Hold the Line is a mono-white, Human-centric Magic: The Gathering Innistrad Event Deck designed for entry level competitive play, as a building block to get started for Friday Night Magic or to take your kitchen table play to the next level.
Hold the Line has some excellent tools to build with in its $24.99 MSRP framework, and was revealed today by Monty Ashley on the official Magic: The Gathering site. Keeping context in mind, Hold the Line is not without problems, and we’ll explore ways to make the deck better or change it completely in the review following the decklist.
Let’s look at the Hold the Line Event Deck:
Decklist:
Sideboard:
Hold the Line comes with some great stuff – Mirran Crusaders are more viable than ever with white’s focus on Humans in the Innistrad block, and Nevermore is probably going to end up being a nice sideboard card in a variety of decks. But there is a serious factor that weighs heavy on Hold the Line – Tempered Steel.
Almost everything from the Tempered Steel deck remains standard legal going into Innistrad, and frankly it looks a lot faster and a lot more dangerous than the benefits offered by Honor of the Pure and… Doomed Travelers. Yeah, you’re going to want to get rid of those guys for sure, trade in the Daggers and Cleavers for Swords, and reconsider your position from there.
Hold the Line is a pretty solid stock for cooking up a white-aggro stew, but there are glaring omissions here that need to be added to get things rolling. Mentor of the Meek seems like a great place to start with a Human-based deck, and Heroes of Bladehold are probably mandatory as well.
Is a Human deck even a great idea to focus on with Tempered Steel still legal? It has potential to shine down the line with the next two sets of Innistrad block, but as it is you’re going to have a to work a lot harder to achieve that kind of speed.
All that said, you’ll certainly be able to steal some games at an average FNM with Mirran Crusader equipped with anything, and the Bonds of Faith are excellent here, usable either as removal or a significant buff to Mirran Crusader (yes, you’re going to want 4 Mirran Crusaders). Mikaeus, the Lunarch can function as this deck’s version of Steel Overseer.
It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s probably the herald of a new age of Human white-weenie decks. But the Hold the Line Event Deck may be living in the shadow of Tempered Steel templates for a while, and you’re probably going to run into those decks at FNM. Do the Humans have what it takes? We’ll see.
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