Duel Decks: Color Hosers

I was going to launch into a brand new initiative (actually, probably not) today, but then I found out about the upcoming new Duel Deck.'

RAWR!!!

My thought processes went through a couple different stages when I read this.

1. Disbelief. The last Duel Deck published not more than a moment ago was Elspeth vs. Tezzeret. The Elspeth deck is a mono-white soldier deck. Knights, on the other hand, are almost assuredly going to be mono-white as well. Because the non-white ones probably aren't out slaying dragons. My best guess, at least.

2. Further Disbelief. Another fairly recent Duel Deck was Divine Vs. Demonic. Featuring a mono-white angel deck. So we have soldiers, angels and now apparently knights. Seems pretty heavy on mono-white tribal, doesn't it?

3. Even Further Disbelief. Another fairly recent pre-constructed release was Archenemy: Scorch the World with Dragonfire.

4. Grudging Interest. So then I tried to figure these decks out. I looked again at what little information I had to go on.

For Knights: Holy Paladins, Noble Cavaliers and Swift Sky Hunters
For Dragons: Enraged Goblin Minions, Majestic Hellkites


To me, the Dragon side sounds a lot like Jund. Not the deck archtype, of course. The namesake shattered fragment of Alara home to black, green and red mana. Here, goblins and dragons worked together using the "devour" mechanic, with goblins more often then not being the "inside man" of the operation. Inside being inside of a stomach. Because the dragons eat them. The dragons eat the goblins.

the food is goblins

Would the Knights then be White/Blue? I don't think so. I really don't. Because Knights don't show up in the blue color pie. Except for Court Hussar.

Oh. Crap.

If you look at it from the right direction, this Knight Deck might very well be white/blue, since these guys are supposed to be defending the realm from the unstoppable dragon horde. Law and Order are usually White, and when they go multicolor that color is almost always Blue.

But probably not…my best guess is that we are looking at yet another monowhite deck.

What else do we know?

Swift Sky Hunters? Boring Stuff.

Noble Cavaliers? Getting More Interesting. Kinsbaile Cavalier is one of the few "Knight Lords" that would properly serve a full-on Knight tribal deck. Gustcloak Cavalier is a pretty fun card I managed to completely miss out on the first time around. This guy seems like a real monster to get rid of in the attack phase.

Holy Paladins? Now We're Talking. Paladins have always been my favorite Knight. Rather than being a simple tool of hard-to-get-rid-of combat damage, most Paladins have 1 thing in common.

They blow up permanents. Northern Paladin. Southern Paladin. Pentarch Paladin.

While the Dragons may have numerically superior Goblins and powerfully superior Dragons, I think the Knights are going to be able to destroy permanents on a grand scale.

Problems? PUSH THE BUTTON.

While Elspeth used the well-worn "white weenie" technology, and Divine used the well-worn…uh…"find Akroma and cast it" strategy, I think the future Knights deck will use a slow-rolling "Rock" strategy to slowly gain advantage and remove hard-to-deal-with threats. While being hard-to-deal with themselves. There will almost certainly be some guys with various "protection froms" ready for deployment.

Of course this is all a guess based on about 2 lines of text. So worthless!

But if you were looking for worth-while content, you'd probably be reading a different blog. Snap!

Tune in on Wednesday (at some point) when I make some grand statements about some sub-optimal card selections.

Sub-optimal like three-legged foxes. Who are still pretty smart!