Have u never played bird into wall? Thats all it takes. Or even just bird turn 1. Im not saying u need 5-6 specific cards, or multiples of the same card. Just cards we normally play. We are like 25% to have that draw.
Also my point was that u can go off with just a wall in play from absolutely nothing, and win on the spot. Thats 3 total cards. Hardly magical christmas land, which is usually 5-6 specific cards. Also wins instantly, instead of a turn later.
U dont have to play 4 at all to make that happen.
And turn 3 is a lottttt earlier than turn 5. Or even turn 4 with 3 cards, instead of needing more cards in order to have a chord turn at that point.
My point was less cards, not more.
Your argument at the end is also flawed. A handful of 4 restos is terrible against 99% of moderb draws, so it must be bad. Habing 3 chords in hand turn 3 is also bad. So is having 3 collected companies in hand turn 3.
Guess all those cards are bad. Can u imagine drawing a birds turn 5? Cards bad then, so cut it.
Now, it might not be good. But your argument against it wasnt great.
While i agree it has problems, i think people are sleeping on 1 huge boon of the saheeli combo: just how cheap it is with evo.
You can combo with a wall of roots and 4 lands in play. Immediately. Thats (at least a little) absurd.
U can kill turn 3 several ways without a lot of difficulty (at least, compared to some other turn 3 sequencez).
That tights up the deck quite a bit. You do go a lot more all in on the combos, since your plan b becomes so weak without resto, but theres still voice -> evo -> pia, which isnt too bad.
Idk still thinking, it just came to me that saheeli + evo is 5 mana. SO little.
Working on a list now for gp vanc.
Tho the more combo version might just plain be a worse meta call, if its all fatal push decks.
Also not sure if voice is getting tons better from fatal push, since fatal push means a lot more kalitas'.
Im interested in seeing how good EE is. In my opinion, the biggest downfall of our chord decks is their atrocious curve. Wotc keeps printing awesome 4 drops, and over the last few years, our already-bad curve (due to the nature of having our combo be between a 4 drop and 5 drop, and chord being essentially a 4-5 drop, in the context of having a strong first few turns) has gotten increasingly worse. There are ways to smooth it out a little, but simply adding more dorks raises other consistency issues.
Im hoping EE, while only sometimes a '3-drop' due to the sacrifice clause (I feel that hooglands curve has been slipping more and more,going from an already very high 9 4+ drops including chord, to 13-14 4+ drops, like in the latest nahiri editions), and EE 'might' be a useful solution. I have felt for a long time that chord, while a great late-game engine and instant speed midgame trick/hate-card tutor/combo piece, still has its problems: cluttering up opening turns of the game and being awkward relatively often due to its high total cost in the high-powered modern format (8 permanants to find kikijiki is still alot for example). Its still amazing a lot, dont get me wrong, but i think theres a little bit of a 'rose covered glasses' going with cards like chord, because of how freaking sweet they can be when they are great, and the stories they invoke. I know most of my favorite plays with the deck involved chord.
Of course we have mana accel, with wall of roots performing especially well in our deck, but they come at a cost, with our deck being nearly half mana sources. This ratio performs well against many modern decks, we still run into some issues against the grindier matchups, drawing too many bricks. Given that most of our deck is designed to slow the game down in order to combo/value our opponents, one of our many balancing factors of deisgning our list is to have our deck be at our best in the exact game states we try to create (the stalled board). We can alleviate this slightly post-board against jund/grixis/jeskai/esper/etc by taking out a few our even all of our mana dorks for our plentiful powerful sideboard cards in those matchups.
However, due to the fast paced nature of modern, these decks (especially jund)can all apply very early pressure (in turns of board presence, or high value card economy, like a bob+kalitas), so this plan risks us stumbling to having too many high costing, powerful cards to win the lategame. Even with a man dork, just having 2 4 drops and a chord will just lose a lotta games on the draw against those decks. I have definitely felt that I have lost more games against the grindy decks to stumbling, rather than getting outvalued lategame (post board). Siding in lots of removal like we do helps this problem, the 'bad jund deck' role, but I still think we can do better (whether or not we can now with the current card pool, or with EE, remains to be seen imo).
