Dark Bant Summoning Trap (The Best Rogue Deck in Standard)
February 16, 2010
At a PTQ in December of last year, I met a player named Jherjames. He showed me his Summoning Trap deck for Standard that had done well for him.
At the State Championships, he went 6-1-1 for 10th place. He beat White Weenie once and Boros Bushwhacker twice. His record versus Jund was 3-1. His draw was an intentional draw in the last round.
After his success at States, he won two Gameday tournaments. His combined record was 10-1-2.
I played a few games against him with Red/Green Valakut Combo and he crushed me in five straight games.
Jherjames also had success playing the deck on Magic Online. And it’s had a couple top four results on Magic-League. I think it’s the best rogue deck in Standard.
I’m a little bit surprised more people aren’t playing it. The lack of popularity could be because of the high price tag. It has a bunch of expensive rares and mythic rares including Baneslayer Angel.
| Dark Bant Trap | |||||||||||
Creatures (23)
Spells (14) | Lands (23)
Sideboard (15) |
| |||||||||
Of course, the decklist needs to be tweaked with Worldwake, but I think the deck is still good. Sphinx of the Steel Wind and Iona, Shield of Emeria are awesome against Jund. Iona obviously wrecks mono colored decks like Elves, Vampires, and Red Deck Wins. And Summoning Trap is great versus counterspells.
I’m sure Jace, the Mind Sculptor will be added to the deck. His brainstorm ability lets you put creatures back on top of your library to set up Summoning Trap. However, once you add Jace, you end up with the most expensive deck in Standard. I’ve emailed Jherjames and asked him if he has an updated list with Worldwake.
Jherjames also gave me the following sideboard plans.
Sideboard Plans
Jund
Play
-1 Iona
-2 Trapmaker’s Snare
-2 Path
+2 Flashfreeze
+3 Acidic Slime
Draw
-1 Iona
-2 Trapmaker’s Snare
-1 Path
+2 Flashfreeze
+2 Negate
Naya
Play
-1 Trapmaker’s Snare
-1 Iona
+2 Flashfreeze
Draw
-1 Trapmaker’s Snare
-1 Iona
+2 Day of Judgment
Boros Bushwhacker
Play
-3 Iona
-1 Harrow
-1 Trapmaker’s Snare
+3 Wall of Reverence
+2 Rhox War Monk
Draw
-3 Iona
-1 Harrow
-1 Trapmaker’s Snare
-2 Path
+3 Wall of Reverence
+2 Rhox War Monk
+2 Day of Judgment
Red Deck Wins
-3 Iona
-1 Harrow
-2 Trapmaker’s Snare
-1 Lotus Cobra
+3 Wall of Reverence
+2 Rhox War Monk
+2 Flashfreeze
Vampires
-3 Sphinx
-1 Path
-2 Trapmaker’s Snare
+4 Acidic Slime
+2 Day of Judgment
White Weenie
Play
-3 Sphinx
-1 Harrow
-1 Trapmaker’s Snare
+1 Wall of Reverence
+2 Rhox War Monk
+2 Acidic Slime
Draw
-3 Sphinx
-1 Harrow
-1 Trapmaker’s Snare
+1 Wall of Reverence
+2 Rhox War Monk
+2 Day of Judgment
Control
-2 Sphinx
-1 Harrow
-2 Path
+3 Acidic Slime
+2 Negate
Mirror
-1 Sphinx
-2 Iona
-2 Path
+4 Acidic Slime
+1 Day of Judgment
37 Responses to “Dark Bant Summoning Trap (The Best Rogue Deck in Standard)”
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and the list with worldwake is?
This deck is incredible, I want to play it..
The Dark Bant Trap deck was appeared first in magic league back in november
Pretty darn neat…
Sorry, but what does he mean when he says play and draw in the sideboard plans?
I get it, if you won the last one or not, as in who’s going to go first, you or your opponent.
@Abram: Yeah, play means you’re going first and draw means you’re going second.
@Zonit: Jherjames was the first one to post a top 3 result in Magic-League.com with the deck.
The list you posted actually never made anything in m-l…
First appearance octomber by Lat[GRC] a Greek guy at october [link]:
2nd appearance different list by same guy [link]:
And the 2nd list is the one your guy copied and tuned a bit
Hm, if I remember correctly, Jherjames told me that he was Lat[GRC]. Anyways, he said he did well on Magic-League with the deck. Also, he tweaks his deck a lot so his list might look different from tournament to tournament.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t emailed me back.
i think that when it comes to magic everyone should pry up on the (bant) attack idea…it’s much easier and more fun when you take the sharuum path, or use flying and protection to ease back into the game.
