Modern

Modern Bant Primer

This article has been a long time coming.

People have scoffed at me for playing Bant in Modern for quite some time now. The story takes us back at least two years ago, where I was messing around at weekly events while living in Waterloo, Ontario. I decided to play a color combination explicitly because it was not represented in the format. Bant was the chosen shard. There were good reasons from the start for why nobody played these colours, for this was in a time before [card]Flooded Strand[/card] and [card]Windswept Heath[/card] were legal in the format. My deck had Arid Mesas and [card]Scalding Tarn[/card]s in it, alongside 4 [card]Misty Rainforest[/card]s. Again, the project was a deliberate foray into the absurd.

After 5-0’ing one weekly and 4-1’ing two others, I knew I was having fun playing cards like [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] and [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] side by side. They were nightmares for other fair blue decks, and access to counterspells made me feel like a Zoo deck that didn’t fold immediately to random degenerate stuff, at least in the post-board situation. It wasn’t until the release of Khans of Tarkir, where my manabase would become a thing no longer nauseating to the soul, that I could start taking its development more seriously.

By then (and I feel like I’ve told this story before regarding Legacy) [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] had run amok in the format. The dominant archetypes were [card]Birthing Pod[/card] and UR Delver. I actually had a good run with Bant in locals during that time period, playing cards like Sunlance and [card]Harm’s Way[/card] to stave off the Delver players as well as exploiting the raw power of Geist and [card]Vapor Snag[/card] to keep Pod off its axis. I was running a few copies of [card]Dig Through Time[/card] instead of [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], hoping to find threats or removal to close the game out instead of relying on a random draw 3, especially given that the deck was more land heavy (and hence prone to whiffing off its ancestral recalls) than the lean, mean Delver machine. Perhaps to all our benefits, we no longer need to select between broken and slightly-less-broken blue delve spells.

But you don’t even have a list yet. Let’s just start with a fairly recent moment in history:

[deck]
[Lands]
1 Breeding Pool
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Plains
1 Razorverge Thicket
1 Stirring Wildwood
2 Temple Garden
1 Treetop Village
4 Windswept Heath
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Dromoka’s Command
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Gitaxian Probe
1 Ojutai’s Command
4 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Loxodon Smiter
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Thragtusk
4 Voice of Resurgence
1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dismember
1 Dispel
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Life from the Loam
2 Negate
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sunlance
1 Supreme Verdict
2 Surgical Extraction
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

With the above I placed 2nd at this year’s Toronto World Magic Cup Qualifier, losing to Hunter Platt’s [card]Scapeshift[/card] at the end of the road. I was undefeated through the swiss.

Prior to the WMCQ I had won a GPT and top 8’ed a Face to Face Sunday Showdown and countless other 30+ man events. The week after the WMCQ I top 8’ed a Mana Deprived Super Series with a list that was one card off from the above and lost a win-and-in at another MDSS with a combo-oriented version (using [card]Retreat to Coralhelm[/card] with [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card]) to Francis Choi after taking a call from my girlfriend and getting a game loss for tardiness (I may well have lost the round anyway, but let this be a reminder to you all that tardiness kills). I also went 11-4 in GP Charlotte, good for 79th (if I recall) in a field of several thousand.

Last weekend, I went to SCG Cincinatti, where my good friend Matthew Dilks went 12-3 (good for 10th place) with BW Eldrazi. I played Bant, by now my mainstay, and put up a 10-4-1 finish, stealing 39th place in a field of 1022.

Between larger events I have played all kinds of permutations of Bant. I have played versions with no combo maxing out on [card]Collected Company[/card], versions with both the combo and [card]Collected Company[/card] in large numbers, versions with the combo and no [card]Collected Company[/card], versions with neither of the above (as my cited list indicates), versions with [card]Remand[/card]s and [card]Vapor Snag[/card]s, versions with [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card]s to pump my Goyfs, and so on.

In what follows I’ll get into my philosophy behind Bant in its current incarnation, and what reasons one could have to lean in my chosen direction. I will get to my SCG Cincinnati list and end with an explanation of the changes I would make to it in light of those fifteen rounds of competitive play. But first…

Some Philosophy

I like modularity. I like decks that sacrifice raw inevitability for in-round adaptability. I like to outwit and confuse my opponents who expect me to be on things that I’m not. I like to see unorthodox deckbuilding decisions rewarded in real-time. None of this means that I’m willing to neuter myself with a deck that feels sub-optimal. Nor am I always going to play the brew. I’ve run the gamut: decks that are obvious, decks that are fringe, decks that are somewhere in between. I’m a Magic player.

