[NOTE: I am continually updated this guide as time goes on and I receive additional feedback from TappedOut and Reddit.]
This is my take on the Bant Knightfall deck. It still requires some adjustments, particularly in the sideboard, but I think it is ready to start playing some events. The deck isn’t ideally situated in the meta at the moment, but it is a versatile creature-based deck with lots of tools available to it and a combo available to finish out the game. The combo isn’t necessary, though. For those unfamiliar with the deck, I’ve written a short summary below. I am new to the deck (I also play burn and infect) and am open to feedback and suggestions.
Knightfall at a Glance:
Bant Knightfall in modern (somewhat similar to Maverick in legacy) is built around Knight of the Reliquary, a creature that gets biggest based on the number of lands in your graveyard. We run a decent number of fetches and some number of Ghost Quarters to make sure we get some lands in the yard to pump our knights. KotR has an ability to sacrifice a forest or plains (not just basics, but our shock lands, too!) to tutor any land to the battlefield, so the deck runs a number of utility lands. This ability requires our KotR to tap, but we combo it with Retreat to Coralhelm so we can untap the knight with the landfall trigger and use the ability again. This results in huge knights, theoretically as large as 24/24, but typically closer to 13/13 or so. We also typically tutor up Kessig Wolf Run last so we can give one of our knights trample. Note that KotR’s ability puts the land onto the battlefield untapped. This means we have the option to float a bunch of mana as we combo, but that depends on the amount of life we can afford to pay when we fetch up shock lands.
This is also a Collected Company deck filled with creatures CMC 3 or less, typically with some sort of ETB ability or other utility. Every creature in the deck can be hit with CoCo and plays a specific role in the function of the deck. There is some wiggle room on creature selection here and the exact number of each that you want varies. Let’s take a look at some of our options and why we run them in the deck. I’m including both maindeck and sideboard creatures in this section, as I believe you will decide what belongs where based partially on your meta.
The Creatures:
Aven Mindcensor - This 2/1 flyer can get some damage in if the board state is stalled out on the ground, but that isn’t why we run him in the deck. He limits your opponent’s searches to the top four cards of their library, and that is pretty backbreaking in a format where fetch lands are so dominant. Additionally, our deck runs Ghost Quarter which, when our Bird Wizard is on the field, is about as close as you can get to Wasteland in modern. Not all Knightfall decks run this, but I am giving him a try in my current build.
Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch - These are our mana dorks, and they are vital to the deck. As a CoCo deck, we want to get to 4 mana as fast as possible. We are also a threat-dense deck, so more mana helps us keep the pressure on. I normally prefer Hierarchs to Birds due to the Exalted ability, but we need red mana to activate Kessig Wolf Run and we don’t have many red sources in the deck. That is why I run more Birds than Hierarchs.
Courser of Kruphix - This guy is a great blocker against aggressive decks, can attack through for some damage early on, and will gain us a fair amount of life as we try to assemble our combo. Once the combo is online he will gain us a bunch of life. This life gain is important, as it allows us to fetch and shock freely and keep us alive long enough to win against aggressive or burn decks.
Eternal Witness - This one is pretty straightforward: it lets you get a card back out of your graveyard. I find that I am normally getting back Path to Exile or Collected Company, but it also helps to get back your Selfless Spirit after you’ve sacrificed it (more on that later) or a Retreat if it gets removed. Our deck is weak to Fatal Push, too, and this lets us get back our creatures to recast them if we need them. A quick rules note: If we CoCo into an E-Witness, the CoCo has finished resolving and is in the graveyard when you put E-Witness’ ability on the stack. So yes, you can get back the CoCo you used to get the E-Witness.
Gaddock Teeg - This dude is a sideboard card if he deserves a spot at all, but he has been discussed so I thought I should include him here. We can hit him with a CoCo, but then he shuts off all of our future CoCos. He also, however, shuts off Chalice of the Void, Karn Liberated, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, and several other key cards in the format. At one point he was a silver bullet, but I don't see him filling that role in the current modern meta.
