G/W Knights Metalcraft

[Ize19]

Artifact (14)
1x Argentum Armor
1x Behemoth Sledge
2x Cranial Plating
2x Flayer Husk
1x Ogre's Cleaver
3x Silver-Inlaid Dagger
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
2x Sword of Vengeance
1x Sword of War and Peace

Creature (18)
3x Grand Abolisher
2x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Mirran Crusader
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Puresteel Paladin
2x Stoneforge Mystic

Land (22)
4x Ancient Den
2x Evolving Wilds
4x Forest
6x Plains
2x Terramorphic Expanse
4x Tree of Tales

Instant (6)
2x Dispatch
2x Naturalize
2x Rebuff the Wicked

Hello all, I'm Ize, and my favorite part of Magic is deck construction, especially builds that seem fun, but are constantly called unplayable. My preferred format is Legacy, as that's what the friend who taught me played, and I like the challenge of going up against the game's best decks.

The first deck I ever built was a G/W equip/Golem splicers deck, and it was pretty terrible. Eventually I split it, added the Puresteel Paladin to the equip deck, and ran it at my local Legacy tournament. It got crushed, but the players there were very helpful, suggesting I add Knight of the Reliquary, which was a monumental improvement. Since my two most important (at the time) cards were Knights, I decided to turn it into a Knight deck.

After several periods of tweaking and experimenting, I decided to check out what others had done with Knights, and I realized that almost all of them were aggro/control, focused on slowing down the opponent to buy time for the Knights to equip and do scary stuff with Jitte or the swords.

My deck runs differently. I use Grand Abolisher, Naturalize, and Dispatch to protect my Knights, but the majority of the deck is about getting my creatures out, and making them bigger, both as quickly as possible.

2x Stoneforge Mystic: An obvious include in any equip deck, combos with the Puresteel Paladin (4x) to bring out whatever equipment best fits the situation, then attach it for free.

4x Noble Heirarch: A great card, and one of the main reasons for the green in this G/W deck. Early draw mana ramp/fixing, mid game cheap pump, plus a body to equip and attack in a worst case scenario.

2x Knight of the Reliquary: The second best target for this decks main combo, plus great at fetching just the lands I need to get things moving.

3x Mirran Crusader: The number one target for this deck's equipment, a double striker with built-in protection, only gets scarier when equipped with the swords/Sword of Vengeance. My usual win condition.

I've run slightly less developed versions of this deck before, and it clearly has the power needed to hang in legacy, but it was often too easily disrupted. I think it has the potential to be really fun in this format, and even competitive, but I'm admittedly pretty inexperienced at this game. I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have.

[Blackmagic]

Hi Ize,
Thought I'd show you my WW equip deck for reference/ideas
I've found it pretty decent and perhaps you can try it out for the different equipment and way it plays out

Suggestions I have for your deck include:

Cavern of souls
Mana Tithe
Knight Exemplar
Additional Stoneforges
Cutting the naturalize (Qasali Pridemage?)
Razorverge Thicket
Godsend

My Deck:
4 AEther Vial
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Masterwork of Ingenuity
4 Bonesplitter
2 Flayer Husk
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Sword of Feast and Famine

4 Kor Duelist
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Mirran Crusader
4 Puresteel Paladin
4 Serra Avenger
4 Squadron Hawk

4 Swords to Plowshares

4 Ancient Den
2 Marsh Flats
3 Cavern of Souls
2 Flooded Strand
7 Plains
1 Karakas

SB: 3 Leonin Relic-Warder
SB: 3 Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 1 Mirran Crusader
SB: 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
SB: 3 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 2 Ethersworn Canonist

[TLK]

I would think in an equipment deck you'd definitely want the full 4 Stoneforge Mystic. Also, 4 Swords to Plowshares is a typical auto-include in any deck running white.

[Seraphix]

[Cards]

...

