White Knight

Knight Exemplar is one of the most exciting new cards in M11, particularly among non-Mythic Rares. Plus the art is just gorgeous. Way to go Jason Chan. I was a huge fan of his art long before he ever painted his first Magic card, so I was obviously very happy to see him doing art for my favorite game. Knight Exemplar is one of his best, in my opinion, and as a bonus, it's one of the playmats for M11 - available here. I'll be ordering one very soon.

In addition to the awesome playmat, I've built a deck around the wonderful new Knight. It's a pretty straightforward list, without much in the way of innovation or tech, but it's a very solid and fun take on the White Weenie archetype. And at least it's not another run-of-the-mill Soldier deck. Here's the list:

4 White Knight
4 Knight of the Meadowgrain
4 Leonin Skyhunter
4 Knight of the White Orchid
2 White Shield Crusader
4 Knight Exemplar
4 Kinsbale Cavalier

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Brave the Elements
4 Honor the Pure
3 Ajani Goldmane

3 Emeria the Sky Ruin
17 Plains

Yeah, so like I said, the deck isn't the paragon of creativity or anything, but heck, when is the last time YOU built a deck with 4x Kinsbale Cavalier? The 2 White Shield Crusaders could easily be something else, but I like flying, so they do the job. Knight of the White Orchid is the surprise MVP here, but then again he often is an MVP so maybe it's not such a surprise. Either way, he's really quite good and I wouldn't recommend trying to build the deck without him - or if you do, at least up the land count by 2 or 3.

Not much else to say, it plays like a white weenie deck, obv, but it has several blowout plays in Brave the Elements, Kinsbale Cavalier, or Ajani Goldmane. Well-timed use of any of these three cards can be pretty much auto-win.

If you want to take it in a different direction, like opening up the colors, I'd say the very first place to look is green for Knight of the Reliquary. I also like blue for Court Hussar. Adding both allows for Rafiq of the Many. I know Bant decks with Mr. of the Many aren't really any more unusual than White Weenie decks, but an all-Knight Tribal Bant deck would be a bit off the beaten path. And there are few things in Magic scarier than an Indestructible Rafiq!

Enjoy.