Geist of Saint Traft - This guy is resilient to removal and can get some serious damage through in the right build of this deck. He is notorious for running away with games quickly, especially in a deck like ours that can drop him on turn two.
Kataki, War's Wage - This dude is a sideboard card against affinity.
Kitchen Finks - This card is one of the banes of the burn player’s existence. It is good against any deck that aggressively attacks our life total. Persist makes it a great chump blocker and also makes your opponent think twice about blocking it when it attacks.
Knight of the Reliquary - This is the card this deck is all about. He both enables the combo and is the result of the combo. He always has the potential to be one of the biggest creatures in the format, and laughs at your puny Death's Shadow or Tarmogoyf. In terms of power and toughness he can even outclass the Edlrazi Titans from time to time.
Leonin Arbiter - Another search prevention effect that works well with the Ghost Quarter strategy and sees some play in the Hatebears versions of this deck. Unlike Aven Mindcensor, his effect hits us, too, so he is counterproductive if we plan to win via combo. Also, if you are going to play Arbiter make sure you know the rules surrounding this card and pay the tax BEFORE you activate any search abilities.
Loxodon Smiter - This is a beater that can't be countered - which is great in a control-heavy meta - and you also get for free against discard.
Mirran Crusader - This dude isn't the same level of utility as the other creatures in our deck. The modern format, however, is overrun by Death's Shadow, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, and Gurmag Angler at the moment, and this card can be a silver bullet in that matchup if need be. He is just impossible for a lot of modern decks to deal with, and I have been incredibly please with his performance as I have been playing the deck.
Phyrexian Revoker - This dude isn't as good as a Pithing Needle, but he plays the same role. We run him over the needle because we can find him with Collected Company. Common cards to name include Relic of Progenitus, Karn Liberated, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Expedition Map, Scavenging Ooze, Liliana of the Veil, Arcbound Ravager, Cranial Plating, Steel Overseer, Lightning Storm, Borborygmos Enraged, Walking Ballista, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Street Wraith, Endbringer, Devoted Druid, and any planeswalker you see in game 1. Note that he shuts down our Scoozes, too, so don't name that unless you have to.
Qasali Pridemage and Reclamation Sage - This is how we deal with troublesome artifacts and enchantments. Because we are a CoCo deck, we want our answers to be CoCo-able. Pridemage is preferred over Sage because he can stick around on the battlefield and wait to be used as removal if we find it before our opponent plays whatever causes us trouble. It also has Exalted, which is a great benefit. Rec Sage will leave us with a body on the field after we remove the problem, but this isn’t enough to compete with Pridemage. Both are 2 power creatures which can serve as extra bodies when needed, but these creatures primarily play the role of a removal spell.
Ramunap Excavator - This is the new card for this deck. It is a Crucible of Worlds that we can hit with CoCo. It lets us reuse our fetch lands. It gets back out Kessig Wolf Run if it gets removed. It lets us
Ghost Quarter our opponent’s lands every turn, which gets even better with Aven Mindcensor. It also lets use get back a forest or plains from our graveyard to sacrifice to KotR again if we make a mistake while we are going off. Note that playing a land from your graveyard counts as playing your land for turn.
Reflector Mage - This guy is also pretty self-explanatory. He is a bounce spell that we can hit with CoCo. Aside from Path to Exile and Spell Queller, he is how we deal with our opponent’s threats. Our deck wants to use Spell Queller to stop our opponent from sticking threats (more on that later) but largely relies on outclassing and overwhelming our opponents. He also can serve to bounce a blocker and let our knights get through if we don’t have trample.
Scavenging Ooze - Shrink their ‘goyf. Get rid of their dredge cards. Get rid of anything with flashback. Gain some life and put some counters on it so it gets nice and big. Scooze is just a great creature that is useful in a lot of situations, and – like every other creature in the deck – we can hit it with CoCo.
