Jund has Bob, Grixis has cantrips, Naya Company has CoCo, Abzan has Lingering Souls and Tasigur, Merfolk has fish shenanigans.) This deck is not able to keep up without CoCo. Serum Visions does not replace CoCo as it neither accelerates our game plan, nor is it justifiable in a creature deck anyway.
Courser is not a good card in this deck. You don't care about life gain because your opponent should be losing more life than you every turn, and in a format of fetching and shocks, attacking with a 2-powered dude is awful. The fact that he smoothes out land draws would be OK if we were going for grindier matchups, but we're not. We want to win before turn 5 if possible, and hopefully never after turn 7. Squeezing a courser in there to gain maybe 1-2 life and help us hitting a 4th land drop that we likely don't need anyway just seems awful.
Path to Exile is a good card in this deck. Cheap, unconditional removal is good. You can argue that other decks do not have interaction and do well, but those decks make up for their lack of interaction with their more powerful engines and card advantage.
Counterspells seem bad in this deck. I know I suggested Stubborn Denial earlier, but being reactive just strikes me as a way to slow yourself down. This deck is simple. Deploy threats, force your opponent to deal with them, or not, and then you win, or they do, and then you oops, win.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
EDIT: Oh, and stop worrying about Jund. Our "curve topper" should be Gavony Township and attacking with dorks. It's fetchable with Knight and fits into our gameplan at the cost of 0. How is Sigaarda going to help us beat Jund? Because hexproof?? If we're lucky enough to draw into our miser's copy??? No.
(i also play 4 loxodon smiter--better against jund and the smaller creature-sweepers ppl play againsr company decks.)