Topic: Bant Aggro Help

I played exclusively Selesnya Aggro and its many variants through DM/M14/Theros... After many thrashing by Devotion decks, I feel that Converting my Selesnya deck over to Bant aggro may prove to be very competitive against Devotion / Control / G/R Monsters.  I was lucky enough to get a full set of Brimaz & a couple of Ephara, God of the Polis and a number of scry lands from pre-release+box+fatpack combo.  Needless to say I pulled the cards together pretty painlessly.  smile

I would love to get people feed back on how to improve this deck: http://deckbox.org/sets/604959 

Local meta for Theros been mainly;  MORE:  Black Devotion > Blue Devotion > Red Deck Wins > Esper Control > Golgari Mid :LESS

Re: Bant Aggro Help

I think you'd probably be best suited to be mostly white with a splash of blue for D-sphere and Ephara, but you really aren't gleaning enough from the green to make it worth messing with your manabase.  If you were running Sylvan Caryatid for fixing that's one thing, but just relying on the lands you're going to be running too many tapped lands and will likely have more inconsistency than is necessary.

That aside, you're not in full on aggro mode, more hedging the line between aggro and mid-range.  Mono-white has access to a LOT of must answer creatures, but in order to be aggro you really need to beef up the low end of your curve - Soldier of the Pantheon needs to be a 4x, Boros Elite, Dryad Militant, Daring Skyjek, Imposing Sovereign, etc.  Personally, I think if you go down to two colors you can run a devotion deck that sits on the fence a bit and will still be successful.  Another added benefit of dropping down to two colors is that you'll be able to run Nykthos, which can either let you drop a ton of Heliod tokens or can enable earlier Elspeth drops (letting you move a second one into the main).  Then you can also run Angel of Serenity in the SB for games where the more aggro strategy doesn't quite pan out.  In either event, Soldier is a solid dude... find a way to fit him in there.

I get that you're hoping to use Deputy of Acquittals for added Ephara triggers, but really I think that's just trying to be too cute.  You're going to get card advantage off of her any way you look at it.  I'd actually suggest running a 2-2 split between Ephara and Heliod as he'll often be quite the beat-stick OR he can give you a means of making tokens on their turn for the added Ephara draws.

Re: Bant Aggro Help

Thanks for the suggests.  Yeah your right its not aggro, definitely more mid range. 

So I had an opportunity to play test it a bit today.  8 games vs mono-black and it only lost once.  We split it into 4 games each were we swapped decks. He's a much better player than me so beating him is always fun for me.  He only lost to a mana flood.

So... Brimaz Voice combo.  Wow... One dominate game went like this. 

Turn 2:  Voice
Turn 3:  Brimaz -
Turn 4:  Spear -  Rapid H Voice for token - Swings w/ Brimz (4); Token (2); =6
Turn 5:  Kiora - +1 on main threat - Swing for 18 on turn 5! insane
Turn 6:  D-sphere demon; quickly over and very satisfying not going to happen that like that ever time, but it played out like that one way or another

I definitely want to try White devotion and Green heavy variant.  Voice token + Brimaz + Spear if not answered very quickly simply wins games and it was the win condition the majority of the time.  If I couldn't chump the voice I killed it my self asap.  it was a few turns from win every time.  Its definitely has Mono blacks number... I now need to test it with control / red agro / Blue. 

As far as the Deputy of Acquittals I'm actually using it as a counter spell... Target removal my Brimaz or Ephara I flash this in to save them and still keep a blocker in place.  That was my thought in putting it.  Plus it adds to devotion, creature for my Voice, and Ephara, all just bonus.

Your suggestions will find its way into my devotion deck for testing smile

Thank you

Re: Bant Aggro Help

its interesting, I think I white wheenie splash blue/green for gas could work. I would look at dropping the walkers and some of the gods myself to help flesh out the early game with soldier like TyWoo said.

Personally if I was headed towards bant colors I would have looked more into mid range and focused on cards like prophet of Kruphix, courser of kruphix, master biomancer, door of destinies but yours is probably better lol