Selfless Spirit - Our deck puts out a lot of creatures quickly and relies heavily on our mana dorks. Board wipes are devastating to us. Selfless Spirit is our board wipe protection and can also be used against some targeted removal.
Spell Queller - This is another key card in our deck. It turns all of our CoCos into potential counterspells for most of the cards in the format, and is a 2/3 flyer to eat spirit tokens and get in for damage. It is important for players new to the deck to know that Spell Queller doesn't counter the spell it targets; it exiles it from the stack. Yes, you can Spell Queller an Abrupt Decay or a Supreme Verdict.
Spellskite - With Splinter Twin banned and infect effectively pushed out of the format thanks to the printing of Fatal Push, there is not much of a need for the trusty ole 'skite at the moment. Sometime in the future, though, we made need to call on our old friend again to eat up our opponent's pump spells or disrupt a combo.
Tarmogoyf - Most Knightfall lists don't run the goyf. I don't like him in this deck, either, but he is at least worth a mention here. He is often a big dumb beater for cheap (or off of a CoCo). While he is a great card and a staple of the modern format, he just doesn't have enough utility to see play in this archetype and is typically small compared to our knights.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben - This is our tax card. Yes, it makes our CoCo cost more, but it also really slows down or completely stops some decks. Storm can’t beat this card. It slows down burn. It is a good option against a lot of other combo decks.
Thalia, Heretic Cathar - And this version of Thalia is really good in some other matchups as a different type of disruption. Goryo's Vengeance decks fold to this, for example. She slows down a few other decks. Some of the decks she doesn't stop are slowed enough by her for us to win.
Tireless Tracker - This guy lets us draw a lot of cards and also gets huge. He works insanely well with our strategy.
Vendilion Clique - 3/1 Flash Flying with build in hand disruption that I can also hit with CoCo? Yes, please! The double blue is pretty tought on our mana and this inclusion is a bit of spice for the deck. I'm trying it out in a combo-heavy meta.
Voice of Resurgence - Our deck is a combination of go-wide and go-big, so Voice is an obvious inclusion. He makes your opponents not want to play on your turn and they will also not want to remove it. This card is amazing early on, and still great later in the game. Against some decks it can lead to a handful of tokens.
The Lands:
Fetch Lands - We run a pretty standard set of fetches for a modern deck, but sometimes run more than other modern decks since we care about lands in the graveyard. Late game it is perfectly acceptable to fetch and “fail to find” when you know you don’t have any fetchable lands left just so you can pump your knights.
Shock Lands - Again, we run shocks as the backbone of our mana base, just like most other modern decks. Shocks are also great because they have basic land types and forests/plains can be sacrificed to KotR.
Basics - I run some basic forests and plains, but no islands. I want to have the option to get an untapped land without shocking and also want to maintain enough lands that I can sac to KotR to combo.
Creature Lands - Lumbering Falls and Celestial Colonnade – These lands give us something to do with our mana when we flood out, provide strong creatures that are resistant to board wipes and any sorcery-speed effects, and can be tutored up with KotR. Technically we could also run Stirring Wildwood, but Lumbering Falls and Celestial Colonnade are the better options as a 3/3 hexproof and a 4/4 flying vigilance, respectively.
Bojuka Bog - This is the land you tutor if your opponent uses their graveyard in any way. Always exile their yard, never your own. Note that this land’s ability targets a player and is not a “may” ability, so if they have hexproof (via something like Leyline of Sanctity) do not play this land.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All - We use this against control decks to make out CoCo uncounterable. This is like Cavern of Souls for instant and sorcery spells, but costs two life to activate.
Cavern of Souls - You only really see this in the humans tribal variation of the deck. It is great in that build, but not so useful in other variations.
Dryad Arbor - We play this 1/1 land creature sometimes to have something to fetch in response to an edict effect (like I said, former infect player...) or to let us get some ramp off of a CoCo. Remember that he does have summoning sickness the turn he comes into play, so we can't use him for mana right away.