When I’m in a certain mood, which is more and more common these days, I will work as hard as possible to squeeze every ounce of value out from something that others have written off in its early stages. I like succeeding where others have not bothered to succeed. I build decks for the moment where I can tell myself that they are legitimately competitive without self-deception and with results. No, I have not crushed a GP yet, and perhaps I won’t. But I don’t think myself incapable, and if you watched Zak Elsik at a local event with Lantern Control six months ago you would have laughed at him too.

Pros don’t have the time to ride a train of thought for two years in Modern – they pick up what is obviously good and optimize it, or they let a specialist innovate on their behalf. And not every pro that is a specialist stumbles upon the same thing.

The edge that deckbuilders get is knowing what they’re going to face, tweaking their numbers to suit the metagame, facing (largely) what they expect to face because others aren’t deckbuilders or believe (erroneously) that a metagame is static and a cardpool fully explored, playing something unanticipated, and reaping the rewards accordingly. Moreover, if my story is something of a success story so far (and I think it is, even if there’s room to grow) it is affirmation that Magic really does offer room to express your personality through your deck choice.

I still get that competitive Modern tournaments tend to be a hotbed of mercilessly linear strategies where it can feel like you are playing past your opponent. Sometimes you can’t make them play with you, so you cram crap like Worship and [card]Stony Silence[/card] into your board. These are the concessions that I will make even if I don’t want to in order to stay competitive. Even if we can’t be innovative on every front, we can still do our thing.

[card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] is a nightmare for the [card]Steam Vents[/card] player. [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] neuters [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] and [card]Remand[/card]. [card]Thragtusk[/card] competes with the best of them. [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] gives you some extra reactivity, effectively extending the depth of your counter / removal packages for different stages of the game in a list that is otherwise mostly fat creatures. [card]Path to Exile[/card] is the best removal in the business. [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card] is a toolbox with legs when you show him some love. Have you ever played [card]Treetop Village[/card] and [card]Celestial Colonnade[/card] in the same deck? It’s so bad that it’s good.

Let’s bring ourselves (almost) up to date with my SCG Cincinnati list – Wonkr Bant X.0:

[deck]
[Lands]
1 Breeding Pool
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Plains
1 Razorverge Thicket
1 Stirring Wildwood
2 Temple Garden
1 Treetop Village
4 Windswept Heath
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Dromoka’s Command
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Gitaxian Probe
1 Ojutai’s Command
4 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Loxodon Smiter
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Thragtusk
4 Voice of Resurgence
1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dismember
1 Dispel
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Life from the Loam
2 Negate
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sunlance
1 Supreme Verdict
2 Surgical Extraction
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

On day one of the event I drew with Jund and lost to abysmal bad fortune against RUG Twin, squeaking into day two at 7-1-1. I would have been on the play for game 3 against Jund, the BG(x) variant which I’m comfortable against compared to its Abzan counterpart where [card]Lingering Souls[/card] is a real issue. Twin matchups are generally where we thrive, since an early [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] or [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] severely hampers their smooth curve and our removal so efficiently disrupts the combo once we have a clock.

Day two I picked up losses to Affinity, UR Twin, and Naya Company. My wins, spread across two days and in no particular order, were as follows:
Grixis Control (x3), Grixis Twin (x2), Bant Company, Merfolk, GW Hatebears, UWR Control, Affinity.

Now, let me articulate in some more detail just what this list was gunning for:

I was anticipating a lot of Grixis Control, Twin, Zoo, Eldrazi, and Tron. Of the five, I felt strong against the blue decks, weak to Zoo and Eldrazi, and somewhat weak to Tron. Obviously this is not a good ratio, and indeed I was considering playing something else entirely for the weekend. Is Bant well-positioned at all? I was lucky to hit so many [card]Steam Vents[/card] decks, even though some bad draws cost me my matches against Twin on two occasions. Soon I will get to how I think Bant can survive (and thrive) with some adjustments for these other matchups. I will admit one major difficulty, though: if Eldrazi decks become massively popular — and there are signs, with recent spoilers, that they will — this deck will not be in a good position to face them. I think that this will also bode poorly for other green creature decks, though, and Modern is going to remain a wide format either way. It’s not the end of the world to concede one matchup. The idea behind any good deck choice is that we don’t concede too many.

