This past weekend was Regionals and the format was Modern. I reached out to good friend of mine, Eli Kassis, for a deck list. Eli is also a brewer and he was the person that originally started playing Four Color Saheeli in Standard and has had other sweet decks. He recommended Knightfall to me which was a Bant Collected Company deck that abused Knight of the Reliquary with Retreat to Coralhelm to get most lands out of your deck, tap your opponent’s creatures down, generate a bunch of mana, and then attack with a huge Knight of the Reliquary that killed your opponent in one hit. The thing I liked most about this deck however, was that it didn’t even need Retreat to Coralhelm to win. The deck functions fine without it, it turns out casting Collected Company into Spell Queller to exile your opponent’s spell and then hitting any other creature is pretty good. I ended up placing in top sixty four with the deck and I could’ve done better if I had played the deck before. So today I want to talk about the Knightfall deck and the Tron deck I’ve been playing!

Let’s start off with the deck I played at Regionals.

Knightfall ? Modern | Ali Aintrazi, 63rd Place SCG Regionals Raleigh

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 2 Courser of Kruphix
• 2 Scavenging Ooze
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Knight of the Reliquary
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Spell Queller
• 4 Voice of Resurgence

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Nahiri, the Harbinger

• Instants (7)
• 3 Path to Exile
• 4 Collected Company

• Enchantments (2)
• 2 Retreat to Coralhelm

• Lands (22)
• 1 Plains
• 3 Forest
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple Garden
• 2 Wooded Foothills
• 4 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Izzet Staticaster
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 2 Surgical Extraction
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 2 Lone Missionary
• 1 Fiery Justice
• 2 Engineered Explosives
• 2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 2 Ghost Quarter

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So, this was list I played. I took the exact list Eli Kassis gave me and just added two Thalias in the Sideboard to combat the new Cheerios deck that started popping up. So, let’s talk about this deck.

What does the deck do?

Well . . .  It can do a lot of things but at its core it is still a Collected Company deck. Like other Company decks it will usually accelerate its resources with mana creatures and then overload on very good two and 3-drop creatures. The creature curve will stop at three and the Company decks try to abuse these creatures by having them synergize together. While this deck does have the synergy of Knight of the Reliquary and Courser of Kruphix, that’s where it ends. Instead of playing a bunch of creatures that will do something when you have a lot of them in play, the deck just plays very good creatures. The deck can recover from a board wipe easily because of this. Not only do we have Collected Company to refill our board but just one creature can threaten lights out for our opponent. Something like a Scavenging Ooze or a Knight of the Reliquary can spell game over, even after a board wipe.

Retreat to Coralhelm and the Combo

Having Retreat to Coralhelm not being a creature is good and bad. It means one of your combo pieces can’t be removed by a creature removal spell but it also can’t be gotten by Collected Company. Again, not being able to be gotten by Collected Company is okay since the deck doesn’t fully focus on the combo anyway, it just plays good creatures and still has the, “Whoops turn two Knight of the Reliquary into Retreat to Coralhelm” games.

In case you don’t know how the combo works, it requires that you have a non-summoning sick Knight of the Reliquary on the battlefield and Retreat to Coralhelm. You then sacrifice a Plains or a Forest to the Knight and get a fetchland which will untap the Knight. You can then sacrifice the fetchland and use the new land that comes into play to tap down one of your opponent’s creatures so Knight can eventually attack and have no creatures to block it. Even if your opponent has a creature land all you must do is make sure you end up with a fetchland on the battlefield. You attack and after your opponent animates their creature land you can then sacrifice the fetchland to untap your Knight of the Reliquary and start the cycle again to ensure it can connect with your opponent’s face.

It may sound complex but I assure you it’s not that hard after you do it once. After playing the deck in a tournament there were some changes I would’ve like to make to it. It’s not many but just a couple different lands or even creatures can give the deck many more options. This is the list I would play if I was playing the deck tomorrow.

Knightfall ? Aether Revolt Standard | Ali Aintrazi

• Creatures (27)
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 2 Courser of Kruphix
• 2 Scavenging Ooze
• 2 Selfless Spirit
• 3 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Knight of the Reliquary
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Spell Queller
• 4 Voice of Resurgence

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Nahiri, the Harbinger

• Instants (8)
• 4 Collected Company
• 4 Path to Exile

• Enchantments (2)
• 2 Retreat to Coralhelm

• Lands (22)
• 1 Plains
• 3 Forest
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple Garden
• 2 Wooded Foothills
• 4 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Izzet Staticaster
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 2 Lone Missionary
• 1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 2 Engineered Explosives
• 2 Fiery Justice
• 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 2 Ghost Quarter

Buy This Deck

We don’t have many differences but they are still very big changes.

