This post is a little late, but I'm still counting it for yesterday, for the record. This is going to be a quick little post about a casual friendly deck that I put together with a friend of mine. It's T2 legal, but probably won't win any major tournaments. In fact, it's pretty much just a fun theme deck. With that, the decklist for Zendikar-Scars Mono-White Knights.
Creatures:
4 Student of Warfare
4 White Knight
4 Knight Exemplar
4 Kemba's Skyguard
3 Sun Titan
Spells:
4 Brave the Elements
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Condemn
3 Day of Judgment
Planeswalkers:
3 Ajani Goldmane
Lands:
20 Plains
3 Emeria, The Sky Ruin
The foundation for this deck is powerful, fast creatures. The Students of Warfare are arguably one of the strongest 1-drops in the game. The ability to have a 3/3 first strike on turn two without much difficulty really helps the deck leap forward. Any spare mana can just get funneled into them, and they're fast enough to dodge most early removal like mana leaks and such. White Knights are solid two drops, and there only to help the deck deploy quicker. The Knight Exemplars are the centerpoint of the deck – both because they're lords (granting +1/+1 to almost every other creature in the deck, as well as indestructibility.) That said, Exemplars are everything bait. They'll get doom-bladed, they'll get hideous ended, they'll be the solitary target of almost every single removal spell your opponant has. That said, feel free to protect your guys early on with Brave the Elements. That's why they're there. Protect your guys early.
Kemba's Skyguards are solid 3 drops, despite their low P/T. They fly, and with the additional power from the Exemplars and Honor of the Pures, they can become significant threats. The additional life is just icing on the cake. I'm partially torn between the Skyguards and Cloud Crusaders, despite the increased mana cost. I'm going to want to playtest both to see how they do in practice.
Sun Titans, obviously, are your finishers. One of them can reanimate a surprising number of your creatures, including exemplars. Getting those lords back on the field can rapidly change the face of the matchup. Combined with the Emerias, which should be going live around the same time as your Titans, you can really start ramping up to a kill rapidly.
Condemn is to handle those pesky Wurmcoils and Primeval Titans and Baneslayers and other threats you can't quite handle. Honor of the Pure seems like a no-brainer, bolstering everything you have in a very creature heavy deck.
Day of Judgment was a controvercial choice when I was making the deck. It does provide a board clear, but only if you have an exemplar out. Once Emeria goes live though, or you have a Sun Titan ready to drop, it becomes extremely easy to repopulate your side of the field.
Ajani is just there to provide some stalling via life gain, possibly dropping the giant avatar on the board for a major threat, but most commonly, allowing you to swing without compromising your defense. If we were using blue, I'd likely replace it with Vencer for the unblockable alpha strike, but we're not.
The deck plays fun, if a little fragile. You need to be prepared to aggressively mulligan if you don't think you can hold board control with your initial draw. Losing one card is not a gigantic loss for the chance to get a much better hand.
Overall, I love this deck more for it's thematic coherency than for anything else. It won't beat the top-tier decklists, but it's enjoyable, especially in a multiplayer format where vigiliance from Ajani, Day of Judgment, and late-game play comes in especially handy.
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