Bant Retreat to Coralhelm

[CaptainTwiddle]

How has Rhox been? I want to up the Primal commands since they're devastating against most slow decks, and can be played turn 3 without much trouble here. It gives us game against Tron if we don't see our combo, and +7 life against burn is game over if they don't Skullcrack in response. If I'm running that many Primals I think it's safe to drop Rhox.

Rhox has been good. I'm going to try cutting down to 1 and adding the Suhome.

Primal would also take over Fauna Shaman's slot, who seems fine but not as good as Primal due to the swiss army knife style of the card.

I like Primal Command over Fauna Shaman in general, but I thought having another cheap play might be advantageous.

Is lotus cobra necessary? 8 Mana dorks is already going to be gumming up the works if we hit mid/late game, and doesn't accelerate us into our 3 drop which is the main problem I have with it. My main focus is to not have too many dead cards in here.

Cobra isn't "necessary," but it's pretty good. I doesn't accel into 3-drops, but it does allow for as much as 8 mana on turn 3 (T1: land, dortk T2: Cobra, fetch land, Dork, crack the fetch, dork, dork T3: tap 3 dorks, play/crack a fetch, tap 3 lands). Hence I'm only running 2. We could try just running 1, but then it's so infrequently seen early that it's probably not worth it.

Have you ever used Slayers Stronghold for the haste? It seems very niche since you'd need 3 lands in addition to whatever you're casting. +2/+0 is fine, but all lands must be scrutinized since the manabase is going to be very important to the combo.

Yes. I find myself using Slayers' Stronghold for haste in most games, ideally making Primeval Titan swing immediately but also sometime just letting a KotR immediately get active. It's also really nice with Ojutai (vigilance = hexproof).

...have you ever run into a situation where Liliana hits something other than a mana dork? I'm just wary of the hands where you have to play Dryad Arbor early and it just eats a bolt, or even worse a Pyroclasm.

I've saved a big KotR by fetching Dryad Arbor once against Jund. They had bolts for my mana dorks and I needed to chump block a Goyf, but I played a KotR with a fetch up.