I marked my answer "blue":
I currently invest my time at playtest with Eldrazi & Taxes, but if i would play soldiers now the build would look like this (more or less):
8 Plains
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Karakas
4 Enlistment Officer
4 Preeminent Captain
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
3 Recruiter of the Guard
3 Captain of the Watch
3 Ballyrush Banneret
3 Daru Warchief
2 Palace Jailer
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
2 Umezawa's Jitte
Side:
1 Aegis of Gods
1 Aven Cloudchaser
1 Containment Priest
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Peacekeeper
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Elspeth, Knight Errant
2 Rest in Peace
2 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Swords to Plowshares
Note that i cut Suppression Field, but i guess it can be quite strong vs DnT (Vial/Mother/Stoneforge/Equipment/Waste/Port etc.) and Miracle etc. - after Thalia 2.0 i feel i don't need this card at maindeck, since it was only good early enough and afterall no soldier (officer) and no beater (topdecking more Fields was always bad). Feel free to cut Sideboard cards or prepare it for any local meta.
TEAM MtG Berlin
Strictly easier to cast Fiend Hunter who's also a Soldier. Looks like a nice addition to this deck's options.
The weakness to Wasteland isn't as pronounced as you'd make it seem. Because the deck usually plays 5+ basic Plains and 4 Chrome Mox, it usually doesn't get locked out of white mana often by Wasteland. And getting a Tomb or City Wasted isn't as devastating to this deck because most of your threats are in the 2cc-4cc range.
I usually have a positive Miracles matchup with this deck because, again, in the long game, your Enlistment Officer will draw you enough cards to beat sweepers.
New Fairgrounds Warden card is pretty sick. It's even more of what this deck needed - spot removal that can be drawn with Enlistment Officer and cheated into play with Preeminent Captain.
I'm playing a list right now that has 4 of these guys and 1-2 Palace Jailer MD to be tutored with Recruiter of the Guard. More Palace Jailer in the SB. This configuration gives you enough game to consistently defeat Delver/Tarmogoyf decks, and it makes stuff like Sneak 'n' Show a bye. The only thing this deck still struggles against is, well, Death'n'Taxes and Lands. 4 Phyrexian Revoker in SB and 2 Damping Matrix in SB should give you some ammunition to fight D'n'T, but you might just have to depend on the fast starts to beat Lands.
6 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Karakas
4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Winter Orb
4 Enlistment Officer
4 Preeminent Captain
4 Fairgrounds Warden
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
3 Captain of the Watch
3 Daru Warchief
2 Recruiter of the Guard
2 Kor Skyfisher
1 Palace Jailer
1 Sanctum Prelate
SB:
4 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Damping Matrix
1 Sanctum Prelate
4 Rest in Peace
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Palace Jailer
Cool. I saw Damping Matrix and was a bit puzzled until I noticed there are no Suppression Fields and Winter Orbs in their place. I guess from your experience the Fields are hit and miss in terms of effectiveness?
I'm also curious if you will try out Aerial Responder. A decent flyer with lifelink. I've noticed Aven Riftwatchers in lists in the past and I guess that Aerial Responder could be the successor? The double white could be a bit prohibitive though.
Can't wait for Kaladesh to come out so I can try out Soldier Stompy. Lol, all we need now is an Armageddon effect on a Soldier. Course that's never ever going to happen.
Hello,
I'm currently testing the following list.
Some of you might find ideas that we could push even further:
2 Karakas
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
9 Plains
1 Daru Warchief
1 Field Marshal
1 Mirror Entity
1 Palace Jailer
2 Aerial Responder
2 Sunstrike Legionnaire
3 Recruiter of the Guard
4 Ballyrush Banneret
4 Enlistment Officer
4 Preeminent Captain
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
2 Shining Shoal
SB: 2 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 2 Rest in Peace
SB: 2 Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Council's Judgment
SB: 2 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Palace Jailer
Happy testing.
Ralf
Legacy & Homebrew **ONLY**
Brown Stax
Rainbow SWAT
Dimir Mill
Morph my Ride
Wally Wallah
Corona Syndrome
Wow.
I think this deck is finally the real deal.
I've been testing extensively against tier decks with my latest posted list and even though it is not 100% optimized I literally have something like an 80% win rate against the field with most losses coming as the result of misplays or just grindy matches against bad matchups such as Death n Taxes or Lands.
The addition of Thalia 2.0, Fairgrounds Warden, Recruiter of the Guard, Sanctum Prelate, and Palace Jailer have really destroyed some of the obstacles that were in this deck's way in the past.
Fairgrounds Warden in particular is just insane as a 3 mana unconditional removal spell that can be a.) uncounterable b.) cheated into play for free c.) drawn by Enlistment Officer, and d.) actually attack and block as well.
Winter Orb + Thalia 2.0 is crazy good against alot of decks.
Recruiter is not really a 4-of because you lose tempo playing him but as a 2-of or even 3-of he can add much needed card selection.
I think this deck might actually be close to Tier 1 at this point, and I'd rather play this than Eldrazi.
** The key is this: before, this deck would wreck Storm and other combo decks, and post a good matchup against Miracles. But it would struggle against the BGx Delver/Tarmogoyf/Gurmag Angler decks on top of struggling against Lands and DnT. Now that Fairgrounds Warden and Palace Jailer have been printed, this deck wrecks Delver/Tarmogoyf/Gurmag Angler decks. The only remaining "bad" matchups are Lands and Death'n'Taxes, and D'n'T isn't as bad anymore now that you can play Recruiter->Revoker and Fairgrounds Warden/Palace Jailer for their problematic creatures. **
That's exciting news, MGB. Congratulations.