Against Tron, since you are inferior on the board to a streamlined Naya Company list, you rely heavily on your [card]Stony Silence[/card]s and post-board counterspells and [card]Ghost Quarter[/card]s to lock down the match. Part of the reason to favour the combo is precisely that it helps you cheese out wins where you would otherwise lose to the superior inevitability of other decks. I found that my Tron matchup was best when I was playing [card]Collected Company[/card] and a combo. [card]Collected Company[/card] skirts the sorcery-speed activations of Karn and Ugin, allowing you to untap and go for the kill with a combo or at least use your flash threats to kill the on-board ‘walkers. The combo does cost a reasonable amount of life and can be bad against Zoo unless you’re quick to set it up, but sometimes does work to shore up that matchup.

There are four main reasons to not run the combo. First, it forces you to play a more linear game where you slim down on removal. More importantly, bringing in post-board counterspells reduces the integrity of your creature-count, as against Bloom, Twin, and Tron you want to keep in your Paths; this results in less consistent Collected Companies. There is also the obvious problem that the combo forces you to rely even more on your graveyard. Finally, although [card]Retreat to Coralhelm[/card] isn’t a dead draw without [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card], it is worse than another threat basically all the time. These reasons were partly why I attempted a version of Bant with the combo but without [card]Collected Company[/card] at GP Pittsburgh. That was the first and only GP I have failed to day 2. The deck felt schizoid. In the end I had sacrificed end-step Knight of Reliquary off of [card]Collected Company[/card] just to play some reactive cards against other unfair decks. I really ought to have either played the linear strategy like everyone else does, or just not played the combo and kept consistent according to my biases.

I want to discuss some of the cards that I played in SCG Cincinnati. This will allow us to segue into an updated list and a final bit of philosophy on what we are trying to do.

Cincinnati – The Good and the Bad

There’s no smooth way to go about this. I’ll just lay it out piece by piece.

I was very disappointed with Worship the whole event. Naya Company decks play more and lower-costed creatures to exploit the card with. Most importantly, they are almost always the aggressor when Worship comes down, so they can punch through an opponent’s board once it resolves. Bant Midrange, on the contrary, can feel like a grindy midrange/control deck post-board, so you can’t necessarily capitalize on a resolved Worship by going for the kill with impunity. There were multiple cases in Cincinnati where I resolved Worship only to sit there and wait for my opponent to deck out. On one occasion against Merfolk this actually worked, and I was fortunate to take an unlikely win in game 1. On the other occasion, against Affinity, the game dragged out until I had no [card]Ghost Quarter[/card]s left for his [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] and I died while my other threats were blunted by [card]Etched Champion[/card]. My play was also suspect that game, but I would have only secured my second draw of the tournament if I had seen a couple of lines and executed them properly.

Note that in both these matchups they have outs to Worship: if you play any non-Geist threat (which I had the presence of mind not to do in the game aforementioned) the Merfolk player can [card]Vapor Snag[/card] it once you are at one, and they will attack you down to one soon enough. They can even [card]Vapor Snag[/card] your Geist’s angel token if you try to get in for four in the air; you lose one life, rather than taking a damage, and die. Against Affinity, they can kill you with Infect. Against Zoo, Worship can put in some real work, but a savvy player won’t cut their [card]Qasali Pridemage[/card]s against you — even if their reasoning is only that the exalted bonus helps their [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]s trump yours — so you’re just waiting for the inevitable. Against Twin, you don’t often find windows to slam a four-drop at sorcery speed (which is why I cut my top end against them and bring in a few counters, though the matchup is already pretty solid). These are reasons why you may not want Worship in a deck of this nature.

