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BMoor's Magic The
Gathering
Deck Garage
Now
that
Time
Spiral
has
brought
back
all
of
Magic's
most
successful
keywords,
I
knew
it'd
be
just
a
matter
of
time
before
somebody
built
the
Flanking
deck.
It's
a
tough
deck
theme
because
outside
of
Cavalry
Master,
there
are
no
"flanking
matters"
cards,
and
flanking
doesn't
really
improve
as
you
get
more
of
it,
except
that
I
guess
it
puts
more
pressure
on
your
opponent's
x/1
creatures.
On
the
other
hand,
the
creatures
with
Flanking
in
Time
Spiral
are
all
very
efficient
creatures
and
beat
down
quite
well.
Let's
see
how
this
gamer
chose
to
go
about
it.
This is a deck that's based around creatures with flanking, and
Looks good, Anonymous! All your Knights are of the most powerful nature, and your counterspells look fine too. This deck fix will likely be a more minor tweak than normal.
First, let's look at your creatures. Knight of the Holy Nimbus is an excellent choice, as is Benalish Cavalry. Cavalry Master, Zhalfirin Crusader, and Celestial Crusader make wonderful "Lords" for the Flanking deck, and Gustcloak Cavalier and Pentarch Paladin make wonderful high-end beaters. Also, I love the Outrider en-Kor/Knight of the Holy Nimbus combo, even though using it while your opponent has two mana can get risky. My only misgivings are towards D'Avenant Healer. The Healer isn't a Knight and doesn't have Flanking. His abilities are very solid, but he doesn't quite fit the theme and his double-white requirement is tricky in this deck.
As a matter of fact, this deck's mana base is probably its biggest problem. Look at all the cards in this deck that require at least two mana of their color:
Pentarch Paladin
Cavalry Master
Knight of the Holy Nimbus
Zhalfirin Commander
Gustcloak Cavalier
Celestial Crusader
Sunscour
Cancel
Muddle the Mixture
This might not be such a problem if not for the fact that several of these cards cost only two mana. Meaning, they want you to have two mana of one color on turn two. In a dual-color deck, if have that many cards demanding you get two of their land first-- even if most of those cards are the same color-- you'll have problems in the early game. What can you do?
First, you can balance your mana base better to reflect your deck's needs. Yes, it looks like you have equivalent numbers of white and blue cards, but clearly the white cards are more color-demanding than the blue ones. Currently you have even numbers of Plains and Islands, and one Azorius Chancery. I think a few of those Islands need to become Plains.
More effectively, you can increase your amount of dual lands.
 And by dual lands, this time I don't mean common bouncelands. The Ravnica bouncelands, like Azorius Chancery, are optimized when you can play a land turn one and cast something, then preferably cast another one-drop turn two before bouncing the land, then you'll have 3 mana on turn 3. With bouncelands, you pretty much give up turn 2 a lot of the time. You, my friend, can't afford to give up turn 2. Turn 2 is when you can drop your 2/2 Flankers. Turn 2 is when your countermagic comes online. You can't play anything Turn 1, so if you rely on Azorius Chancery to accelerate your mana, you'll be discarding down to seven cards at the end of Turn 2. That's just terrible. So as much as it pains me to say this, you need Hallowed Fountain.
Hallowed Fountain is, to put it bluntly, the most effective white/blue dual land Wizards will ever print. Its power will win you games. That's why it costs $20 or so for a single copy. If you don't want to spend that kind of money, that's fine, but there's a chance you could recoup your investments in the tournament prize money you could win with a deck like this if you did. Fortunately, you're in luck. Since you have no one-mana cards, Hallowed Fountain's power for you lies in its ability to come into play tapped. On turn one, you don't care if it comes into play tapped because you weren't going to tap it for mana anyway, right? Well, there is another W/U dual that comes into play tapped. I speak of Boreal Flats, the snow land from Coldsnap. It's not as powerful as the Fountain because the Fountain lets you choose to pay 2 life or tap it. But in the early game, Turn 1 Boreal Flats, turn 2 Plains, Knight, turn 3 Island, ready to counterspell looks pretty good. You made no mention of any budget, my friend, so I'm putting both options on the table for you. Options, after all, are what makes Hallowed Fountain so powerful.
Now that I've given my dissertation on dual lands, let's look over your counterspell assortment. You've got 12 counterspells, plus 4 bounce spells, 2 Faith's Fetters, and a Sunscour if nothing else works. Boy, nothing's getting by you, eh? I think this might be on the excessive side, frankly, so let's go through and find out which ones are your strongest counterspells. Rune Snag takes the first place ribbon, I'd say. After that it's between Remand and Cancel, but I'd say Remand edges Cancel out by a small margin only because of aforementioned mana tension. Eight counterspells is usually enough, so Cancel can come out. Muddle the Mixture is a bit disappointing as a counterspell (though it has its moments) but pretty impressive as a Transmute card. What is it here that you're Transmuting for? Knights, or more counterspells? I don't really think that justifies its prescence here. So you've got a few extra slots apparently. You could add more Faith's Fetters. You could try Sleight of Hand to improve draws and sift through your deck. or, here's a thought-- try a few copies of Dovescape. Think about it-- you want to counter most everything your opponent does, and flank your way to victory. Dovescape counters wantonly and indiscriminately, and makes 1/1 Bird tokens. If your flankers get blocked by a 1/1 Bird token, the flanking will make it a 0/0 instantly and kill it. It won't even matter how many Birds gang block, say, a Benalish Cavalry because they'll ALL become 0/0 and die before a single point of damage is dealt. The plan has inherent risks, granted, but I believe you'll find Dovescape to be a powerful addition to this deck. Especially when, at end of turn, you tap out for Repeal to create a flock of Doves on command.
Hopefully this has been helpful to you, anonymous. And to all you readers out there, anonymous and identified. Time Spiral is full of great kewords from Magic's past, and even though I haven't seen the Echo deck yet, I'm sure there's a great deck lurking in each and every one of them.
Good luck!
~BMoor
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