This decklist (with Worldwake cards) by LedZep got 3rd in a Magic League trial…
Creatures [25]
4 Baneslayer Angel
3 Birds of Paradise
2 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Spells [11]
4 Negate
4 Summoning Trap
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Land [24]
7 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Plains
4 Seaside Citadel
1 Swamp
2 Verdant Catacombs
Sideboard:
4 Acidic Slime
2 Iona, Shield of Emeria
3 Wall of Reverence
2 Flashfreeze
2 Path to Exile
2 Day of Judgment
(on Feb 18, 2010)
It seems to me that with knight of the reliquary it’s a bit odd that whoever made that deck didnt at least put in 1 sejiri steppe and/or 1 tectonic edge.
But, Dee what do you think of that decklist?
Beau, thanks for the list.
Abram, the list is pre-Worldwake. That’s why there’s no Sejiri Steppe or Tectonic Edge. I don’t think those cards
I’ve tested the list including a version with Jace. Sadly, the deck was too inconsistent. I got too many draws with expensive spells and not enough mana ramp. Or I would get a bunch of mana ramp spells but nothing to ramp into. I mulliganed a lot. Fast decks can be a big problem if you don’t have a quick summoning trap.
Also, I kept getting unlucky with summoning trap. For example, I would get Sphinx of the Steel Wind versus White Weenie and they would just path it. Or I would get Iona versus UW Control and name white but they would play Jace and bounce Iona.
If you want to play Summoning Trap, I recommend testing this list, which went 4-0 in an MTGO daily back in Feb 28:
1 Celestial Colonnade
4 Forest
2 Island
2 Marsh Flats
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Plains
1 Stirring Wildwood
3 Sunpetal Grove
2 Swamp
1 Tectonic Edge
2 Verdant Catacombs
25 lands
4 Baneslayer Angel
3 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Novablast Wurm
1 Sphinx of Lost Truths
3 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
21 creatures
3 Day of Judgment
2 Flashfreeze
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Summoning Trap
4 Trace of Abundance
14 other spells
Sideboard
1 Bant Charm
2 Calcite Snapper
1 Celestial Purge
1 Day of Judgment
2 Flashfreeze
2 Mind Shatter
2 Negate
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Terastodon
2 World Queller
15 sideboard cards
Personally, I haven’t played it but it looks interesting because it relies less of Lotus Cobra, which is such a high variance card. Plus, it has a couple Day of Judgments, which is pretty good in the current meta.
Here’s a post on tcgplayer by platypusplatoon
Summoning Trap! (And the math behind it)
Posted 10-20-2009 at 08:18 AM by PlatypusPlatoon
Summoning Trap is one of the most exciting, yet overlooked, cards in Zendikar. It’s all too easy to focus on the trap clause, and wonder aloud to yourself, “Now how am I ever gonna set that off?” Then you look past that, to the mana cost in the top right corner, and realize – hey! It’s Dramatic Entrance, without the colour restriction or card disadvantage!
Inspired by a post on these forums, and with a buddy building a deck using it, I figured it’d be neat to look at the math behind the card. Warning: lots of numbers ahead. May cause drowsiness and affect your ability to drive or operate machinery.
Assume you have a 60 card deck. You can load up your deck with any number of Fat – basically, large creatures you want to cheat into play with Summoning Trap. Things like Bird of Paradise and Lotus Cobra don’t qualify, as they’re what you use to accelerate out a Trap, not what you want to dig up. Failure is defined as hitting 0 Fat when casting a Summoning Trap – seeing no Fat in your 7 revealed cards. These calculations are done assuming that no fetchlands have been cracked, any library manipulation has been done, blah blah blah.
With that out of the way, let’s get onto the numbers.
Total Combinations of cards = C(60,7) = 386206920
#Fat—-No Fat Combins—–%Failure
–1——–341149446———88.33%
–2——–300674088———77.85%
–3——–264385836———68.46%
–4——–231917400———60.05%
–5——–202927725———52.54%
–6——–177100560———45.86%
–7——–154143080———39.91%
–8——–133784560———34.64%
–9——–115775100———29.98%
–10——–99884400———25.86%
–11——–85900584———22.24%
–12——–73629072———19.06%
–13——–62891499———16.28%
–14——–53524680———13.86%
–15——–45379620———11.75%
–16——–38320568———-9.92%
–17——–32224114———-8.34%
–18——–26978328———-6.99%
–19——–22481940———-5.82%
–20——–18643560———-4.83%
–21——–15380937———-3.98%
–22——–12620256———-3.27%
–23——–10295472———-2.67%
–24———8347680———-2.16%
–25———6724520———-1.74%
The first thing that jumps out at me is that, wow, I need to play a lot more fat than I realized. But think back to how many times you’ve seen 0 land openers in your deck with 20 or 22 lands, and you realize, hey, it happens. In fact, the percentages above mirror exactly your chances of drawing a no land hand in your opening 7, if you change #Fat to #Lands. Except here, you don’t get to ship ‘em back for a do-over.