Another card – and this may come as a surprise – that I have finally lost some love for is the copy of [card]Elspeth, Knight-Errant[/card]. Back when I was playing four copies of [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] and Zoo was less popular, Elspeth was great. It can still help you cheese out some quick wins from time to time. However, the card is very bad against combo decks, fast aggro decks, or big mana decks, currently a large chunk of the format. When you’re playing Bant Midrange, the combo decks punish you for tapping out at sorcery speed after turn four (notice that I played one [card]Ojutai’s Command[/card] as a value four-drop that doesn’t let me get punished in this way). Against the aggressive decks, you are often insufficiently aggressive to capitalize on its pump effect, so that you are making a bad attack if you do or merely making a soldier or two if you don’t. The big mana decks don’t often care if you pump your creature for three damage, though sometimes this can be enough to close out a game. These issues are exacerbated whenever you are on the draw. Elspeth shines more brightly in Naya Company decks, which have a sufficient creature density with their low curves to jump one of their threats over a clogged board and avoid getting punished on the swing-back.

Besides these cards, nothing stood out as problematic. If anything, I was simply underpowered against the Naya decks and could have had a board that was better configured for a few other matchups. We could also just play Naya, but I am operating on the logic that Geist is worth playing and counterspells are worth having. I don’t want to play a rush-down deck that prays it has enough gas to get there. I want to ride a threat or two to victory as I negate my opponent’s business spell. I also want my opponents to be confused, somewhat in the dark.

Some have remarked that the decks against which counters would be good are precisely the decks that have more counters than us to protect their combos. If that’s the case, we may as well eschew the counterspells altogether and go for some red cards. I don’t often find that the games play out this way, however. The point of playing a midrange deck that can take on a pseudo-control role is that you still do have sufficient pressure against combo decks. They cannot sculpt their hands to include extra permission all day. You will make them go off, and when you do, they are often very soft to [card]Dispel[/card] or [card]Negate[/card].

All this being said, here is the next iteration of Bant (or something close to it) that I intend to try:

[deck]
[Lands]
1 Breeding Pool
1 Celestial Colonnade
2 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Plains
1 Stirring Wildwood
2 Temple Garden
1 Treetop Village
4 Windswept Heath
[/Lands]
[Spells]
1 Bant Charm
2 Collected Company
2 Dromoka’s Command
4 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
3 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Kitchen Finks
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Voice of Resurgence
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
2 Negate
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Dispel
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Stony Silence
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Sunlance
1 Angel’s Grace
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

This list finally concedes that some number of Collected Companies is a virtue. Two is not four, so you still don’t quite get the velocity of some other green creature decks. Nevertheless, you are getting a few ‘flash threats’ and card advantage options that serve multiple purposes and match up somewhat better against Naya, Tron, and Twin. Against Naya, we are in a better position to keep up by mirroring their strategy. Against Tron, we are blanking their sorcery-speed big walkers and giving ourselves options to recover after wraths. Against Twin, we have a better chance of sticking threats after turn 3 without risk of death to the Twin combo. The presence of [card]Collected Company[/card] means that a few cuts get made: the [card]Thragtusk[/card] has to go, and [card]Ojutai’s Command[/card] (much to my chagrin) gets cut as a curve consideration. [card]Ojutai’s Command[/card] is a fantastic, powerful card in a deck of this nature, but it is not the raw engine that [card]Collected Company[/card] is, and our space is finite. The second [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] has to go as well: hitting it off an on-curve [card]Collected Company[/card] is too mediocre. I am content to take a risk on playing the first: the upsides are just so high when you can manage them. It leaves for the second copy of [card]Qasali Pridemage[/card].

The second [card]Bant Charm[/card] leaves for the first [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] in the main, while Elspeth leaves for the Second. This is just to get our creature density up to the requisite level. I choose Finks over [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card] because Finks overperforms when you’re behind and, as noted, the absence of Nacatls means we are often looking to catch up against the faster green decks. The presence of the card maindeck frees up a spot in the board where it previously resided. In all, five cards leave the maindeck: Elspeth, [card]Thragtusk[/card], Snapcaster, [card]Ojutai’s Command[/card], and a [card]Bant Charm[/card]. Five cards enter: two [card]Collected Company[/card], Two [card]Kitchen Finks[/card], and a [card]Qasali Pridemage[/card]. In the end we have lost a small share of reactive elements after all, at least in the sense of playing more answers. [card]Collected Company[/card] is still an instant, and [card]Qasali Pridemage[/card] interacts quite readily against many key cards in the format.

The board is where things get interesting. The Worships are gone, replaced by two [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]s, and [card]Dismember[/card] leaves for Sunlance. Finally, the slot where a copy of [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] once rested is now home to a copy of [card]Angel’s Grace[/card]. Some thoughts about these inclusions are in order.

