B/W Warrior Weenies, now with Exert! The deck is very young and pretty untested, so all feedback is very welcome, especially on the sideboard :)A few notes:
The main gameplan here is simply to kill the opponent very quickly, through playing many cheap creatures that benefit from global buffs, and a few creatures that can grow to large proportions by themselves. The deck also packs a few tricks and removal, as well as resilient creatures, to help win when turning dudes sideways isn't enough.
Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant are not warriors, but they are too powerful not to include, as all the best warriors are humans anyway. Lieutenant in particular gets us to a satisfactory anthem density, and with Aether Vial out can even act as a combat trick.
On that note,
Herald of Dromoka
is primarily here to let my exert creatures, particularly Glory-Bound Initiate, attack every turn. It also helps race other aggressive decks by letting us swing out and still have blockers. I feel that Glory-Bound Initiate is needed to give the deck a high enough density of modern quality creatures, and vigilance makes it really good.
Having a playset of Mutavault makes the manabase a bit shakier, making it tougher to include cards with multiple colored symbols. Aether Vial alleviates this somewhat in the case of creatures, but not noncreature spells, so noncreature spells with double colored symbols need to be used sparingly, and should be very powerful to justify inclusion. The other option of course is to remove the Mutavaults, but they help me close out quicker, play around board wipes, and add threats to the board even when I'm drawing too many lands, so I think they're worth inclusion for the time being.
You may ask what the reasons are to play this over other, similar tribal decks. We have three advantages over all (or nearly all) similar decks. Firstly is the potentially large lifegain from Glory-Bound Initiate. Second is Arashin Foremost, which helps make up for our relatively weak lords (compared to other decks in the format) to steal games out of nowhere. Third, and I think most importantly, is
Herald of Dromoka
. No other tribal deck I am aware of has access to board-wide vigilance, and this lets us very effectively race other aggro decks.
As for specific comparisons: Vs. mono white humans, we have a much higher density of quality threats and anthem abilities. We also have more resilient threats, and the ability to play creatures with Aether Vial during the opponent's turn, giving us much more flexibility to fight through removal. Vs. Merfolk, we get to run actual hard removal and more potent sideboard hate, and we're probably faster (though the board-wide unblockable and access to counterspells are certainly missed). Vs. 3-5 color slivers, they have better protection against spot removal, but we have a much more consistent, less painful manabase, and have an easier time casting noncreature spells thanks to decreased reliance on lands like Cavern of Souls. Vs Goblins, they are faster, and have more reach through burn, but have much weaker individual creatures and less resilient threats, and no Aether Vial to flash creatures in the opponent's turn. They will rarely be able to recover from a board wipe. The closest comparison is to 3-5 color humans. These decks could potentially rival us in speed, depending on the build, and have access to more card draw and resilient threats, while maintaining access to removal and potent sideboard cards. However, our manabase is more consistent, and we deal way less damage to ourselves.