I’d never want to play a 6-mana spell that would auto-fail on me more than 10% of the time, so 16 fatties seems like the baseline. Even then, I’d probably want to go with 18-20, just to be safe. In any case, it seems like the best way to build a Summoning Trap deck is not to revolve your deck around casting it; you’re better off playing Fat that you can hardcast when the situation arises, as opposed to all Progenitus and Iona all the time.
With that being the case, the ramp you’d really want (at least in my opinion) isn’t so much creature ramp but spells like harrow / rampant growth as seen in the original list – the goal of which is twofold (1) ramp and (2) trim lands out of your deck so you can find the powerhouse creatures more readily with summoning trap. I think i’d rather have those spells than Jace the Mind Sculptor…or maybe i’m just saying that because I don’t own any.
Has anyone tried any other more budget friendly big creatures, for folks without baneslayers and sphinxes? Some i’ve brainstormed (but not as yet used) are:
- Karthus, Tyrant of Jund: (Hi Jund player, i put out a 7/7 haste flier AND I steal all your broodmates and can swing with all of them, thanks for the alpha strike!). Probably not better than Sphinx of the Steel Wind, but more budget friendly.
- Inkwell Leviathan: shroud is a big deal with all the removal available
Interesting stats. Thanks for sharing. I really like Knight of the Reliquary in the deck because she’s not too bad to trap into late in the game after you’ve cracked a couple fetchlands and she provides mana ramp.
I just noticed – why pull the Ionas from the RDW matchup?
Not sure, but my guess is that you want less of the expensive fatties in the opening hand. Plus, you’re boarding out some mana ramp and the trapmaker’s snare, so you’re not as reliant on getting off a quick trap.
Despite sending you that email about the Maelstrom deck, I decided to play this one (I couldn’t get the cards in time for Maelstrom). My changes to Jherjames/Lat’s deck were 2 O-rings in place of the Paths, and 2 less Baneslayers (only had access to two) which I replaced with a fourth Sphinx and a Terastodon (mostly because I was looking for a fattie I could hardcast that I already had in my trades binder).
I lost 2 matches in a row, won my third, and dropped the fourth round because I was sleepy. I don’t want to bore folks with the details, but I am confident that despite my losses (attributed to the ridiculously fast starts red can get with multiple goblin guides and the fact that I didn’t play the deck at all prior to last night) that this deck is the real deal.
Based on the above, my recommended changes (which may be suited to my meta more than anything) to maindeck are -2 rampant growth and -1 Iona, +1 Sphinx and +2 Wall of Reverence or Rhox War Monk, and O-Rings instead of Paths. I have not figured out what I want to put into the deck from Worldwake.
Beau, thanks for the info. I like the Rhox War Monk idea.
I was thinking about cheating Eldrazi into play with this shell, or polymorph, but someone just told me that Djinn of Wishes lets you PLAY spells instead of putting things directly onto the battlefield (thus letting you use the “when you play this spell do x” abilities on the cards). The Djinn might be a little janky, but it’s something to consider. Emrakul is ridiculous!
Hm, you might be on to something. Djinn of Wishes could work with the big Eldrazi. Too bad the wording for the blue creature isn’t “cast”.
Emrakul is riduculous and I’m sure people will be playing it with Polymorph and Summoning Trap.
Doh – good catch. I got that via text message and didn’t bother to look up the card…didn’t fully realize it was “cast”.
I was talking to my play group tonight – they are under the general consensus that “play” means cast in the context of the Djinn of Wishes.
I looked at it just now, and one of the rulings says “If the revealed card is a spell, you may cast it only if you can choose legal targets for it. If you cast it, it’s put on the stack, then Djinn of Wishes’s ability finishes resolving. The spell will then resolve as normal, after players get a chance to cast spells and activate abilities.”
That leads me to believe it counts as casting, so you would get the benefit of the eldrazi.
You’re right. Thanks for the clarification. Djinn of Wishes might be a sleeper card
Now we just need some library manipulation. Jace and Ponder come to mind.