Now, EE has problems too, but it does a similar job as chord (combo them dead) while providing a pretty different avenue of doing it (the sacrifice 'combo' with voice/pia, and being cheaper to cast in a fair number of circumstances (turn 2 fulminator is actually good against tron, unlike turn 4 fulminator, for example).
Still wanna test, could be a flop who knows, just hoping it might fix some of the issues the deck has had in its many iterations.
4th Wall of omens: curve lowering, digs for our important cards, needed sac outlet for EE. Ive been very happy with it so far, and am pretty sure its needed with EE. Wall-> p&k, while not as good as with voice, is still great against a few of the fastest decks in modern, where we need that early p&k regardless. Maybe we will have more 'flipped' voices due to EE, so the filler body will be slightly more relevant. Also, against a blue deck, i'd rather sac the wall than the voice, so they get punished for countering the EE and 'getting' us.
Courser of kruphix: Over the last few years I have felt like courser is one of the best cards in the deck. Like wall of omens, its the 'glue' that holds our deck together, and one of the few non-4 drops that provide a repeatable, 'engine-y' effect to provide advantage. Aggro being on the uptick makes be even more confidant in courser's place in the deck.
6 Mana dorks: I actually want to shave one of the heirarchs, Im just trying to find the right replacement. Maybe a 3rd courser.
0quasali pridemageor reclamation sage: Since we are playing EE, the philosophy of the deck has to change to accommodate that. As such, we are going to be tutoring for 'value' less (or at instant speed to catch an inkmoth or o-stone), and using more of a k.o style card (like posters were saying earlier). I might want the sage in the board, but im still not sure. Theres a relatively small window in games where tutoring for the combo isnt just better, and we might do it with more consistency and faster now that we have 6 tutors. I was rarely impressed with rec sage anyways, and theres SO many decks in modern.
Lone Missionary: In addition to skite and scooze as hate cards, I included lone missonary maindeck over baloth for curve reasons. I feel like missionary is more likely to trip up our opponents when they go for lethal or just being reasonable value against the aggro decks (and our manabase), than other cards providing other 'tricky' value, like pridemage. That said, this (in addition to the 2nd heirach) is a flex spot that I am not sure about.
Devout lightcaster: Ive been wanting to play this baby for awhile now, and the recent 'change' to go naya and play archangel of tithes gave me the courage to finally put it in the SB. Suck it jund!
I played the deck on sunday at a card kingdom event, going 3-1 and losing to mono-u tron, and beating grixis delver, wr soul sisters, and dredge. Notable plays were EEing a witness to get a reveillark against grixis (sweet!), and then game one against dredge I end stepped turn 3 resto, untapped and EEed my courser for kiki-jiki and killed him, whereas I didnt have enough permanents to chord in that spot. Its not much testing and its hardly conclusive, but its a start!
It's a 2-for-1 that's a method of uncounterably putting either a Knight or a Retreat into play. It costs some mana, but with dorks getting to 5 mana doesn't seem difficult, and especially so with retreat+dorks, or knight as pseudo-ramp.
Anyone tried it? It's more mana efficient than wargate, potentially, but obviously not as precise, but also synergizes pretty well with Courser of Kruphix (providing a shuffle effect and a way to take advantage of knowledge of your top card).
Because it's a cast trigger it's not vulnerable to stuff that is normally a problem for us, like tempo counterspells and such. Having your Chord remanded feels pretty poor, but this guy does not want to interact--he just wants to spit out free cards.
Lol great minds think alike. I have been testing a knight retreat list in the devotion shell with hydra as the payoff card For a few weeks now for exactly the reasons you give. It's been pretty good so far. Hitting both halves, atarka, garruk, as well as every sideboard card seems like great value
. It might end up being a little better than 'janky'
The anti-synergy is that retreat reduces your chances of hitting a good creature to a borderline unacceptable level.
And it really isnt that hard to argue with scattered, weak results. They really dont give us anything we didnt know. It is nice to seeing retreat lists performing though.
I have been playing with the deck a lot. Chord has been amazing almost always, and is never poor-to-bad. The odds on company says it wont be at any level (in our deck) that it is in other decks that perform with it. You dont need to test with it to come to that conclusion-you can just run the math.
