ECall Bant

Hey folks.

I think Eladamri's Call is a powerful and underplayed card. I put it into what I think is a reasonable shell, but need help with the specifics. At this stage I'm not concerned as much with adjusting this to beat some specific deck, but trying to find a the deck's strengths in general.

https://img.scryfall.com/cards/large...jpg?1521725346

Pros: Gets any creature whereas GSZ limits us to just green ones, and some good Blue bears have been printed lately.

Cons: Whatever we get costs 2 more mana
Our deck has some number of conditional cards


Below is a first draft decklist


// Creatures (20)
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Mother of Runes
3 Spell Queller
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Deputy of Detention

// Artifacts (4)
4 Aether Vial

// Spells (17)
4 Brainstorm
2 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Eladamri's Call
3 Swords to Plowshares

// Lands (19)
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Plains
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Karakas
4 Wasteland
2 Windswept Heath

//Sideboard
4 Winter Orb
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Spell Pierce
1 Fearie Macabre
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Profaner of the Dead
1 Trygon Predator
1 Meddling Mage
1 Gilded Drake


We offset the cost of ECall with Vial and Hierarch, And we are blue enough to play Force of Will. With the 8 pieces of acceleration Daze becomes attractive, and then so does Wasteland.

Because we are committed to playing some number of spells, at least for ECall and Force, we don't want Thalia.

The Feedback I'm looking for:

• Which one-ofs should be in the main/board?
• The deck needs a proactive gameplan other than the toolbox. I'm hoping its something like Heliod/Palace Jailer/Spell Queller and not Goyf or TNN but it needs something.
• I'm missing lots of potential playables.

Thanks for reading!

14 creatures and 4 vial seems awful TBH. Definitely cut over since call already does that. Probably some number if counters too. Daze is meh. I feel like with vial you want more creatures that double as spells. Spellstutter Sprites and the like. This deck probably likes the new walking Detention Sphere man. Probably also want a Rec Sage or something.

Living Wish for redundancy?

14 is not a great number, but Ecall is a virtual 4 more creatures and you're like 70% to find a creature off of your brainstorm.

I'm leaning more towards removing ponders for something like 2 Spell Queller, 1 Detention sphere guy, 1 trigon predator. Oh and -1 Trop +1 Karakas.

I thought about a deck like this one time. Here are the targets I was considering:
Spirit of Labyrinth
Gaddock Teeg
Containment Priest
Thalia
Ethersworn Canonist
Qasali Pridemage
Kataki, War's Wage
Wilt-leaf liege
Sigarda
Thrun, the Last Troll
Eternal Witness
Trygon Predator
Llawan, Cephalid Empress
Meddling Mage
Phyrexian Revoker
Geist
KotR
TNN

Good luck!


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Living Wish might be a good supplemental tutor, but my intuition is that the instant speed nature of ECall + Vial (or Ecall + Flash) is pretty important and outside of the 2 mana hate bears I wouldn't want to be Wishing for a lot of these cards. Plus getting to hold up an Ecall and a Vial on 2/3 lets you represent like half of your deck.

I think you want Knight of Autumn in there, and shouldn't Snapcaster Mage be present as well? Also, I'd say Spellstutter Sprite > Daze here.

Should I swap the knight and trigon predator? I guess that makes sense. Knight is the more general card and predator is the narrower/more powerful effect.

Do I have enough targets for snapcaster mage? Assuming I won't get to flashback daze or force often, that leaves 4 brainstorm, 4 ECall, and 3 Plow. Thats just 11-12 cards. Is there an agreed upon minimum?

I like Daze because I want more insurance against fast combo and more interaction in the early game in general. Its easy to find creatures that are good in the mid/late game so that should already be a strength for the deck.

Sprite with no support is only countering 1drops and as a 2 mana 1/1 just countering 1drops feels a little too low impact. For 1 more mana Spell Queller counters a wider range of cards and has a better body.


I guess there is a direction you can take the deck by playing all the counter creatures... Judge's Familiar, Sprite, Queller, (Mystic Snake?) and then it makes sense. But then I don't think you want what the rest of the deck is doing

Yeah, I'd say swap the Knight and Trygon.

Replace the 4x Daze with 2x Snapcaster and 2x Spellstutter. You can flashback StP against aggro and E.Call against anyone else. 1cmc is like 80% of the spells in the format, including most removal - StP/Bolt/Push and all cantrips. It'll hit stuff against everything but a Chalice deck, and then it's an easy card to board out.

If you're worried about fast combo put the Daze's in the sideboard. You don't have a fast clock so other decks can simply slow down a turn and ignore Daze if they're really worried about it.

Honestly this deck seems a lot more like a modified version of Bant Survival with E.Call replacing SotF than anything else. Maybe take a look at some of those lists?

cut 4 vial, add 4 lotus cobra. then fetches act as a way for "free" calls.
:D

I suggest:

+1 Ramanup Excavator
+1 Horizon Canopy

+2 Spell Pierce (to the sideboard)

Knight of Autumn maindeck, 0-1 Trygon Predator SB.

If you just need to kill one thing, Knight is better (does it immediately on ETB). If there's nothing to kill, Knight is better (use another mode). If there are multiple things to kill but their deck is fast (e.g. Storm), Knight is still better because you may not get 2+ attacks with Predator. Predator is only better in slow grindy matchups where you need to kill multiple things but not that quickly (e.g. The Ant War deck, Moon stompy).

Despite the instant speed nature of your deck (hold up ECall and Vial, then drop a creature in response to opponent's play), you don't actually have 2cc bears that are good to flash in. Canonist, Meddling Mage, Lavinia, Teeg and Revoker are all proactive hatebears that need to be on the battlefield before opponent tries to do something. If you tutor and Vial in response to an action, it's already too late. The opponent's action will still go off. You could have just played them on your main phase or tutored with Living Wish (sorcery speed). If you want instant-speed reactive tricks, better ones to flash in are: Containment Priest, Spellstutter Sprite, Snapcaster Mage, Harbinger of the Tides, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Qasali Pridemage, Mausoleam Wanderer... Proactive has its merits too, it's just a different strategy.

I agree with everyone else: more creatures and fewer spells. You're a Vial deck with 18 creatures (low), and half of them are MoM/Hierarch (support instead of business). A lot of the time your Vial isn't doing much, especially if ECall eats a Spell Pierce because you set yourself behind 1 land bouncing a land to Daze. Other Bant Vial decks with Force of Will and Brainstorm (e.g. CounterSliver) ran minimum 20 creatures, usually a bit more.

-2 Daze, +1 Spellstutter +1 Snapcaster?

Daze is good sometimes, but this is more of a hatebears control deck than a tempo deck. 4 Daze seems bad. Spellstutter won't always have a target, but it will often enough that sometimes you'll want one to tutor for instead of Spell Queller (e.g. Vial is on 2, or you can't afford them getting the card back later).

@Mr. Safety
It would be a waste of islands not to have some 1 mana counterspells in the board. Is there a strong reason for Pierce over Flusterstorm?

@FTW
To be fair Canonist and Revoker do get better from gaining flash but you are right, we want to be able to threaten more things off of a vial on 2.

-2 Daze, +1 Spellstutter +1 Snapcaster is actually pretty appealing.

Taking a look at Counterslivers (thanks btw), how about Phantasmal Image?