The first deck I ever built was a G/W equip/Golem splicers deck, and it was pretty terrible. Eventually I split it, added the Puresteel Paladin to the equip deck, and ran it at my local Legacy tournament. It got crushed, but the players there were very helpful, suggesting I add Knight of the Reliquary, which was a monumental improvement. Since my two most important (at the time) cards were Knights, I decided to turn it into a Knight deck.

After several periods of tweaking and experimenting, I decided to check out what others had done with Knights, and I realized that almost all of them were aggro/control, focused on slowing down the opponent to buy time for the Knights to equip and do scary stuff with Jitte or the swords.

My deck runs differently. I use Grand Abolisher, Naturalize, and Dispatch to protect my Knights, but the majority of the deck is about getting my creatures out, and making them bigger, both as quickly as possible.

...



Since you're playing a toolbox-style deck, you should max out on Stoneforge Mystics. Not only do they give you a choice of any equipment to get (so you can sort of think them as more copies of equipment), they can make them uncounterable through the activated ability and also provide bodies to carry equips. Having a bunch of equips in play but no creature to carry them is this deck's worst nightmare, so you want to be sure to have a robust creature count. Right now 18 looks pretty low. Another creature worth considering is Mother of Runes, it can protect your other creatures and also carry equips in a pinch.

I would suggest adding a few more mana accelerants in addition to the Hierarchs-maybe 2 Birds of Paradise. This looks like a deck that requires a lot of mana and can also use extra mana effectively. Strapping some equips on a Birds of Paradise is no joke either, and I've won many games that way.

Knight of the Reliquary is a powerful card, but I'm actually not sure how good it is here. You are playing basic fetchlands to power it up, but playing these comes with a cost as you can't use them the turn you play them. Legacy is all about efficiency and being able to make plays so lands that enter the battlefield untapped are very important. Furthermore, while getting a 5/5 or 6/6 for 3 mana is nice, Knight of the Reliquary's biggest strength is the land tutoring ability. There are a variety of powerful utility lands available in Legacy like Wasteland, Maze of Ith, Karakas, Cavern of Souls, Sejiri Steppe, Bojuka Bog, Thespian's Stage/Dark Depths, etc. If you are going to play Knight of the Reliquary, I would strongly consider adding Windswept Heaths instead of Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse, and utility lands. Otherwise, I would cut Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse for lands like Sunpetal Grove, Brushland, or Razorverge Thicket that produce mana more reliably.

Another card worth adding is Swords to Plowshares. It just gives you an efficient way to interact with what a lot of other decks are doing.

[Ize19]

Hey Blackmagic, thanks for all of your suggestions. Mana Tithe is a great call, and fits perfectly in Rebuff the Wicked's slot. I also think Cavern of Souls is a great card, but it's a little pricey for me right now. I've already got a lot of great equipment, but I can see taking out one Sword of Vengeance for Godsend as well.

While Razorverge Thicket is also a great card,I don't think it fits this deck very well. I already have Noble Heirarch and KotR for mana fixing, and the deck is running smoothly, so I don't think the Thicket would add anything.

I've added in a Stoneforge Mystic, taking out a Grand Abolisher, as I've found in previous versions of this build that usually allows the Stoneforge to appear at the optimim frequency. As for Knights Exemplar, I've tried running it, but it doesn't suit this Knights deck, as it always seemed to fight with the cards I actually needed out , be it Puresteel Paladin or Mirran Crusader.

You have a really nice deck, and I especially like that Master of Ingenuity card, but overall it looks like the other builds I mentioned in my first post, aggro/control, which there's certainly nothing wrong with, I just liked that my deck ran differently.

Hey TLK, thanks for the reply, Seraphix's post was much more extensive and included your suggestions, so my answer to your post will be in my response to him.

Hello Seraphix, I appreciate your in-depth analysis of my deck. You make some great points about Stoneforge Mystic, and I've upped him back to three copies. While I can see the worry about not having enough creatures, that hasn't been a problem for me yet, I'll let you know how it plays after I try it out next week.

