A Knight tribal deck with a Knight of the Reliquary + Retreat to Coralhelm combo.
The Knights
Student of Warfare is just a great aggressive 1-drop, that can hit for 3 on the second turn. It's kinda like Wild Nacatl but with first strike. Also sometimes just an insane top deck later on in the game, since a 4/4 double strike ends the game really quickly.
Knight of the White Orchid ramps and fixes, lets us catch up on the draw. Also 2/2 first strike is not a bad body, first strike gets all sorts of random utility creatures such as Snapcaster Mage.
Knight of Meadowgrain a 2/2 lifelink first striker is reaaally tough to race, especially great vs burn.
Knight of the Reliquary a combo piece, huge body (often 4/4 or 5/5 on turn 3) and packs a small land toolbox too! Just great stuff.
Knight Exemplar the reason to have all these random ok-body knights in the same team. Indestructible is no joke and almost all our creatures is good.
Mirran Crusader can get random free wins vs BGx, if they don't happen to have a bolt or path at hand, depending on the version. Hits really hard, especially with exemplar out.
The Non-Knights
Noble Hierarch The best manadork in modern, especially in an aggressive deck that can take advantage of the exalted. Also happens to be on color and lets us sometimes win on turn 3.
Collected Company gives a lot of fuel and lets us play longer games. Hitting two creatures is quite likely in this deck, and this lets us dig for Knight of the reliquary for the combo or Knight exemplar in response to removal.
Path to Exile This is a white deck in modern, so this is quite self explanatory.
Retreat to Coralhelm A combopiece. It can be decent even outside the combo, since tapping down blockers/attackers can be pretty strong.
The Mana
Due to our heavy focus on white, we can function with a lot of basic plains. This makes us safe from Blood Moon and also gives us very consistent mana.
We also run a small tutor package for Knight of the Reliquary, Ghost Quarter for tron and amulet (although we are probably dead by then in that match up), Gavony Township for grindy games and Sejiri Steppe for a nice finish for the combo or just evasion if our opponent is low enough. I've also been considering Bojuka Bog for the sideboard but that may be too cute.
Sideboard
This is still a little work in progress, but the main goal is to run as many creatures as possible, since we want to keep collected company strong post board too, since that card is just absurd.
Kataki, War's Wage, Aven Mindcensor, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Spellskite and Kor Firewalker are all pretty straightforward hate cards we can hit off of coco. We don't need to run too many of each, since coco lets us dig for them (+ mindcensor and rhetoric seem kinda niche).
We can also sideboard into a more hatebear-y kinda strategy with our three Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and one Gaddock Teeg. These cards can make life really miserable for some decks, and just plain annoying vs others. Twin, for instance, can deal with thalia but it sure can be annoying.
We also have one dismember mostly for infect, since there is one of those in my meta.
Why play this deck instead of the zoo version?
The mana is more painless. We run a lot of plains and can fetch for them most of the time. We are almost immune to blood moon.
Also, Knight Exemplar enables some very good synergy draws. Sure, just jamming nacatls and goyfs is great, but exemplar, especially out of coco can really be devastating. Double exemplar can be almost impossible to handle for some decks.
The zoo version probably has faster aggro draws, which can be important in modern, but I don't think this list is inferior over all. If you like tribal decks and can't afford goyfs, then I suggest giving this a shot.