Gavony Township - Our deck often ends up with a bunch of creatures on the board, and this land lets us grow them all.
Ghost Quarter - We’ve discussed this on a bit already. We use the land to attack our opponent’s mana and to get rid of their utility lands. It is also our answer to tron. This cards gets better when we have Aven Mindcensor. Note that it is also sometimes correct to Ghost Quarter your own lands to pump your knights if you don’t have the combo online.
Horizon Canopy - This land helps with color fixing and can draw us a card or add another land to our graveyard if we are in a tight spot. UPDATE: I waited for a reprint to add this land to my list and Iconic Masters is about to deliver!!! Having pplayed with the deck a fair amount, I'm excited to finally get a Canopy (or two) for my deck.
Inkmoth Nexus - This may seem like a really weird inclusion in the deck but it serves a specific purpose: dealing with infinite life combos. There are a number of decks in modern right now that gain infinite life and then just expect you to concede to them. Inkmoth Nexus gives us a way to deal infect damage and kill them with poison counters. We don’t have pump spells aside from Kessig Wolf Run, but we have a few creatures with Exalted to help speed up that clock. Additionally, Ranumap Excavator allows us to replay our Nexus if our opponent destroys it.
Kessig Wolf Run - We covered this one already, too. It is there to give a KotR trample so we can win through a blocker. Note that we may have to use a Birds of Paradise to make the red mana required to activate this if we mess up on sequencing our lands when comboing off or if something happens to our lone Stomping Ground. It should be the last land you tutor when going off with the combo. Alternatively, we can run Rogue's Passage and not have red in our deck at all.
Sejiri Steppe - This is a very powerful land if used properly. We can respond to targeted removal of one of our important creatures by activating a kinght to grab a steppe and blank the removal spell. We can also grab the Steppe when we are going off to give a knight protection and get past blockers.
Planeswalkers:
Not all versions of Knightfall go the planeswalker route but they can be powerful tools for us. Some decks run them main and some side, but I wanted to cover some of the more-common options here.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Nissa, Steward of Elements
Tamiyo, Field Researcher
Other Spells:
Retreat to Coralhelm - We’ve covered this one already. It is the combo piece that lets us untap our knight with a landfall trigger to repeat the tutor process. It can also be used to scry on landfall if we are in a tough situation and need to find a specific card, but this is not the ideal use of the card. The number of Retreats you play in your deck is based on how reliant you are on the combo. I typically hold the Retreat in my hand until the turn I want to execute the combo, unless I am playing against a discard (Thoughtseize/Inquisition of Kozilek) deck.
Collected Company - Again, we’ve talked about this already. This card was dominate in standard, to the point that I quit playing the format until it rotated. It has also been dominate in modern. It is just THAT good, and our deck is designed to maximize its value.
Path to Exile - It is one of the best removal spells in the entire game of Magic. All white decks want it, including us.
Life from the Loam - This card transforms the strategy of the deck a bit, but can be awesome if you want to loop Ghost Quarter and/or pretend Punishing Fire isn't banned in modern... I don't run the Loams, but a case can be made for a LoamPox-esque variant of knightfall in Junk colors.
Chord of Calling - Green Sun's Zenith is not legal in modern, so this is the best alternative we get. I've seen some lists run one of them.
Other Sideboard Cards:
Our deck runs white and has a red splash, so we have access to a lot of the best sideboard cards in the format.
Leyline of Sanctity - Play it against burn and against heavy discard decks. Basically play it against any deck that needs to target you to win or to stop you from winning.
Magus of the Moon - It is a blood moon we can hit with CoCo. It stops Tron decks dead in their tracks, but we run a few basics and a number of mana dorks, so we can typically still cast everything without too much of a problem. It does limit our ability to combo, though, since we can’t sacrifice our shocks to KotR with Magus on the field.
Stony Silence - Stops affinity in its tracks. Is also great against any other decks that rely on artifacts.
Unified Will - Seems to be the prefeered counterspell for this deck.
More coming soon.