Latest note from my playtest group during playtesting of Emrakul (which I think is better than Iona in case your opponent has board position) in this deck and in polymorph; Emrakul is subject to removal from O-ring and Journey to Nowhere, because they cease to be spells after being cast and can thus target Emrakul. So boarding wise, if you’re playing mono-white, use Iona!
(or rather, anyone using white)
Good points. Emrakul is very powerful but there are ways to get around her “shroud-like” ability. The one I thought of was Jace’s bounce ability. Also, Gatekeeper of Malakir and Fleshbag Marauder can be problems.
In Polymorph, I’m still leaning towards Iona in the main. Emrakul could be a good sideboard card though. Possibly against decks with multiple colors to deal with Iona.
The problem I found with Iona was that there was no follow-up…you locked down the board, but if your opponent already had board position you were hard pressed to defend yourself.
Not sure why Emrakul would be better than Iona if your opponent has board position. Emrakul can only block one creature like Iona and 7/7 is not much different than 15/15 if you’re blocking.
The annihilator ability is not really helpful if you need to keep Emrakul back to block. I guess you could race, but that’s probably not an option if your opponent has board position.
Iona does a good job of blanking many of your opponent’s best cards. Iona stunts their board development so that you can come back. On the other hand, Emrakul doesn’t keep your opponent from casting spells so they can keep improving their board position.
Plus, I thought of another common way to kill Emrakul, Basilisk Collar and Cunning Sparkmage lol.
Now if Emrakul had lifelink, that would be sick
Played this tonight, went 3 and 1. Wins were against white weenie, time sieve, naya allies. Loss was to Eldrazi ramp (which I really, really like by the way…kinda want to meld the two). Will post decklist tomorrow.
Good job, Beau. It would be cool to see your list. So many variations out there for Polymorph. What did you come up with?
I felt that the polymorph decks are a little more fragile than I would like, because the combo pretty much requires you get off a polymorph. In my opinion, Summoning Trap is slower but more resilient, and off the radar so you can probably sneak it into play (they’ll probably assume you’re playing mythic or mythic conscription).
Creatures (23)
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Sphinx of the Steel Wind (prob switch for Baneslayer)
2 Iona, Shield of Emeria
2 Pelakka Wurm
2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Wall of Omens
Spells (14)
2 Jace the Mind Sculptor (borrowed from my friend Dave – thanks Dave! – only saw it once the entire night, I want 3 or 4 maybe)
2 See Beyond (prob switch for trapmaker’s snare, I wished I had a summoning trap more than I wanted to put fatties back into my deck as I could eventually hardcast)
3 Realms Uncharted (thins the deck for better % chance of pulling something relevant with summoning trap, makes KoR huge)
3 Harrow (same as above but better interaction with lotus cobra)
4 Summoning Trap
Lands (23)
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs
6 Forest
3 Island
2 Plains
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Swamp (Likely will become Bojuka Bog)
1 Terramorphic Expanse (split with evolving wilds for better realms uncharted)
1 Evolving Wilds
I forget what I put together for a sideboard, because I made the deck literally 5 minutes before we were going to start play (I saw there was another guy playing Naya Allies and I have this almost obsessive compulsive thing about being different), but it included 4-of negate, a singleton bojuka bog, and some combo of o-ring, terastodon, journey to nowhere, flashfreeze, wall of reverence. I think 2 additional Iona should be in there, more terastodon instead of journey, more o-ring instead of flashfreeze.
Notes -
Iona is really, really good. I should have 2 in the board.
Sphinx is awkward to have and hard to hardcast, probably board it and put Baneslayer (I buckled and got two, my bank account does not thank me) or Terastodon in its place for removal
Terastodon is sick and can be hardcast easily (well, more easily than sphinx, iona, or emrakul). What would you rather your opponent have, 3 3/3’s you can annihilate or block all day anyway, or his 3 planeswalkers?
Small amount of basics can be problematic if they get spreading seas’d
I am wondering if negate in the board should be negate in the main, and even if it should be negate at all or some other type of counterspell
I think mulling if you have no ramp is the right call
Meddling mage and day of judgement main board used to be good for me when I played bant trap. I think I ran trace of abundance instead of harrow, to protect my mana from seas as well as to ramp. I like the idea of negate mainboard.
Primeval titan from m10 should be a good addition to this deck. It helps out towards letting you hardcast your fatties if you happen to be without a summoning trap.
I going to try the deck again for M11 with Primeval Titan and Sun Titan.
Haha, you guys and I are on the same page – i’m trying it with Primeval Titan right now in place of some of the harder to cast targets. I’ll let you know the results of my testing!
Cool, let us know. I’m kinda stuck on how to improve Turbo Titan.