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At least balanced

Hello dear fellowers, today i’m gonna write `bout my new (old) love – Eldrazi and Taxes. A Black-White Deck full of disruptive elements, card advantage and clunkiness ;) It has a lot of legs (like many other decks i’ve played), a bunch of removal and some sort of „trick plays“. First: Why Taxes? Death and Taxes doesn’t get the attention it deserves. It’s a quite powerful and interactive strategy, it has huge creatures and neat interactions. There are two solid reasons to play the deck: A)      Great removal Black and white give all what a skillful player may wish for. Path to Exile, Fatal Push, Zealous Persecution, Dismember, Go for the Throat etc. In addition to this creatures can be blinked, flickered and processed – so a lot of interaction is going to take place at my table. B)       Disruption „to go“ I love creatures with disruptive elements. I was intrueged by Thought-Knot Seer, Wasteland Strangler and Tidehollow Sculler when i started playing the
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Solid, just solid

So this time around I’m diving into details of Bant Company. The deck is solid, pretty solid. I switched from a 4 Spell Queller to a 4 Reflector Mage build, back afterwards, settled on Nissa, Steward of Elements for now, playing a single Jace, the Mind Sculptor out of the sideboard. The thing that bothers me most is the fact, that Modern adapted quickly to the unbannings. Player’s quickly switched decks to either grind against Jace and Bloodbraid Elf or go under / over them. Again, Bant is in the middle of nowhere. Kelvin Chew, the most prominent successor with Bant Knightfall, discarded Retreat to Corallhelm for two Jace’s, added two Vendilion Clique to compensate for the gap in interaction and called it a day. Yes, the playset Voice of Resurgence haven’t been overlooked. This is more of a concession to the vast majority of player’s trying to grind Bant out – Voice ‘ll give ‘em a hard time again. If someone is upon summoning up and concluding the changes the deck went t
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King for a day, fool for a lifetime

So GP Lyon is over and it doesn't felt great. After the Modern Pro Tour everybody and his mother liked to grind, resulting in a heavy shift towards Young Pyromancer and Lingering Souls decks. Bant is not super-well equipped to battle thoses grind-/topdeck-wars, so my results has been bad at all. Saturday i've dropped at 0-2 from the mainevent in Lyon to grind sideevents. I've switched to Dredge, which felt pretty good. I wore down a bunch of Snapcaster Mage decks and ended up with pretty good results. So i've decided to continue the win-streak with Stinkweed Imp, Bloodghast and Conflagrate. First: Teh deck One of my qualities as a player is quickly recognizing which cards put in work and which ones does not. Starting with a mostly stock list (i was missing just Gemstone Mine), i've cut the Scourge Devil for a Haunted Dead, which is far and beyond too good to pass on. The format right now is 90% about grinding (not racing) because Jace and Bloodbraid Elf were
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Walker, Texas Ranger

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Due to the continous absence of Chuck Norris, i’m in charge of finding a suitable replacement for this Texas Ranger. Indeed, my search was successful and I’m proud to present Jadelight Ranger to the Modern-community. First – Why in hell does Modern need another fringe-playable, green 3-Drop? It doesn’t. Let’s not flatter the fact that there are a bunch of valueable 3-Drops out there. Either Eternal Witness, Tireless Tracker, Courser of Kruphix, Knight of the Reliquary, etc. they all does a good job in generating some sort of value. So Ranger is the next one in this queue. Let’s check out what it does:              A)      At worst : Explore, find a non-land, add a +1/+1 Counter, explore the same card again, add a +1/+1 counter again. In the end, we got a Scry 1 and a 3-Drop with 4 power and 3 toughness.       B)       At average : Explore, find a land, draw it, explore again, find a non-land card, put a +1/+1 counter on it. In the end, we got Scry 1, drawn a
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Starting all over (again?)

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Due to being disrupted by GP Madrid, i’ve put aside Bant Knightfall for a while. I’ve played Affinity with my teammates running hot on Burn and the third one failing on Junk Midrange. My results have been mixed – a 50/50 I believe because I haven’t kept record of my results. This record was the result of a mediocre preparation and a handful of bad matchups. All-in-All it was a fun time and the results have been ok’ish at least. After the GP i’ve struggled to really come up with Magic because i was in serious doubt regarding my deck choice for the upcoming month. After testing Dredge and Vengevine Aggro i concluded that it’s the most easiest thing to stick on old behaviors and run Bant Knightfall again. Here’s why i firmly believe this deck is capable of getting to the top tables: First: A proactive Beatdown plan The deck has some Beaters, primarily Knight of the Reliquary, but also Tireless Tracker is able to get the Beatdown going. Although these
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Vengevine Shenanigans

Vengevine Shenanigans I’ve only played a couple of games (maybe less than a hundred) with this deck, but I had a bunch of funny and interesting games along the line. Some included great sideboard decisions, others has been more board-state oriented. First – UR Storm Storm is always a tight Matchup. Especially on the draw Vengevine Aggro does need a good draw (a reliable Turn 3 kill) to keep up with the blistering fast combo deck. Boarding out 4 Gather for 2 Tormod’s Crypt and 2 Lightning Axe fits perfectly. Crypt attacks the graveyard Storm needs so badly (and serves double-purpose for having a Revolt-trigger for Hidden Herbalists) and Axe kills the other Engine-part Baral, Chief of Compliance / Goblin Electromancer. I had a Match were I was on the play Game 1 and came out quickly. With Vengevine and Superion I had 11 power Turn 2 and won that one. The more interesting Game was the 2 nd one. Again I had the Nut-draw and rushed in for a potential Turn 3 kill.
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Head in front of the wall

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Sometimes failure leads to better insights. Right now, i'm just like "head in front of the wall" until the wall breaks. In preparation for GP Madrid i've put Affinity to the test and my failure rate is great. By all means, now i know what a real great aggro deck is - and how complicated board states could be. I didn't respect this for all years playing magic and that makes me sad again :( No matter what, after the GP i'm likely running Bant Knightfall or (even better) Vengevine Aggro / Hollow One. Here's what i'm running for now. First: Super Vengevine A MTGsalvation user created the following beauty: 4 Bloodstained Mire 4 Wooded Foothills 2 Stomping Ground 4 Copperline Gorge 3 Mountain 1 Forest 4 Insolent Neonate 4 FAithless Looting 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Vengevine 4 Burning-Tree Emissary 4 Hidden Herbalists 4 Reckless Bushwhacker 3 Hooting Mandrills 3 Myr Superion 4 Gather the Pack 4 Commune with the Gods I've played
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