MTG Salvation

So I took a somewhat budget Knightfall list to SCG Worcester's Modern Classic last weekend. I didn't do well, but I figured some people might be interested in a tournament report of sorts. First of all, here was the list I ran:


As you can see, I prefer the creature-centric beatdown plan over the combo, however it's impossible to compete in Modern without at least a little bit of unfair magic or boatloads of disruption (a la Jund). As a compromise I'm running 1 Retreat so I still have an out with the combo, but I'm not focused on winning with it. Besides that, the 3 Avacyn's Pilgrims act as a poor man's Noble Hierarchs. The Wheel of Sun and Moon is my little bit of spicy sideboard tech that doesn't shut of CoCo (unlike Grafdigger's Cage), allows KotR to still grow (unlike Rest in Peace) and functions well as a 1-2 of (unlike Leyline of the Void). Unfortunately I don't think I ever drew it in this tournament.

Matches:

1. Lost 1-2 vs. UR Phoenix. Game 1 I landed a Scavenging Ooze and managed to eat an Arclight Phoenix, but I had no way to deal with the two Things in the Ice that he resolved and lost the game. Path and Reflector Mage are the only outs to that. Game two I was on the play and got a quick Collected Company into KotR, searching up a Bojuka Bog and slowing him down significantly. A few turns later I topdecked a Retreat and he scooped. Game 3 was pretty close--I played around his Izzet Charm and landed a clutch Vendilion Clique, but eventually got run over by more copies of Thing in the Ice. I saw 1 Path and 0 Reflector Mages in the whole match, which was disappointing.


2. Drew 1-1 against Eldrazi & Taxes in a match I should have won. Game 1 was a ridiculous 40+ minute grindfest where he played an Eldrazi Displacer, Blade Splicer, multiple Tidehollow Scullers, a Leonin Arbiter, and a Thalia. I got a big Knight down as well as two Tireless Trackers, who gave some much-needed card advantage (although they never got big because he kept blinking them with Displacer to remove the +1/+1 counters). I was happy with how I piloted this game, which included a sneaky Gavony Township off KotR to blow out one of his attacks and kill his first-strikers. Eventually I got there, mostly thanks to Knight of Autumn killing a Tidehollow Sculler (it's an artifact!) which returned my Path. After Pathing the Displacer and Ghost-Quartering his Shambling Vent, I was able to swing in for lethal. In game 2 he landed a turn 1 Aether Vial into turn 2 Leonin Arbiter, while I played a dork and tried not to get blown out by Arbiter + Path to Exile. Between the two of us I think we cast 5 Paths in the first few turns. He found an Eldrazi Temple, and then topdecked a Reality Smasher, while I hit land after land. I died and we couldn't start game 3 before time was called. I think I played well but the match was disappointing, as it definitely could have been a 1-0 or 2-1 win.


3. Lost 1-2 against UW Control. Round 3 was another heartbreaker loss, this time on the very last turn of extra turns. Game 1 I had a fast start with mana dork into Tireless Tracker (which got Pathed) into CoCo hitting Knight of the Reliquary and Voice of Resurgence. I got my opponent all the way down to 2 life when he wiped the board. In response, I used Knight to get a Gavony Township because I had a Birds of Paradise in hand. I played it and activated Gavony on his end step, then activated again on my turn for lethal. I was suprised that this worked, as he had a Field of Ruin in play and I expected Gavony to the bite the dust, but he either missed it or thought he could just block with Snapcaster or something. Game 2 I kept a hand of dork, Gaddock Teeg, Voice of Resurgence, Unified Will, Spell Queller, and 2 lands. He tapped out for Azcanta and I played Teeg on turn 2 with Unified Will backup. That stopped his first Path, and Queller quelled his second. He managed to topdeck a third copy, which exiled Queller, and then used the old Path to remove Teeg. I drew a Collected Company and mainphased it to avoid the Cryptic Command that I was sure had been stuck in his hand, hitting KotR and Scooze. He binned a land off Azcanta and then miracled a Terminus. I drew something inconsequential (can't remember what exactly) and he slammed Teferi the next turn on an empty board, which all but ended the game. In game 3 I kept a mull to 6 which had one land, three dorks, a queller, and a Knight of Autumn. I think this was a good keep in retrospect but unfortunately played out as badly as possible. I played a land and Hierarch, and he played a Hallowed Fountain and Opted. I didn't draw a second land on turn two, so I decided to play out all my mana dorks. My opponent blind-flips a Terminus, the one and only card that could have messed up my plan (since pathing a dork just gives me the land anyway). We ended up going to time, where he won on turn 5 of turns off a Celestial Colonnade, animated Gideon of the Trials, and counterspell backup for my Path. I still think I played this match pretty well, and it was definitely winnable for Knightfall. Terminus is a cool card, but sometimes I really hate playing against it.


4. Lost 0-2 vs. UR Phoenix. This was even more brutal than Round 1, as my opponent had turn 1 Faithless Looting discarding double Arclight Phoenix on the play. Not much I could do there. In game two I found a lot of my graveyard hate in addition to casting 3 (yes, 3) Collected Companies, but I never hit a Reflector Mage. Crackling Drake doesn't care about whether you exile graveyards, and a double Thing in the Ice draw sealed the game even after I found a Path to Exile. The Phoenixes themselves aren't that scary after sideboarding, but TiTi is a beast. Err, horror. You get the idea.