I think we can look at top finishing decklists for indications as to which builds are the "best". Best is contextual - so we should keep that in mind, but AFAIK the only lists that have placed in an event were Lantern's MTGO result, and the following in SCG states:
As far as I can tell, the only empirical evidence we have include Collected Company as a card in the deck. Perhaps the discussion should start to transition away from brewing like mad-men, and towards decklists with results.
Interesting to see that Abzan company can just kinda jam in a couple retreats.
But there is a pattern: all decklists with results run Collected Company - Blue Naya, Blue Abzan and Bant.
I think thats more a symptom that people are taking existing archetypes (abzan and naya company) and jamming retreats in, instead of building the deck from the ground up.
3 results total really isnt a pattern. Now If we saw 1st place lists left and right, maybe we would be on to something. Still-variance is a huge part of magic. You can have 100 people play the deck, and 3 people end up doing well, but we cant conclude that that then is the best list by seeing that 3 people did well. The average record of the deck couldve been 1-5 for all we know, these 3 just ran a little good or had favorable matchups/opponents (or not, maybe they just crushed people).
Now, it still doesnt rule out that these lists could be headed in the right direction. But it isnt a confirmation of that fact.
Company just clashes with retreat way too much, and bant colors dont provide enough good hits evenly dispersed throughout the curve. No paths in that one list? Not over my dead body.
Not going into CoCo lets you run a wider range of creatures and more non-creature spells overall. However, CoCo seems to add some non-combo explosiveness to the deck. I (and a few others) have been trying chord of calling--it is slower and less explosive, but more precise. Chord plus retreat gets you the combo, while CoCo plus retreat might get you the combo.
Another alternative with some legs is commune with the gods searches for either combo piece and turns on some graveyard tricks, including making goyf more useful in these builds.
That having been said, I think CoCo builds are currently favored.
Thanks for the info! I really am going to have to squeeze wolfrun in, aren't I?
I think running the math shows that bant coco builds just really aren't that good-its too inconsistent (as opposed to abzan) and if you want to push the consistency, then you ruin the curve.
I also think commune is too clunky/inconsistent for modern (at least, in a non-enchantress style deck, which currently doesnt exist).
Ad Nauseam and Amulet Bloom both maindeck 1 bullet Slaughter Pact. Ad Nauseam needs it to kill Spellskite mid-combo, so its resources are going to be stretched. Elves's creature removal is stuck in the board, though beware of instant-speed Reclamation Sage meaning that not even Sejiri Steppe can protect the combo.
Ah yes slaughter pact in those 2 (although ad nausem does not care about spellskite in the slightest [neither lightning storm or conflagrate cares about spellskite, and they run 1 of each]; I've played against it a few times and haven't seen a slaughter pact yet).
Enchantment removal does nothing to the combo if you have a fetchland in play (either as your land drop for the turn or if your opponent mistakenly lets you knight at least once) so I usually wouldn't be worried about rec sage. A nice thing about underplayed (in this case, new) combos is that people don't know how to beat it. People siding in enchantment removal will -usually- be disappointed.
On Sejiri Steppe:
The opponents that will get juked by Steppe the most often are opponents with few removal spells, such as Amulet Bloom, Ad Nauseam, Elves, Affinity, and Melira Company. Those opponents are the most likely to ignore KotR until they are sure you're on a combo deck (after all, they'd rather kill hate bears that stop them from winning like Meddling Mage, Scavenging Ooze, Aven Mindcensor, Kataki, and Izzet Staticaster).
...A ton of fair opponents will just kill KotR on sight, though.
What removal that kills knight would amulet, ad nauseam, and elves play? Mayyybe 1 dismember in their board?
Affinity has gav blast maybe, which usually wont kill knight anyways.
Yeah, midrange path decks (melira and the mirror) are the most likely to be blown out for holding on to their 1 path til the right moment. Still, its that 1/100.
I dunno, I definitely think discard is stronger glue than dorks though. Playing dark confidant as a way to dig for the combo might not be the worst either. I'll fiddle around with it.
Being able to abrupt decay exarchs (and random combo pieces) and inquisition combo decks brings a lot to the table.