What did your testing look like? How did you like your 4x Winter Orb setup - what was it like in matchups where it wasn't amazing?
It seems like the Turn 0/1 decks would still be hard (Belcher, Oops, TinFins, etc). Any thoughts on those?
And - what, specifically, do you think are the hardest parts of DnT and Lands? Is it the mana/land disruption? The removal (Jitte or PFire)? I'd love to work on ways to mitigate some of those weaknesses.
The Turn 0/1 decks are the same problem level for this deck as they are for every other Non-Force-of-Will deck in the format. Sometimes they just have the win on Turn 1 and you can't do anything about it.
The benefit of playing this deck over some other non-FoW decks such as DnT or Eldrazi is that you have Chrome Mox on top of Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors, and you have both Thalia and Chalice MD, so you can power out disruption on your first turn with a greater degree of consistency. Turn 2 Belcher/TinFins wins that would kill Death'n'Taxes might not work against this deck so easily, because you can play your Thalia a turn earlier than D'n'T if you have a Mox.
DnT is just naturally a problematic matchup due to Flickerwisp killing Chalice and Chrome Mox, and AEther Vial sidestepping alot of your disruption, and Chalice of the void and Thalia being suboptimal against their threats. Additionally, they have enough blockers and ways to kill you with Equipment that is hard to deal with. The solutions to this matchup are to maximize the use of the new removal soldiers (Fairgrounds Warden and Palace Jailer) and make liberal use of both Phyrexian Revoker and Damping Matrix. It will never be a good matchup, but hopefully with tight play you can at least manage to make it respectable.
Lands is a bad matchup because they have spot removal AND disruption, and can sidestep disruption with a quick combo kill. Winter Orb is a fine card against them unless they have the quick combo. The solution to this matchup is simply to have more explosive starts and/or find better disruption.
Awesome replies, thank you.
Regarding the decklist itself - are you finding anything "loose" or "flexible"? What do you consider the cards that you'd be willing to swap out? And what are the bank of cards you'd like to put in, if possible? Lastly, what cards have you not yet explored but have considered?
Really excited about some positive Soldier news!
MGB, do you think that Fairgrounds Warden makes Jitte unnecessary, at least in the main? I just built MDGhost's list with I think 2 Jitte's and the Chalices as the only non creatures (outside of Moxen). Makes sense to adjust numbers and have more Soldiers double as removal, and have the ability to run more than the regular 4 Chalices.
I'm not sure about Winter Orb, would be curious to sum the number of decks it significantly impacts versus where it is a dead draw. One nice appeal that Suppression Field has is that it can be pitched to Chrome Mox at least.
Also, do you mind elaborating on Kor Skyfisher's uses?
Kor Skyfisher is the best flying soldier you can get for 2 mana, essentially. The drawback is a real drawback some of the time when you just have to bounce a land, but most of the time it's not really a "drawback" in that you can bounce a spare Chrome Mox that you played without imprint, or you can bounce something with a CITP trigger and re-use it.
The real purpose is simply to have a 2/3 flyer that can block Delver of Secrets (and give you yet another way to deal with Delvers) or just fly over blockers for the win.
I'm still doing testing with the list.
Winter Orb is one of those cards that does something good nearly in every matchup. Even against a Delver deck you can occasionally tempo them out with a fast draw and they can only cast 1 thing per turn under Winter Orb + Thalia (1 or 2). Against some matchups where it's bad you just board em out for other hate pieces.
I played MD Ghost's list above for the first time against a friend with 12Post and High Tide. Insane how much power can be put out by Preeminent Captain. I'm eager to try MGB's idea and include more disruption, using the Fairgrounds Warden soldier/removal as a way to have a more compact list.
Saw a guy with a foil Warden at a pre-release event over the weekend but he left before I could bargain for a trade
So, I'm not sure why people like Winter Orb over Suppression Field. It's really bad early, if you don't have a Captain out, because you can't cast spells either much of the time. To risky to play in my opinion. I'd much rather play a single Hokori, Dust Drinker to fetch with Recruiter and play later after they tap out. I currently have 1 in my mainboard. Suppression Field does a lot of what Winter Orb is trying to do vs. opponents mana bases, and also it gets tons of other goodies, and can the effect stacks, so there's no harm running 4.
Current List:
4 Cavern of Souls
2 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Karakas
3 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Preeminent Captain
4 Enlistment Officer
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
4 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
2 Recruiter of the Guard
4 Daru Warchief
4 Suppression Field
4 Fairgrounds Warden
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 2 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 2 Rest in Peace
SB: 1 Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 1 Containment Priest
SB: 2 Sanctum Prelate
SB: 1 Leonin Relic-Warder
SB: 1 Aegis of the Gods
SB: 2 Crackdown
SB: 1 Gustcloak Savior
SB: 2 Dawnbringer Charioteers
FYI, I'm new to Source, always used MTGS, so I don't know how to card tag, and the announcement didn't help. Please help.
@R3ndr0c: For card tags, type "cards" inside square brackets [], then the card name, then "/cards" inside square brackets.
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