Walker, Texas Ranger

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 land and left with a 3/2 for 3 mana. This result comes up too, if you decide to put the revealed non-land card in scenario into your graveyard.

      C)      At best: Draw 2 lands. Jadelight Ranger sticks to being a 2/1.

These three scenarios are not super-impressive at all. So why the heck should you tend to run this Merfolk-lady in your 75? The answer hasn’t been clarified until now – it’s card-quality over pure impact.

Many decks tend to run some cards that are garbage by all means – these are cards, that doesn’t line up great against the opposing strategy or just there for redundancy reasons. Maybe your deck has a lot of pieces that only works together, but not on there own.

This is where a 2/1 for G2 filters away useless topdecks. Sometimes you need to fuel the graveyard, sometimes another landdrop is necessary and on another occasion the Scry 1 effect ensures that more gas will come along the way. So the point here is card quality and filtering – two more useful than exceptional abilities for a single card.

What does make it playable is the fact, that it explores not once, but twice. This is enough reason for me, to test this card at least. I’m convinced that it won’t let me down, but time and games will tell if I’m right or wrong.

Right now I’ve dismissed Courser of Kruphix to make room for a singleton Ranger. I was considering Tireless Tracker, but he deserves another role. Courser was there too to filter cards, ensure that I hit landdrops and gave me some life. He is a nice Aggro-wall, but his offensive power (2) is rather lackluster.

Second – Specific adjustments

In the last couple of weeks I was facing a lot of Uw Control. Tron and Scapeshift has literally dropped off the map – they has been seen nowhere. A common problem I’m facing is Rest in Peace nowadays.

This ugly sideboard-hoser is a real nightmare for Bant Knightfall. It shuts down Kitchen Finks, Knight of the Reliquary, Scavenging Ooze and the die-trigger of Voice of Resurgence. That is a whole lot of cards on my side (12 right now) and enough reason to consider to do sth. against it.

My sideboard wasn’t really prepared for Spreading seas, Rest in Peace, Detention sphere and on top of that Runed Halo. I also ran into plenty of Bogles decks, full of annoying Enchantment-stuff. Looking through those decklists, I’ve decided to dedicate some sideboard-slots to it.

At first I was cutting Stony Silence – Affinity is at least an average, if not favored matchup and Tron is not the flavor of the month anymore. Adding a singleton Reclamation Sage was perfectly fine. Bogles is a downward awkward matchup, whereas the only outstanding card on my side is Blessed Alliance – therefore I’m not willing to dedicate too many slots to it.

Uw was the other big contender. Digging through the options, I stopped at Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Nissa, Vital Force. The problem I recognized was the biggest issue with both of ‘em: They are outstanding Threats – but Control does have a few outs against them and plenty of threats themselves that are able to shut them down (TL;DR: I don’t want to play the grind-game).

So I’ve decided to include 2 Nissa, Steward of Elements into my fifteen. She costs 3 Mana and is able to enter the battlefield Turn 2. All 3 abilities are quite good (especially the 0 is great with Bant, hitting 50 of 60 cards in my deck) and I firmly believe that Bant is the only Wedge in Modern that really wants here.

In the early game she supplies me with plenty of gas, later on her ultimate is game over. The downside is, that she gets handled easily by Lightning Bolt and Abrupt Decay – cards that I not commonly ran into.

Further evaluating my gameplan against Control, I gave some thoughts to my counter-suite. With 4 Spell Queller already I just doesn’t want to dedicate more than 2 slots for countermagic in the sideboard. Until this point Unified Will was the choice that looked the most promising.

It is able to even counter Primeval Titan, Wurmcoil Engine or Ulamog. But countering creatures wasn’t in fact what the format ordered for – as I’ve mentioned earlier, Titan’s and Engines are on the decline, so I saw no need for countering 6/6’s on the stack.

Instead I was faced with Gideon of the Trials, Jace, Architect of Thought and Gideon Jura. My opponents usually tap-out for these huge monsters, so my inner voice told me that a more conditional counter is what I was looking for.

I had to decide between Spell Pierce and Stubborn Denial – but my thought-process didn’t end here: Do I have enough creatures to turn on Ferocious on Stubborn Denial? A closer look at my deck told me, that I got a couple of those; Namely Knight, potentially Ooze and Tracker. Voice of Resurgence is another one that could spit out a big token.

Diving deeper, I saw the possibility to pump lonely creatures with Kessig Wolf Run, enabling Stubborn Denial to a hard-counter. This convinced me to dedicate two slots to it.

Evaluating further, I came to conclude that UW Control only has a bunch of removal (as other decks too) – Path to Exile, Detention Sphere, Condemn and Supreme Verdict. They only knock me out of hard-hitting beaters if everything lines up perfectly for them – that doesn’t happen on each occasion.

Furthermore my Voice of Resurgence are really annoying for ‘em. Once they die, the Elemental-Token becomes pretty huge, turning Ferocious active. At last, the addition of Jadelight Ranger as a potential 4/3 lead me to believe that Stubborn Denial could become a useful tool.

Even if it doesn’t, it opens up the possibility to disrupt the opponents play with just a single mana left – this sets me up to compete with the blistering fast combo-decks of the format (Griselshoal, Storm, Abzan Company).

The last change regards to Selfless Spirit. While it is a good way to prevent a Sweeper-blowout, it does line up poorly against the rest of the meta. Seriously, a 2/1 with Flying isn’t a Beater, neiter a top-hatebear. I shaved down from two to one and packed a third Voice of Resurgence instead.

Voice did impress me a lot along a lot of games in the last couple of months and is a pain-in-the-ass for control to play against. The elemental token is really scary at times. Midrange, Aggro and Control don’t like it and I’m feeling for you all, that hate her.

Third – Side stuff

The more important things have been covered already. I’ve added a Reflector Mage, completing the playset and dismissed the Phyrexian Revoker / Thalia, Heretic Cather. Mage are much more versatile and remain a great tempo-play that many opponents let scratch there heads. It does hit every creature-centric Combo-deck, aggro and midrange alike.

Only spell-based combo (Ad Nauseam), ramp-control (Tron) and pure Control (UW, Grixis) are not affected by the bounce-shenanigan.

Last Words

Bant is in a really exciting spot right now – it lines up well against a huge part of the widespread decks and has some sort of fighting chance against the rest. The color-combination has still much room for improvement and innovation, a fact I like very much about it – combining the good and well accepted of past days with fresh and sometimes wild ideas.

Sitting down, taking a deep breath and reevaluate gameplans against certain decks does help much more than grinding games or watching streams. It’s a learning process that will left me (and you too) more confident, more focused and as a better player – so take the chance to took some moments off.