@blueduck70 I saw your list and it kept me thinking on the thalias. Don't you think that making the company cost 5 and PtE 2 is punishing? I played a league now with 2x 3 mana Thalia maindeck instead of the Aven Mindcensors but I couldn't take any conclusions... Need more testing.
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Thalia is punishing for the non-creature spells, but if you have an early company you can just not play thalia. And if you do play thalia early, it's usually so good against the opponent that they have to remove it, or be slowed down against a tempo deck. Playing thalia is a real cost, as why I'm playing 2, but I really feel like they're better than voice or the 3rd scooze in this meta. I really think theres merit in disruption that plays to the board. Often it lets you tap out where otherwise you'd be forced to hold up spell queller for interaction vs storm or valakut.
I like 3 mana thalia, but the competition for 3 drops is so high.
If Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is good in the current meta (and I do believe she is), why not play the humans version of Knightfall with 2-3 Thalia? I believe it has the most raw power of any version of the deck, and if Thalia is the disruption we need right now, humans can support her better than any other, given the synergy with other humans. Personally I've been on a tear with Humans Knightfall. I haven't lost a match of paper magic with it yet (though admittedly no competitive events, just friendly games and FNM). From my experience with all three versions, this one seems the most powerful right now and Thalia might be the card to push it over the top against Titanshift and Storm.
Also, I've mentioned this before but Unified Will is just absurd out of the sideboard when a deck plays 11-12 1 drops. Gideon's Intervention is also an excellent piece of sideboard tech that needs to be explored further. Unlike Runed Halo it actually stops damage dealt to permanents you control, so it can actually blank Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. Our humans and Knights can then get so huge they make Primeval Titan look puny, and lock the Titanshift deck out of the game.
I absolutely agree that Human Knightfall may just be better. I was very convinced of that as of a week ago. This was more of an experiment in seeing if adapting thalia with better creature quality could do better against the meta. I decided to try thalia in classic knightfall after doing very poorly with humans against removal heavy decks (BGx, Jeskai). In the short game humans is much more powerful, but it just feels miserable to topdeck champion of the parish or sometimes thalia's lieutenant late game. I'm not convinced which is better (online meta has been changing a lot lately), but do think it's possible that a thalia heavy version with spellqueller could have merit.
List tags are malformed.
@blueduck70 I saw your list and it kept me thinking on the thalias. Don't you think that making the company cost 5 and PtE 2 is punishing? I played a league now with 2x 3 mana Thalia maindeck instead of the Aven Mindcensors but I couldn't take any conclusions... Need more testing.
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Thalia is punishing for the non-creature spells, but if you have an early company you can just not play thalia. And if you do play thalia early, it's usually so good against the opponent that they have to remove it, or be slowed down against a tempo deck. Playing thalia is a real cost, as why I'm playing 2, but I really feel like they're better than voice or the 3rd scooze in this meta. I really think theres merit in disruption that plays to the board. Often it lets you tap out where otherwise you'd be forced to hold up spell queller for interaction vs storm or valakut.
I like 3 mana thalia, but the competition for 3 drops is so high.
List tags are malformed.
@blueduck70 congrats on the 5-0! Also, congrats on getting your list published. This new 5-0 policy is awful
2cmc thalia is an okay choice I think. Newer lists were cutting the two drops and in my testing, playing almost any configuration of 2 drops until a total of 8 makes this deck considerably better. It doesn't matter if it's lotus cobra, thalia, selfless, third ooze/qasali/voice, it will be better than any three drop. I'm personally not a fan of thalia in modern but I can see it being good in various matchups (shadow, living end, the synergies with queller...). I also see no problem with playing thalia maindeck.
I would never go below 4 queller though. The number of times I've cast queller to then receive a handshake by my opponent...
Mindcensor should be in the sideboard I think, and in higher numbers, if you want that kind of effect. Mindcensor is at its best turn 2, so I would advice 2-3 copies if that's how you want to fight the valakut matchup.
I'm interested in your reasoning for stony silence/surgical extraction though. Surgical is a pretty narrow card in this deck (no thought scour, only one ghost quarter, our removal exiles, no discard, no snapcaster) and I only played it when I expected facing griselbrand reanimator decks. Stony is a good card but I think gaddock is a better card in this deck.
I think mindcensor probably isn't impactful enough. Never really cast it, just wanted to try out more disruption over value spots. Definitely would put the 4th queller back in.
Stony Silence is necessary to make games 2 and 3 more favorable against affinity. Affinity is big now; Often I play against it twice in a league, and bringing in the stony silences and staticasters have been great. Also good against tron and eldrazi tron, since ballista is so hard to deal with, along with lantern. But mainly for affinity.