That is a very interesting idea, assuming u can get the mana to work.
An uncracked fetch usually works just fine for me. If you're not attacking, you're probably behind. Combo or not, as you said. But there's really no situation where having an uncracked fetch on the board doesn't protect the knight apart from the turn you drop her. I guess I just feel like running one Steppe makes more sense than dedicating 3-4 slots to protecting the combo when the combo is an oops I win, anyway. I run a coco list, so I'm not usually worried about finding another one or racing through removal.
If you reread my previous post, I addressed -exactly- the gameplay scenario you describe. It will not happen like you are saying in real gameplay against real opponents. Realize that I am not advocating running maindeck negates/dispels whatever to protect the combo. I am just saying sejeri steppe does NOT work as you describe in real tournaments.
And I am still of the opinion chord>>>coco in this deck. Coco messes up our curve way way too much to get any reasonable % of getting value and so is unreliable. We do NOT have 1-2 mana combo pieces that we can find, and our voices we find are worse than abzans because we can't 'turn them on' with a sack outlet. So we have to cram even more 3 drops in our already packed 3-drop deck in order to have enough good hits. This is a much worse coco deck than abzan. Just run the percentages. At absolute best we are about 50-60% to find 2 good hits (with a bad curve), which is still worse than hitting all parts of a combo. Abzan is like 85-90% because of the combo pieces it can hit.
I dunno, when I was actively testing I tended to untap with knights and no retreat pretty regularly, and using the knight to threaten allowed me to swing for gavony beats with the team. Eventually playing chicken leads to blanking removal.
It was really, really bad when you drew it had and had a tap-plains though. Really bad.
So, when you untap with knights and no retreats regularly, do you then proceed to never activate or attack with knight until you draw a retreat (because if you arent attacking then you wont win until you can combo simply because you arent attacking)? Because if you do either at any point, you then turn your opps removal back on, and steppe remains useless. If you are sitting there with any untapped knight while townshipping with multiple other creatures in play, then your opponents spot removal is already poor simply because you are townshipping with multiple creatures in play. So, usually a winmore scenario to 'protect' your useless (because you arent activating or attacking with it) knight while you township your opp to death.
So, basically taking it out makes the deck more forgiving on our opponents. If they don't realize they must kill the knight on the spot, then we are safe? But if we don't keep it in, they are free to kill our knight at any point?
I realize the interaction. However, you have to think what went on for the game to get to that state:
You have had to have knight in play for more than one turn. All removal heavy decks will kill it the turn you play knight if they have any removal (because they wouldn't want you to get any value out of knight, much less get potentially blown out by a possible sejeri steppe), and if they don't have a removal, then steppe doesn't matter.
If you have an untapped knight sitting on a board stall (or else 99% of the time its just better to attack than wait to combo), then you will have had to never use knight during end step for value, or your opponent would kill it in resp. So, your knight would have to sit there doing actual nothing, which is not what I signed up for when paying 3 mana in modern.
So, for this to actually ever be relevant, It would have to be a board stall against a removal heavy deck, where you never activate or attack with knight, then you draw the combo, and your opponent managed to draw a removal in the meantime, and has not cast it at any point on any card in play. In all other game states, you will have a tapped knight in play at some point, for your opponent to kill, and steppe will do nothing.
All I'm saying is, the scenario people are describing almost never comes up in real play against players that know whats up. I understand the interaction is nice, and was good in a slower format, but drawing a tapped, mono-white, non-plains will cost you more games than it will save you.
it DOES not protect the combo if your opponent is competent. That is my point. Dispel ALWAYS workds. Steppe works 1/100 times if your opponent plays proerly.
A card is not good if it only works if people missplay.
Have u never played bird into wall? Thats all it takes. Or even just bird turn 1. Im not saying u need 5-6 specific cards, or multiples of the same card. Just cards we normally play. We are like 25% to have that draw.
Also my point was that u can go off with just a wall in play from absolutely nothing, and win on the spot. Thats 3 total cards. Hardly magical christmas land, which is usually 5-6 specific cards. Also wins instantly, instead of a turn later.
U dont have to play 4 at all to make that happen.
And turn 3 is a lottttt earlier than turn 5. Or even turn 4 with 3 cards, instead of needing more cards in order to have a chord turn at that point.