As a matter of fact, I used to run two Birds in this deck, until someone convinced me they weren't necessary. Still, I felt their absence, which is when I found the Noble Heirarch, which has been a great replacement. I'd love to add them again, just not sure what I'd remove.

KotR is great, and you're right that I'm not using him to his full potential. One of the things everyone always brings up about Legacy is how expensive it is to play, and a huge part of that is the expensive lands. Well, I don't have the money for all those broken lands, so instead I try to make use of great second-tier lands. My favorite are the Artifact lands, which might be broken in Affinity decks, but are merely enabling in Metalcraft decks. In my deck, the Knight's greatest use is ensuring I either get, or maintain metalcraft, which is what makes the rest of the deck easy to run.

While Terraforming Expanse and Evolving Wilds aren't great turn 2-3 draws, they're fine on turn one, and great once the Knight is out. Bust out a cheap fetch, grab a plains or forest, whichever you see first, sac it to the Knight, and bring out an artifact land, untapped. Plus, your Knight is now +2/+2. All that for an average cost of 13 cents.

Swords to Plowshares is great, but in this deck, Dispatch is even better. If you think I need 4, I'm interested to know what you think I should take out.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to review my deck, and for all of your suggestions, even the ones I'm not taking. I'm hoping to be able to take this deck to a local Legacy tournament next week, so if I do, I'll report back the results.

[Seraphix]

...

Hello Seraphix, I appreciate your in-depth analysis of my deck. You make some great points about Stoneforge Mystic, and I've upped him back to three copies. While I can see the worry about not having enough creatures, that hasn't been a problem for me yet, I'll let you know how it plays after I try it out next week.

As a matter of fact, I used to run two Birds in this deck, until someone convinced me they weren't necessary. Still, I felt their absence, which is when I found the Noble Heirarch, which has been a great replacement. I'd love to add them again, just not sure what I'd remove.

KotR is great, and you're right that I'm not using him to his full potential. One of the things everyone always brings up about Legacy is how expensive it is to play, and a huge part of that is the expensive lands. Well, I don't have the money for all those broken lands, so instead I try to make use of great second-tier lands. My favorite are the Artifact lands, which might be broken in Affinity decks, but are merely enabling in Metalcraft decks. In my deck, the Knight's greatest use is ensuring I either get, or maintain metalcraft, which is what makes the rest of the deck easy to run.

While Terraforming Expanse and Evolving Wilds aren't great turn 2-3 draws, they're fine on turn one, and great once the Knight is out. Bust out a cheap fetch, grab a plains or forest, whichever you see first, sac it to the Knight, and bring out an artifact land, untapped. Plus, your Knight is now +2/+2. All that for an average cost of 13 cents.

Swords to Plowshares is great, but in this deck, Dispatch is even better. If you think I need 4, I'm interested to know what you think I should take out.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to review my deck, and for all of your suggestions, even the ones I'm not taking. I'm hoping to be able to take this deck to a local Legacy tournament next week, so if I do, I'll report back the results.

I forgot you had Dispatch. Dispatch is certainly better when you have Metalcraft, but when you don't have Metalcraft is pretty awful. Plow will be much stronger on average, and the lifegain isn't a really big deal-every fair White deck in the format still plays 4, as TLK noted.

You're correct that a lot of the good toolbox lands are expensive. Sejiri Steppe is a nice cheap one that can turn your Knight into a combat trick. Bojuka Bog can also be a nice one to have in the sideboard against graveyard-based decks like Dredge and Reanimator. I'm sure there are more that are escaping me right now.

I would recommend trimming down equips to make room for the other stuff. None of them are worth running outside of the Swords, Behemoth Sledge, and Argenteum Armor.