Surgicals are probably just a relic of Dredge being everywhere a few months ago, but is still ok against reanimator and some other decks. Probably should be removed for the 3rd scooze in the board and an extra slot.
By gaddock do you mean gaddock teeg? I'm not sure I understand what gaddock teeg is good against. Storm and Valakut have bolts out of the board. I can only think of it as good against Company/Chord decks and Normal Tron. What match-ups is it good in?
I read this thread every once in a while, but never have posted. I've been playing collective company variants for a while (abzan/naya counters company, 4 color humans, knightfall humans, classic knightfall). After playing a bunch of devoted druid decks for a while, Ive recently come back to knightfall.
I thought classic knightfall was a great metagame choice for a while when Grixis Shadow and UW control were big. However, I haven't liked it as much lately and have been turning to human / combo variants lately. Extra disruption in thalia (and sin collector in 4c), along with more aggression / quicker clock, seemed to give it a better chance at closing out games against decks like valakut and storm. I really like the pro-active plan rather than reacting with spell queller.
Currently, I've been trying to combine the high card quality of classic knightfall with more proactive disruption. Specifically, I've been very impressed with thalia's performance in the humans deck. It's been very good against death shadow, jeskai, ad nausuem, storm, valakut, burn, and even counters company. Furthermore, Thalia has lots of synergy with Spell Queller. Voice hasn't been a great choice for a while, and generally the match-ups it's good in are already good, so subbing in thalia for voice seems fine.
I absolutely agree that Human Knightfall may just be better. I was very convinced of that as of a week ago. This was more of an experiment in seeing if adapting thalia with better creature quality could do better against the meta. I decided to try thalia in classic knightfall after doing very poorly with humans against removal heavy decks (BGx, Jeskai). In the short game humans is much more powerful, but it just feels miserable to topdeck champion of the parish or sometimes thalia's lieutenant late game. I'm not convinced which is better (online meta has been changing a lot lately), but do think it's possible that a thalia heavy version with spellqueller could have merit.
List tags are malformed.
Thalia is punishing for the non-creature spells, but if you have an early company you can just not play thalia. And if you do play thalia early, it's usually so good against the opponent that they have to remove it, or be slowed down against a tempo deck. Playing thalia is a real cost, as why I'm playing 2, but I really feel like they're better than voice or the 3rd scooze in this meta. I really think theres merit in disruption that plays to the board. Often it lets you tap out where otherwise you'd be forced to hold up spell queller for interaction vs storm or valakut.
I like 3 mana thalia, but the competition for 3 drops is so high.
List tags are malformed.
I think mindcensor probably isn't impactful enough. Never really cast it, just wanted to try out more disruption over value spots. Definitely would put the 4th queller back in.
Stony Silence is necessary to make games 2 and 3 more favorable against affinity. Affinity is big now; Often I play against it twice in a league, and bringing in the stony silences and staticasters have been great. Also good against tron and eldrazi tron, since ballista is so hard to deal with, along with lantern. But mainly for affinity.
Surgicals are probably just a relic of Dredge being everywhere a few months ago, but is still ok against reanimator and some other decks. Probably should be removed for the 3rd scooze in the board and an extra slot.
By gaddock do you mean gaddock teeg? I'm not sure I understand what gaddock teeg is good against. Storm and Valakut have bolts out of the board. I can only think of it as good against Company/Chord decks and Normal Tron. What match-ups is it good in?
I thought classic knightfall was a great metagame choice for a while when Grixis Shadow and UW control were big. However, I haven't liked it as much lately and have been turning to human / combo variants lately. Extra disruption in thalia (and sin collector in 4c), along with more aggression / quicker clock, seemed to give it a better chance at closing out games against decks like valakut and storm. I really like the pro-active plan rather than reacting with spell queller.
Currently, I've been trying to combine the high card quality of classic knightfall with more proactive disruption. Specifically, I've been very impressed with thalia's performance in the humans deck. It's been very good against death shadow, jeskai, ad nausuem, storm, valakut, burn, and even counters company. Furthermore, Thalia has lots of synergy with Spell Queller. Voice hasn't been a great choice for a while, and generally the match-ups it's good in are already good, so subbing in thalia for voice seems fine.
Here is my recent list I 5-0ed with yesterday:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/competitive-modern-constructed-league-2017-09-19
playing the one of mindcensor since valakut is so popular online. The 4th queller should probably be in over the mindcensor or the 3rd reflector mage.
Any thoughts on the list / thalia main deck?