5. Won 2-0 against a weird UW Tron deck (Eldrazi? Gifts? I really don't know). I steamrolled him in game 1 because he couldn't find his third tron piece or an Eldrazi Temple, and I chained 3-drop after 3-drop off my mana dorks. Game 2 he mulled to 4, which turned out to be natural Tron plus a Basilisk Collar. Thankfully I had a Damping Sphere in my opener, and was able to Spell Queller the Walking Ballista he drew. Considering the mulligan this was actually a much closer game than it should have been, but it was nice to have a dominating performance in at least one match.


6. Round 6 was a bye for me because my opponent never showed. I decided to drop and play side events, as I was well out of prize contention at this point and didn't want to waste time waiting for the round to end. The match next to me was interesting at least--it turned out to be a spicy Bogles deck vs. Werewolf tribal.

Overall, my finish was obviously disappointing but I was happy with my piloting and had a lot of fun. It's important to be critical of your play, but a lot of my losses came down to luck, and I think I played to my outs pretty well. Stuff like the control deck's repeated blind Terminus flips sucked, especially in the last game, but at some point you have to just pray that doesn't happen--there wasn't really a way to avoid it. Besides the card choices I discussed in the decklist section, I would make a few changes going forward:

1. Re-evaluate the use of noncreature cards in the sideboard. I found things like Damping Sphere and Nissa to be underwhelming, and I don't think they justified the fact that they make Collected Company that much worse. I was not excited by Deputy of Detention in RNA but now I'm thinking he might make the cut.
2. Retreat is a nice "degenerate package" as an alternative to the beatdown/grindy midrange plan, but adding 2-3 more copies really stresses CoCo's consistency. I think the deck either should play 0-1 Retreats and a suite of value creatures with CoCo, or 3 Retreats main/1 SB and a bunch of planeswalkers (Jace, Teferi, Tamiyo, and Nissa) and spells (Dromoka's Command, Settle the Wreckage) in the extra slots. I can't afford JTMS and Teferis, so for now I'm stuck on the CoCo plan. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what the "right" path is going forward.
3. Vendilion Clique is amazing (but you probably already knew that). Once I can afford it I'm definitely going to run another in the sideboard, or maybe even mainboard. Gaddock Teeg is great too, and probably deserves a second copy (he is strictly sideboard though since he shuts off CoCo).
4. I need to rethink my approach to graveyard hate. A lot of it is a trap--decks like Hollow One and Phoenix both have at least a few threats that don't care about the graveyard, so while we're wasting time and slots playing hate cards they're just killing us anyway.

This might be a bit premature, but I'm really excited for the newly-leaked Ramunap Excavator. 2/3 Naga Cleric for 2 and a G that lets you play lands from the graveyard. It's a Crucible of Worlds that can be hit off Collected Company! Most notably, it allows for reliable landfall triggers even after Knightfall has partially or fully combo'd off, either for repeated lifegain with Courser, Clues with Tracker, or just keeping your opponent's fatty tapped down with a fetchland + Retreat to Coralhelm. It also lets us Ghost Quarter lock opponents. For context, I'm planning on sticking to the Bant shell without the Vizier/Druid combo.

I posted about this a while ago, but I think one of the counterspells in the sideboard should definitely be a Disdainful Stroke. It is great against the big mana decks, and it can both creature and noncreature spells. I don't know whether it's better to run 2 Unified Will, 1 Negate, and 1 Disdainful Stroke, or 1/2/1 with the 2-of being Negate.

Quote from MalkoMann »

I'm not too high on Bojuka Bog, it's often too slow against Dredge and Living End and is a little too cute against Snapcaster Mage and Storm where 3x Scavenging Ooze is usually enough - and god forbid that you draw the Bog naturally. I don't like it against Tarmogoyf either, but it is funnily enough good against other Knights of the Reliquary.

It's interesting that you say that, because I am running 2 Scoozes mainboard and dropped my sideboard copy for a Bojuka Bog, precisely because I felt that Scooze was too slow (more precisely, green mana can be a bottleneck and it's nice to have a way to exile the whole graveyard at once). Scooze is bad in multiples, so I hesitate to run 3. Bog seemed preferable to something like Nihil Spellbomb too because it can be tutored by KotR. Is drawing it that big of a problem? Against the combo decks that would necessitate siding it in (e.g. dredge and storm) I would rather have a slower clock but be able to get a valuable graveyard wipe.

I haven't gotten a chance to test Nissa, but I have a question about the manabase. Why does the deck have 9 fetchlands but only 8 fetchable lands? I run more shocks than most people (instead of Botanical Sanctum) because if I'm comboing I want to get as many lands as possible. Also, if you have fetches but no plains/forests left you can't use them to search up the utility lands (even though you crack them just to buff knight). See my lands below (optimal lists probably should run Wooded Foothills over Flooded Strands, but these are the ones I own):

Quote from Twanicus »

I like that rhonas can activate himself by pumping a dude. Hit him and a qasali off of CoCo eot, then pump qasali and swing for 9. It's just that the 3 cmc slot is SUCH prime real estate, what comes out?

That's really my problem too. I'm running 1-2-1-1 Courser-Tracker-Witness-Clique, so maybe the Eternal Witness should get cut, if anything? I love having it as a one-of though.

Also, Brian DeMars just posted a video of his games playing Knightfall--his inexperience is painful but it's nice that the deck is getting a spotlight. For those who don't want to watch, he went Someone in the comments suggested running Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion instead of Kessig Wolf Run, which I hadn't considered before. Wolf Run is nice for pumping dorks, and I think trample is better than double strike here, but Sunhome is admittedly more mana efficient per point of power.

@silverironman
What do you think of running Disdainful Stroke instead of 1 (or even both) Negate? The CMC requirement covers everything Queller doesn't, and hits all card types. The only things it doesn't stop are counterspells and burn.