Chivalry is Dead!

Modern Competitive Knights Pox Tribal Zombie

Sjorpha

Land (25)

• 2x Castle Locthwain
• 4x Flagstones of Trokair
• 4x Godless Shrine
• 4x Marsh Flats
• 4x Silent Clearing
• 2x Snow-Covered Plains
• 2x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Creature (22)

• 4x Dauntless Bodyguard
• 4x Foulmire Knight
• 4x Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
• 2x Knight Exemplar
• 4x Murderous Rider
• 4x Smitten Swordmaster

Sorcery (6)

• 2x Collective Brutality
• 4x Smallpox

Planeswalker (5)

• 2x Ashiok, Dream Render
• 3x Liliana of the Veil

Instant (2)

• 2x Nameless Inversion

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Sideboard

Creature (7)

• 3x Fulminator Mage
• 2x Kambal, Consul of Allocation
• 2x Phyrexian Crusader

Planeswalker (2)

• 2x Ashiok, Dream Render

Instant (2)

• 2x Disenchant

Artifact (2)

• 2x Damping Sphere

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Stony Silence

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Maybeboard

Creature (1)

• 1x Mirran Crusader

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Chivalry is Dead!

"Don't ask my name, it's long since I forgot

if once I had a title, home or wife.

No songs of fame or valor is my lot,

and yet my quest continues past this life."

Flavour overload in this BW Zombie/Knight tribal that plays as well from the hand as it does from the graveyard.

Frustrate your opponents with smallpox, go wide and attack with an army of indestructible knights, self mill and deny graveyard and tutoring with Ashiok, rebuild your board and recur your removal spells with Haakon.

General gameplan

You have a couple different angles of attack to choose from as you start the game, depending on your hand and the enemy deck.

You can go wide with knights and just attack, playing the cheap knights from the hand and buffing with Knight Exemplar. You're not as fast on this front as some of the other tribal decks, but you can potentially swing for lethal by turn 4.

You can also play a more controlling long game with Smallpox and removal spells, getting your opponents threats out of the way before starting to deploy your own.

For the long game you have Haakon to play knights and Nameless inversion from the graveyard.

Creatures

Dauntless Bodyguard: Aggressive 1-drop that can just attack and can play from the grave with Haakon. It also protects your bigger creatures from removal, and with Haakon in play that's a recurring thing that can make your board really hard to get rid of. The synergy with Knight Exemplar is also very nice.

Foulmire Knight: This guy can make attacks and blocks look really bad for your opponent, and in the late game it's a nice extra draw with the adventure mode. Chump blocking with this with Haakon out makes for recurring 1 mana "removal" that is really hard to outgrind.

Haakon, Stromgald Scourge: Haakon is a weird card. Let's you play knights from the grave which can be extremely powerful. The trick is to get him into the graveyard but once he gets going he can outgrind many decks.

Knight Exemplar: Powerful knight lord, get two out hand your entire board is indestructible, or pair with a Dauntless Bodyguard and it's almost as good. Can be played from the grave with Haakon, just like all the other knights so I'm going to stop pointing that out now.

Knight of Meadowgrain: Just a nice little knight card that complements some of the lifeloss costs we have in the deck. It's not the most powerful creature on its own, but I found that both first strike and especially lifelink are things the deck needs to not drain your life total out too fast.

Murderous Rider: Fantastic card in this deck. Unconditional instant removal of both creatures and planeswalkers followed by a 2/3 lifelink knight body. The fact that it shuffles into the deck on death is a mixed bag, you kinda wish it went to the grave with Haakon but it can be nice against mill and to restock the deck with the removal spell. It can still be played from the grave if it get's discarded, milled or countered.

Spells

Collective Brutality: A great tool in a deck that wants to discard cards, and all the modes are useful to us as we are a deck that likes to regain some life after paying to various costs. There are also some decks, like burn/prowess, that can be really blown out by a well timed Brutality.

Nameless Inversion: A removal spell that can be cast infinitely once you have Haakon out, and combo that can win the game against some decks. On its own it's not the most powerful removal spell, but it's ok and has the small upside of killing indestructible creatures.

Smallpox: Another spell that can really blow some decks out if timed well, for example on the play against a mana dork opener. Ideally you want to play this with an empty board on turn 2, saccing a flagstones (Urborg being the other land) and discarding a Haakon. That's the ideal scenario, but there are many situations where saccing one of your zombies or one drops or extra lands is fine as long as your opponent suffers enough damage. Given that it can be a bit situational in this deck it can also be a good option to just discard it to a brutality or Cryptbreaker.

Ashiok, Dream Render: Ashiok combines very useful self milling, putting Haakon and knights in the grave, with disrupting enemy graveyard strategies and tutoring. It's a bit of a meta call as the self milling on it's own might not be cost efficient enough, but in the current metagame with Primeval Titan decks being so common I think it's warranted. And it's also good against traverse shadow, grixis shadow, tron and the Uro/Kroxa decks. Simply put there are a lot of tier decks that wants to abuse the graveyard and tutor effects, so the times when Ashiok does nothing are very rare.

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position in Modern Tribal 3 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Mythic Rares 33 - 9 Rares 14 - 4 Uncommons 6 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.20