Deck Tech: Bant Deathblade

Bant Deathblade has experienced a surge in popularity on MTGO, currently sitting at 3% of the meta alongside much more popular and well-known archetypes like Burn and Infect. This sudden change can probably be attributed to a decklist that appeared late February in the hands of UNKOMAN. Many other players have picked up his (or her) awesome looking deck since then.

UNKOMAN's deck follows the classic Bant formula of generating and leveraging a mana advantage with numerous turn-1 ramp plays, but has eschewed the Green Sun's Zenith package in favor of Deathrite Shaman. While the deck loses the flexibility of the GSZ package, the raw power of Deathrite Shaman cannot be denied.

Here is UNKOMAN's original list:

BANT DEATHBLADE, 2/29/16
Creature Spells (16) 4x Noble Hierarch 2x Deathrite Shaman 4x Stoneforge Mystic 3x True-Name Nemesis 3x Knight of the Reliquary	Noncreature Spells (23) 4x Brainstorm 4x Swords to Plowshares 1x Sylvan Library 4x Daze 4x Force of Will 2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor 1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar 1x Umezawa's Jitte 1x Sword of Fire and Ice 1x Batterskull
Lands (21) 3x Misty Rainforest 2x Windswept Heath 3x Flooded Strand 3x Tropical Island 2x Tundra 1x Savannah 1x Underground Sea 1x Forest 1x Karakas 4x Wasteland	SB: 1x Abrupt Decay SB: 2x Containment Priest SB: 1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant SB: 2x Ethersworn Canonist SB: 1x Flusterstorm SB: 1x Krosan Grip SB: 2x Meddling Mage SB: 1x Path to Exile SB: 2x Rest in Peace SB: 1x Surgical Extraction SB: 1x Vendilion Clique

The list is streamlined and threat-dense, with very high card quality. However, it looks very mana-hungry for a deck with only 6 accelerants, 21 land, and no Ponders. Also, I am very disappointed by the lack of Zealous Persecution or Engineered Plague in the sideboard. Access to that sort of effect, otherwise unavailable in Bant colors, strikes me as one of the strongest incentives to splash Black.

My biggest issue with Bant Deathblade is it always looks worse than either Bant or Esper Deathblade. I must say this is the first Bant Deathblade list to interest me though, and I'm not alone. UNKOMAN's list has generated some discussion and hype online, breathing life into the largely forgotten Bant archetype. The deck has also begun to show up in paper, taking 9th place at a ~90 player Channel Fireball 3K in the hands of Steven Bush late March.

I will likely sleeve up some variant of Bant Deathblade myself to see how it plays out.