[card]Supreme Verdict[/card] is here to answer many of the same strategies that Worship was intended against: namely, faster aggro decks. While they do not help against [card]Scapeshift[/card] and [card]Ad Nauseam[/card] like Worship did, [card]Scapeshift[/card] can always [card]Cryptic Command[/card] Worship back to our hand before going off anyway, and [card]Ad Nauseam[/card] is accustomed to playing [card]Echoing Truth[/card] in the board. Perhaps we are better off fighting these strategies on the stack after all, so we do it with counterspells and [card]Angel’s Grace[/card]: a one-of that, I think, beautifully fits the role of letting us progress our board with minimal tempo concession. The [card]Scapeshift[/card] player can put us out with a Valakut trigger on their next turn if they have any [card]Mountain[/card]s left in deck and if they get to have an extra turn or finding the land in the first place.

Sunlance over [card]Dismember[/card] is a more radical change. They do not target the same strategies. Sunlance is better against Nacatl, Burn, Affinity and Merfolk while [card]Dismember[/card] is better against Tasigur, [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], and [card]Deceiver Exarch[/card]. I posit that we are already well-positioned against Twin and Grixis Control, so choosing a piece of removal that benefits our matchups against faster aggro decks is preferable. The decisions begin to compound: a Sunlance for the early game with [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]s for the mid-game, plus [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] for the interim and [card]Collected Company[/card] for matching our answers with corresponding velocity; these are the sorts of things that make Merfolk and Zoo go from bad to respectable matchups, and they do not leave us without the kinds of answers we want against unfair decks. It helps to have the Verdicts against BG(x) as well, where Worship is a poor choice (since they really can just kill all of our threats and effectively blank the card).

Now, then, a word on some more unorthodox card choices that have probably been on your mind from the early stages of this article.

Unorthodox Card Choices (Or: Why I’m not Completely Insane)

Here is a list of the cards you probably think are bad but aren’t:
[card]Moorland Haunt[/card]
[card]Disdainful Stroke[/card]

Well, either I am too comfortable with my card choices or the list is actually rather short. I’ll assume the latter. [card]Moorland Haunt[/card] is one of the craziest manlands that requires the right shell to abuse. Naturally, that shell is a creature deck that plays blue… Many have suggested that this card become a second [card]Ghost Quarter[/card]. It could, but the card is so insanely powerful against control decks and BG(x) decks that it is very hard to imagine cutting. If you want to ensure that your list has 4 [card]Ghost Quarter[/card] in the 75 (I humor myself in assuming that somebody may actually play this deck), by all means cut this. Surely cut it before cutting a colored source. Try it first, though.

[card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] is a calculated decision to play something over the third [card]Negate[/card] that is good in many spots where [card]Negate[/card] is good but also slightly matchup-specific. I chose [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] because of its applications against all the big mana decks of the format. Where [card]Negate[/card] hits [card]Scapeshift[/card], Karn, Ugin, and [card]Hive Mind[/card], [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] hits all of those cards plus [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card], [card]Primeval Titan[/card], [card]Inferno Titan[/card], Ulamog, and the creatures that are climbing out of the new Eldrazi Deck. I certainly don’t think hitting one of your opponent’s [card]Blight Herder[/card]s or [card]Reality Smasher[/card]s is enough to render the Eldrazi Matchup a good one, but I’ve already admitted our flaws.
This is a short section, after all. Let’s get back to the general point.

Closing Thoughts

Bant is a midrange deck that is also aggressive against fair blue decks and control-ish against faster aggro-decks. The sideboard is perhaps its strongest feature. It feels like it can dance with just about anything, though it is not impervious to being outclassed from time to time by decks that are one dimensional or all-in, thereby punching through you. If this is the story of my Modern career, I am happy enough to live it.

I have no doubt this will not be my last attempt to make Bant work. I may try the combo again someday, but for now I am of the opinion that it is not necessary and has some real downsides inherent to it. Then again, so does not playing the combo. If this article can encourage anything, hopefully it is a discussion of the merits and demerits of these different versions.
Also, do not ask me to play [card]Rafiq of the Many[/card]. We are not playing ‘Shards of Alara Theme.dec the Gathering’. We are playing Magic.

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