Okay, full disclosure. Craig is a Connecticut local I’ve run into at numerous IQs over the last few years. He’s a solid player I knew was always going to give me a good match. He’s also a player I knew was going to be playing a good deck but with a unique twist. He was the first person I saw playing Catacomb Sifter and Wingmate Roc, akin to the Esper lists that we saw last fall with Eldrazi Skyspawner in place of Sifter.
So when I ran into Craig last weekend in Pittsburgh, I had to see what he was playing. And he did not disappoint. Craig brought a sweet Bant Company list that borrows elements from the U/R and U/W Fliers decks that have seen success on the fringe of the format. The typical green creatures are supported by the Vaporkin cousins themselves, Rattlechains and Dimensional Infiltrator.
Rattlechains combines with Bygone Bishop to give the deck a Spirit subtheme as well as another card advantage engine, as if Duskwatch Recruiter and Collected Company weren’t enough. Bounding Krasis is what gave the initial Bant Company lists a flash element, but the 3/3 body is fairly weak on most battlefields. The fliers in this list let you get around the efficient blockers in Standard to apply pressure.
Eldrazi Skyspawner supplements the fliers to create a significant aggressive presence, but the Eldrazi Scion token is important to enable Reality Smasher. As your opponents are busy either trying to answer your flying army or assemble an attacking force to race, Reality Smasher comes down to punish either plan. The five-power haste creature swings any race but can also help you win an attrition war against reactive decks. Despite not having evasion or being a target for Collected Company, it’s the perfect supplement to the army of fliers this deck generates.
The rest of the list is derivative of stock Bant Company lists, from Sylvan Advocate and Duskwatch Recruiter to Reflector Mage and Eldrazi Displacer. These are the cards that let you build an advantage in long games, so the clear direction of Craig’s list is to more easily dominate the early turns with aggressive plays. Typical lists of the deck can punish stumbling opponents, but the fliers in this list cement the primary gameplan as an aggressive one.
This shift in strategy makes the deck better against G/W Tokens, as Sylvan Advocate and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar are weak to aggressive flying creatures, but the continued presence of the card advantage creatures means you don’t lose much against the control decks of the format.
The greatest advantage you gain with this list is that most players are going to assume you are on a typical list of Bant Company and will be caught completely by surprise with the unique Spirit elements of the deck. Taking a well-known deck and creating an offbeat spin on it is often a better plan than playing a completely rogue archetype, since with the former, your opponents will prematurely assume which cards are in your deck, whereas with a rogue deck, your opponents will assume you are playing strange cards and have a better chance of figuring out what exactly is going on before it’s too late.
Creatures (29)
- 4 Eldrazi Skyspawner
- 4 Reflector Mage
- 2 Eldrazi Displacer
- 4 Reality Smasher
- 4 Sylvan Advocate
- 2 Dimensional Infiltrator
- 2 Bygone Bishop
- 4 Rattlechains
- 3 Duskwatch Recruiter
Lands (25)
Spells (6)