Cranial Plating looks good on paper, but not being able to use the BB activated ability makes it worse (you can't produce Black mana). This ability is very powerful and makes combat very difficult for your opponent. This might be ok if you had lots of creatures with abilities like Flying, Trample, or First/Double Strike to just push damage through with Plating, but right now Mirran Crusader is your only man who fits that bill. The rest of your creatures don't have much toughness and can just be chump-blocked, making Plating look pretty embarrassing on them.

The rest of the equips you have are kind of low-impact and probably not worth the mana investment. You're better off with more creatures to put your good equips on.

[Ize19]

I forgot you had Dispatch. Dispatch is certainly better when you have Metalcraft, but when you don't have Metalcraft is pretty awful. Plow will be much stronger on average, and the lifegain isn't a really big deal-every fair White deck in the format still plays 4, as TLK noted.

You're correct that a lot of the good toolbox lands are expensive. Sejiri Steppe is a nice cheap one that can turn your Knight into a combat trick. Bojuka Bog can also be a nice one to have in the sideboard against graveyard-based decks like Dredge and Reanimator. I'm sure there are more that are escaping me right now.

I would recommend trimming down equips to make room for the other stuff. None of them are worth running outside of the Swords, Behemoth Sledge, and Argenteum Armor.

Cranial Plating looks good on paper, but not being able to use the BB activated ability makes it worse (you can't produce Black mana). This ability is very powerful and makes combat very difficult for your opponent. This might be ok if you had lots of creatures with abilities like Flying, Trample, or First/Double Strike to just push damage through with Plating, but right now Mirran Crusader is your only man who fits that bill. The rest of your creatures don't have much toughness and can just be chump-blocked, making Plating look pretty embarrassing on them.

The rest of the equips you have are kind of low-impact and probably not worth the mana investment. You're better off with more creatures to put your good equips on.

Ah, now I see where you're coming from. If I'm running so few equip cards, then not only will Dispatch be much less reliable, but I'll definitely need all 4 Stoneforge Mystic's. You certainly make a good point about not all of the equipment being relevant, but I really like having metalcraft easily enabled, plus the card draw engine that the Paladin provides.

You're certainly right about there being some cool budget lands, and I've looked up several, and currently have them in my sideboard. I didn't cut the Flayer Husk's though, as they not only bring creatures that can be equipped, but they serve the purposes I mentioned in the previous paragraph, for just one mana, in other words, best of both worlds.

Anyway, after taking your advice, this is my current decklist, though it may take some time before I have all the new cards listed:


Creature (21)

2x Birds of Paradise
2x Grand Abolisher
2x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Mirran Crusader
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Puresteel Paladin
4x Stoneforge Mystic

Artifact (9)

1x Argentum Armor
1x Behemoth Sledge
3x Flayer Husk
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
2x Sword of Vengeance
1x Sword of War and Peace

Land (22)

4x Ancient Den
2x Evolving Wilds
4x Forest
6x Plains
2x Terramorphic Expanse
4x Tree of Tales

Instant (8)

4x Dispatch
2x Mana Tithe
2x Naturalize

Sideboard (15)

2x Bojuka Bog
2x Brave the Elements
2x Fleetfeather Sandals
4x Ghost Quarter
1x Looming Spires
4x Sejiri Steppe

[pettdan]

I couldn't find any mentioning of Etched Champion. It could perhaps compete with KotR in the 3 drop slot. With metalcraft you can put an equipment on him without risking wasting your mana/turn due to removal in response, also the champion will be almost unblockable.

[Blackmagic]

Manriki-Gusari is also an equipment worth mentioning/trying out

[Ize19]

Hey guys, thanks for your continued responses. Pettdan, good call, someone did recommend him before, which is what led me to the Mirran Crusader, but you're right that he's still worth taking a look at. I don't want to lose KotR for him though, so I'll have to see what else I can take out to fit him in.

Blackmagic, thanks for the suggestion, it certainly has its uses. I'll consider it for sure.

Again, thanks so much for taking the time to help me out. I appreciate your consideration.