My point was less cards, not more.
Your argument at the end is also flawed. A handful of 4 restos is terrible against 99% of moderb draws, so it must be bad. Habing 3 chords in hand turn 3 is also bad. So is having 3 collected companies in hand turn 3.
Guess all those cards are bad. Can u imagine drawing a birds turn 5? Cards bad then, so cut it.
Now, it might not be good. But your argument against it wasnt great.
You can combo with a wall of roots and 4 lands in play. Immediately. Thats (at least a little) absurd.
U can kill turn 3 several ways without a lot of difficulty (at least, compared to some other turn 3 sequencez).
That tights up the deck quite a bit. You do go a lot more all in on the combos, since your plan b becomes so weak without resto, but theres still voice -> evo -> pia, which isnt too bad.
Idk still thinking, it just came to me that saheeli + evo is 5 mana. SO little.
Working on a list now for gp vanc.
Tho the more combo version might just plain be a worse meta call, if its all fatal push decks.
Also not sure if voice is getting tons better from fatal push, since fatal push means a lot more kalitas'.
Im interested in seeing how good EE is. In my opinion, the biggest downfall of our chord decks is their atrocious curve. Wotc keeps printing awesome 4 drops, and over the last few years, our already-bad curve (due to the nature of having our combo be between a 4 drop and 5 drop, and chord being essentially a 4-5 drop, in the context of having a strong first few turns) has gotten increasingly worse. There are ways to smooth it out a little, but simply adding more dorks raises other consistency issues.
Im hoping EE, while only sometimes a '3-drop' due to the sacrifice clause (I feel that hooglands curve has been slipping more and more,going from an already very high 9 4+ drops including chord, to 13-14 4+ drops, like in the latest nahiri editions), and EE 'might' be a useful solution. I have felt for a long time that chord, while a great late-game engine and instant speed midgame trick/hate-card tutor/combo piece, still has its problems: cluttering up opening turns of the game and being awkward relatively often due to its high total cost in the high-powered modern format (8 permanants to find kikijiki is still alot for example). Its still amazing a lot, dont get me wrong, but i think theres a little bit of a 'rose covered glasses' going with cards like chord, because of how freaking sweet they can be when they are great, and the stories they invoke. I know most of my favorite plays with the deck involved chord.
Of course we have mana accel, with wall of roots performing especially well in our deck, but they come at a cost, with our deck being nearly half mana sources. This ratio performs well against many modern decks, we still run into some issues against the grindier matchups, drawing too many bricks. Given that most of our deck is designed to slow the game down in order to combo/value our opponents, one of our many balancing factors of deisgning our list is to have our deck be at our best in the exact game states we try to create (the stalled board). We can alleviate this slightly post-board against jund/grixis/jeskai/esper/etc by taking out a few our even all of our mana dorks for our plentiful powerful sideboard cards in those matchups.
However, due to the fast paced nature of modern, these decks (especially jund)can all apply very early pressure (in turns of board presence, or high value card economy, like a bob+kalitas), so this plan risks us stumbling to having too many high costing, powerful cards to win the lategame. Even with a man dork, just having 2 4 drops and a chord will just lose a lotta games on the draw against those decks. I have definitely felt that I have lost more games against the grindy decks to stumbling, rather than getting outvalued lategame (post board). Siding in lots of removal like we do helps this problem, the 'bad jund deck' role, but I still think we can do better (whether or not we can now with the current card pool, or with EE, remains to be seen imo).
Now, EE has problems too, but it does a similar job as chord (combo them dead) while providing a pretty different avenue of doing it (the sacrifice 'combo' with voice/pia, and being cheaper to cast in a fair number of circumstances (turn 2 fulminator is actually good against tron, unlike turn 4 fulminator, for example).
Still wanna test, could be a flop who knows, just hoping it might fix some of the issues the deck has had in its many iterations.