Nahiri Vs Tamiyo

I’ve heard people talk about playing Tamiyo, Field Researcher over Nahiri. Both are 4 mana Planeswalkers; and, even though this deck could abuse Tamiyo more than Nahiri, Tamiyo requires you to have creatures to really abuse it where Nahiri can just come down and exile that Tarmogoyf or Reality Smasher and pose as a threat even if you just have mana creatures laying around. Nahiri is better suited against decks like R/W Prison where it can exile annoying enchantments like Blood Moon or even something like Worship after Game 1. I like Nahiri as a nice catch all that can also filter our hand. I think a lot of people are under the misconception that you need to play Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and that’s not the case. Nahiri is still a great Planeswalker in Modern, with or without Emrakul.

Kessig Wolf Run over Gavony Township

Sometimes you end up having a lot of mana creatures and I’d rather just threaten lethal with one instead of having to tap my mana and sometimes creatures to put +1/+1 counters on them so I can attack the following turn. Sometimes you just gotta swing your Exalted Birds of Paradise and threaten lethal by having Kessig Wolf Run on the battlefield and some other mana guys laying around. Look your opponent in the eyes as you sink all your mana to give your Birds of Paradise +6/+0 and Trample. Then ask them, “Who’s the mana dork now bucko?!” You ever see the movie The Birds? No? I’m just old? Well, whatever, it’s like that!

On top of killing your opponents with Birds of Paradise, it’s also nice to just give your 10/10 Knight of the Reliquary Trample because you can’t tap all their guys down since Retreat to Coralhelmhas retreated from you and is still in your deck.

Nobody likes Gavony. We are all moving to Kessig. Pack your bags kiddo!

I Don’t Like People Playing with Their Cereal

The last thing I want to hit on is the Sideboard. Yes, I have three Thalia, Guardian Thraben and an Eidolon of Rhetoric. Why you ask? Because of that darn Cheerios deck and spell based combo decks. Back in my day our parents didn’t let us play with our food. We ate our cereal then had to drink all the milk that was left in the bowl or we got nothing else to eat that day. But now? You people play with your cereal before throwing a bunch of grapes at us for lethal. Call me the fun police, but no thank you. Thalia, Mr. Rhetoric and I are having none of it. No more playing a bunch of 0 cost spells to draw your whole deck or playing Goblin Electromancer or Baral, Chief of Compliance to cast all the spells and then kill us. I want to draw Thalia or Eidolon of Rhetoric and that’s why we have a combined total of four. Thalia works well against other decks like Infect, Burn, and even Tron. Since we can’t Chord of Calling for her, we play multiples.

Speaking of Tron and toys . . . 

Golgari Tron ? Modern | Ben Friedman

• Creatures (7)
• 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 2 World Breaker
• 3 Wurmcoil Engine

• Planeswalkers (5)
• 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
• 4 Karn Liberated

• Sorceries (12)
• 4 Ancient Stirrings
• 4 Collective Brutality
• 4 Sylvan Scrying

• Artifacts (17)
• 1 Planar Bridge
• 4 Chromatic Sphere
• 4 Chromatic Star
• 4 Expedition Map
• 4 Oblivion Stone

• Lands (19)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Urza's Factory
• 3 Blooming Marsh
• 4 Urza's Mine
• 4 Urza's Power Plant
• 4 Urza's Tower

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Fatal Push
• 1 Ratchet Bomb
• 1 Consuming Vapors
• 2 Thragtusk
• 4 Nature's Claim
• 3 Relic of Progenitus
• 1 Ghost Quarter

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Why Black?

By playing Black we also gained Fatal Push from Aether Revolt. Collective Brutality is still the better main deck card right now but Fatal Push is very good against small creatures like Death's Shadow, any infect creature, Puresteel Paladin, and Grim Flayer. Basically, being a better Path to Exile in that Scenario. The last card we gained for the board by playing Black is Consuming Vapors. Consuming Vapors is great against Hexproof creatures like Geist of Saint Traft or Slippery Boggle but it’s also fine to game winning against any creature deck like Death's Shadow or any Collected Company deck. The only Collected Company deck where you might not want this are decks that can generate tokens like Elves. It’s very hit or miss in the Elves matchup. The last thing you can do with Consuming Vapors is target yourself. You might laugh, but sometimes gaining six or seven life is what you need to do. Thankfully the creatures you’re sacrificing generate tokens or can be re-bought from the graveyard.

Planar Bridge

It might take a while for it to catch on but I have a feeling that all Tron decks will eventually run one Planar Bridge. The card is great in that it offers inevitably like Eye of Ugin did. Remember that you had to pay 7 mana and tap Eye of Ugin to tutor for a creature. It won’t do anything the turn you play it but untapping with it will spell game over since it will keep finding threat after threat.

Urza’s Factory

It’s the best thing I’ve could find that replaces Eye of Ugin. Control decks can counter all your spells and some creature decks can even Path to Exile your creatures and you’ll be in top deck mode. Now you can tutor up Urza's Factory and make a steady stream of 2/2s that will take over the game or buy you enough time to draw another threat. I didn’t like having to tutor up Sanctum of Ugin and then having to draw another 7-drop to activate it. I wanted a land that was a threat and this was the best I that I found. Yes, it’s better than the colorless creature lands like Gargoyle Castle.

That’s everything I have for you today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and as always thank you for reading and your support!

Until next time,

Ali Aintrazi

@Alieldrazi on Twitter