Here's my list:
4 Birds of paradise
2 noble hierarch
4 voice of resurgence
4 wall of omens
1 spellskite
1 scavenging ooze
1 lone missionary
2 eternal witness
2 courser of kruphix
2 restoration angel
2 pia and kiran nalaar
1 kiki-jiki, mirror breaker
1 reveillark
Spells
4 path to exile
4 eldritch evolution
2 chord of calling
4 wooded foothills
4 windswept heath
1 arid mesa
2 forest
1 plains
1 mountain
2 stomping grounds
2 temple garden
1 sacred foundry
3 razorverge thicket
1 rugged prairie
1 horizon canopy
3 engineered explosives
1 ghostly prison
1 archangel of tithes
1 lightning helix
1 scavenging ooze
1 eidolon of rhetoric
1 kataki, war's wage
1 celestial purge
1 devout lightcaster
1 obstinate baloth
2 fulminator mage
1 vulshok sorcerer
Some notes:
4th Wall of omens: curve lowering, digs for our important cards, needed sac outlet for EE. Ive been very happy with it so far, and am pretty sure its needed with EE. Wall-> p&k, while not as good as with voice, is still great against a few of the fastest decks in modern, where we need that early p&k regardless. Maybe we will have more 'flipped' voices due to EE, so the filler body will be slightly more relevant. Also, against a blue deck, i'd rather sac the wall than the voice, so they get punished for countering the EE and 'getting' us.
Courser of kruphix: Over the last few years I have felt like courser is one of the best cards in the deck. Like wall of omens, its the 'glue' that holds our deck together, and one of the few non-4 drops that provide a repeatable, 'engine-y' effect to provide advantage. Aggro being on the uptick makes be even more confidant in courser's place in the deck.
6 Mana dorks: I actually want to shave one of the heirarchs, Im just trying to find the right replacement. Maybe a 3rd courser.
0quasali pridemageor reclamation sage: Since we are playing EE, the philosophy of the deck has to change to accommodate that. As such, we are going to be tutoring for 'value' less (or at instant speed to catch an inkmoth or o-stone), and using more of a k.o style card (like posters were saying earlier). I might want the sage in the board, but im still not sure. Theres a relatively small window in games where tutoring for the combo isnt just better, and we might do it with more consistency and faster now that we have 6 tutors. I was rarely impressed with rec sage anyways, and theres SO many decks in modern.
Lone Missionary: In addition to skite and scooze as hate cards, I included lone missonary maindeck over baloth for curve reasons. I feel like missionary is more likely to trip up our opponents when they go for lethal or just being reasonable value against the aggro decks (and our manabase), than other cards providing other 'tricky' value, like pridemage. That said, this (in addition to the 2nd heirach) is a flex spot that I am not sure about.
Devout lightcaster: Ive been wanting to play this baby for awhile now, and the recent 'change' to go naya and play archangel of tithes gave me the courage to finally put it in the SB. Suck it jund!
I played the deck on sunday at a card kingdom event, going 3-1 and losing to mono-u tron, and beating grixis delver, wr soul sisters, and dredge. Notable plays were EEing a witness to get a reveillark against grixis (sweet!), and then game one against dredge I end stepped turn 3 resto, untapped and EEed my courser for kiki-jiki and killed him, whereas I didnt have enough permanents to chord in that spot. Its not much testing and its hardly conclusive, but its a start!
Lol great minds think alike. I have been testing a knight retreat list in the devotion shell with hydra as the payoff card For a few weeks now for exactly the reasons you give. It's been pretty good so far. Hitting both halves, atarka, garruk, as well as every sideboard card seems like great value
. It might end up being a little better than 'janky'
And it really isnt that hard to argue with scattered, weak results. They really dont give us anything we didnt know. It is nice to seeing retreat lists performing though.
I have been playing with the deck a lot. Chord has been amazing almost always, and is never poor-to-bad. The odds on company says it wont be at any level (in our deck) that it is in other decks that perform with it. You dont need to test with it to come to that conclusion-you can just run the math.
I think thats more a symptom that people are taking existing archetypes (abzan and naya company) and jamming retreats in, instead of building the deck from the ground up.
3 results total really isnt a pattern. Now If we saw 1st place lists left and right, maybe we would be on to something. Still-variance is a huge part of magic. You can have 100 people play the deck, and 3 people end up doing well, but we cant conclude that that then is the best list by seeing that 3 people did well. The average record of the deck couldve been 1-5 for all we know, these 3 just ran a little good or had favorable matchups/opponents (or not, maybe they just crushed people).
Now, it still doesnt rule out that these lists could be headed in the right direction. But it isnt a confirmation of that fact.
Company just clashes with retreat way too much, and bant colors dont provide enough good hits evenly dispersed throughout the curve. No paths in that one list? Not over my dead body.
I think running the math shows that bant coco builds just really aren't that good-its too inconsistent (as opposed to abzan) and if you want to push the consistency, then you ruin the curve.
I also think commune is too clunky/inconsistent for modern (at least, in a non-enchantress style deck, which currently doesnt exist).
My 2 cents.
Ah yes slaughter pact in those 2 (although ad nausem does not care about spellskite in the slightest [neither lightning storm or conflagrate cares about spellskite, and they run 1 of each]; I've played against it a few times and haven't seen a slaughter pact yet).
Enchantment removal does nothing to the combo if you have a fetchland in play (either as your land drop for the turn or if your opponent mistakenly lets you knight at least once) so I usually wouldn't be worried about rec sage. A nice thing about underplayed (in this case, new) combos is that people don't know how to beat it. People siding in enchantment removal will -usually- be disappointed.
What removal that kills knight would amulet, ad nauseam, and elves play? Mayyybe 1 dismember in their board?
Affinity has gav blast maybe, which usually wont kill knight anyways.
Yeah, midrange path decks (melira and the mirror) are the most likely to be blown out for holding on to their 1 path til the right moment. Still, its that 1/100.
That is a very interesting idea, assuming u can get the mana to work.
If you reread my previous post, I addressed -exactly- the gameplay scenario you describe. It will not happen like you are saying in real gameplay against real opponents. Realize that I am not advocating running maindeck negates/dispels whatever to protect the combo. I am just saying sejeri steppe does NOT work as you describe in real tournaments.
And I am still of the opinion chord>>>coco in this deck. Coco messes up our curve way way too much to get any reasonable % of getting value and so is unreliable. We do NOT have 1-2 mana combo pieces that we can find, and our voices we find are worse than abzans because we can't 'turn them on' with a sack outlet. So we have to cram even more 3 drops in our already packed 3-drop deck in order to have enough good hits. This is a much worse coco deck than abzan. Just run the percentages. At absolute best we are about 50-60% to find 2 good hits (with a bad curve), which is still worse than hitting all parts of a combo. Abzan is like 85-90% because of the combo pieces it can hit.
So, when you untap with knights and no retreats regularly, do you then proceed to never activate or attack with knight until you draw a retreat (because if you arent attacking then you wont win until you can combo simply because you arent attacking)? Because if you do either at any point, you then turn your opps removal back on, and steppe remains useless. If you are sitting there with any untapped knight while townshipping with multiple other creatures in play, then your opponents spot removal is already poor simply because you are townshipping with multiple creatures in play. So, usually a winmore scenario to 'protect' your useless (because you arent activating or attacking with it) knight while you township your opp to death.
I realize the interaction. However, you have to think what went on for the game to get to that state:
You have had to have knight in play for more than one turn. All removal heavy decks will kill it the turn you play knight if they have any removal (because they wouldn't want you to get any value out of knight, much less get potentially blown out by a possible sejeri steppe), and if they don't have a removal, then steppe doesn't matter.
If you have an untapped knight sitting on a board stall (or else 99% of the time its just better to attack than wait to combo), then you will have had to never use knight during end step for value, or your opponent would kill it in resp. So, your knight would have to sit there doing actual nothing, which is not what I signed up for when paying 3 mana in modern.
So, for this to actually ever be relevant, It would have to be a board stall against a removal heavy deck, where you never activate or attack with knight, then you draw the combo, and your opponent managed to draw a removal in the meantime, and has not cast it at any point on any card in play. In all other game states, you will have a tapped knight in play at some point, for your opponent to kill, and steppe will do nothing.
All I'm saying is, the scenario people are describing almost never comes up in real play against players that know whats up. I understand the interaction is nice, and was good in a slower format, but drawing a tapped, mono-white, non-plains will cost you more games than it will save you.
A card is not good if it only works if people missplay.